The Mystery Wife

"What in hell are you on about?" Draco hissed at Snape as soon as they were out the door.

"You're drunk," Snape drawled, not letting go of his wrist as she proceeded to drag him down the street. "Snape's Beer packs more of a punch than one might typically expect."

"Snape's Beer?" Draco frowned, suffering himself to be led along, as the street appeared to be lurching a little in front of him. "You have a beer?"

"Not mine, nor my family's," said Snape, her voice returning effortlessly to its carefully flawless upper class diction. "Snape is a fairly common surname. I seem to recall that it is also the name of a fishing village on the east coast somewhere."

Draco's frown deepened. He had no idea what either a fishing village or a beer could possibly have to do with That Voice. Mostly to keep it talking, he asked, "That dress...your mother's?"

"There are still a few of her effects in the house," Snape shrugged. "Too much bother to be rid of all of them. And as I have always intended to burn the place down, there would seem to be little point in any particular clean-up effort."

"You're going to burn down your family home?" Draco practically yelped. Merlin knew the dress deserved to be burned, but the entire house? He'd sooner snog Slughorn than set Malfoy Manor on fire.

Well, maybe. Probably. If his mother were crying about it in front of him. Because, really, SLUGHORN. Eeew.

Beside him, Snape shrugged, finally letting go of his wrist. "That is my intention, yes. I want to leave no loose ends in England, nothing of myself behind. Richard will be better off believing me dead and having no further connection to me. I should have destroyed the house years ago, but having this one safe bolt-hole has proven reasonably useful."

Her voice was hard, and her features looked as though they'd been chiseled out of granite. It was the same expression she'd worn when she was talking herself into taking the potion that had turned her into a woman.

Draco stared incredulously at her. "You're going to let your own brother believe you're dead?"

Snape nodded, rather sharply. "It's better for him. Better for his rather considerable brood, too. Richard has eight children to consider. He hasn't the time or the wherewithal to be caught up in our troubles."

Those little furrows were there between her brows again, the ones that had always meant deep unhappiness. Draco had always known that much without knowing exactly how he knew it. Years of watching that face under vastly different circumstances, no doubt.

"How can he be caught up in your problems if everybody thinks you're dead?" Draco pointed out. "I didn't even know you had a brother. I bet nobody else does, either. And you're going to be in France. You could send the occasional letter, couldn't you?"

Snape's jaw hardened. "Don't... tempt me, Draco. I should have done all this years ago, but for the fact that I allowed sentiment to keep me from heeding my own better judgment."

"The Death Eaters are all in jail," Draco retorted. "Who's going to hunt him down? Potter and his gang? Not bloody likely. I think you could probably afford the sentiment now."

"The Death Eaters are not all in jail, in point of fact. A good number of them escaped. Altogether too bloody many of them know about Spinner's End. And enough Revelati cast on Spinner's End could lead them to Richard and his family. So could an owl with a badly timed letter. No. Let me do this one thing unselfishly and right."

Draco went a bit paler than he already was, at the reminder that some of the Death Eaters had gotten away. And even for the ones that did wind up in Azkaban, the Ministry had had rotten luck in keeping people there, in recent years...

"Alright," he muttered. And then he started, as if someone had pinched him. "Then we're going to have to disguise me, too, aren't we?"

"That we are. And before tomorrow, as you'll need to accompany me to Gringotts."

Draco backed away in wide-eyed alarm. "I won't take it!" he shrilled. "I won't take that bloody potion! You're not turning me into a girl!"

Snape snorted derisively. "I have no intention of turning you into a girl. I am not turning you into a girl, I am not poisoning you, enslaving you or forcing sex from you. When will you get it through that irritatingly thick skull that I have only ever tried to protect you, and that every major misstep you've ever made in your short life was done because you did not allow me to help you? Every one, Draco. Accepting the Dark Mark. Attempted murder. Enabling the Death Eaters to get inside Hogwarts. The death of Albus Dumbledore, which will forever be on my head, and for which you owe me your life and more. The loss of my reputation, my home and my masculinity inexorably followed that irredeemable act. You are both the cause of the utter destruction of my old life, and the only thing left to me from it. The final tie, the one that cannot be broken while we live."

Her eyes were black pits of rage, utterly terrifying. "You can trust me. Your mother saw to that. But while you are in my care, you will tow the line. You will show me the respect that is my due. And you will grow up, boy. We are down to last chances, you and I, and life is not infinitely forgiving in allowing you to start over."

Sheer fright had instantaneously done the work of a pot of black coffee and an ice-cold shower. Draco was no longer feeling remotely drunk. He rather wished he were. It would have blurred this a bit.

"Yes, s--" Draco had nearly said 'Sir'. And a slip like that could get them both killed.

"...Mistress," he finished in a whisper. He hated the word as soon as he'd said it. He hated it on the same level as he'd hated 'my lord', on those hideous occasions in the past year and a half when he couldn't avoid Voldemort's notice. But, exactly as in that case, he was too afraid not to use it.

Snape sighed and rubbed the back of her neck, something Draco must have seen her do dozens of times after a Potions student's efforts had ended in disaster. "Mistress sounds like a dominatrix," she muttered. "And I don't greatly fancy listening to 'Madam' or 'Ma'am,' either. The usual rules for students are relaxed somewhat for Apprentices; as the relationship is usually an intimate one, Apprentices are allowed to call their Masters by name. I have spent the last several years building up a female alterego named Sevanna Prince. A Canadian Potions Mistress of some note. Most of my inventions and discoveries have, of necessity, been published in her name instead of my own."

Sevanna Prince. Draco had heard of her. Famously reclusive, she never gave interviews or made appearances at Potions conventions, but her papers and radical theories were read avidly and debated hotly. Sevanna Prince had done more to revolutionize the art of brewing than the next three rivals behind her, one of whom was considered to be Severus Snape himself.

'A Canadian Potions Mistress of some note,' indeed.

Bloody hell, come to think of it, what did the holder of any of Sevanna Prince's patents need with start-up capital from the Malfoys? Snape didn't exactly seem like the sort to be profligate with money. He had to be sitting on a fortune.

"You might as well get used to calling me Sevanna, and I might as well get used to hearing it," Snape sighed. "We have the rest of our lives to do so, after all."

A tiny, fey flicker of humour surfaced through the fear. "And the prospect of that is probably worse than suddenly being the wrong gender," Draco drawled wryly. "What with my being less welcome company than an infestation of Nargles. The better-bred and more personable ones, anyway."

Snape's eyes finally met his in a moment of shared humor, all hostility apparently erased. "It can be no worse than suddenly finding yourself bound to the Bat of the Dungeons until death do us part," she shrugged. "We might as well make the best of it. A truce, if you're amenable. The entanglement will be considerably easier if we aren't wrangling every step of the way."

Draco ventured a small, crooked smile. "Alright. I'll get my NEWTs, at least... Maybe Sevanna Prince could go to Potions events for a change, now that she has an apprentice to carry the packages... And we'll be in Paris. I don't think it's possible for Paris to suck."

Snape actually almost smiled at that. "Spoken like the young. It is possible to be miserable absolutely anywhere, believe me," she drawled. "Though if you're going to be wretched, Paris is hardly your worst choice of locale. If you find yourself sleepless, it is possible to get decent food and truly decadent hot chocolate at four in the morning in a café overlooking the Seine."

"I could do with some chocolate at four in the morning, most days," Draco said under his breath, losing his smile, and his eyes darted away. "So you've been in Paris before, then? You sound familiar with it."

"I am, reasonably," Snape nodded. "I've managed to finagle a few trips over there into the course of my work. How's your French?"

"Couci-couça," Draco replied, amusingly enough with the appropriate Gallic gesture, rocking his hands in the air to indicate no more than adequacy. His accent was a little old-fashioned, but it would pass without remark in the Wizarding Quarter, he was fairly sure.

Snape nodded acceptance and what might have been approval. And then she froze, fractionally, before moving on. "We're being followed," she whispered, so quickly and quietly Draco couldn't quite be sure he'd heard it. "Two Muggles, behind us. Do not use your wand; the signature would be detectable and traceable." She went on in a more audible and casual voice to say, "Growing up in this place, I learned a thing or two about aping an accent; my French allows me to pass for a native."

Her hand seemed to be concealing something, and the glint of it caught Draco's eye.

"Well, it would," Draco said, in as close to a casual drawl as he could manage while his mind was shrilling, You also apparently learned a thing or two about knives! No magic. They were down to what the Weasleys considered proper fighting, then. Brilliant. "What they use for English here practically IS a foreign language. French would be cake, after speaking this."

"E by gum, can yer belly touch yer bum?" a male voice sang out behind them, while another one laughed. Draco tried not to jump out of his skin, and he and Snape turned around. Two enormous Muggle men stepped out of the shadows.

"Na then, aht laiking on t' gate, bewer? Aht skeggin' fer a tup?" one leered, his eyes raking over Snape with unmistakable intention.

"I kin giv' 'er a tup," the other one laughed.

Snape smiled slowly, seductively, and stepped in front of Draco.

"What are you doing?" Draco hissed, and she nudged him further backward, concealing the knife in her hand.

"'Appens as maybe," she drawled, looking the men over with apparent appreciation.

"Wet as a night out in T'ilkers, art tha' not, bewer?" the first one grinned.

That, Draco understood, even in this Yorkshire crap they deludedly called English. He drew his wand with a muffled snarl, although he retained enough sense to keep it out of sight, between himself and Sev--Sevanna.

"I think I could get over that not being willing to kill people problem, right now," he hissed into Snape's ear. "Get out of the way."

"No," Snape hissed back. "You are not getting yourself killed or injured your first night in my keeping."

She took another step closer to them before Draco could pull her back, and said, "Get theesen on," very softly. The eyes of the first one... Crabbe, Draco had already mentally named him... went, if possible, stupider than they had been, and he turned and started walking down the street.

"Ssup wi' thee?" the one Draco had mentally named Goyle asked him. "Tha'rt as green as tha's cabbage lookin'!"

Goyle went after Crabbe, and Snape turned. "Move," she hissed, her free hand grabbing Draco's to tug him along with her in the direction of the nearest alleyway.

Draco went, glaring back over his shoulder at the retreating Yorkshire Crabbe and Goyle, in spite of rather dubiously thinking that an alleyway did not exactly represent a place of safety in this backwater dunghill town.

"We should have killed them," he muttered angrily at her. "Or knocked them out and roughed them up a lot, anyway. You wanted your brother to think you were dead. We could have left their bodies and mocked up our own to leave with them. Alibi plus two bastards removed from the world, and you wouldn't have to burn the house down. Oh, how tragic, a young woman and her... whatever the hell they thought I was, back in the bar... dead from injuries taken in defending themselves from a pair of thugs... What is this place coming to? Is nowhere safe?"

"And do you really imagine killing to be so simple?" she hissed, dragging him through the alley. "Killing rends the soul, Draco. Your own is whole in spite of everything Voldemort could do to it. I was prepared to kill them myself if I'd had to, but what an inelegant and wasteful..."

She broke off her tirade in midstream, half a second before a closed fist shot of the shadows behind a dumpster, and punched her in the face. She went down in an ungraceful heap with a curse, letting go of Draco's hand so as not to drag him down with her.

The owner of that fist strode out of the shadows, smirking, looming over her. That smirk transferred itself immediately to Draco, as the man apparently decided Snape wasn't a threat. Draco saw the knife flash in her hand.

Draco didn't wait for arguments. Or worse. He--she--whatever--didn't want her Apprentice to kill people. Her Apprentice didn't want to kill people, honestly.

But he wasn't going to stand around and watch her have to do it, either.

Draco threw all his weight, six years' personal experience of fighting with the Weasleys, his deep and abiding dislike of this town and its inhabitants, and a level of frustration only a seventeen-year-old could experience or endure, into the punch that abruptly connected with the man's face.

The behemoth of a man actually staggered back a little in tribute to it. And then he smiled and swung back with a great ham fist.

"Why is everybody in this bloody town built like Crabbe and Goyle?" Draco shouted bitterly at Snape, ducking the blow and aiming another at the man's midsection, which seemed to cause no reaction beyond a grunt.

Snape, in the meantime, was hardly idle. She staggered to her feet, shook her head to clear it and grabbed up a discarded rusty pipe. One good, hard swing connected with that thick, bald head, bringing the man to his knees. Draco punched him in the face again, purely because he felt like it, and the man went down like a bag of stones between them.

There was something hot and triumphant blazing in Snape's eyes as they met Draco's, something altogether primitive, aided by the fact that she was still holding her rusty pipe like a Beater's bat.

"That felt good," she admitted, her voice slurring a bit, her mouth bloody.

Draco's fists felt like they were on fire, but he didn't care. He gave her a feral grin in reply. "Yeah. It did. Are you okay?" He carefully stepped closer and coaxed the pipe out of her hands. "Come on. Back to the pub. You're bleeding. And clearly, every arsehole in Yorkshire thinks we're brilliant targets. We're coming back this way with your brother and any other non-arsehole we can get."

"This one," she replied, nudging the man with her foot, "may well die of what I just did to him. I cannot risk using magic to save him. If the body is discovered tonight and everything goes tits up, we're going to have to make a run for it."

Her eyes were sharp and calculating, as always, and they rested on the man for a moment with apparent indifference.

"Keep the pipe," she said. "We may yet need it."

Oh, Draco planned to.

"What about a potion?" he asked, almost timidly. "I have one. By the time he woke up, it'd be out of his system. I was going to sneak it to you, frankly, but if his dying would cause trouble... we'll give it to him and go buy you another bloody awful warm lager to numb the pain, instead."

He risked another lopsided smile, wanting the tolerant, dryly amused Potions Master of earlier back, rather than this cold-blooded, frightening, Death Eater version.

"What do you have on you?" Snape asked.

Draco's mouth quirked. "Healing potions, Blood-Replenishing potions, the Draught of Living Death... I raided the stillroom back at the manor and hid them in my stuff. I learn quickly, when I bother to listen."

"I carry a small arsenal around, myself," Snape admitted. "Let me see your Healing potions."

Draco pulled three vials out of various pockets of his Muggle garb, and Snape sniffed at all of them. Sevanna, Draco forced himself to mentally rename her. Sevanna picked out the cheapest and least effective of the Healing salves and applied a bit to the back of the fallen man's head.

"There," she muttered when she'd finished. "He'll either come around soon, or not at all. Either way, we need to be elsewhere."

Those eyes were hard, the mouth set in an uncompromising thin line that made her look far more like her old self. She handed Draco back his potion with a muttered "Thanks," and headed back out of the alley in the direction of the pub.

Draco followed her, his stomach still roiling from uncorked nerves and the rush of adrenaline.