The Decoding of the Heart

I'll be posting this chapter in two, maybe three parts. This took longer than expected, and I still haven't got to where I wanted to get story-wise.

Major warning to those who like plot and action - there isn't any. You got that in chapter 2. This is ALL very detailed scene setting (some set-ups for the sequel to "Letter" included) some background and a bit more character interaction. Oh, and Salomé's finally made it to the page, punished for her lateness by being overtaken (at high speed and in glorious technicolour) by Esmé from Riley's "Pawn to Queen " (Salomé was conceived first and permitted her serpentine chum's creation. She has wisely decided not to compete with Esmé's spectacular appearance or ability to speak English.)

I’ve made a minor-ish change following a reader’s query about Snape’s potential animagus form.

All literary references and borrowings from other fanfic writers (Morrighan, Earthwalk, Lupinlover , Silverfox and JL Matthews) are in the endnotes.

The Wicket Gate

Christian is guided in his pilgrimage by one Evangelist, who tells him that he must go to the Wicket Gate to commence the journey-to-death (ok, Heaven) proper. It is at the Wicket Gate that the literal burden of sins on Christian's back falls away.

He doesn't get there without a bout in the Slough of Despond first.

Those of you familiar with A Pilgrim's Progress will note that I am not following the exact order of the book's journey/geography. This is quite deliberate. In Bunyan's world, only Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs get to Heaven (those "who would valiant be" and the ones willing to slog at following the Correct Path.) Ravenclaw-types evade the ethical choices by sophistry, and the Slytherin tendency to look for alternative routes is seen as very dodgy, indeed punishable by exclusion from Paradise.

Bloody Patriarchal Narratives. I'm damn well going to jump around the text as I please.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The serpent had been at large all day: very at large, for she was of a breed that demanded extensive habitat. Today she felt good: few people were about, the Giant Man had provided her with Great Turtle habitats to squat in, and had even (at her Keeper's request) raked in some sand from the lakeside to cover her preferred haunts. She felt good despite a nagging concern for the Keeper, who was late coming home, judging by where he'd placed the stone on the sundial.

A change in the ground's vibrations told her he was back. She turned in the direction of the castle. This showed a good measure of devotion, for she had not enjoyed such roamings for a very long time, and, despite her fatigue would have gladly stayed out until nightfall. An extended period of confinement - punctuated by brief exposures to peril - had only recently come to an end. She turned back, trusting that there was always tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, to wander.

For the first time in three years, Salomé was tasting freedom.

* * * * *

"There he is - look."

Harry pointed to a dot that was making rapid, if wobbly, progress from the Whomping Willow to the bottom-left-hand corner of the parchment they'd summoned from his tightly packed trunk.

"Sooner him than me," said Ron. "You couldn't pay me to use that passage again."

Harry concurred. The Shrieking Shack had earned its name at last.

Sirius steered the boat without a word. Hermione fiddled with something in her bag.

"Now what?"

They had reached the great north entrance of the castle, and realised there was a problem: entering the Slytherin quarters when none of them knew the password. It was Hermione who suggested a solution.

"Take the boat round, Sirius - he's right on the lake. That looks like a jetty and some steps."

Sirius obeyed, and kept the boat well clear of the castle's walls, slowing right down. Hogwarts was complicated, and it was no mean task not to get diverted and drawn into some hidden canal. It was almost ten minutes before they reached the place they were looking for, during which the young men tried in vain to get the low-down on the fight. The hex matter aside, Sirius said, they had to get Snape to the hospital wing, or someone from the hospital wing to Snape.

"Why are you so worried?" (Hermione kept her voice casual) "He's tough enough to look after himself."

Sirius did not meet her gaze.

"I tried to heal him." he muttered. "It didn't work. The Mark's made him immune to magical cures. Pomfrey must know how to do without, though - he's never taken Dark treatments instead."

"And he's still in one piece?" marvelled Ron.

They were spared morbid reflections on the matter by their arrival at Snape's quarters.

According to the Marauder's Map, the Potions Master lived in a corridor circling the base of the south-west tower. The centre of the tower was inked in solid, and the stairs Hermione had noticed did not appear to continue above the first floor. She thought it odd, but somehow unastonishing, that a man who commanded the public space of the classroom with such authority should command a private space so timidly. Almost slipping off the page, barely clinging to the edge of its own tower, Snape's lair seemed to be but partially within Hogwarts' domain. It was as if he had been banished to the margins of their world, and, like the Basilisk, lurked in wait for you hidden in a pipe.

The Basilisk in its dark and slimy pipes was very much in the trio's thoughts as they followed the map. When they drew up by the mossy façade, nothing given away by the lancet slits or the (shuttered) French windows, they all dreaded entering what had to be an extension of Snape's glum office with its murky glass-jar walls.

Sirius tied the boat next to another that was moored there, and addressed them all.

"Tread carefully, ok?"

They knew he didn't just mean the slippery green steps, which in fact took them up above the windows to a battlement-like balcony that pinched its way round the tower.

They were in a garden - or garden path - of sorts. At least, there were pots under cloches containing various growths that looked familiar from their Potions classes. Less recognisable, indeed baffling, were the flat discs placed at regular intervals in the gravel. They seemed to be filled with liquid silver, and twinkled innocently in the sun. They reminded Harry of some of the things he'd seen in Dumbledore's office, but they had the sense to keep clear of them and not touch.

After all, you never knew with Snape.

Hermione took charge of the map.

"There has to be a way in from here," she whispered. "This shows two entrances, and one of them should be on this terrace - just round there."

They walked round, and, sure enough, found a wooden trap door, heavily embellished with wrought iron that resolved into a handle. To their surprise, the door was wedged open. Forgetting to knock, Sirius pulled it up by the ironwork - which hissed into furious life and began to unravel - all seven feet of it. They stifled their gasps.

It was obviously Harry's move. Sirius backed off, and the Boy-Who-Lived, bowing respectfully, began an eye-level exchange of hisses with the upright and wary-looking snake.

In less than a minute it withdrew, slinking through the gap between trap and ground to the mysterious volume below.

"Can we go in?" whispered Ron.

"Yeah - it's fine."

"What did it say?" asked Hermione, impressed.

Harry, who was looking oddly pleased and excited, blushed.

"Er- Greetingss, Sstag-Boy. Hasst forgot me?"

"You KNOW that snake?" asked Ron.

"She's the one Dumbledore used to infiltrate Voldie's familiars. I thought she got killed way back! We had these secret sessions - me, her, AD and Snape. I translated instructions to her, and she'd give me reports on her progress. Then there was that big fight when Voldie lost all his familiars and the sessions stopped. Snape went round looking even glummer, and AD asked me never to talk about it. We were trying to play down the Parseltongue thing" he explained to a rather hurt-looking Hermione "It was still putting me under suspicion."

In fact, there had been a great deal he'd had to keep from his closest friends, and they'd had to accept it had been for their own safety.

"So what did you say to her?" Ron was too intrigued to notice Sirius' impatient cough as he lifted the door from underneath and laid it flat.

Harry blushed even more.

"Hail Ssalomé, Sserpent-Sspy, Sslayer of the evil Nagini - Well, it worked didn't it?"

"Are we going in or aren't we?" Sirius interrupted.

Ron sighed. "Down the plumbing again... "

They stepped down, one by one, onto a spiral staircase whose steps were indiscernible in the gloom, and, like the handrail, treacherously smooth. Strains of choral music floated up from below.

Within a turn and a half, they emerged from the stone cylinder to find themselves treading on glass, clutching steel - and descending into a remorselessly light, white space.

It was barely ten feet wide, and curved quickly out of sight in both directions, making you feel you were in a passage to a room rather than in one. Accustomed as they were to Hogwarts' rich, pervasive medievalism, the concrete floor and bare chalky wall - never mind the un-quaint staircase - came as a shock.

Light pierced in from all directions, slicing the passage into bars of brightness and relative shadow that seemed to shift clockwise. The lancet openings on the outer wall were multiplied on the inner one, making them wonder if a huge, slowly turning lamp were hidden in the tower's centre. Circular skylights occupied the same places as the peculiar discs they'd seen on the terrace. They had intricate wires attached. Sirius drew his breath in sharply:

"Scryscopes - typical! He's rigged the whole place up for surveillance. He must have seen us on the terrace - what's his game?"

Snape's dot was blithely hovering around the other side of the tower, and Salomé, who had presumably gone to alert him, was visible neither in the room nor on the map.

"Maybe they're switched off now the war's over." suggested Hermione. "Don't they start humming or something when you're detected?"

"You're right - they must be. Even if he could hear them over this racket, they'd have relayed him our images by now."

"Shouldn’t we wait outside?" whispered Harry. "I mean, this is his home from what I've heard, and he'll hate our seeing him after he's lost a fight."

"No way," said Sirius. "Having you three here means he has to behave more or less sensibly."

They were far from sure of this, but complied.

The corridor began with a laboratory. A sink and several fire-points were embedded in a sterilised worksurface that wrapped itself round the interior wall. Cauldrons hung below it, glassware and other equipment nestled in precision-cut niches above. There were no ingredients, though, and no cabinets to keep them in. Two stoneware bowls, one with water, one empty, were on the floor under the sink. A narrow table with bench attached - undoubtedly requisitioned from some unused classroom - crossed the passage like the spoke of a wheel or hand of a clock.

That directed Hermione's attention to the books. The external wall seemed to be built from them - packed floor to ceiling in grey bookcases that swept along the curve. It looked as if they went full circle and joined up from the other side : a veritable drum of reading matter. The line separating water and sky appeared high in the lancet slits. You got the feeling that only that wall, that fortress of books, stopped the lake from flooding in.

Snape still kept out of sight; but through the chants of forty voices coming from a little further along, they heard running water.

Not the ideal moment to spring upon him, then.

"Better wait til he's done," said Sirius.

"Like, three seconds?" asked Ron.

They tiptoed round - there were no rugs. The books became files. A desk - more classroom surplus - faced a recess with the shuttered windows, far enough back to to walk round and open them. Tidily-stacked crates of parchment were next to it, and a spindly stool. The angle-poise lamp was cordless and bulbless.

The strangest thing of all, though, was that none of it seemed real. The walls and floor were solid enough, but everything else was - intermittently, and ever so slightly - transparent. Perhaps it was the bars of slow-drifting light befuddling their minds. Hermione touched one of the books, expecting her hand to go through it as if it were a hologram. It was there all right, and her touch seemed to make it regain its proper opacity.

They advanced towards Snape's dot, passing a glass tank containing sand. They saw the music was produced by a (somewhat passé) radio-cum-CD-cum-cassette player on the floor. Some of the shelves, accordingly, held tapes and discs.

"But hi-fi's don't work in Hogwarts... " teased Ron, hoping it came under 'Misuse of Muggle artefacts'. Trust a Slytherin to find a way round that one.

Snape's voice cut through the noise :

"Give me five minutes. Make yourself comfortable. Take the Perriand."

Curiouser and curiouser!

"He thinks there's only one of us," whispered Sirius.

"I think you've concussed him," sniggered Harry.

They inched into what passed for the sitting room. A wall cut six feet across the space, blocking their view of what they guessed were the bathroom and bedroom beyond.

"What's a perry-ong?" asked Ron.

The item that answered Ron's query - there was no other seating - had pride of place. As with the table, it was placed like the spoke of a wheel or hand of a clock, offering its occupant a view through a window slightly more generous than the lancets.

A chaise-longue.

Not just any chaise-longue, but a genuine example of the sexiest chaise-longue the 20th century had produced (and reproduced, for that matter; but the Hero of a Romance has no business owning cheap imitations).

It was a sleek structure in chrome: a minimal base on which was balanced (at whichever angle you preferred) the seat - or rather mattress. This cut a loose horizontal 'S' in the air, as if it had been designed to support the recumbent form of a very curvy woman, right down to the impudent bolster where she'd rest her neck.

"Slinky devil! "exclaimed Sirius, considering the conquests that could be made on such a couch, and how much it was wasted on Snape.

Ron thought it resembled the contraption in Mr and Mrs Granger's surgery, but had the sense not to start a discussion about that with Hermione (who was at any rate far more absorbed in examining the books.)

It was upholstered in snakeskin.

Not just any snakeskin.

"That's never…Nagini - is it ?" Ron appealed to Harry's more informed judgement.

Harry peered at the upholstery, then daringly lowered himself onto the thing, stretching out his legs with a grin.

"I think it just might be."

Before they could decide the matter, the owner of the fixture entered, wet-haired and (to absolutely no-one's dismay) fully-dressed.

There wasn't a mark on him.

"Albus, sorry to keep you, I - oh."

Everyone froze. Severus took in the scene: Black and Weasley standing around awkwardly, Potter suddenly bolt upright on the chaise, Granger by the bookcases, guiltily replacing a volume. He said nothing, but limped past them to the CD player and turned the music down.

They clocked that this meant he'd left his wand behind the wall. He returned immediately, however, eyes searing their flesh.

"What the hell do you want and how the hell did you get in?"

Hermione found that the others were all looking her way. It was a fair guess that she was the one he found least obnoxious.

"We got a boat to the back steps, sir. The door on the terrace was open. Your serpent let us in."

Snape's eyes flickered from the telltale map in Hermione's hand to Harry's defiant face.

"And?"

"Sirius was concerned about your - injuries - sir."

He let her dangle a bit longer.

"And he needs you to take your spell off him."

"Does he now?"

"And - you left these behind."

She fished the jacket and shirt out of her bag.

"They aren't too badly damaged. I've got most of the crud off."

Sirius could have sworn that her voice sharpened on the word 'crud'.

"How very thoughtful." It was impossible to tell whether Snape was being ungracious or, for him, quite polite. He took the neatly folded clothes and limped off again behind the wall.

The idea of embarrassing Professor Snape had often held great appeal for the trio, but now that they had caught him in a vulnerable moment, they felt more awkward themselves. It was obvious from Sirius' astonished expression that Snape had hidden his facial wounds to prevent too many questions from Dumbledore, and equally obvious that Snape knew they knew that. They were not people who enjoyed gloating over the loser of a fight, even if that loser was not displaying due signs of humiliation.

"What do we do now?" whispered Ron.

"Let me handle it," answered Sirius.

Snape reappeared.

"Still here ? Touched as I am by your - concern - I'm sure you can see I'm not dying on my feet, no matter what Black claims. So why don't you all run along and visit your zoo, or whatever diversion it is you've devised for yourselves."

Sirius shook his head slowly.

"A word in private, Snape."

"Discretion? That's a new one for you."

Sirius could be magnificently stubborn when he chose. He stalked over to Snape and led him, by a rather strong grip, towards the study area.

"Did you have to bring them with you?"

"Security measure. I've said as little as possible, but I'm NOT leaving here 'til I know you've been seen to, and 'til you take this damn hex off me."

Sirius had never seen Snape look so mischievous.

"You threw the hex off yourself a good twenty minutes ago, remember? It wasn't nearly powerful enough to last this long anyway... Whatever gave you the idea you were still under it?"

Sirius reddened. Snape transferred his gaze to the chaise-longue, where Hermione was now scrutinizing the bronze and viridian remains of Nagini.

"Well, try it out if you're going to, girl. Surely you know a Muggle masterpiece when you see one."

Hermione reclined on it a little dubiously. Sirius averted his eyes.

"Dear me, the mind is so suggestible. No woman in Britain will be safe! Too young for you, too clever for you, and not even your type."

(The mind is so suggestible. In a fraction-of-a-fraction of a second, in a moment so fleeting that he took no note of it at all, the idea of whose type Hermione Granger could be slipped to the depths of Severus Snape's subconscious, where it was filed - between 'Deathwish' and 'Duty' - under 'Dunderhead Notions'.)

"And what would you know about 'my type'?" Sirius lost his courteous resolutions.

Everything, Snape did not hesitate to remind him, that he'd revealed on a disastrous 'lad's night out' Dumbledore had forced them to have at the start of the war. They hadn't exactly had the same idea of fun.

"Don't worry, Black. It's nothing a cold shower can't cure."

Sirius took a deep breath.

"All right, play it that way. Now let me take you to the Hospital Wing."

"There's no room."

"Then I'll bring Poppy down here."

"Has it occurred to you that if Poppy gets worried then the Headmaster gets worried and we both end up having to answer to him?"

"Come off it - say some Muggle muggers jumped you before you could reach your wand. That's a shabby part of London we were in once you got behind the tourist bit."

"Poppy has her hands full."

Snape was still truculent, but the fact was that he could use help. He thought his nose might be fractured, and one of his ribs throbbed badly. Sirius sensed him weakening, and turned on the charm for all he was worth.

"We'll bring down one of the House-elves from there then. They know what they're doing, they'll do as you ask, and they'll keep stum."

This was so near Severus' own plan that he complied quite suddenly - though not without the comment that he couldn't let a troubled conscience spoil Sirius' evening.

Sirius returned to the trio.

"Could one of you go up to the hospital wing and fetch a House-elf nurse? Don't give any details, just bring them here."

Ron volunteered. He was the most eager to get out of there: Hermione was back by the bookselves, having been startled off the chaise-longue by Salomé. The serpent had innocently slithered along the chrome frame - and Hermione's arm - giving the young witch a nasty fright. (She tried not to be prejudiced, but she really didn't like snakes.) Harry had happily taken her place, and from the look of things, he and Salomé were exchanging My Heroic Victory stories.

"You'll have to walk." Snape told Ron curtly. "There's no floo, and my office got blasted. The door's behind the staircase. Say 'Rosa Luxemburg' to get back into Slytherin."

Ron gaped.

"The password changes every Monday. Just knock when you get back here."

After Ron went out, Snape retreated to the french windows and opened the shutters. He stared out at the lake, concentrating hard on the muffled music and the hissing of Parseltongue, which helped the murmurs in his head recede a little.

There was a sharp whistle from above.

"Damn."

"What's that?" asked Harry, breaking off his narrative, to Salomé's irritation,

at the climactic point.

"The scryscopes. They do that sometimes. It's most annoying."

"We thought they'd been disabled," said Sirius.

"That'll be the day," said Snape.

"But you didn't see us on the terrace, or when we came in... " Hermione ventured.

"Of course not - surely you can tell these are the parts that register, not the ones that transmit. They're rather sensitive to changes in the light."

The whistling died down.

"Where's - what they register - transmitted?" asked Hermione, her mind racing through the implications.

"To the Ministry. And the Headmaster's office."

There was an appalled silence. He found himself facing three indignant Gryffindors, and didn't quite know how to react. Hermione, adjusting her glasses, squinted at internal lancets, then at the chaise and the books opposite them.

"Are these transparency rays from the Ministry too?"

"Very good, Granger. Yes. Patent of Alastor Moody. His lasting contribution to Law and Order."

"How long's this been going on?" demanded Sirius.

"Since I started teaching here."

Snape turned back to the windows. When he resumed speaking, very quietly, it sounded like a testimony or confession directed at no-one in particular.

"They had to reconstruct this room specially. Moody's dark detector was an early model - needed a lot of space, couldn't see round corners, couldn't cope with anywhere too shadowed or heavily charged with magic. And it's unhealthy to be exposed to it directly and continuously. The quarters traditionally given to the Head of Slytherin were quite unsuitable. We turned them into a common-room for the prefects. This tower hadn't been used for nearly two centuries. There were all kinds of legends about it: that Salazar Slytherin's study was here, that the Chamber of Secrets was underneath, that this was where his brother was murdered. Slytherin House voted to purge it in 1791, then seal it off. They did a very thorough job. It's completely unhaunted and quite unenchanted. That made things very easy. The concrete can't hide anything: it's the most charm-resistant material you can have. The inner wall's concrete too. They whitewashed it to maximise the light. ! Actually, I like it. The traditional quarters aren't good for proper study - too ornate to concentrate in."

"What about at night?" Hermione couldn't help asking.

"They did some clever thing based on Muggle technology - similar to infra-red. And the scryscopes were always more sophisticated - picked up sound too."

Sirius had evidently forgotten his own mistrust of the Slytherin spy.

"Dumbledore allowed this?" he exploded. (There could have been no conquests of either sex on the couch, and it sounded as if Snape had experienced precisely the personal constraints that he had.)

"It was this or a cell next to yours. The Headmaster fought it all the way." He gave a mirthless chuckle. "They'd have put a transparency charm and bug on me if he hadn't insisted a locator anklet was enough."

"Your office - " said Harry. "it wasn't set up like this."

"It wasn't a private space. They knew I wouldn't be idiot enough to hide things where they could be found by any visiting teacher or student. I never could tell if it was bugged or not."

His tone was casual, as if he couldn't see what all the fuss was about.

"But it doesn't make sense," Hermione protested. "If you'd wanted to engage in dark activities, there were loads of dodges round all this. What could they learn from watching you mark homework or drink a cup of tea, or... "

She trailed off, trying not to imagine too precisely what it would be like to have your every activity recorded and observed.

"How were you supposed to - to function, to do your work?" she finished lamely.

"In a state of constant irritability," Snape retorted, with a twisted smile (he never had quite managed a straight one). "As for loopholes - the real point was not to detect suspect behaviour but to prevent it, and be seen to be preventing it. I accepted that. I had nothing to hide. Nothing."

They watched his fingers clench the black cloth of his robe.

"You're right, of course. The documentation revealed nothing of interest. Just created a lot of very dull work for a couple of ministry clerks. Naturally they gave the task of trawling through it all as a punishment to the laziest and least talented - as I often put on record for them." Another convoluted smirk. "I don't think the clerks much liked the way I addressed them across the 'scopes. Especially as they couldn't answer back. And they certainly didn't care for my taste in music."

Hermione wasn't surprised. Snape's music collection was utterly lacking in anything popular, though it had plenty in it that was twentieth century. She didn't know many of the names she'd read on the spines, but had noticed that he had none of the appealing classics her parents favoured. There was an eclectic selection of medieval and renaissance stuff, then an abrupt jump from Bach to Bartok.

Harry and Sirius exchanged grins. Unlike Hermione, they knew the humour of imprisonment. There was something heartening in the thought of Ministry twerps being forced to sit through Snape's un-gossip-worthy daily routines, listen to difficult music and suffer his scathing commentary.

"They could probe me all they liked," Snape continued, almost oblivious to them, "with their lights and their shoddy veritaserum, their imitation psychologists and their Sorting Hat confessions, trying to dissect the soul. They never found what they were looking for."

(Yet Albus Dumbledore had - almost. Severus could barely admit to himself that the thought of the Headmaster's eyes upon him, of the Headmaster watching over him - even though the old wizard did not abuse his power, did not study the transmissions and warned his Potions Master when he was 'having a look in' - made him feel safe, reassured that he could not stray.)

"They used the Sorting Hat?" Hermione almost shrieked. Everyone had a great affection for the old hat. This was deploying a favourite childhood toy as a torture device.

"Only a few times. One of the Headmaster's brainwaves. He let the Ministry believe the Hat could read minds better than anything they could come up with, and pretended to be very reluctant to use it. Of course, we knew it would be loyal to us and edit out anything we didn't think they should be told - even if they tried forcing its confession."

(But how much did it edit out for the Headmaster? He didn't know.)

Nothing was said for a few moments. Then Hermione asked timidly whether the surveillance would be removed now that the Dark forces had been defeated.

"They broke the anklet off last week. They'll be dismantling the rest 'in the near future' - which doesn't tell one anything."

"We should get Percy onto this." declared Hermione. "He still gets on with Fudge and he's quite high up."

"Are you kidding?" said Harry. "Percy can't do anything without writing a thousand page report on it. And you can still buy really crap cauldrons."

"Speaking of Weasleys, your friend seems to be taking his time."

Hermione checked the map.

"Oh dear - he looks a bit lost. Lots of the usual passages are too damaged to use. He's wound up in the Ravenclaws' wing. Their entrance got destroyed."

"Well let's hope he has the wits to find his way out. I'm sure you've pleasanter things to do than stand in guard over me in my own room for hours."

This struck them as unfair, given the sympathy they'd just shown him, but it couldn't be denied that that was what they were doing; that, with the best of intentions, they were not acting unlike the Ministry.

The trouble was, you couldn't help wanting to probe such a place - at least Hermione's curiosity was very aroused. She was itching to follow the wall of books all the way round, but tact had to keep her back from them now. This did not prevent her adjusting her glasses and reading a few titles. The laboratory area had held a collection of texts and full sets of periodicals on Potions, Alchemy, Chemistry, Bio-Chemistry and Medicine that put the one in Hogwart's Library to shame. There was a large section on the Dark Arts - squeaky clean, with such volumes as "A History of Dark Seduction - the philosophy and propaganda techniques of tyranny" and "Deep Magic and Dark Magic - towards a distinction." She was surprised by the number of Muggle subjects mixed in with the Magical textbooks, and half-wondered if this was a kind of display for the Ministry. They looked as if they had been read frequently, though, and the less functional section of the shelves ! - philosophy and literature - was thoroughly Muggle. In contrast to his music collection, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were given their full due. "Tristram Shandy" and "Gulliver's Travels" looked well-thumbed, and she was astonished to see Wollestonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Women" next to the complete works of Marx and Engels. He seemed to like George Eliot, but his greatest preference was for the French and the Russians. He had everything by Dostoyevski.

Hermione felt slightly ashamed, and wished Professor Vector hadn't emotionally banned her from reading - there was so much to catch up on. 'English' had been the only subject in junior school in which she'd disgraced herself with a B plus. Baffled by the nebulous subjectivity demanded of her, she couldn't fathom a knowledge in which there wasn't a right answer but only an appropriate way of questioning answers. Her pleasure in the magic of fiction, dampened by her sense of failure, was snuffed out by the letter from Hogwarts. That offered her a whole world - a solid, practical, provable world - of enchantment.

Snape turned the volume back up on the CD player, but the piece came to an end and he switched it off abruptly. He began searching through the tapes for something else.

"That was a very nice piece of music;" Hermione offered. "What was it?"

The professor was not easily charmed, but, unknown to her, grateful to hear another person's voice - especially one so dry and unhaunting as Granger's.

"Nice? I'd hardly call Spem in Alium 'nice'."

"Uplifting, then." poor Hermione amended. It wasn't that she lacked vocabulary - she'd helped Harry write his speech - but she didn't habitually make speaking an art (unlike, she reflected, Professor Snape, whose remarks they always remembered verbatim - albeit with resentment - and who would have captured their hearts as well as their minds in that first lesson in Potions if he hadn't spoilt his stirring introduction by assuming they were dunderheads and picking on Harry).

"It's by Thomas Tallis. A motet in forty parts. One of the best examples of polyphony." (Hermione didn't ask but made a note to look them up.) "Each singer has a different melody, but all their differences are perfectly harmonised. A utopia in music, wouldn't you say ?"

She could only nod.

"And they're singing about faith?" (at least her Latin vocabulary hadn't deserted her).

"To be precise, about having no faith in anything except for their God."

He picked out a tape of Bach cantatas and slotted it into the cassette player.

"It's not every day I get the chance to irritate Black."

He proffered another of his warped smirks, but found that Hermione's answering smile faded almost before it reached her mouth.

"What's the matter ? Going to lecture me on forgiveness and tolerance?"

The 'matter' was with Snape himself. The surface of his skin had taken on a translucent aspect, and through it the real condition of his face - mangled into ghastly bruises, vicious cuts, swollen nose and broken teeth - was showing.

Hermione looked very white.

"Well?"

"Your concealment charm, sir;" she whispered. "It's wearing off."

For a moment Snape looked alarmed - then furious. She suddenly found a slender finger pressed to her lips, and a few more clamped on her elbow tight enough to pull her round to the desk and through the french windows - opened with a smart kick.

They were on the landing half-way up the stone steps. He used his Very-Quiet-and-Bloody-Unnerving tone.

"Say one word about this to anyone, Granger, and your marks won't exceed 80 percent the whole of next year."

Quite enough to make Hermione toe the line: she nodded again. He let go, and reached inside his sleeve for his wand.

"Damn."

Hermione produced hers - and the teeniest smirk of her own.

"Dissimulo Ictae. There's no need to blackmail me - sir."

She scanned his face, touched it with the wand again, and repeated the spell.

"I always keep a secret if I'm asked. There. You're covered."

This seemed to calm Snape down. He muttered a 'thank-you' and leaned against the railing, looking down at the water to the bottom of the steps.

Here, this is the place...Come.

Hermione saw he was staring at one of the two boats.

"Is that watched too ?"

The edge of anger in her voice snapped him back to reality. He analysed her expression: that wretchedly generalised, abstract compassion typical of Gryffindors with brains. Well, he could alleviate that - and keep talking down the murmurs.

"No. It's one of the school boats - a 'dodge', as you put it. The Ministry didn't have the face to say I couldn't borrow a boat. The lake's pretty exposed, after all. In summer I can sleep in it all night. Get in, we'll be missed."

He pushed her lightly, but none too courteously, back through the glass doors, followed and shut them behind him.

They returned to the sitting area. Hermione turned the music up more as she passed, which seemed to earn Snape's approval. The idea of listening to it was far from the minds of Harry and Sirius, however. They simply spoke (or hissed) a little louder.

"Where's Ron got to?" asked Sirius.

"He's in the hospital wing."

"Shouldn't be long then."

"Provided he doesn't lose himself on the way back," said Snape.

A sudden laugh from Harry caught their attention. He was still perched on the chaise-longue, with Salomé twined about his arm, engaging him in a tête-à-tête.

"What's the joke?" asked Hermione.

"Oh - nothing much."

He had asked Salomé what it was like to have Snape as a Keeper, and received the answer "A bit depressing." (Salomé, mercifully, dropped the heraldic mode of address once she got past the formalities.) She obviously liked her keeper, though, as she kept saying what good care he took of her.

"I see you've reacquainted yourself with my serpent."

The remark was far from warm. Harry suspected that his ability to speak Parseltongue, when Snape couldn't, was reason number two-thousand-and-three that the Potions master hated him.

"I didn't know she was in hiding all this time," said Harry. "I thought she was dead."

"Quite a few Dark Creatures were after her once she'd killed Nagini. Some of them from the Forbidden Forest. We couldn't risk letting her out, or anyone who could be made to reveal her whereabouts knowing where she was. It was very hard on her. She doesn't seem to have recovered her spirits. Hagrid can't find anything wrong with her. She's quite old of course, but I wonder if she's sickening with something."

He fixed Potter with a discomforting stare.

"I'll ask her, shall I?" said Harry (knowing Snape was incapable of making a simple and civil request.)

"If you would. I can communicate with her on a basic level, but I'm no Parselmouth."

"No problem." The hissing resumed with galling inssoucssiancsse.

"Isn't the Ministry a bit concerned about your having Nagini's skin here?" Sirius was still rather taken with the chaise. "It must count as a Dark Relic."

"Not after Dumbledore cleansed and blessed it. Salomé refused to give up her trophy; but I didn't much like it hanging around as a corpse either. Fortunately Nagini was over twelve feet long. The Perriand was due for repair, and there was enough of her left over to meet Professor Vector's urgent need of an evening bag and matching shoes."

If Hermione hadn't been thinking about Snape's beaten-up face and his floating nocturnal refuge, she'd have laughed.

"Nagini's got a better grave than she deserved," said Sirius. "And a Muggle one too. It's not something you can pick up in Diagon Alley."

(It wasn't something Sirius could pick up at all on his income, Ministry compensation or no, Severus thought - meanly. But the voices were rising up again in his head, and he forced himself to keep talking over them.)

"It was one of the only things that wasn't confiscated from my inheritance - the aunt who left it me hadn't been in contact with my family for years. She was a Squib. I only found her after I became a spy, and she died before I could really get to know her. She was actually my great aunt. She hung around Europe between the wars - the Muggle wars - collecting anything that interested her. My family didn't recognise their value. She gave me this, the staircase from her house, and a few sketches. The staircase isn't structurally sound. I've had to give it some magical reinforcement over the years."

Hermione entertained a very bizarre vision of Arthur Weasley and Professor Snape comparing notes on the maintenance of Muggle artefacts. She was feeling more mortified than ever. Just when you thought you had a grip on knowledge, another area would open up to reveal your ignorance - and from her own world too.

"Perriand's the name of the designer?" she asked.

"Charlotte Perriand, yes, though it's not always called that. It's often attributed to the man she worked for, Le Corbusier, but Aunt Lolita swore Perriand created it. All the intial drawings were Perriand's. There's one of a young soldier she found asleep with his feet up against a tree and his head on his knapsack : the posture gave her the idea for the shape."

Hermione looked at the chaise-longue anew: Charlotte Perriand, surely a woman of her grandmother's generation, must have fancied the soldier rotten - and not been afraid to show it.

A loud series of knocks from the other side of the tower told them that Ron had finally made it back.

"I'll get them," said Sirius. "You're moving around too much, Snape, you'll make things worse. Lie down why don't you."

And to Snape's annoyance, he swept off towards the laboratory. Hermione tried to get Harry's attention, indicating by a jerk of the head that he should clear off the one piece of comfortable furniture - but Harry was thoroughly engaged in talking to Salomé, whom he obviously found delightful company.

Whilst Sirius deposits Ron back with his girlfriend, marches Snape off to a makeshift surgery in his own laboratory, and oversees the ministrations of the House-elf - we can eavesdrop on Harry and the snake.

"Can you always tell what creature an - upright - would be?"

"Of coursse ! That girl who wantss to look-think all the time, she's a lion. And Dog-man's the one who pulled my jaw."

"What about my other friend?"

"Fox-boy? With the red fur?"

"Er, yeah ". Harry was rather surprised. He'd had Ron down as a horse and Hermione as an owl.

"Of coursse, I don’t need to tell you what my Keeper is."

"Bat-man?" asked Harry eagerly.

"Don’t be ridiculouss!" Salomé admonished. "Can’t you ssee how many of our ssserpent virtues, he has? If only he weren’t an upright - he’d cssertainly be one of uss."

Harry was disappointed. Snape in tights, baby-blue tights, was a Boggart-cupboard standard.

"He's worried about you. He wantss to know if you feel ssickly."

Salomé drooped her head a little.

"It isn't right to shut up one of my kind. We need sspace to keep sstrong."

"He was protecting you."

"I know, but it weakens uss, and I'm not sso young. I'm not be-venomed though, just tired. You can tell him that."

"Is there anything he can do? Anything he should feed you with to get you back to normal? "

"I can find it for mysself, as long as he letss me out every day. I'd feel better if he weren't sso ssickly. What'ss the matter with him ? Why's he sso melancholy? The Sserpent-Imposster's gone forever."

Harry wondered how much he should tell Salomé.

"Well," he thought carefully, "when he was quite young he was - overpowered - by the Sserpent-Imposster and became his sservant for awhile. He esscaped by pretending to sserve him but ssecretly fighting against him - well you know that bit, he sspied, like you - but he's ashamed of himsself for allowing the Imposster to rule him in the firsst place."

"The young are easily decsseived and overpowered," Salomé observed, "but they are sstronger if they are attacked and then ssurvive. Why should he be ashamed? He helped you desstroy the Sserpent-Imposster, did he not? He has honour now."

"He did," said Harry "but he hasn't been honoured that much. The leaders of the uprightss don't ssee things as you do."

Salomé was silent for a bit, making Harry think he'd made matters worse.

"He's always alone. Why doesn't he have a female upright?"

This was getting tricky.

"Erm - we uprightss like to mate in ssecret, and because your Keeper was once the Imposster's sservant, he was always watched."

Salomé gasped. "I knew it! He had Eyes upon him, I ssenssed it!"

She uncoiled a bit. "Sso now he jusst has to wait until they sstop watching? They will won't they?"

Harry didn't want to build up Salomé's hopes, but said he believed so.

"He needs to be mated," she affirmed. "I can't be at peacsse until he is."

"It won't be sso easy. It'll be very hard to find him a mate."

"Why? Were all the female uprightss killed in battle?"

"No, but - well, he doesn't attract them."

Salomé found this most puzzling.

"They don't like the Cunning and the Brave?"

"Well, yess, only they'd need to like his body to get interessted."

"But he's ssuch a ssplendid sspecimen!"

"They don't ssee it."

Salomé slumped back into a flat coil, somewhat despondent.

"Of coursse," she said sagely, "they don't come closse enough for a proper feel."

Harry couldn't disagree with that.

"But it'ss sstrange they can't tell. His ssong is very ssmooth, and ssuch delicate paws he has! Ssuch a ssubtle and ssenssuousss touch."

Harry wasn't sure he wanted to hear about this. Salomé's voice dropped to a gurgle.

"They musst ssee how gracssefully he prowls... "

"Er - no."

"Got a lovely big ssniffer... " she offered perkily.

Harry tried very hard to keep his face straight.

"That'ss one of the things they don't like."

"Truly?"

"I'm afraid sso."

"They're mad!" declared Salomé.

"Why?"

Salomé rolled her eyes (or so to Harry it seemed.)

"If the ssniffer's big, the sseeder's big. Ssurely they know that?"

Harry was in serious danger of pissing on the Perriand.

"By that rule, it might be a bit - on the thin sside." he said weakly.

Salomé extended her neck to come very close to Harry's eyes.

"You jusst tell them it'ss perfect. I know."

Harry wouldn't promise, but he couldn't help asking Salomé how she knew.

"I've sseen him when cleans himself under the rain - why?" she sounded suspicious.

"Oh - nothing." said Harry.

Salomé chuckled.

"I know what you're thinking, Sstag-boy. The inssult ! He never getss too closse that way. Ssuch a resspecter of sspeciess boundaries ! Not like the Giant Man. I had to bite him to make him sstay behind the line. Him and his nassty sscent. He got very afraid of me - gave me to Snake-friend that same winter, in the fesstivites."

Harry really wished she'd hadn't said all that. His urge to laugh developed into a panic, as he imagined (among other things) Salomé as Snape's Christmas present from Hagrid. The serpent seemed to sense his unease, for she switched tack.

"Sso - will you try and find an upright for him? There are sso many in this placsse."

"We uprightss believe thiss ssort of thing's besst left to Nature," Harry lied.

Salomé was not to be deterred.

"What about the Sswan-woman? She's very fine."

Harry imagined she meant Professor Vector.

"I think she has other matess lined up already."

"Cat-woman then? She's unmated."

"She's much older than him, and passst bearing young." said Harry.

Salomé gave a long, reflective hiss, then sprang up.

"The Lion-girl! She's your friend, sso you can advise her."

"No I can't." Harry tried to sound very stern. "That's imposssible. She's much too young for him."

"But she's old enough to mate - you uprightss are sso fusssy! It'ss a wonder you get to breed at all."

"She's promissed to the Fox-boy, sso that rules her out."

Salomé eyed Ron and Hermione, who were by now talking quietly together.

"I'd never have guesssed. There's no ssenssing between them. She could get free

of him like that! "

She thwacked her tail on Nagini's hide.

Harry chose to ignore this, and was trying, rather heatedly, to explain the concept of a school in terms of respecting boundaries, when a squeaky House-elf's voice bounced over from the laboratory area.

"Oh Master Snape, Master Snape, I is very sorry ! I is doing my best for your bones and your skin, but I have no skills to mend your teeth, I don't. "

"But my teeth are not part of your duty, Xanuki. There are Muggle specialists who will welcome the responsibility."

"Send him to your parents," Ron sniggered to Hermione.

"They wouldn't be up to it," she replied, remembering years of singularly ineffectual braces. Her parents were stronger on health and disease-prevention than aesthetic reconstruction. She did wonder whether Snape would find a dentist - she doubted he'd ever visited one.

"'Mione?"

"What?"

"You do realise you made a joke?"

She thumped him (playfully, for her).

"You need to in a place like this."

"It is horrible," Ron agreed. " All cold and empty, just like Snape."

Ron was mentally comparing it to the busy cheerfulness of the Burrow, which Harry had taught him to value.

"I meant the surveillance. The room's really beautiful."

For reasons he couldn't quite fathom, this disturbed Ron.

"You just like it ‘cos of all the books."

Hermione admitted that she was deeply envious of Snape's world of a library, but she felt a certain reluctance to explain why she admired the quarters as a whole, as if defending the professor for the second time that day would expose her to ridicule.

The room moved her: a scholar's room, but that wasn't the whole story. She'd seen the other House Heads' suites during various prefects' teas. Next to their unsurprising splendour, this had the rigour and purity of a monk's cell, a voluntary prison. Nothing got in the way of its startling form, and had she not known of the transparency rays, she would have found that the many openings in the thick walls broke the narrowness of the passage, connecting the eye to a greater liberty beyond. It was a penitential space, a transitory space, a space for marking time. She pictured the spied-upon-spy pacing endlessly round it, like the minute-hand of a clock, controlled from the centre, caught now in the shadow, now in the light.

No wonder it chilled Ron. Its furniture expected no visitors, no family; it ached isolation.

Yet it was beautiful; and it was this that clawed at Hermione's pity. One automatically associated Snape with everything ugly, unpleasant and pathetically spiteful, but the room reminded her that he aspired to beauty, to purity, in its least mundane sense, and was undoubtedly aware that he didn't have it himself. She suddenly understood a strange contradiction in his appearance: the irreproachable clothes (as fastidiously attended to as the laboratory) and the total neglect of his person. He underscored that difference daily, making an ever darker line of demarcation. It had to be irony, humourless self-satire; a constant reminder of his corruptibility. The beautiful clothes mocked him and the beautiful room mocked him. She wasn't sure if they consoled him too.

"Doesn't have much apart from the books though." Ron was saying. "Maybe they don't give him a full salary ‘cos of his past. This place looks poor."

Ron was not entirely wrong but not entirely right. Had Hermione lived more in the 'real' world, she could have told him that western poverty manifests itself in a clutter of desperately tawdry possessions gathered around one for comfort. This was willed austerity, whose grace lay in the concentration on things that really mattered and the subtle rhythms in their relations to each other. Hermione said nothing. She could not deny that the walls were unpictured, the windows uncurtained, the staircase uncompromising, the chaise-longue minimalist. There was even something minimalist about his pet. She was an Indigo snake: a blue-black, smooth-backed, thin-trunked, unmarked Indigo snake, whose affectionate temperament and impulsive nattering were belied by spartan looks.

"Harry - what are you up to? "

Harry was doubled up with suppressed laughter.

"You're wrong you know." Salomé was saying.

"About what?"

"The Lion-girl."

"Give it a resst, Ssalomé. She doesn't want him."

"If she doesn't want him, how come she's checking out his nesst?"

Harry sighed.

"Ha! She's been look-thinking all his mark-leaves ever ssince she came in!"

"She does that everywhere. She jusst likess look-thinking."

"Sso does he! He look-thinkss all the time. Then he mark-makess, then he look-thinkss. Mark-makess, look-thinkss, mark-makess, look-thinkss... They're bound to get on."

"You going to translate for us or what?" Ron said.

Harry managed to regain control.

"Can't tell you now - ask me later."

Sirius and Snape had returned. Sirius was slightly more relaxed; Snape walked more stiffly, holding his head up carefully. The House-elf had not found any broken ribs, but had skillfully closed the nose-fracture without cutting Snape open. Various unmagical ointments and tight bandages had done the rest.

"Whenever you're ready," Sirius said. "We'll go back the way we came - we need to return the boat."

"Go out through here." Snape opened the glass doors to the stone landing. "But one more thing, Black, before you leave."

Sirius joined him at the desk, rather surprised he should be detained.

Ron started pacing about. Hermione was withdrawn, but he didn't want to neglect her, and Salomé was still absorbing Harry's attention. The snake was now demonstrating various patterns she could arrange herself into on the floor, and, rather impressively, stretched up in the air, for all the world as if Divine Justice had never condemned her to crawl on her belly.

"'Mione - look at this." Ron whispered. He peered into a small, very deep-cut niche low enough to miss at first glance.

"We shouldn't pry Ron."

"But you'd never guess - look. Go on."

"Stand out the way - I'll look at it from over here."

Hermione zoomed in on a rather strange shrine. An everlasting candle lit a torn scroll of parchment, a ring with a single stone, a broken Time-Turner caught in a clump of sea-weed - and the black-framed photograph of a woman.

For a moment Hermione thought it must be Snape's eccentric aunt, but the woman was about thirty and wore fairly modern robes. She was turning away from the camera with a backward glance. The photograph almost looked as if it had been enchanted to keep still, but the woman kept turning on the spot, always about to leave, repeating her accusing stare. It was impossible to tell her colouring - the picture was black and white. Her eyes could have been green, grey or blue, her hair anything mid-way between black and blonde. She looked like a public statue: grave, intelligent, strong - and utterly cold.

Hermione was certain she was dead; long dead.

Very surreptitiously, she directed her wand to uncurl the scroll, and went into extreme close-up.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look on myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee,

The rest of the poem was torn off, deliberately, half-way through the line.

"He can't have been married to her or something could he?" Ron whispered, "I mean, she's really good-looking."

"Who knows?" said Hermione.

"I thought he was gay," said Ron.

"So did I," confessed Hermione.

She wished she could recognise the poem. Why was it cut off? How did it end? She memorised the first line, and let the scroll close up again. She didn't think Ron should read it.

It turned out that Snape did not have much to say to Sirius. He tracked down a London A-Z from his shelves and spent a minute looking up a street. Then he wrote an address and date down on a piece of parchment.

"The twelfth blow. I'm meeting the Headmaster in London next week. Might as well kill two birds with one stone. I'll owl you if I can't get an appointment for before lunch, or on that day."

"You still insist on going through with this?"

"Of course, though if you've thought of a suitable alternative, I'm open to suggestions."

"No, no. We'll stick to this one."

He looked at the parchment :

"Thursday, noon, Toby's, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton/Camberwell. Brixton end more likely."

Thursday, Sirius thought. Nearly four days, good.

"I'll be there;" he grinned.

"Alone," said Snape.

Gods, thought Sirius, he never misses a trick.

"Alone," said Sirius. "I promise."

He tried to look Snape in the eye, but the man was already turning away. Look after yourself 'til then - no, that's not it -

"Stay out of trouble now, won't you."

When they rejoined the others, Hermione and Ron had augmented Salomé's audience. She was looped in a large circle on the floor. On seeing Snape, she immediately stretched up into a zig-zag line with right-angled corners.

"She wants out," said Snape.

The staircase, of course. They almost applauded. Salomé transferred herself to her Keeper's wrist, slithered up his arm and wound herself round his neck.

"Did you find out what's wrong with her, Potter?"

Harry's eyes were glimmering emeralds of laughter.

"It's just as you thought. She didn't like being cooped up. She isn't infected with anything, just needs space to roam about in and get strong again. She says she'll find the medicine she needs as long as she's let out a lot."

"Good," said Snape. Potter was looking at in him in an amused way that he found very unsettling. "You seem to be most - entertained."

Right, thought Harry, Vengeance is mine.

"Well, Muggles do have a saying, 'like pet, like owner.' And you two being spies, being tall, thin, all in black... "

"She's blue, not black; and very vain about it - always looking at her sheen in the scryscopes. I hope you didn't tell her - she wouldn't be best pleased, would you my beauty?"

He turned Salomé's head towards him. She flickered her tongue on his cheek. He suddenly looked embarrassed at having spoken English to his snake.

"It's remarkable how much one can say to her. She understands simple signs and copies them with her full length to get what she wants."

"Actually," Harry moved in for the kill, "She'd be very pleased to look like you. Really flattered. She can't understand why you aren't - er - married." (He made it sound like a euphemism.) "That's why she's so unhappy. She wants a 'ssplendid sspecssimen' like you to settle down, have loads of kids... "

Snape looked positively ill.

"It's really baffling her. You see - " Harry slowly looked the Potions Master and his snake up and down, lingering in certain places, eyes dancing mockery.

"She's very fond of you."

This rendered everyone speechless.

Harry stood up, tickled Salomé under the chin, hissed her a good-bye and sauntered out. The others followed, shooting the stunned Potions Master very odd looks.

Granger was the last to go, rather pink-cheeked.

"'Til August, sir," she managed, and shut the glass doors carefully. This didn't stop the delayed outbreak of hysterics reaching his ears.

He waited until they'd definitely gone, then unplucked Salomé from his neck.

Salomé looked at him. It seemed she'd done a bad thing. She couldn't think what. She slipped onto the floor and advanced towards the spiral stairs in a very straight line, stopping now and then to look back at her Keeper with a rueful expression.

"It's open, Salomé, you don't need me to let you out." He put the heels of his palms together but kept the tips of his hands apart.

Salomé decided she'd just go as far as the bridge and back. She was sure she hadn't done anything wrong. Maybe the Fox-boy or the Dog-man was responsible. She hadn't seen her Keeper when he'd got back, but had she'd smelt blood on him.

She pulled herself up the stairs. Her Keeper did not follow her. She felt heavier for what the Stag-boy had told her about him. She squeezed out carefully: the wedge had been re-set rather close. Uprights were such complicated creatures. Always making problems, upsetting the balance of things.

Severus eventually unfroze, fetched his wand and levered himself carefully onto the chaise. He'd probably spend the night on it: it gave better support than his bed, and the boat was out, even if a storm weren't looming. Potter's little joke (he had nothing to hide) was the least of his worries.

"Accio ‘Resurrection’."

The weighty Tolstoy landed squarely in his lap: the trouble was, it felt weighty. He sent it back. He summoned Notes from the Underground instead. For all his scathing comments about ministry clerks, he identified with the civil servant protagonists of Russia's nineteenth-century novelists. Their testimonies of forgotten lives, unnoticed slights and unresolved bitterness told him he was not the only one. They were his soul-mates, these narrators, his truest, closest friends.

He tried levitating the volume for a full ten minutes. No wobble, but it was an effort. The concealment charm should have held out an hour at least. He should never have conjured up the dust dome: it took huge amounts of magical energy.

He'd always assumed he had an inexhaustible supply.

That would really give them something to laugh about: Snape the Squib. (Could he find a function, hack it, in the Muggle world? He only knew it second-hand, rarefied through cultural filters). If he refused the headmaster's charity, the old wizard might even insist he take over from Filch in his fading years.

About ninety of them, going by averages. A higher price than Avada Kedavera.

He let the book drop, and stared up at the 'skylight'.

"And what did you do in the great war, sunshine?"

* * * * *

It was almost five by the time the four Gryffindors sat down at The Three Broomsticks for a reviving drink. They had fetched Harry's trunk from the dormitory for him to take straight to Sirius' cottage near Edinburgh. Term had ended early, all exams cancelled, so that repairs to the castle could begin immediately. Harry had rather enjoyed not putting his worldly goods on the Hogwarts Express the day before - it symbolised never having to see the Dursleys again.

The jokes about Salomé's lust for her Keeper and their supposed antics wore thin after awhile, especially once Harry admitted he'd distorted the serpent's words; (he omitted a certain accusation against Hagrid, alongside Salomé's matchmaking ideas.)

"You have to pity old Snape though," Harry concluded. "It takes a snake to fancy him."

"Well actually," Ron began -

Hermione kicked him under the table.

Sirius especially seemed less than merry.

"I can see why you seized the moment, Harry, but if I didn't know you better I'd say that was taunting a man when he's down."

"Says he who just put him there," retorted his godson.

"Fair point. But I didn't insist on fighting."

"Well then - he asked for all he got."

More than you'll ever know, thought Sirius.

"Don't fret about it," said Ron. "You're mixing it up with being angry at what the Ministry's put him through. Like 'Mione said, it's the punch-up the pair of you've been itching for. Now you've had it you can forget it."

Sirius shrugged. "The hostilities are over, that's certainly true."

Harry thought his godfather looked immensely tired.

"Sirius - about this dinner tonight... "

"We'll do it next week, if that's ok with you. It's been a long day, and all this business hasn't made any of us feel like celebrating."

He turned to Hermione and Ron.

"When are you two expected at the Burrow? "

Hermione was to stay at the Burrow for most of the summer. Her parents were on a long, recuperative holiday after nursing her late grandmother.

"About eleven. We told mum we'd spend the evening in London. She's got a lot of colleagues of Dad's round to cater for. They want to talk about how they'll run the ministry once Fudge is out. Yawn yawn."

"Well, why don't we all have a quiet, light supper at my place," said Sirius, "and you two can stay overnight too. Nothing like guests to warm a new house."

They accepted, and, having finished their drinks, Apparated to Sirius' cottage - a very pretty thatched affair, half paid for by the Ministry, whose emptiness was only that of anticipation. Harry and Sirius would spend that summer turning it into a real home. It even had climbing roses and a vegetable garden, well tended by its previous owner.

They spent the remaining hours until evening tranquilly on the grass. Harry insisted on cooking supper - his ability to do it well was the one thing he could thank Aunt Petunia for. Sirius excused himself for an hour to write some letters.

Or rather a letter, to Albus Dumbledore. He had not spent twelve years in Azkeban without learning to decode certain signs.

He wrote a cleaned-up account of the afternoon's events, and ended with the kind of reflective self-sermonising of which he knew the old wizard approved.

"If things hadn't happened by chance, so quickly, I would have sworn he'd planned it as the most elegant revenge - making me a puppet-murderer who'd give him a death that could only be sought from the bottom of a Slytherin heart. But he said he knew I could never kill him, and I believe him. He wanted to settle things - and force me to confront myself without illusions. Well, he succeeded. He also made me see something of him. Albus, he's never let so much slip. He was giving an account of himself, setting the record straight. I'm certain he means to leave us forever, and soon. Don't let him out of your sight for a moment:; you have the equipment; let the ministry leave it in place until you're sure he's safe. Above all, talk to him before Thursday.

Sirius Black.

P.S. I feel it would be inappropriate to accept the DADA post. Thank-you for the offer. Don't worry - I've plenty of prospects."

It was owled the minute it was done, marked ‘Urgent.’

* * * * *

The storm was a long time breaking. At the first crack of thunder, Severus manoeuvred himself off the Perriand and went up to the terrace. He called for Salomé. Rain built up fast. Presently he heard the thudding of her tail on stone. She was on the sundial, sopping wet, having stayed out longer than she'd intended. She knew he'd relent if she waited for him to find her. He duly gathered her up, took her in, and mopped her dry with a rough towel.

She flicked her tail smartly against his hand.

"All right Salomé - I'm sorry."

She understood she was forgiven, and twined herself about his neck and up round his forehead. She felt, as always, dry and cool, and perfectly moulded to him. It was the best cure for a headache he knew. They sat by the tall windows, watching the lightning flash on the lake, listening to the pounding rain and mercifully loud thunder.

* * * * *

Hermione couldn't sleep. She slipped out of the sleeping bag, wrapped her robe around her, and crept downstairs to the kitchen.

Sirius was there.

"Hermione! Are you all right?"

"Just couldn't sleep. It's been so hot, and the storm kept me awake. What about you? You look wrecked."

"I couldn't sleep either. I've made some camomile tea - can I get you some?"

"Please."

They sat down with their mugs on a couple of boxes. Now was as good a time as any.

"I've got something for you." Hermione said.

She delved into her pocket, took out a large folded tissue, and put it on his lap. He opened it.

Crud.

"Not a good idea to leave bits of yourself with people who aren't your friends."

Shit. But it could have been worse. (He remembered a little patch of stony ground).

"How could you Sirius? Was it really the only way? I can't believe it."

If she ever works for the Ministry, Sirius thought, they won't need transparency rays.

The cat had got Sirius' tongue. He went over to the fireplace, 'crud' in hand, took his wand from the mantlepiece and set fire to the tissue, hairs and all.

Hermione remembered her promise to Professor Snape.

"I bet you really let him have it, didn't you? It wasn't just self-defence."

Sirius checked that everything was burnt, snuffed the fire out, and made it all disappear. He stood up - he felt more comfortable facing her that way.

"It isn't as horrible as it seems, Hermione. I swear to you I didn't use my Animagus form to gnaw him to bits."

Hermione looked unconvinced.

"Snape was much more in control, all the way through, than you'd think. If anyone was defeated, it was me. He didn't behave as if I'd humiliated him - did he?"

She shook her head. He came back to the boxes and sat down.

"Hermione - you could never imagine what happened in there. I hope you never can. If I were to tell you just the half of it, you might think better of me, but Snape asked me to say nothing and I'm keeping my promise. He's been exposed enough, and you'll have to assume what you like. What I saw of him today, in that dust, was something no student of his should ever know of. Leave it alone, leave him alone. I can handle it from here. Please."

Hermione relented.

"All right, Sirius, I'll leave it. But I'll tell you one thing again. What he overheard you say by the river was worse than anything you could hit him with."

"I know," admitted Sirius. "I was wrong about him."

He cracked a boyish grin that, really, should have let him get away with murder.

"Lucky he's too proud to care about my opinion."

"Intellectually, that's true," replied unsmiling Hermione. "But you get to him at gut level, you know that - as he does you."

"Well, maybe that's done with now."

"Maybe."

Hermione finished her tea, but did not go. She still buzzed with questions she knew she couldn't get answers to.

"Perhaps it's as well it happened. Resolved something."

She poured another mug of tea, shakily.

"I don't have many reasons to like Professor Snape either. But that set up, Sirius - I can't get it out of my head! All that intrusion, all those years. I don't know how he's kept sane."

He hasn't, Sirius thought, but voiced another idea.

"By focussing on what he had to do. Concentrating entirely. He was always determined, always good at cutting out distraction. That's what we detested about him at school. He never larked about, never got the joke. Always on edge, ready to spring. I suppose it's helped him. If you focus you can get through anything. It's how I stayed sane in Azkeban."

That's right, thought Hermione, bring it back to you.

"Was he really an evil little brat?"

Sirius shrugged.

"He was never caught actually throwing any of those thousand hexes he knew. He'd threaten you with them very convincingly. Filch was always finding acid holes in the floor, scorched curtains and such - and Snape well out the way by the time he did. Drove us mad - you could never get the slippery bastard."

"So the teachers thought he was good as gold."

"Not initially. He was very disruptive at first - raised hell in all his lessons, until they realised he was bored out of his skull because he knew it all already, or picked it up twice as fast as anyone else. They'd moved him up to our year within a month. It settled him a bit, but he still gave the teachers a hard time, always showing them up. He spoilt classes for the slow. McGonagall and the Potions Master were the only ones who could handle him. He wasn't much liked. Too clever to be popular and really crap at sport."

Hermione could understand that - from the clever-and crap-at-sport side.

"Remus said you and Harry's dad were the cleverest in the school, but you were popular."

"We didn't make a thing of it, and he didn't really mean academically. We did fine in NEWTs of course, but it was more that we were inventive, ingenious, making the map, becoming Animagi - practical stuff, fun stuff that you develop with four heads, not one. Snape was more the lone genius. Even the group he hung out with just put up with him. "

"Did he call people Mudblood, like Malfoy?"

Sirius frowned.

"Not that I recall. He wouldn't have been stupid enough to do it openly. I remember him flying off the handle when someone put Grindelwald insignia on his hat. He was from one of those grand old families you could bet had supported Grindelwald - though his branch of it must have come down in the world. He didn't seem to have much money for a Slytherin, and always treated James as if he were a jumped-up nouveau riche."

"And was he?"

"Harry's grandparents weren't born rich. I despised Snape for not admiring that, for noticing it at all and thinking it mattered - more than being fun and witty and kind. Given what a meritocrat he is, it was hypocritical."

Hermione sipped her tea. She tried to picture Snape when he was her age.

"Why would someone join Voldemort if they didn't want to be associated with Grindelwald? It doesn't make sense."

"I couldn't tell you exactly, Hermione; but Voldemort never sold himself as Grindelwald's successor. He wanted a unique place in his own century. You could even say he dissociated himself somewhat. He started out very respectable, tried to infiltrate traditional politics. Lots of people didn't realise how dangerous he was until it was too late. There was much more prejudice against Muggles and mixed origins then. Nothing virulent, just unthinking, and Grindelwald wasn't chiefly remembered for his purebloodism. He was more about the dominance of the Teutonic tradition. Worked up people's fears about Oriental trickery, African power, Latin American subversion - foreign takeover. A lot of British people bought that - not us Celts, of course."

Hermione decided to reward Sirius' fairmindedness.

"It's a shame Binns won't ever retire. You'd be great teaching History of Magic."

* * * * *

It was well into the small hours, and the Potions master was once more stretched out on his chaise-longue. Undressed. He was wakeful, even though the day's events hadn't entirely displeased him. He'd paid Black back, in every sense. He'd done all he could, and no-one in the world could deny it.

He clicked his fingers. Once, twice, three times.

A long blue line emerged from the tank.

Click, click,click.

It was one of those nights. Salomé slid along towards the bedroom, but saw that her Keeper was somewhere else. She slithered up the chrome and coiled onto his chest.

He drew circles with his index finger just above her head.

It is always that simple sign, but Salomé knows just what to do.

His arm drapes down to the floor, and his head rolls back.

She spirals upwards. She twists on the spot, turning like a slow machine.

He watches.

She keeps spinning, always upwards, as if the spiral will forever disappear into the sky.

When she's used up her full length, she goes into reverse and down, then begins again.

He is lighter than helium, but his eyelids feel heavy.

They flickered and shut, but Salomé still danced, expertly circling him to sleep. Round and round, a hypnotic machine.

It was the darkest hour before dawn, but the serpent danced on until she, too, sank into a coil of sleep, lulled by his heartbeat.

If she could have heard his thoughts instead, she would not have understood them - not even in her own tongue.

A chant, a mantra.

When morning comes I will not wake. When morning comes I will not wake.

When morning -