Snape in the Magic City

Snape in the Magic City

Chapter One

The headline stood out stark and black on the front page of the morning paper:

ALABAMA UNPLUGGED

"What does that mean?" Daisy Brightsmith asked her friend at breakfast.

"It means that even though the hurricane's gone, nearly a million people are still without power," Priscilla replied.

Daisy frowned. "Power?"

"Electricity. The words are synonymous to a Muggle."

Priscilla put down her coffee cup and picked up the paper, as well as her reading glasses, which she perched on the end of her nose. The glasses, Daisy always thought, made the older woman look more like a Muggle's idea of a witch than Daisy herself did. Yet Priscilla was Muggle-born, whereas Daisy could trace her own ancestry--on the Brightsmith side at least--back to Helga Hufflepuff, and beyond.

Not that she often bothered to do so. Her father's Aunt Astilbe had been the most recent of the family genealogists, and had left more charts and tables and notes than an archivist could shake a wand at. Most of the Brightsmiths just said "Helga Hufflepuff" or "Narus Nitidus" and let it go at that.

And most of them didn't read Muggle newspapers. But Priscilla took this daily one, and Daisy had brought it in along with the milk, which was delivered three mornings a week to their front porch.

"All this about downed power lines," Priscilla was saying now. She tapped the newspaper with a bony forefinger. "They're not talking about ley lines. They mean that thousands of Muggle homes and businesses are without electricity, and will be, until the Muggle power crews can remove the trees and limbs that have fallen on the lines--those cables that transmit the electricity from the power plants to the houses and other buildings. Until they can do that, and get the lines back up, people won't have air-conditioning. A lot of them won't have heat, and the weather's supposed to start getting cold at night. Their refrigerators won't work, they won't be able to wash clothes; some of them won't even be able to take baths, because they won't have any hot water. They can't watch TV, or use their computers, until the power comes back on. Or their phones," she added, through a mouthful of doughnut, as she read on.

* * * *

"We ought to do something," Daisy said, some thirty minutes later. She and Priscilla were just setting off from the house they had shared for the last five years, towards the school where they had taught for the last seven. They seldom bothered to Apparate on days as nice as this sunny September one. Priscilla had never been very accurate at Apparating, even over short distances, and Daisy loved the walk. The house stood about half a mile outside the small Kentucky town, and the road led past fields and gardens to the Quodpot goal at the edge of the playground. Sometimes Daisy found it hard to picture the city in which she had spent the first ten years of her life; the city only slightly smaller than the one to which Priscilla's parents had retired. Today it was hard to imagine the heavy rains reported falling not many miles to the east, or the destruction that Hurricane Ivan had left behind in the states farther south.

"We ought to go down to Birmingham and see if we can do anything," Daisy continued.

"Do anything!" Priscilla snorted. "Like what? Wave our wands and get Mother and Dad's power back on? What would the neighbors say? What would my brother say?"

Daisy turned from the pained expression on her friend's face to look at the lush greenery covering their own neighbor's pasture fence. The blackberries were long gone by now, but the honeysuckle vine still bore some blossoms, and the pokeweed was flourishing on its rhubarb-bright stalks. Daisy's students always enjoyed making pokeberry ink; and she planned a berry-picking field trip while she waited for Priscilla to come up with answers to her own questions.

The two women were just passing the Main Street Deli when Priscilla sighed and said, "I wish I could bring Mother and Dad up here."

"They brought you up here, after all," Daisy pointed out.

This elicited another snort from Priscilla. "You're about as hilarious as that cousin of yours," she scowled; just as Daisy, smiling, was about to say, You're starting to sound like my cousin.

* * * *

During recess, while Daisy's youngest pupils flew about the playground pretending their training-brooms were winged horses, Daisy sat on the lowest bough of the old white oak tree and thought about the only one of her cousins--the only one of her relatives--who never seemed to be bothered by Priscilla's somewhat acerbic temperament. Daisy had often thought this cousin of hers would come in handy at recess to keep an eye on the young boys in her class as well as Priscilla's older ones.

Right now Daisy's older students and Priscilla's third- and fourth-graders were helping--or pretending to help--refurbish the Quodpot cauldrons, under the supervision, and no doubt getting on the nerves, of the crew from the local office of the Commonwealth Council on Wizarding Fitness.

The crew had assured Daisy and Priscilla that "the kids" wouldn't be any trouble. "If they get out of hand we'll turn 'em into possums and sic the Muggle hunters on 'em," the captain of the crew had said. Lonnie Kent, who often fell asleep during Silent Reading, had looked as if he didn't think he would mind being an opossum; and Lisa Boone had said, "If any Muggle hunters come after me I'll turn them into bowtruckles."

"Yeah, and what do you think bowtruckles do to possums they find hanging upside down in their trees?" a crew wizard had asked.

The rest of the crew, and the children, had laughed.

"Well, we'll leave y'all to it," Daisy had said.

She had turned to go; but Priscilla had stayed where she was.

"If I hear of anyone pointing a wand at anyone else, no one will be playing Quodpot for a month," she had said. From the looks on their faces Daisy had wondered if the Council crew thought she meant them as well as the students.

Priscilla had said nothing more, but had returned to her classroom.

Daisy had gone up into the oak tree.

And when the idea came to her, as she said afterwards, it was almost like an acorn hitting her on the head.

Almost before she knew it she was out of the tree and in Priscilla's classroom, where the fifth-grade class was having a lesson in brewing Wolf's-Milk Solvent.

"Careful, Mavis! Careful!" Priscilla called out--just as a cold wet glop of spurge sap hit Daisy in the face.

"Evanesco!" Priscilla cried--and the caustic mess was gone as abruptly as it had come, leaving Daisy unhurt but staring from Priscilla's furiously quivering wand to the hapless Mavis's wildly wavering one.

"Watch what you're doing, child!" Priscilla scolded; at the same time that Mavis stammered, "I--I--I'm s-sorry, Miss B-Bright--smith."

Daisy smiled at the crimson-faced ten-year-old. "I'd better brush up on Apparition before the next teachers' conference," she said. "Or else send an owl to warn people before I Disapparate!"

Mavis gave her a somewhat shaky smile, and the other students giggled. Not so Priscilla, who with another one of her snorts turned to Daisy and said, "What can we do for you, Miss Brightsmith?"

Priscilla never called Daisy by her first name in front of the students. The teachers at Horndrake Hall practiced the same formality, and what was good enough for Horndrake Hall, Priscilla often said, was good enough for Bat Lick Elementary School.

Hopefully, then, Daisy thought now, this idea that had just come to her would be acceptable to Priscilla.

"It's actually something some of us might be able to do for your parents, Miss Praten," she said.

"'Us?'" Priscilla looked puzzled for a moment; then she looked wary. She glanced around the classroom at the students, who were pretending to be busy at their cauldrons; then she turned back to Daisy. "What do you mean?" she asked in an undertone.

"I mean my cousin. He could help, Miss Praten," Daisy plowed ahead, as Priscilla pursed her lips and started to shake her head. One arched black eyebrow was already halfway to her hairline, and Daisy thought, not for the first time, No wonder Mavis tends to stammer!

"He wouldn't go blundering in the way we would, all what he calls wrong-footed," Daisy continued. "He may not be what you'd call a people person--" (here Priscilla snorted again, and the eyebrow all but disappeared into her hair) "--but he ought to be very good at subtlety and--"

She had been about to say "subterfuge," but caught herself just in time. There were family secrets that could be divulged in time of need to an old and close friend; and then there were what might not quite be state secrets but still probably shouldn't be spread around.

"He's a very powerful wizard," she finished, feeling her own cheeks turning as red as Mavis's had been.

The sound Priscilla made now was not a snort, but something that, coming from almost any other woman, Daisy would have thought was almost a sigh.

"Your parents might even think it was appropriate," Daisy added, "having an Englishman come help them out, seeing as how it was English money that helped Birmingham grow so fast in the early days."

"'Englishman!'"

Definitely a snort this time, thought Daisy.

"He's hardly my parents' idea of an Englishman," said Priscilla. "It was English iron and steel interests that helped build Birmingham. Not magic."

Daisy raised both of her eyebrows. "Oh, you never know," she replied. "And besides, what do you think the Hogwarts Express is made of?"

* * * *

"I just hope I've got this addressed right," Daisy said.

It was lunchtime, and she and Priscilla were sitting in what they liked to call the teachers' lounge. It was in reality more of a mud room, or lobby, between the school's back door and its two rest rooms. There was a long sofa here, on which a student could lie down if he or she felt ill, and on which Daisy and Priscilla often sat to eat their midday meal. Today, however, they were seated at the small table, which as well as their lunches held an assortment of textbooks that needed mending, a Quod that needed inflating, and several wads of crumpled-up parchment, along with Daisy's inkwell.

The back door was open, and through it the two teachers could hear the voices of the students who ate out on the playground instead of going home for lunch. The oldest and most responsible fifth-graders took turns acting as lunchtime monitor, unless the weather was bad, when everyone ate in the classrooms. Daisy was glad that today was warm and dry, and that this week's monitor was Samantha Boone. Samantha had self-confidence, as well as the respect of her schoolmates. She also had enough sense to come and get the teachers if a situation required more authority than she had. The Quodpot crew had gone to eat at the Main Street Deli; probably as much to have a break from the children, Priscilla had said, as to sample the Deli's deservedly famous fare.

Now Daisy sat tapping her lips with the feathery end of her quill and glancing from the letter she'd just handed Priscilla to read, to the envelope she herself had just finished addressing.

"I know Pallas can find him," she said. "I just hope I've got his title and everything right. Mama says her Great-Aunt Statice was the most persnickety woman she'd ever met, and that all her descendants are just like her."

"I can't imagine your cousin being like anybody's great-aunt," Priscilla retorted, perusing the letter through her reading-glasses. "Or like his own whatever Statice is to him. His great-grandmother?"

"Something like that." Daisy touched the end of her quill to each of her fingertips in turn, reckoning. "All I know is, he's my second or something cousin once or twice removed."

"He can't be too many times removed, or Statice would be your mother's cousin instead of an aunt. . . . I think," Priscilla added, with one of her rare smiles. "This looks fine to me," she went on, handing the letter back to Daisy. "You've done a lot better job of selling Mother and Dad's case to him than I could."

Daisy felt her cheeks getting hot again. A compliment from Priscilla was the more appreciated, for being so rare. Some of the parents said Miss Praten did not praise their children often enough, but Daisy agreed with her friend in disagreeing. If Priscilla said something nice about a person, the person could be sure it was not just flattery.

"So what about this?" Daisy asked. She held out the envelope out to her friend. "Does this address look OK?"

Priscilla reached for the envelope--but even as she did so, there was a sound of running feet outside, and Samantha burst in at the open doorway, wild-eyed and with flushed cheeks.

"Miss Praten! Miss Brightsmith!" she gasped. "Rion just jinxed Ophie, and now Travis has Rion at wandpoint up the oak tree and won't let him down!"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake!"

Priscilla and Daisy sprang up from their chairs, grabbing their wands, and followed Samantha out onto the playground. In the doorway Daisy paused, turned back, and pointed her wand at the letter.

"Involvo," she muttered, and the letter folded itself and slipped into the envelope she had addressed to:

Professor Severus Snape

Potions Master

Slytherin House

Hogwarts School

nr Hogsmeade

SCOTLAND