Snape in the Magic City

Chapter Two

"'Alabama Unplugged.'"

Albus Dumbledore laid down the letter with which he'd been presented, and peered over his half-moon spectacles at his Potions master. "You know what this means, don't you, Severus?"

Severus Snape met his headmaster's look, unblinking. "I do," he said. "It means that for at least two weeks one lot of Muggles won't be polluting the atmosphere with their electricity."

Snape placed a delicate emphasis upon the last word. He knew how to pronounce it, although he seldom said it. He was, after all, no Arthur Weasley.

"Spoken like a true Slytherin," said Dumbledore.

The headmaster did not look proud or pleased to utter these words.

"Severus," he said; and leaning his elbows upon his desk he placed the tips of his fingers together.

Snape let out his breath in a just-audible sigh. He knew what was coming. Never mind that term had just begun. Never mind that he had even more dunderheads amongst this new lot of first years than there had been since Neville Longbottom's year had entered Hogwarts. Never mind that there were four--four!--promising sixth-years doing NEWT-level Potions. These four might almost--almost--make teaching Potions less disagreeable than internment in Azkaban.

Snape knew that Dumbledore knew this. The headmaster knew everything. Well. Everything an accomplished Legilimens could know about an experienced Occlumens.

Snape told himself later that he should have known what Dumbledore was going to say to him. He should have seen it coming. He should not have just sat there, in what some of his colleagues called that "easy" chair, waiting for Dumbledore to continue after that first, warning, oh-so-softly-spoken, "Severus."

"It means," said Dumbledore, regarding Snape over his steepled fingers, "an opportunity for you to run a recce."

Snape stared at the man. "A what?" he asked.

"A reconnaissance." Dumbledore's blue eyes twinkled. "It's a Muggle phrase."

Snape snorted; but Dumbledore was still speaking.

"--one of the things you do best, and better than anyone else I know."

Snape curled his lip. We both know what I do best, he thought.

"It could lead to an improvement in magical-Muggle relations," Dumbledore went on. "In international relations. You could lay the groundwork for future visits, Severus. Perhaps even an exchange of students."

"Which makes it important enough to take me away from the students here, is that it?"

This time Dumbledore was the one who sighed. He got to his feet, and walked over to the window that looked out upon a sky tinged with the reflection of the setting sun.

"It is part of our remit now, Severus. And this is a splendid opportunity."

Why don't you just say what this really is? Snape wanted to ask. What you know and I know? As long as we're mouthing phrases--it's Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Snape turned from Dumbledore's observation of the sky, and stared into the flames that flickered and crackled in the fireplace. Slytherin green, they might have been conjured to make him feel welcome; or to convey a more subtle message. Snape had not come to the office this evening by Floo powder. He had left the Great Hall with Dumbledore after dinner, and together they had climbed the stairs. It being a Friday, one of the staircases they had taken had brought them out into a corridor at the far end of the castle from where the gargoyle guarded the entrance to Dumbledore's office. Dumbledore had not seemed to mind; and Snape, who ordinarily would have done, had been glad of the extra time in which to think; to formulate a response should Dumbledore table the subject of defence against the dark that comes with loss of power.

Snape had never been inside a Muggle home. He was fairly certain, however, that Muggle hearth fires did not burn green. Nor did he have any intention of travelling by Floo powder to either Alabama or Kentucky. Whatever statement Dumbledore was trying to make with this fire, Snape wasn't going to make any assumptions about it. The letter from his cousin was written in plain, albeit American, English. Let Dumbledore speak clearly as well. Then, thought Snape, I can tell him I will not teach any form of defence against any sort of darkness. I will not teach it to wizards and witches here, nor will I teach it to American Muggles.

Snape turned from the fire back to the figure at the window. Still gazing out at the sky, Dumbledore spoke. "Even a Thestral," he said, "can be blown off course by hurricane-force winds."

"A Tinderblast would have no chance at all, then," Snape replied.

"We could do a Portkey, of course--"

"No."

Snape rose from his chair. He walked over to the fireplace and stood staring down at the flames. They were so very nearly the same shade of green as those produced by a handful of Floo powder.

His dungeon was only a few grates away.

"There is no one to take my lessons, Headmaster," he said.

"There is," came the quiet reply. "I could teach them five of the uses of dragon's blood."

"You forget the sixth years."

"Not at all. They could teach me how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I'm afraid my copy of the text is far from being the latest edition; besides which the students' ... ah ... extracurricular activities no doubt have an effect on their Potions classwork."

"That has always been the case, Headmaster."

But not in the same sense, Snape admitted to himself. He knew exactly what Dumbledore was saying, as well as what Dumbledore had left unsaid. For nearly twenty years now Dumbledore had left so much unsaid. And why should should he speak, when his Potions master was also Head of Slytherin House, and a spy to boot? Snape knew far better than Dumbledore just what extracurricular activities affected Slytherins' schoolwork. "To bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses" had meant something very different to Draco Malfoy than to, say, a young Gryffindor such as Ginny Weasley had been at the start of her first term here.

A true Weasley, that one: asking the Great Greasy Git for help in making a Love Potion, long before Gilderoy Lockhart had suggested all the students should do just that. Bold as bronze, she was; no more afraid of me than she was of Hagrid, Snape remembered, as he watched the flames leaping: green serpents' tongues testing the air.

Only when the flames guttered suddenly did Snape realise he had sighed again: a great exhalation that left his lungs as empty as if he'd just dived for the Golden Snitch.

"You may not need to be away long, Severus."

Snape started. He had all but forgotten Dumbledore; and no wonder, with all the images his memory had just scanned.

"The BBC is saying that other states are sending electricians to Alabama to help restore the Muggles' power," Dumbledore continued.

"Who?" said Snape, in an effort to take his mind off the last four words Dumbledore had just uttered.

"Electricians," said Dumbledore.

Snape shook his head. "I meant, who is the BBC?"

* * * *

When a wizard travels by train he can relax. He can lean back in his seat, put his feet up (if no one is sitting opposite him), close his eyes, and even nod off to sleep if he so desires, secure in the knowledge that he will be awakened by a voice echoing along the corridor: We are approaching King's Cross, where this train terminates. All change, please, all change. Next stop: King's Cross. All change--only not into a bat or a rat or anything of that sort, unless of course you're a properly registered Animagus ...

The wizard has time to stretch luxuriously, get to his feet, and collect his belongings, before joining his fellow travellers crowding platform nine and three-quarters waiting to pass through the barrier into the Muggle world.

It is perhaps unfortunate that there is no train from King's Cross to New York's Penn Station, let alone any other terminus in the United States. Of course, many witches and wizards can Apparate, even across oceans. Snape could Apparate. He had passed that test at the age of seventeen.

Apparition had never been relaxing for him.

Now, as he walked down the drive from the castle to the Hogwarts gates, he thought about the last time he had Apparated.

It had been just two months ago. The night had been nearly as cold as this one, but clear, and bright with summer twilight and a full moon. It had been a lovely night for flying, even though his destination had been number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

He had wanted to fly that night. He wished he could fly tonight, across the Atlantic Ocean and on to Kentucky. Pity the storm that made the journey necessary made flying to America tonight as risky as most modes of travel in Britain had been when the Dark Lord was in power.

For so many years Snape had not been able to fly anywhere beyond the Hogwarts grounds. Like the castle itself, the grounds were guarded by ancient spells and charms that protected all within.

Perhaps those enchantments had helped to prevent Neville Longbottom's classmates and teacher from actually being killed when potion after potion had exploded, melting cauldrons and filling the dungeon with noxious gases.

They hadn't worked very well when Gilderoy Lockhart had tried to mend the arm Harry Potter had broken playing Quidditch; or stopped the wizard everyone had thought was Mad-Eye Moody from turning Draco Malfoy into a ferret and bouncing him, hard, off the stone floor of the entrance hall.

Nor did Legelimency tell Dumbledore or me that Moody wasn't actually Moody, Snape reminded himself.

Who knows? I might have been perfectly safe flying to all those Death Eater gatherings--if the Dark Lord hadn't insisted we answered his summons instantly.

Snape suppressed an urge to turn and look back at the castle. His wand was unlit; but even without its light he would not be able to see if Dumbledore was watching at his window, or indeed if the window was where it had been just a short time ago. Perhaps by now the headmaster was down in the dungeon, supervising the detention Snape had planned for this evening. Perhaps he was preparing for his first meeting with the sixth years. Dumbledore would get them talking. Few sixth years were as much in awe of him as they had been in their early days at Hogwarts.

Wonder if he'll get them talking about potions, Snape said to himself. No doubt they'll have all tried making Love Potions by this time in their lives--and with some degree of success, if the rest of their work's anything to judge by--but how many who manage an O on their OWLs ever go on to discover that the real beauty, the real attraction, the real danger and fear and all the other elements of what some call "love" are not why one makes potions and yet are exactly why one makes them?

Thus their essential magic.

And thus a spy may apply them where no potions master would but only a potions master could.

During the time of Voldemort's resurgence, Snape had Apparated between Hogwarts and London as frequently as he had Apparated between Hogwarts and wherever the Dark Lord had held court. He had had no choice about responding whenever the Dark Mark seared his flesh with its summons. No matter what he might be doing--teaching, research, supervising a detention, or enjoying a brief respite from any of those activities--he had had to leave it, hurry from the castle and the security of the Hogwarts grounds, and Apparate to the Dark Lord's side. Likewise, immediately upon his return to Hogwarts he must report to Dumbledore, and then Apparate yet again, to meet with the other members of the Order of the Phoenix. They had never been pleased to see him. They had never been pleased to hear whatever information he had had to give. As long as the Dark Lord lived, and reigned, even good news was about the death of someone, the destruction of some thing, the loss of some precious element of the wizarding world.

They couldn't afford to lose me, Snape thought now. I was an essential element in their defence against the Dark Side. Without me they'd have had no ear in the Death Eaters' gatherings. Without me they'd have had no voice in the Dark Lord's ear.

Without me they'd have had no scapegoat. No one to send where they wouldn't soil the hems of their robes with going, even to learn what they needed to know in order to survive and preserve their precious Order.

Well, it's preserved. And even now, when some might say wizardry no longer needs the Order, Dumbledore says the Order still needs me.

In July, the last time he had Apparated, Snape had brought to Grimmauld Place a report on the activities of the Slytherins who had most recently left Hogwarts. Yes, he had told the people sitting at the table in the firelit kitchen, he had heard some talk of Muggle-baiting. Yes, it had been only talk, and not of having actually done anything.

Had he been able to read the speakers' minds?

One look from him had silenced that questioner.

Had he been able to tell whether their thoughts were actually their own, or if any of them had been under the Imperius Curse?

Merlin forbid they should be under the Imperius, someone had said; and Snape had had to sit through the discussion which had ensued and had left him with no appetite for Molly Weasley's Devonshire Hot Pot.

Nor had he had the stomach for further expeditions to the haunts of old Slytherins. But at least he had been able to fly to those, or go by train, with no business more pressing than to congratulate Pruna Parkinson on her first win playing Keeper for the Wigtown Wanderers. He had not had to report that to Grimmauld Place. Only one other member of the Order had any interest in the Quidditch prowess of Slytherins, and Snape saw no point in bothering to tell the rest what they could read (if they chose) in the Daily Prophet.

It had certainly not been worth Apparating.

Pity this American situation was.

Unlike the BBC of which Dumbledore had spoken, the USSU was not calling this a "national disaster." Daisy had quoted from a Muggle source and spelled a case for one Muggle household. She might be thousands of miles away, but where blood ties were involved there was little need for Legilimency. The moment Daisy's brown-eyed owl had dropped the letter into his hands Snape had known he must show it to Dumbledore, even more surely than he had known what Dumbledore's reaction would be.

He had reached the end of the drive. The crescent moon shone from a gap in the clouds, its light momentarily revealing the figures of the boars on the gateposts that loomed in front of him.

Snape sighed, once again resisting the urge to turn and look back at the castle. He hated teaching Potions, even at NEWT level, and Dumbledore knew it.

Snape slipped his hand into the pocket of his travelling-cloak and gripped his wand. Then he stepped up to the gates and spoke the password. The gates creaked slowly open, and Snape walked through them and out of the Hogwarts grounds.