Blood Lines

"I heard you were leaving us." Severa gave no indication that she had heard the overly sly voice of Ms. Iceradey.

She maintained her brisk pace and continued to head for the dungeons. 'I wonder why they always seem to put Potions in the dungeons.'

*Maybe it's so they don't have to be reminded of the walking dead on the faculty? *

The halls were dark and deserted. Nearly everyone was at breakfast.

"Rumor has it you're going to Hogwarts," the Advanced Curses professor matched Severa's stride.

"Rumor is faster than fact then," they descended the stairs together. "I have not even applied. Yet."

As they moved through the subterranean halls, Severa mouthed a rapid and unintelligible string of release charms that disabled the wards (and hexes) designed to block students from entering without her permission. Safely inside the classroom, Severa was again bombarded with double-edged questions.

"Who told you that there was a position about to open? What happened to their Potions Master, what was his name? I can't keep all of you strait, you all look the same."

"It comes with the job, there aren't that many of us, and what did you want?" Severa answered with a distracted, almost unconscious openness. It had been a long day and it was only six am. 'Oh, Friday how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.'

"Moody, I want to buy some of your stock. You can't possibly transport it all out of the country. And they can't possibly refuse you. Not with your connections."

The intentionally poorly disguised attempt to lure her into boasting did not have the desired reverse psychology effect. In all her twenty-two years at Durmstrang no one had been able to discover how Severa got things done that should have been impossible. Like the time she got the Headmaster's own son expelled. It had become an unspoken competition to see who could get more information out of her. One favorite theory was that she was watched over by a certain person who-must-not-be-named.

"I have no problem selling you anything that you want. As long as I have it in stock..." She did not bother to add a probing look. It would have been lost on the inside-the-box-thinking woman. Severa instead began to unpack and put away the ingredients that she had bought with next week's Ninth Level Potions in mind.

"I am interested specifically in the er- concoction that you used on Dimitry last Winter Solstice Break."

Severa quirked an eyebrow. "I was reprimanded for actually using it on a human. You do remember the favored rumor at that time was that I had to sleep with the entire Board of Administrations to keep my job?"

Not a flicker was to be seen in the midnight gray of Iceradey's eyes and not a hair was ruffled in her painfully tight waist length braid as she shrugged off the warning. "I am not so prone to foolish indiscretion that I would actually use it. The sincere threat is enough."

Pulling out another jar of some sort of slimy larvae, Severa double-checked the contents before placing it on a shelf beside several others that looked exactly like it. "How much are you interested in?"

"How long can it remain potent?" Iceradey countered.

"If you leave out the last two ingredients until an hour before you want to use it," she stepped away from the shelf and fussily realigned a few containers.

"How long?" As soon as she asked a second time, Iceradey bit her tongue. She had just given away her only card. Severa now knew that she desperately wanted the potion. 'And Moody never sells. It's always a trade, a favor for a debt.'

"It will last at least five years, if mixed. If left incomplete it should have a shelf life of about sixty years. I have one case of it that they didn't find and confiscate."

"What would you want for it?"

Severa thought for a moment. "I have already gotten your assistance in securing my dungeon. I'm leaving soon so I don't expect to need any help with collecting saliva from the Grendler." She knew that her colleague was going to be less than happy with the deal that she was about to offer, "Your broach."

Iceradey's hand flew to her throat, and the large ancestral broach there. "No. Not even if I thought it was all you would ask for."

"Not the Box Broach, the Trefoil," Severa spoke as though it were of no consequence. "It does you no good as you can not access the stone it holds, and the surplus elixir does me no good taking up room in my cubby."

Iceradey's laugh sounded like clattering stones. "Don't think that you can tell me you don't know it isn't a stone. We both know it is a Parramorph's egg, and worth your weight in gold."

Severa glanced at the universal clock on the wall behind her desk. "I have a class in twenty minutes. Was there anything else you wanted?" She sat behind her desk and arranged the few papers she would be handing back to the students. "I ask a Parramorph's egg and I offer you the ability to protect yourself, untraceablely."

Iceradey halted in the doorway. "Untraceably? Then how did you get caught?"

"I forced him to swallow it," Severa puffed at her bangs and hung up her cloak. "He would not open his mouth so I cut a hole in his throat and poured it in." She grinned with over sweetness; the shock on the stiff lipped Professor's face was worth the breach in Standard Operating Procedure.

(SOP went something like, Never tell anyone anything. Secrecy is key to safety.)

~

Evening meal was still in attendance as Severa wended her way toward the Physical Education Room.

The PE room was unique to Durmstrang. It was a room within the actual structure of the school that was a magic free zone. The charms needed to keep a balance of energy between that one room and the rest of the school were incredibly powerful and complex. All of the effort that had gone into it had been well worth it though. Durmstrang was the only school that could boast of graduating Wizards and Witches that could handle anything, with or without their wands.

She clutched a large three-lobed pin in her hand. Iceradey had broken down and made the trade. As she had expected, it had caused greater resentment to boil out of the older woman, but that didn't matter.

She silently opened the solid oak door to the PE room and ducked inside. Moments later she emerged empty handed and unseen.

~

Just past midnight Tuesday morning, Snape stood, leaning over his sink, brushing his teeth. He had just thrown up and was trying to remove the last of the residual sludge. He spit one final time and reached to put away his toothbrush. Something in the mirror caught his eye.

It was there behind him. Luminous eyes glowing faintly in the dark. Then it was gone.

"So," he sighed putting his toothbrush away, "you're back."

Snape, head down, walked back to his bed. He pulled the covers up to his waist. The mattress shifted slightly as it crawled up to him. He felt its cool breath on his face and a slight blue-ish glow filtered through his closed eyelids.

It looked down at him for a few moments then, laying its head upon his chest; it curled up at his side.

His right hand came to rest on its upturned cheek. "I need to do this."

It closed its eyes. The universe shrank to just the two of them and the few places they intersected each other. "I know," it hoarsely whispered. "I will fight for you."

"I know." Snape would have cursed the tremor in his voice, if he had heard it.

Again it whispered. "You do not need to lay with him to banish me."

"It is the only choice I have," Snape spoke softly. "If I lay with him I will be free of you. If I don't..."

"No," Its voice faded. "It is a choice between your body and your mind."

He felt the mattress shift again. Snape lay alone in the dark with his hand over his heart. Eventually he slept.

~

With unutterable reluctance Snape made his way to the dining hall for breakfast. 'I wonder what that Malfoy, meant when he said that he was signing up too?'

The only seat available was beside Lupin and as Snape sat, to his great vexation, the werewolf turned to face him.

"Snape," Remus tried to sound pleasant while addressing the Potions Master. "Haven't seen much of you for a while now." He added softly for Snape only, "Which is strange seeing as we are both living in the dungeons."

Goblet in hand and halfway to his mouth Snape spoke without seeming to pause. "I'm sorry if my lack of presence has given you the impression that you need to speak with me." He took a long drink of wine. (His was the only glass at the head table that held wine and it was only at his special insistence that he had been granted it.)

"Severus?" Dumbledore broke away from his conversation with Sinistra for a moment. "Do be more kind."

With a smile that should have killed one, or both, of them he turned to Lupin again. "I have been in my classroom and my study," he shot a look at the back of Albus' white head. "Thank you for asking." Immediately he began to eat, merrily he speared a piece of liver.

Remus winced. The message was clear; it could just as easily be him on the end of that fork.

~

"I'm not going," Snape's voice hung in the air. "I know you're lurking in here somewhere. You go." With that he rolled over and fell back to sleep.

~

Harry was furious. Snape had been focusing on Neville. Practically driving the boy to a nervous breakdown. 'We all know that Neville is already upset because his Grandmother is sick. None of the other professors would ever even think of getting on his case right now.' He was sitting at a lab table, taking out his anger by pulverizing the Orris root they had dried last week. It wasn't working. 'How can anyone be that heartless, that cruel?' His arm was beginning to get sore from the jarring motion, 'The bloody, stupid, greasy, sadistic-'

Long, tapered, fingers touched his desktop and Harry was suddenly aware of a pair of sleeves and a torso caging him in.

Snape leaned in further, until the front of his robe just brushed the eternally tangled locks of a very startled Harry Potter and his own hair screened the boy's peripheral vision. "The bloody, stupid, greasy, sadistic, what?" he purred.

Terror. Harry would have marveled at Snape so accurately reading his mind. He would have looked to Ron for help. He might have even run, but terror froze his thoughts before they could become actions. Mentally he struggled to recall whether he had felt this frightened before. 'When that Dementor was about to eat my soul I was very scared.' Sweat trickled down his back, 'When I was tied to the tombstone and Voldemort touched me, and nothing happened to him, I was really scared.'

As Snape bent over Harry, everyone stopped working and shifted around for a better view. Whispered inquiries as to what Harry had said went unanswered by other students as Snape repeated it for them. Breathlessly they strained their ears to catch what the boy who lived would say next.

"Well Mister Potter? What were you going to say next?"

Some of the students gasped others gaped. Ron was sure it was the last thing he would ever hear Harry say (on some level he cheered the brave last words, committing them to memory for the generations to come), Hermione nearly fainted.

A loud gong-like crash resounded throughout the chamber. "Aaaghhh!" Harry shouted jumping from his seat, sure that he was about to die. When he jumped his shoulders connected rather forcefully with Snape's upper chest and the top of his head hit Snape's chin.

Severus had been turning, something at a nearby cauldron did not look right. With his attention split, Potter's spasm-for-life threw him off balance. He twisted around as he fell but did not have time to catch himself. Snape's head was thrown back as he hit the corner of one of the stone lab tables. There was an audible snap and he crumpled to the floor.

Everything went to hell in a hand-basket from there. A few Gryffindor girls screamed. Harry spun, so fast, (to see what happened) that he slipped in Neville's spilled potion. A pair of strong hands caught him from behind.

"Get those Gryffs out of the way," Draco ordered with a jut of his perfect chin while trying to get Harry back on his feet.

Harry tried to take in what was going on, but it was too chaotic. 'No,' he corrected himself with a rather detached air. 'It's not chaos, it's almost like they're running around knowing exactly what to do.'

Every Slytherin in the room had a drawn wand and was efficiently performing a specific task. Some were directing the frightened Gryffindors to the other end of the room, another group was taking care of the mess under the guidance of- 'Crabbe and Goyle? Are they actually leading the cleanup?' Harry blinked. A small group had run out the door and headed in the direction of their common room.

Draco made sure that Harry was firmly on his feet before kneeling beside Snape. Looking up Malfoy scanned the milling crowd. "Pansy!" He shouted above the hysterical cries of the girls. "Professor?" he called. Snape hadn't moved. Quickly she joined him and they had a hurried, whispered conference that ended with Draco telling her to, "Just get it done now."

She stood and approached the corner where the most frightened students were clinging to each other.

"He's-dead-he's-dead-he's-dead," Parvatti chanted over and over.

Several other students (girls and boys) were mumbling or crying or stuttering basically the same thing. There was confusion and fear and a lot of noise.

Pansy raised her wand and placed a silencing charm on the entire group. "Done." She called back to Draco, who was now working with three other Slytherins to put Snape onto his back while keeping his neck immobilized.

Harry was frozen in place.

As they carefully turned Snape over Draco watched for any sign of movement. "Where are those gofers?" he demanded of no one in particular. "Professor," he called more urgently, "Sir, we need you to confirm."

Dazedly, Harry approached and knelt beside Draco.

The Slytherin shook his head, leaned back to see around Harry. "Gloves!" He called to a dorm mate then spoke to Harry, "If you're going to stay here you'd better be ready. I think he's gonna sizzle."

Quickly Dragon hide gloves were relayed to Harry and he put them on with out thinking. He noticed that everyone who had heard the prediction tensed. "What do you mean sizzle?"

With a gloved hand, Draco brushed at the blood on Snape's face. He had bitten his lip and the blood was getting everywhere. There was a large rapidly swelling bruise on the right side of Snape's face where he had hit the table. His eye was swollen shut and his cheek seemed distorted.

"It's broken," Draco confirmed softly. "The swelling is kind of hiding it but if you compare his right cheek to his left..."

Harry did and was sickened to find that Snape's right cheek was indeed sunken where the bone should have been. The distended purpling flesh was continuing to swell.

"He won't be seeing anything with that eye for a while." Draco forced a tight laugh, then muttered under his breath, "If it keeps swelling like this the skin is gonna split."

It struck Harry that Draco seemed to be trying to make light of the whole thing. 'To calm me, or himself?'

Snape's breathing became more forced. Not like he couldn't get air in, more like he couldn't get it out. He shuddered and without waking he rolled to his left side and began shivering violently.

"Is he having a seizure," Harry tried to ask. Someone burst into the room and a smallish black case was passed from the panting figure leaning against the door, through a relay of several waiting hands, and quickly reached an impatient Draco.

With practiced movements he opened the case and laid out a hideously large old-fashioned needle that looked more like a torture device than a medical tool and phial of clear liquid. "Get his arm," he called as Snape began to curl into a fetal ball.

Crabbe and Goyle worked to force Snape's arm to straighten, while Draco filled the syringe and Pansy tied a tourniquet on the unconscious professor's upper arm.

"He's starting to sizzle," Draco explained to the Gryffindor at his side. The film of sweat on his brow contradicted his calm manner. "This kind of thing happens every once in a while. He's taught us what to do." he tried a reassuring smile, but knew it was not going to work.

~

Lunch was a subdued affair; the normal chatter and fooling around were painfully absent. Everyone who had been there was quietly sharing information and those who had not been present were spreading rumors. Some claimed that Snape was dead; they were in the minority. Most talked about the Slytherin-uprising that had supposedly taken place. Professor Dumbledore, Madame Pomfrey, and Snape were absent from the meal. Not even Ron bothered to point it out this time. Everyone knew.

As they left the Great Hall Harry Hermione and Ron chose to hold back a bit rather than join their Housemates. They did not notice the presence of the three Slytherins until Draco stepped forward.

"Do you need to get hit in the head too, before you get it?" he sneered in his best Snape impression.

Harry didn't bother to stop for his reply. "Shut up Malfoy," he sensed Ron tensing as Crabbe and Goyle came out to stand beside their leader.

Draco grabbed Harry's arm and forced his to stop. "Half the free world licks your boots and you're too childish to hold your tongue when nothing is on the line."

"I didn't ask for this," Harry shot back with a gesture toward his scar.

Draco scoffed. "None of us ask for the lives we get Potter. You didn't ask to have your parents killed, and I didn't ask to be born to parents that would beat me." He shook his head rejecting Harry's statement, "It doesn't matter. What does matter are the things we do ask for. We ask for the consequences of our actions. The choices we make determine what those consequences will be."

Draco shook his head again, this time though Harry noticed that his shoulders drooped. The three Slytherins left as silently as their Head of House had taught them to. The three Gryffindors stood rooted where they had been left.

After a time Hermione broke the silence. "I want to go to bed now."

~

He sat on the edge of the bed in the medical wing waiting for permission to leave. Albus had been less than pleased to hear of the disaster that had been first period. Cheekbone re-knit and split skin under his eye mended, it was just a waiting game now. The wide swath of gauze that encircled his head was starting to get irritating and there was nothing to do about any of it.

A swish of robes, the parting of the privacy curtain, and the Headmaster's familiar scent began to fill the cubicle.

"What were you thinking?" Albus nearly exploded as he placed a soundproofing charm on the small enclosure.

Shrugging he did not turn from the blank wall that had just become rather interesting, for some reason.

Sighing deeply, Albus took the visitor's seat. "Can I at least see how bad the damage is?"

Reluctantly he turned to face the Headmaster.

Grimacing, Albus got up and, after a questioning look and the slight nod of permission, he removed the thick gauze bandage Pomfrey had wrapped around his head. "I do not think he will be pleased," it was a moot point.

Rolling his open blue-black eye he chuckled. "Yah, well now he'll have a good reason to kill me," he looked away uncomfortably. "He won't want to have me around until it heals, and I heal faster when I'm out."

That was news. "You heal faster on the outside? You've done this before?"

He moved back to sit cross-legged in the center of the bed. "Second-year. At least, I think it was," nervously he laced his fingers and hunched forward to lean on his knees. "I don't care what he does now," speaking more to himself than to Albus. "I can't take the darkness any more," he shook his head. "He's turned. There's no softness in his heart now."

Throat dry Albus licked his lips. "What exactly are you saying?"

Head skewed to the right so that he could make eye contact he whispered. "You must kill him."

Albus absorbed the statement, then changed the subject. "Here," he handed back the bandage. "There was someone who wanted to come in and see you. Are you up for it?"

Again he shrugged, rather than actually committing to an answer. He did however reapply the bandage.

"I'll take that as a yes," Albus sounded calm, but he smelled worried. "He is very anxious to see you in person. I was rather surprised. He must have done quite a bit of growing up over the summer."

"I won't hurt Longbottom. You should know that," he was focusing on the wall again.

The Headmaster released the privacy charm and waved Neville in from the hall.

Neville had opted to await the verdict on his visit, from a safe distance. His first choice would have been the Astronomy tower, but the hall was okay.

As he hesitated outside the curtained space Dumbledore gave the timid Gryffindor a pat on the back. "I think Madame Pomfrey gave him something to keep him quiet." Seeing Neville relax a little, Albus took his leave and headed to his private chambers. 'Kill him?! If only it were that easy...'