Playing Botticelli

Chapter One - Portrait of a Man with a Medal

The lark is there again, darting between branches and causing bits to float down upon me from above. This makes me peevish. And so I search for the creature in the canopy above and when I see it I take steady aim. It does not know what I am doing; it merely looks at me with its shiny jet eye and tilts and sways with the breeze and this angers me even more, causes my own eye to narrow in threat. I send sparks at it and the sparks bounce off the wood like dying stars and the lark now moves so that it can look at me with its other eye. But it does not leave its perch.

Foul thing! Witless thing!

I leave my wand and reach for small rocks and throw these. I slap the trunk of the tree. I storm around its base in a black fury and finally, bored, the lark shrugs and carries itself away.

I sink down into my robes so that I can press my head against the bark. It scratches deep in my hair and into my scalp, but this feels good. I look upward into the scribble of branches and beyond them to the grey sky and I hear the sounds of other larks in other trees. But I sorted my lark.

The tree is empty; nothing adorns it. It is mine.

Glass, despite common belief, smells of its innards long after they have been spilt. I know this because I have a good nose and because I know the scent of every conceivable mixture known to wizardkind. I have left empty bottles on shelves for years, have filled them with new liquid souls, have boiled them until they shine with unnatural cleanliness and I still can smell what they had harboured before. I am the greatest Master of Potions in over four hundred years. I don't care to be challenged on that fact. And if I am, which I admit happens occasionally, well . . . I sort it. Like the lark.

When Minerva chooses to bother me with ridiculous things it can very well ruin my night. It often does, and she often bothers me. This night is no exception, and marking papers while the shadow of a witch flickers on the parchment like a silent film is both irritating and taxing.

"What may I assist you with, Professor?" I ask. I sound bored and a bit impatient-if it is possible for a voice to have both these qualities at once-and it is because I am. I don't like disturbances. They put me on edge.

"Severus," she says, and she is whispering. "It is about what occurred today on the bridge." Her round spectacles reflect the candlelight and I can't see her eyes, which sometimes makes me rub my thumb and forefinger together in uncertainty. I know, of course, what she is talking about. I know because I was there, standing silently at the mouth of the bridge and with my hand on my wand and doing nothing but watching the execution of brutality. Not because I didn't care enough to stop what was happening. But rather because there was something deep in me as I stared wolf-eyed and motionless that was . . . uncertain.

"You're referring to Draco?" I ask. He had, after all, been especially horrible. I had to think that through for a moment, just now, ponder its implications. He had grown into a bloodhound of a young man and I couldn't deny he had a special scent for Potter. Not that I cared. But one did tire of having to defend him to the others on the staff, regardless of my own personal desire to see Potter disappear in a vaudevillian puff of smoke and never disturb my thoughts again. Potter was insipid and his friends were insipid and if Draco Malfoy was the only method I could employ to make his days at Hogwarts just a bit less joyful then I was willing to defend any and all actions.

And, having been witness to the occurrence on the bridge, I know that defending Draco Malfoy is what I am about to do.

I eye Minerva warily. Her lips are pursed and she is wringing her hands and therefore I know it is a bit more serious than I first thought. I can detect the scent of chamomile on her.

"It's not about Draco," she whispers again, "it's about Hermione Granger."

"Is that so?" I hear myself say with curiosity. I'm not curious. Not remotely. I press my thumb to my forefinger and stare at the glow in Minerva's glasses and I am thinking of the bridge and of Hermione Granger and I recall that there had been two packs of students there, circling one another slowly with marked distrust. Something had alerted Malfoy to Potter's scent yet again-a weakness, certainly, for it was rarely anything else-and had led him to the bridge. A stammering first-year told me about the scuffle too late and when I had arrived it was nearly over, the Weasley boy bloodied and Potter curled in a motionless ball upon the wooden beams. "You . . .you monster!" That is what Hermione Granger had exclaimed, and she was fairly howling in despair; the wind kicked the hair into her eyes and mouth as she faced Malfoy and the others and there were pale tear trails down her cheeks and her lip quivered softly and that is why I stopped at the mouth of the bridge and couldn't move further.

She was pressed back against the bridge's trusses and Malfoy and his mates quivered on their haunches, waiting to strike. But they kept their distance from her. As I did. And we all watched with a sort of fascinated anticipation as she held her head aloft and lowered her eyelids so that her lashes hid her rage, so that she could trick them. Trick me.

Malfoy, sensing submission, smiled dutifully and lifted his wand to her throat. "Well. Know when you're beat, Granger. I'll give you that. Now. . .", and his wand waved teasingly in the air, taking into consideration her face, her neck, her chest, "what should we do with you? Hmmm?" I felt my stomach clench at the absurdity of his dramatic words, at the absurdity of him. The boy, I had to admit then, lacked refinement. This fact shamed me as I stood there and I gripped my wand with white knuckles.

One of Malfoy's boys whispered something and all three sniggered like hyenas. Malfoy cocked his head back slightly and looked at Hermione Granger, evaluating her from under his lashes, and then his mouth curled on one side. "Might do," he replied.

"Oh go on," prodded the tall one.

The young woman remained standing, motionless, her lids still at half-mast.

Malfoy flicked his wrist, pointed his wand like a burnt finger at her chest, and said, "Engorgio!"

I took my first interceptive step on to the bridge then, but my vision was suddenly blinded by a spray of light that had erupted from Hermione Granger and arched over her like a round, golden aura. Shrieks exploded on the bridge, followed by what I fancied was the impact of falling weight on the boards beneath my feet. I held my fist to my eyes and continued on, wand raised, stumbling forward into the light; and then I reached for the girl, parting the rays like a horizontal waterfall with my fingers, and got my hand around her arm.

The light died with a sharp popping sound and she turned her face toward me, her eyes wet and lost. Malfoy and the others lay in unnatural positions at her feet with their eyes rolled back and mouths agape, like the cursed worshipping Hecate . Potter was still motionless. Blood dripped down Weasley's chin and he groaned like a wounded animal. And Hermione Granger began to sob.

The situation, I had thought at the time, was hardly peculiar in the long and tattered history of Malfoy/Potter opposition

I place my quill down and fold my hands. This indicates that I am willing to listen. I then say: "Hermione Granger. She seemed no worse for wear. How is the Weasley boy, by the way?" Again, I'm not really curious. It just seems like a polite question to ask. A number of teeth had been knocked out of Weasley's head. Several, no doubt, had been swallowed.

"Yes, yes, he is doing well now." Minerva waves the question away and leans closer to me in case her whispering is too soft to hear: "Did you happen to hear what hex Miss Granger used against Draco?"

I stare at her for a moment. I feel my teeth grind slightly as I go over her question in my mind. When my teeth grind in such a way I know that something is bothering me, which is confusing me now, because I am bothered by nothing with regards to what happened on the bridge. "No, I'm afraid I didn't," I at last reply.

She nods and continues looking at me. I think she is looking at me; I can only see my own reflection in her face.

I pick up on her silent cue. I'm not stupid. "Why, Professor? Has something happened?" Even before the question leaves my lips my thoughts are elsewhere. I think of the ingredients I need to collect for a particular experiment; in my mind my finger is scanning my shelves and creating indexes; I think of someone I am to meet with next month; I think of fine brandy. This last thought catches on a corner of my mind and begins to unravel there: I can fairly smell the warmed glass and its rising vapours. Minerva disrupts these thoughts and I begin to grow irritated.

"Well," she is saying, "Poppy was telling me about something she discovered on Draco and his friends when they were brought to her . . ." She drops off and the candlelight flashes off of her spectacles.

"And . . . ?" I'm a bit curious now, I'll admit. As much as it would amuse me to see, say, a human prick growing out of the center of Malfoy's forehead, the fallout from Lucius would be . . . uncomfortable. And that remains a very fine rope on which I must balance.

"A strange symbol," she whispers, "burned into the flesh of the inner thigh."

I'm interested. "What sort of symbol?"

"I'm not entirely sure. I've not seen anything like it before. A rune, perhaps."

"You've told the Headmaster?"

"Of course."

"And he doesn't seem overly concerned?"

"He said you may know what the symbol means." She wrings her hands in worry. "Oh, where could Miss Granger have picked up such a hex? And the power required for such a thing, I-

"I will have a look," I say, but really I am thinking about herbs and brandy again. "Are the students still in the hospital wing?" I have picked up my quill once again. This means that the conversation is to be brought to a close.

"Yes, they are still there. Sleeping." She, likewise, knows my cues, and she is now withdrawing toward the door. "Thank you, Severus. Do tell me what you find."

"Of course," I assure her, and when she is gone I put down my quill again and close the office door with a word and a narrowed glance.

Later that night, as I walk the hallways and strain for the sounds that aren't silence, I decide to visit the hospital wing. Poppy is there and she shows me to the beds where the marked ones lie and she pulls the sheets away and I look, but the marks are now gone. This upsets Poppy and she tries to describe to me the odd curves and angles of each symbol, because, apparently, all three were different. In the end she grows exasperated and suggests I take it up with Minerva, who may be able to describe them in more detail. I assure her I will do this and I leave the hospital wing and once more go back to walking the halls.

But my curiosity has left me now, and Dumbledore's disinterest is mine, and I forget all about Hermione Granger and the marks she has left.

There is a parlour game I played often as a child called Botticelli. It's a guessing game. The rules are simple: one player selects a set of initials belonging to a familiar person and claims, "My initials are XX". The other player must then ask yes or no questions to determine whom, in fact, the other player is pretending to be.

I still enjoy playing this game. In fact, I am playing it now. Here.

The catch is . . . I'm not sure who I am pretending to be.