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The Potion Master's Muse Challenges > The Witching Hour

The Witching Hour Challenge: The Seer by mouse [Reviews - 13]

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Disclaimer:
I am a lowly worm who does not deserve to be ground into slime under the heel of The Great And Mighty Rowling. All these characters? They are hers. This imaginary world? It is hers. I am dirt. I am slime. I am unfit to polish the Great and Mighty Rowling's Great And Mighty toenails. I cringe in abject shame before her Great And Mighty copyright lawyers. (grovel, grovel)
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Part Two: The Muggle Seer


"No, no messages, sir," said the clerk - a young man this morning.

Snape pressed his knuckles against his mouth, and stared at the dull black surface of the hotel's front desk.

"Will you be checking out then, sir?" prompted the clerk after a moment.

"Just a moment," said Snape, and pulled Ron and Hermione away from the desk.

"Something's wrong, isn't it?" said Ron in a low voice.

"Professor Dumbledore is occasionally too busy to chit-chat, but he would not forget to contact me completely," said Snape. "Yes. Something is wrong."

"What do we do?" said Hermione.

Snape looked at her, and then said slowly, thinking it out as he spoke, "Defeating the Dark Lord is our goal. To achieve that goal, we need three things: Harry Potter alive and well - which means that we must find Potter, Albus Dumbledore alive and well - which means we must find Professor Dumbledore, and the Order of the Phoenix in a functioning capacity - which means that we must find and protect this mysterious Ms. Rowling, who seems to know so much about us." Snape paused. "The problem is, the last item involves going back to the conference, while the first two items involve going back to the Salem Massacre Memorial Museum, and possibly the police. We need to be in two places at once."

"So we have to split up," said Ron.

"Professor Dumbledore told me to keep you two safe, and to keep you away from the conference," said Snape fiercely. "That means we do not split up."

"Then we go back to the museum," said Hermione firmly.

"Except," said Snape heavily, "that Ms. Rowling is the unknown quantity. I know how bad the situation is if Potter dies. I know how bad the situation is if Professor Dumbledore dies. But I do not know how bad the situation is if the Dark Lord gets his hands on Ms. Rowling, and it could be very bad indeed, if Professor Dumbledore's guess about how Ms. Rowling gets her information is correct."

"How does he think she's getting her information?" asked Ron. "Spies?"

Snape paused. Perhaps it was time to tell the students the entire story. "Professor Dumbledore thinks that this J. K. Rowling may be a particularly rare and strange sort of seer," said Snape. "Imagine an artist who suddenly gets a inspiration one day - perhaps she paints some wonderful scene, some alien vista. Everyone applauds her vision, but little does she or anyone else know that she has painted something that is real. It is an alien vista, yes, but one that actually exists somewhere." Snape frowned slightly. "This has happened before - there is painting in the Tate Gallery in London called "The Fairy-Feller's Master-Stroke", by a man named Richard Dadd. It is small, and painted in exquisite detail, and it features fairy creatures. Now as a Muggle, Richard Dadd couldn't know that the fairy kingdom really exists; he couldn't know anything about the creatures that live in it. However, well after his death, an academic in the wizarding world did a bit of research and verified the names and identities of most of the creatures in his painting. They were real beings. Furthermore, she found that the events depicted in the painting were based on events that actually occurred at the Queen of the Fairies's Golden Jubilee Gala in August of 1902. The odd thing was, Dadd created the painting over the course of several years, many decades in advance of the actual Gala - which in fact occurred after his death."

"You mean - he painted a picture of things that really happened, before they actually happened?" said Ron.

"My, aren't you quick on the uptake, Mr. Weasley," said Snape. "Yes, that is what I just said. It was a very strange sort of prescience. Professor Dumbledore thinks Ms. Rowling may be a creature of the same stripe. Apparently she had a vision, one day on a train, and started writing these children's books about it. She's been doing it for many years now, but if you read the books, you can see that they are almost a transcript of what has actually been happening at Hogwarts over the past five years."

"Creepy," said Ron.

"Quite," said Snape, and gave Ron a twisted smile. "All three of us are in the books, you know. You get quite a bit of ink in fact, Mr. Weasley. She writes things that I remember you actually saying, but she wrote a lot of it before you ever came to Hogwarts."

Ron paled. Hermione looked puzzled, and said, "But she couldn't get everything right. No seer is that good."

"She doesn't," said Snape. "She gets little things wrong, like a few of the names, or the way into Diagon Alley, but she gets the general story right. And she's been getting far too much of what goes on inside the Order of the Phoenix's headquarters right. She endangers us. This is why we came here; Professor Dumbledore needs to talk to this woman. And apparently, he also needs to find a way to protect her now. The Dark Lord has also become aware of her very narrow, but precise, vision of the future." Snape took a deep breath. "And that is the problem," he said. "The last books in the series are supposed to cover this year and the next. We've got the book for this year; and apparently it is possible to change the future from what she predicted, because we have already done so. This book can't hurt us. But if the Dark Lord gets his hands on Ms. Rowling, then he has foreknowledge of what we might attempt to do next year. That's enough information for him to smash the Order of the Phoenix completely, and win the war."

Ron and Hermione stared at Snape in mute shock.

"I reckon," said Ron eventually, "that we need to get back to the conference, Professor Snape. If Professor Dumbledore has been captured or hurt, then we need to find this woman. I hate to say it, but this is more important than finding Harry."

"You're saying we need to disobey Professor Dumbledore's orders, in other words," said Snape heavily.

"What did he tell you to do, exactly?" asked Hermione.

"Just what I said. Keep you two safe. Keep you away from the conference."

"Well, then, leave us here," said Hermione. Snape frowned at her. "If Ron and I just try to find out some information," she said, "or maybe try to get our wands back, then we're not likely to be in any real danger on our own. And we won't be at the conference, so you won't be disobeying Professor Dumbledore's orders."

"I don't think that Professor Dumbledore would consider abandoning two underaged wizards - without their wands - in a foreign city, to be keeping them "safe". What if I get killed? What if Professor Dumbledore never returns? What will you do?"

"Call my mum and dad?" said Hermione timidly, and gave him a little shrug. Snape sighed, and pressed his hand against his forehead.

"There's two of us," said Ron. "And we're sixteen. We'll try really hard to keep our noses out of trouble, Professor Snape. It's the best you can hope for. We do need to be in two places at once, so you go be at the conference and find that seer, and we'll stay here and see what we can find out about Harry, Professor Dumbledore and the Death Eaters."

Snape gazed at Ron for a long moment, pursing his lips. Then he turned and walked back to the front desk.

"Will you be checking out?" asked the clerk pleasantly.

"No," said Snape. "We'll take the room for another night."

***************************************************

Snape wove through the crowd of costumed Muggles, his heart jumping in his chest. It was a relief to be back in robes, but all it would take for him to wind up dead would be to run into the wrong person in this crowd. Dumbledore had said there were Death Eaters here at the conference, and he didn't have a wand to defend himself with.

The crowd contained a lot of teenagers, but not as many as Snape would have expected there to be. It didn't seem too conspicuous for him to not have Harry, Ron or Hermione along as decoy minors; there were quite a few adults that didn't appear to be acting as anyone's guardian. If Snape had known this was going to be the case, he would have argued harder against Dumbledore bringing the brats along in the first place.

And a few of the lone adults were far drunker than they should be in the company of young people. Just such a woman stepped out in front of Snape suddenly, and said with a sloppy grin on her face, "You are the best Severus Snape I have ever seen."

"I am the only Severus Snape you have ever seen," said Snape, pushing rudely past her.

A moment later, he felt as if he should be eating those words. A cluster of no less than five dark-haired, hook-nosed men in black robes were standing in his way, all chatting amiably with one another. Snape pushed by these with a bit more reserve, trying to avoid meeting the eye of any one of them. It was all dreadfully embarrassing.

Snape elbowed a female version of Harry Potter aside with a bit more gusto than he should have - pity it wasn't the real McCoy - and suddenly felt his stomach turn to ice. The crowd had parted abruptly, and Snape found himself standing in front of Bellatrix Lestrange - the real one.

Who, thankfully, had her face turned away from him. Bella was holding a martini and studying the crowd with mixture of contempt and cruel amusement on her face, the expression overlaid upon that fiery insanity that Azkaban had lit inside her. Snape wheeled, and walked away quickly, just as Bella's head began to turn back in his direction. Another one of Snape's doppelgangers brushed by him, headed in the opposite direction. The man was wearing rather nicer robes than Snape was, and nodded to him in a friendly fashion.

The skin between Snape's shoulderblades itched, as if Bella was already taking aim at his back with her wand, but he knew that she would have had to dive through the crowds to get a clear shot at him, and he didn't hear any commotion. Bella had not seen him.

Snape forced himself to slow down. He didn't want to blunder into someone equally lethal in his hurry to get away from Bella. What he needed right now was to find the right Death Eater to approach...

Snape stopped abruptly - causing a very tall Flitwick to bump into him - and smiled. Sitting at the bar in the corner of the room, and chatting up a plump Muggle woman dressed in tartan robes, was Peter Pettigrew. Snape's smile grew more cruel, and he glided forward toward his quarry.

"You look just like how I always pictured Peter Pettigrew!" the woman was saying enthusiastically as Snape approached.

"Why thank you," said Peter, in what was obviously his most suave and manly voice. "That's not the half of it, though - would you believe my name really is Peter?"

"Oh my goodness!" said the woman, and giggled in a perfectly idiotic way.

"Ah - our new celebrity," said Snape, coming to a stop right at Peter's shoulder. The little man and his companion jumped visibly.

"Wow," said the woman, staring. "Now you really look like Snape."

"S-Severus!" said Peter. "I didn't know you were here!"

"And now you do, Peter. We need to talk. In private." Snape pulled the little man up by his arm.

"Oh! But...right now?" An unhappy and desperate look crossed Peter's face, and he squirmed against Snape's grip, casting pathetic glances at the woman. Snape rolled his eyes.

"My friend would like to buy you a drink and continue romancing you after I am finished speaking with him," Snape said to the woman tersely. "Will you wait for him?"

The woman blushed furiously, and stammered, "Oh! Er...er, yes! All right then..."

Snape dragged Peter off without another word.

When he had pulled him out of the main hall and into a small side room where waiters feverishly swapped empty champagne glasses on their trays for full ones, Snape pushed Peter into a quiet corner.

"I didn't know the Dark Lord had sent you here too, Severus!" said Peter in a whisper, glancing nervously at the waiters.

"He didn't," said Severus. "I am here on Dumbledore's orders. Why are all of you here? I saw Bella out there, Peter - Bella among the Muggles! Does the Dark Lord want a massacre? What's going on? I can't be seen speaking with any of you, or it will blow my cover with that Muggle-loving fool, Dumbledore! Why are you all here?"

"The Dark Lord has just become aware of a very powerful seer, Severus! This woman has predicted events from the last five years with great accuracy, and apparently she has predictions for the next two years! She knows how the war is going to end!"

Snape let his forehead wrinkle in consternation. "That's impressive," he said. "Why hasn't this woman come to our attention before now?"

"Because she's a Muggle, Severus!"

Snape curled his lip. "A Muggle seer? Surely there's no such creature, Peter - Muggles have no magic!"

"Indeed! No right-thinking wizard would expect a Muggle to know anything about the future!" said Peter with feverish excitement. "That's exactly how she's managed to slip by us for so many years!"

"Well, why wasn't I told about this?" asked Snape, letting his voice become peevish. He switched to a more outraged tone. "And why should you get chosen for a mission like this, when I wasn't told a thing?"

"You were away on Hogwart's business when the Dark Lord found out about it," said Peter evasively. "It came up suddenly, Severus - I'm sure no slight was intended..."

"Hmph," said Snape, scowling.

"So why are you here, Severus?" asked Peter.

"I told you. Dumbledore brought me along. The old fool hasn't told me why, but it can hardly be a coincidence, can it? He must know something about this seer also..."

"Dumbledore is here?" said Peter, growing pale.

"You mean the Dark Lord is not here?" asked Snape, raising an eyebrow.

"No!"

"Great Merlin; it will be a slaughter!" said Snape, widening his eyes. "How many Death Eaters do we have here? Do we at least outnumber Dumbledore by a good solid margin?"

"There's eight of us," said Peter, wringing his hands, "but most of the others are already occupied trying to keep the Americans away..."

"Americans? What Americans?"

"American wizards! That's how the Dark Lord became aware of this seer - apparently a group of Dark wizards here in America was planning to kidnap the seer when she came to speak at this conference. The Dark Lord's spies made him aware of the plot almost at the last hour. She arrives here today! We were sent to intercept her."

"Eight of us," said Snape seriously, "not including me, because I cannot be seen to be involved. It would have been enough - if not for Dumbledore's presence. How many are here at the conference right now? You and Bella and...?"

"Just Bella and I," said Peter. "The idea was, if the others could keep the Americans away, the Muggle herself wasn't going to present any problems."

"But if Dumbledore finds out about this, you and Bella won't stand a chance," said Snape, running the tip of his finger around the outside of his lips thoughtfully. "You two must be less conspicuous than you are currently being, Peter. Bella is just standing out there. Imagine what will happen if Dumbledore sees one of you two." Snape lowered his hand, and fixed Peter with a serious look. "I expect the mad old fool would kill you where you stood."

Peter went pale again and began to tremble, wringing his hands feverishly. "I - I'll keep a low profile, Severus," he said. "That's excellent advice."

"Indeed," said Snape, nodding solemnly. "When is the seer arriving? Tell me what your plans are, so I can try to keep Dumbledore away while you carry them out."

"Well, we don't know exactly when the woman is getting here," said Peter. "Some of the Muggles are keeping the details secret from all of the other Muggles, and we haven't managed to interrogate one of the correct ones yet. We don't know why they're being like this; you'd think it would cause a stampede or something if they told everyone that this Rowling woman was going to be here. Anyway, we know that she will be speaking to the conference delegates at some point, so Bella and I were just going to bide our time until we saw her, and then snatch the woman."

"A good plan," said Snape, nodding, "if we can keep Dumbledore out of the way until after you've got her. If you find out when the seer will be speaking, Peter, you must tell me immediately. I can try to keep that old Muggle-lover busy somehow. If I have to, I'll do myself harm." Snape curled his lip in disgust. "Dumbledore is such a soppy old fool, he'll want to nurse-maid me back to health himself."

"Really?" said Peter, looking flabbergasted.

"I assure you," said Snape, shrugging. "I know the scope of the man's sentimental idiocy very well. He truly is a fool."

Peter said nothing, but looked sad and fretful for a moment. Snape eyed him.

You had your chance to choose the right master, Peter, thought Snape, and you blew it, same as me. Yes, you could go back to Dumbledore and ask for a second chance - but you never will. You don't have that much courage.

"You'd better get back out there and tell Bella to lie low," said Snape. "But don't tell her that I'm here. She's...not been quite right, since she came back from Azkaban. She's incapable of understanding subtlety anymore, and I can't afford to have her blow my cover with Dumbledore. She would utterly ruin the Dark Lord's plans for me if that happened, and we both know how displeased he can be when plans go awry. Best to spare us all from that, yes?"

"Oh yes," said Peter, nodding fervently. Then the little man's expression darkened. "And you're right; Bella's...broken. I can hardly keep her from killing the Muggles we've been interrogating; I can't make her see reason."

"Better keep her away from your lady-friend then," said Snape, raising an eyebrow and smiling thinly at the little man. "Bella won't like her one bit. That juicy little thing in the plaid robes doesn't have a magical bone in her body. Although," Snape let his smile grow cruel, "I'll bet you're looking forward to changing that state of affairs, at least temporarily. I imagine being someone's pet rat for twelve years puts a bit of a crimp in a man's love life."

Peter blushed crimson. "She's just a plaything," he said sulkily.

"And I would certainly not begrudge you your playthings, Peter," said Snape, still smiling, "so long as it does not interfere with your work. Besides, as I suggested, you should be lying low right now. I expect the young lady's bed would be an ideal place to be lying, generally speaking. I wish you luck with the plaything, Peter. And now, I must go. I shall need to keep much closer tabs on Dumbledore than I thought would be necessary. I will see you later."

"Yes. Bye, Severus," said Peter.

Snape swept out of the room, trying not to grin. It was really too easy, sometimes.

*********************************

Snape watched Peter from behind a potted plant - another plastic one; what was it with these Muggles and their imitation plants? Peter came out of the little side room that Snape had pulled him into, chewing his lip and looking thoughtful. The little man stood on his toes and peered over the crowd. Snape saw him spot Bella, saw Peter's expression grow even more thoughtful. That's it, thought Snape, decide what you'd really like to happen, you little rat. Weigh the odds.

Snape could almost see the decision click into place in Peter's mind. The little man took one last calculating look at Bella, then glanced around the room quickly. Seeing no trace of any enemies, he scurried over to the bar again, and leaned over the shoulder of the woman in the tartan robes.

Great Merlin, thought Snape suddenly. That Muggle is supposed to be dressed up as Minerva McGonagall, isn't she? Minerva would drop dead of embarrassment if she saw this. The Tight-arsed Tabby wouldn't be seen flaunting an eye-watering expanse of cleavage like that if her life depended on it.

Snape watched Peter give a little flick of his head toward the doorway, saw the woman duck her head shyly and grin, then nod at him. A moment later they were arm-in-arm and headed out of the room.

Good job, Peter, thought Snape, nodding to himself in quiet satisfaction. Voldemort's going to kill you sooner or later anyway; you may as well have some fun. And you'd be quite happy if Dumbledore killed poor un-informed Bella now, wouldn't you? She frightens you.

Snape slipped back out from behind the potted plant. Now as long as he kept track of where Bella was, he had free run of the conference.

Snape pursed his lips. But how did that really help him? He didn't know where this Rowling woman was going to turn up, and if he didn't find her before Bella did, then it was all over. He didn't have a wand; he couldn't duel with Bella over the seer.

I need Veritaserum, thought Snape, and I need to find the right person to force it down the throat of.

He frowned at the crowd. A bunch of silly Muggles who liked to play dress-up weren't going to have any Veratiserum. Might Peter have had some? It was too late to find out now.

Snape frowned thoughtfully at the crowd. It was a big crowd. How many organizers would it take to pull off an conference like this? Probably a lot. Would they all know one another, or would the organizing committees spawn organizing committees, until no one was quite sure who was doing what anymore?

Snape wandered back to the hotel foyer, where a table of frazzled volunteers were signing in late delegates and handing out information packages. He watched them for a while, trying to determine who was working the hardest to be friendly and informative. He eventually narrowed it down to two young men dressed in full wizarding robes, complete with pointed hats. They were smiling the most broadly and looking the most exhausted.

Snape walked up to one of them, leaned toward the man and said in a frantic undertone, "I've just been sent to tell you, she is here."

"What?"

"She is here!" said Snape, making himself look desperate. "Right now! Nobody knows what to do! What are we supposed to do with her?"

The man stared at Snape for a moment, then said bemusedly, "Uh - I don't know what you're talking about, buddy."

Snape bit his lip, and said, "Then I don't think you're who I'm supposed to be talking to. Er, is there someone else around here who...?"

"Whoa. Whoa!" said the other man in the wizard's robes, his eyes growing wide and his face becoming very pale. "What do you mean, she is here? Like, now?"

"Yes!" said Snape desperately. "She as in Herself! She is here! She's in the back alley, in a car, and nobody knows what they're supposed to do! Where are we supposed to take her?"

"Oh hell," said the man. "Mike! Take care of things here; this is an emergency. You! Take me to her."

"Follow me," said Snape, leading the young man into the main hall at a brisk pace.

"She isn't supposed to be here yet, is she?" hissed Snape over his shoulder, as they hurried through the crowd. "When was she supposed to arrive?"

"Not for another hour!!" said the young man desperately. "Ashley just left for the airport ten minutes ago! Her plane should hardly even be landed yet! Oh, why did I ever say I would help organize this bloody conference? Everything is going wrong! Why is she here early?"

"I don't know! They just sent me up here to fetch you," said Snape. "What do we do with her? The problem is that nobody down there knows what we're supposed to do!"

"We smuggle her up the service elevator to her room," said the young man, taking a deep breath as if to calm himself, "and then she stays there until the banquet. That's the plan."

"Right," said Snape, motioning the man toward the room where he had earlier dragged Peter. "Through here. This is a short-cut."

The young man strode quickly through the door, and Snape turned on his heel and calmly walked back into the crowd, becoming instantly invisible among the multitude of other Snapes.

So. He had to be in the service elevator - the lift - in an hour. Provided that the young man didn't realise just how thoroughly he'd been bamboozled and change all of the plans, everything should be straightforward now. Snape felt rather pleased with himself. He knew when the seer was supposed to make her appearance, and he knew roughly when and where to go looking for her before that. All of a sudden, things were going quite smoothly.

"Hello, Severus," purred a woman's voice in his ear suddenly. "What was it that you were up to with that silly young Muggle in the blue robes?"

Snape's stomach seemed to have turned to ice again. He turned slowly, and looked into a pair of cold, dark, insane eyes. "Hello Bella," said Snape calmly.

******************************************************

"You will never guess who I saw running around Old Salem this morning, covered in dust and blood," said Bella, stirring her martini slowly with its toothpick-impaled olive. She stared at Snape avidly. "Little bitty baby Potter. So it wasn't entirely surprising for me to see you here - whence goes Potter, thence goes Dumbledore, and whence goes Dumbledore, thence goes dear faithful Severus. But faithful to who? That is always the question that runs through my mind...over, and over, and over again..."

"You know where my loyalties lie, Bella," said Snape tersely. He fiddled with the glass of champagne on the table in front of him, and then consciously made himself stop. The babble of the crowd in the main room, just outside of the lounge where he and Bella were sitting, murmered as gently and insensibly as the sea.

"Do I? I know that I spent fourteen years in hell for my loyalties," said Bella sweetly. "While you taught baby wizards how to brew philtres instead, safe from all scrutiny under the kindly eye of our master's greatest enemy."

"Which puts me in the best possible position to now help our master take his revenge upon that fool Dumbledore!" hissed Snape. "The Dark Lord does not doubt my loyalties, Bella; why should you?"

Bella giggled, still staring at him. The giggle made Snape's scalp prickle. The truth was, he didn't really know whether Voldemort doubted his loyalties or not. It was true that Voldemort had eventually permitted Snape back into the ranks of the Death Eaters - after torturing him into screaming incoherence, torturing him until he'd soiled himself in every way that it was possible to do so - but even still, there was something about being back in the ranks that didn't feel quite right to Snape. It had something to do with the way Bella didn't bother hiding her hatred of him, with the way Lucius didn't quite meet his eyes these days...and with the shifty way in which Peter tried to explain away the fact that Snape hadn't even been told about this mission to kidnap Rowling.

"If I wasn't trustworthy, I'd be dead," said Snape somberly. "You know that the Dark Lord can always tell if someone is lying to him. We cannot fool him."

Bella narrowed her eyes, still stirring her martini.

"What were you doing with that Muggle?" she asked.

Snape gazed at Bella a moment. "Dumbledore may suspect me," he said coolly. "He sent me on a chore, to get that Muggle out of the way, but he didn't tell me why, and I suspect that it was really me he was trying to get out of the way."

"Dumbledore distrusts you? How delightful to hear that you are becoming less useful to our master," said Bella, smiling. "No one is more delighted than me to hear that you are becoming more and more disposable with each passing day, Severus."

"Shut up, Bella," said Snape savagely. "I shouldn't even be speaking to you! You could jeopardize everything I've been working for. You are here to capture this seer, Rowling. Would it not be useful to you if Dumbledore trusted me? Do you really think that you can thwart Albus Dumbledore alone, Bella? You could use my help - if I am still capable of giving you any. I don't see why you spurn my assistance out of hand."

"What makes you think I am alone, Severus?" said Bella.

Snape snorted. "Because Peter told me that it was just you and him here, right before he bunked off to go kip some Muggle woman." Bella stiffened, and Snape recognized the reaction as an opportunity. "Oh yes," he said, smirking at her. "I saw him leave. I told him to go warn you that Dumbledore was here, but he decided to chase some Muggle bird instead. Do ask him about that decision, when you next see him, Bella - and then ask yourself whose loyalties you should be doubting more: his, or mine."

Bella narrowed her eyes, looking enraged. "Being more trustworthy than that little rat is nothing to be proud of!" she hissed, but Snape saw her eyes flickering toward the crowd outside. Her fury was for Peter now, rather than him.

"But it's all I have, Bella..." said Snape, raising his glass to her in an ironic toast.

Bella slapped the glass out of his hand. It smashed on the floor, drawing the stares of the other people in the lounge. Snape gazed at Bella, his face impassive. He lowered his hand. "Control yourself," he said in an even voice. "You're drawing attention to us."

"I would obliterate them all," said Bella, staring feverishly at the Muggles around her. "I would heat their bones, and cook them from the inside out. I would watch them screaming. They are vermin, they are playthings..." Bella's expression became vague. "And I can see myself doing it..." she said, her eyes unfocused. The small hairs on the back of Snape's neck stood up. Peter was right; this woman's mind was broken.

"The Dark Lord would not thank you for such indiscretion," said Snape quietly. Bella's eyes refocused on him, her expression still distant. After a moment she shivered, and blinked, and then looked around as if not quite sure how she came to be there.

"Do you know anything more about when the seer will appear?" asked Snape, still watching Bella with a carefully neutral expression.

"Why would I tell you?" asked Bella lightly, turning to him and smiling as if the unpleasantness had not happened. "So you could go inform Dumbledore? I think not Severus. You stay out of my way today, or I will kill you as the traitor I think you are."

Snape narrowed his eyes, and then smiled nastily. "Well," he said, "since I appear to be finished with my drink, Bella, I will take my leave of you. Fear not; I will not come near you - to help or to hinder. The Dark Lord can blame or reward you entirely for the results of today." Snape stood up, abruptly enough that the motion knocked his chair over, and swept out of the lounge.

Snape checked the time quickly. Bella had tied him up for less than half an hour. Good; it meant he still had lots of time to...

Suddenly an arm wound almost lovingly around his neck from behind, pulling him to a stumbling halt, and Snape felt warmth pressed against his back. He groped for his wand instinctively, but a hand had already clasped his wrist, preventing him from reaching for his empty pocket. "Now, now, Snape..." breathed Bella in his ear, "no need for indiscretion." She licked his earlobe, and Snape flinched violently, hating the feel of her. "I've changed my mind, Severus," said Bella. "I think I want to keep my enemies closer. You'll be staying with me this afternoon."

"I can't!" said Snape, attempting to pull her arm off his neck. Bella tightened her grip and giggled. "I can't be seen with you!" hissed Snape."If Dumbledore spots us, it will completely blow my cover, you crazy sow!"

Bella tightened her grip again, and Snape suddenly wasn't getting any air. He clamped his hands tightly over her arm and concentrated. Bella yelped shrilly, and jerked away from him. Snape whirled to face the woman - who was now rubbing the hand-shaped burn marks on her arm.

Bella's eyes were mad slits. "You have more power than I thought, Severus," she said. "I had always pegged you as one of those watery academic types. Were you really just too squeamish for the raids, rather than too weak? I shall have to speak with the Dark Lord about this..."

"I shall have to speak with him about how utterly useless a mad sow is for sensitive field work!" snapped Snape.

Bella took out her wand, and pointed it at his heart, her eyes blazing. Snape went perfectly still. The Muggles all around them were staring at he and Bella, some of them smiling stupidly, as if they thought it was a game.

"Put it away, Bella," said Snape.

"Take yours out, Snape," she hissed. "Lets see how powerful you really are."

"Don't do this here, Bella! Away! Now!" ordered Snape. Bella smiled strangely, and shook her head.

"One," she said quietly. "Two..."

Snape dived sideways into the crowd. There was a flash of light and a bang behind him, and Muggles began screaming. Snape scrambled to his feet and raced away, mercilessly knocking over anyone unlucky enough to be in his way.

"I'm going to cut your heart out and eat it, Severus!" screamed Bella from somewhere behind him. Snape kept his head down.

He flung himself though a pair of swinging doors, one of which glowed white-hot in his peripheral vision, then belled out like a soap bubble and tore itself off its hinges in molten shreds. Snape raced past a dozen bellowing Muggles, all of who seemed to be wearing white aprons and vaguely mushroom shaped white hats. The little part of Snape's mind that always stayed clinical and detached wondered vaguely about that, as he launched himself through another door and nearly broke his neck when there turned out to be a staircase behind it.

Snape managed to scramble down two full flights of stairs before he heard the bang of the door above being slammed open again. He heard Bella shriek abruptly, and there was a clattering noise. Snape jumped almost all of the way down another flight of stairs before he heard Bella begin to swear blisteringly. Snape wretched the door at the bottom of the last flight of stairs open, and sprinted through it.

He was in a strange echoing space, with distant walls, a raw cement ceiling and a dark rough floor with yellow stripes painted all over it. There were Muggle cars parked everywhere. Snape ran among the cars, aware that there weren't really very many places for him to effectively hide in here. He was approaching one of the walls of the strange room however, and there was a door in it. The door was sliding shut even as Snape watched it, and something about the way it moved told him that he wasn't going be able to get it open again once it had closed.

Snape put on one last burst of speed and dived through the narrowing gap, hearing the banging of a door echo through the big room behind him.

He crashed headlong into a wall, bounced off, and fell gracelessly to the floor. Snape gasped in pain, but not loudly enough to be heard over the startled screams of a pair of Muggle women.

Snape felt reality lurch, as if the ground had just moved. Then he realised that this wasn't an illusion - the floor was vibrating. Snape looked up, and understanding clicked into place.

He was in a lift - an elevator. Snape blinked up at the two women, who had pasted themselves into the corner in terror, and rubbed at the freshly acquired lump on his forehead. One of the women was holding a baby, which had begun to shriek. The noise was like a spike through his skull in the small enclosed space.

"You're not allowed to use this elevator!" said the other women, her voice squeaky with panic.

"Too sodding bad!" gasped Snape, picking himself up. "I had a frothy-mouthed maniac chasing me! I didn't stop to read the prohibitory notices!"

Snape leaned against the wall of the lift, still panting, and gave the two women a poisonous glare. One of them - the one who had spoken - was short and about twenty years old, with a neat bob of shiny sky-blue hair. The other - who was holding the screaming purple-faced baby - was tall and perhaps forty, with long blonde hair.

"Are you one of the conference delegates?" asked the younger woman, sounding as if she couldn't conceive of anything in the universe more terrifying than a conference delegate.

Snape glanced down at his wizard robes, looked back up at the woman, and then spat at her, "What do you think?"

"I've gone mad," said the older woman weakly, still staring at Snape.

"Indeed?" he said ferociously to her. "Bully for you! This is supposed to matter to me for some reason?"

The woman said nothing, but began to tremble, staring at Snape with wide blue eyes. She was actually very attractive. Snape gazed back at the woman for a moment with some mild appreciation, but no real interest. The presence of the baby, already and of itself a profound turn-off, tended to imply that there was another man in the picture.

"I've gone mad," the woman repeated. "You're Snape."

"You know my name?" said Snape, before he remembered that everyone at this conference knew his name.

"Bloody hell," said the woman weakly, bouncing the baby up and down to soothe it. "The readers are going to be so annoyed that I lost my mind before finishing book seven."

The lift doors opened, and the older woman abruptly shifted the baby in her arms to free up one of her hands, and shoved the blue-haired woman firmly out of the lift.

"M-Ms. Rowling?" said the younger woman uncertainly.

"You get off," said the blonde woman. "I need to talk to this man for a minute."

"But? But!"

"Stay here! I'll come back up in a minute!" said the blonde woman.

"Rowling?" said Snape quietly, blinking. "You're early..." The lift doors closed again, and the woman pressed one of the lower buttons on the wall.

"And you're Snape," she said. Her voice was still shaking. "Not just someone who looks like him - you're him, straight out of my head. You've got his face, you've got his voice, you've even got..." She reached over and laid a feather-touch on Snape's jaw, "...that little mole that I've never bothered to mention in the books. You're him."

"Yes," said Snape. "I am. And you are in great danger."

"Well, yeah..." said Rowling weakly. "Crazy women shouldn't be allowed to run about on their own. I expect I'm a danger to myself."

"You are not crazy!" said Snape, feeling his temper beginning to fray. "You are a seer! If you want to meet a crazy woman I can introduce you to Bella, but I expect you wouldn't like that because she'll Crucio you until you can't remember your own name. Ms. Rowling, I need you to come with me."

"Bella?" said Rowling.

"Bellatrix Lestrange," said Snape. "I know that you know who she is. Look, this will be very difficult for you to understand all in one go, but you are a type of seer, Ms. Rowling. That vision you had of Hogwarts so many years ago, that wasn't your imagination. That was something else, a resonance of the universe that you happened to be on the same frequency as - Dumbledore thinks it occurs in conjunction with important or emotionally charged events, but if it happens to settle on the shoulders of an artist, then the world gets art. This happened to you. Hogwarts is real. Dumbledore is real. Magic is real. I am real, and so is that little pimple on the arse of my happiness, Harry Potter. I am not your creation, Ms. Rowling; I'm a living person whose life you've just been unwittingly eavesdropping on."

"Harry's real?" said Rowling softly. The baby was starting to quiet down, whimpering now instead of wailing with gusto. "I should very much like to meet Harry."

"Yes, doesn't the whole bloody world want to meet Harry Potter," said Snape bitterly. "Well, I don't know where he is right now, so too damned bad. I need to get you away from here, Ms. Rowling. The Dark Lord, the Cruciatus curse - those are real too, and so are Death Eaters. There were two of them sent here today to kidnap you, and I've only got rid of one of them. The other just tried to kill me. Also, there's another group of Dark wizards skulking around trying to kidnap you as well. All the world loves a writer, apparently. You must come away with me."

"But -" said Rowling, looking mildly stunned, "But I'm supposed to be speaking at this conference..."

"If one of the Dark wizards looking for you actually succeeds in finding you, they will probably kill that," Snape pointed to the baby, "out of hand, just as a nuisance. You, they will secrete away somewhere - where you will spend the rest of your undoubtably shortened life being tortured into insanity for the information contained in your head. Information that will be used to kill and subjugate a large number of perfectly blameless beings, by the way. Tell me Ms. Rowling: just how important are your prior engagements to you, really?"

Rowling paled, and said nothing. The lift ground to a halt again, and Snape turned his head toward the door nervously. He didn't know where Bella was. She might be still in the car park - where Rowling had just sent the lift - or she might have run upstairs again, looking for Snape on another floor. If they met Bella face-to-face, Snape would to have to find some way to draw her away from this Rowling woman...

The door slid open. Snape poked his head out and scanned the area quickly. There was no sign of Bella. He grabbed Rowling's arm and dragged her out of the lift.

"Do you know how to use one of these things?" he said, gesturing to the Muggle cars around them.

"Oh - yes. And they've given me use of a rental while I'm here." Rowling frowned slightly, and then turned to look at Snape. She bit her lip, and studied his face carefully, wearing a strange expression. Snape gazed back at her in silence, giving the woman time to make it real to herself.

Finally Rowling sighed, and said, "Oh, bother it all." She pushed the baby into Snape's arms. "Hold Mackenzie while I find my keys," she said. "I don't know if I believe any of this yet, but if I have gone mad, then I may as well have one last adventure before they lock me up. Let's go, Severus."

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The Witching Hour Challenge: The Seer by mouse [Reviews - 13]

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