Author's Note:

Snape and Tonks’s dialogue in section three is ripped directly from chapter eight, “Snape Victorious,” of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Snape’s dialogue at the end of the final section (section eight) is from chapter nine, “The Half-Blood Prince,” of the same (pages 152-154 and 168, respectively, in the 2005 UK hardcover edition).

The actions that accompany this dialogue in canon have here been paraphrased wherever possible, but some overlap with the actual words from the book was inevitable, if only to spare the reader sentences like, “Snape vigorously closed the hinged metal barriers in her phizog.”

Many thanks to the kind and patient Vaughn for her beta services. All errors are my own, and feedback is welcome.

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Insidious

by Grainne

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Chapter 8: Stealth and Secrets

The first of September dawned cool and clear and, for Snape, full of difficult memories. It was lucky then that Wilkes’ ditty had the same effect on the brain as the chorus to Celestina Warbeck’s “You Melt My My-Oh-My” and the jingle for Sir Sped’s Stink-No-More foot powder—that is to say, it was one of those ditties that tend to get stuck in one’s head and, through sheer bloody repetition, drive out all other thoughts. This makes the average wizard want to hammer a spike through his skull (or his wife’s wireless), but in Snape’s case the distraction was not unwelcome.

“Do for yourself!” all the Slytherins holler.
Do for yourself; don’t wear any Crup’s collar.

Snape left off staring wistfully at his spoon (he’d been thinking about the first time he’d managed to mangle one on purpose) and dug into his porridge.

We stand side by side, but we’re watching our backs,
For Salazar says to beware sneak attacks.

Snape drew his eyes away from the staff room window (he’d been recalling his painful first flying lesson) and gave his full attention to Dawlish, who was braying his way through the assignments for the final pre-term security check.

Do for yourself and the others will follow.
Do for yourself or defeat you must swallow.

Snape turned his back on the tapestry of the troll ballet (he’d been remembering Black’s reference to it upon hearing that Snape had been invited to Slughorn’s Christmas party in their fifth year) and hastened along the seventh-floor corridor.

He passed a statue of a haggard-looking crone and glanced at it out of the corner of his eye. “That wouldn’t fool a Squib,” he said, “let alone a Death Eater.”

The statue sighed and muttered something under its breath that sounded remarkably like, “Piss off back to your dungeon, Snape.”

“Gladly,” Snape replied with a sneer. “But if you aren’t up to this assignment, Nymphadora, I’d suggest that you piss off back to your Ministry playpen. Hogwarts needs protection, not pantomime.”

Snape didn’t glance back as he strode away; he didn’t care to see the rude gesture the poorly disguised Auror was no doubt making in his direction.

Friend may turn foe in the blink of an eye;
The only one true is the one you call, “I.”

Snape refocused his eyes on the parchment in front of him (he’d almost wandered into a reminiscence about a slim-fingered hand, a borrowed quill, and a shared bottle of ink). He lay down his own quill and blew on the parchment until the ink was dry. Then he rolled it up tightly, sealed it with a tap of his wand, and placed it with the others.

Do for yourself and your one true self only.
Do for yourself...

Snape flexed his cramped fingers with a grimace. Unfortunately, in this instance, doing for himself involved a great deal of correspondence with other people, and his aging joints were starting to suffer.

He glanced at the clock. It was time for lunch—and not just any lunch, but the last student-free lunch for some time. Even so, he could not work up the proper enthusiasm. His bunions were still sore from kicking his furniture; now his fingers were sore as well. To top it all off, remembering-then-not-remembering things all morning had made him cranky.

“Do for myself, hmm?” Snape murmured. “Very well.”

He locked his door, temporarily sealed his fireplace against Floo calls, and opened the cupboard that held his private stores. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. After all, there was only one bottle in the cupboard shaped like a giant thumb (and a horrid shade of teal, to boot): Dexter’s Dexterous Digi-Mint.

Snape wasn’t in the habit of stocking name-brand potions, but he’d made the exception for Dumbledore, as a few slight additions to the Digi-Mint formula quickly yielded a paste that kept the headmaster’s withered hand from causing unbearable pain. The unaltered potion, however, was supposed to be perfectly adequate for more mundane maladies.

Several minutes later, with his hands and feet submerged in warm basins of the lurid blue-green goo, Snape altered his opinion. Dexter’s Dexterous Digi-Mint was more than adequate for mundane maladies; in fact, it was sublime. Not only did the potion numb the pain and infuse Snape’s joints with a pleasant tingling sensation, it also emitted a soothing vapour that did wonders for his crankiness. He was of half a mind to write a letter to this Dexter, commending him on the creation of such a fine product.

Soon, Snape’s eyelids drooped. His head lolled on his chest.

No, a letter wasn’t enough. Snape vowed that, should he survive long enough to earn his freedom, he would track down this Dexter and buy him a drink by way of thanks. Yes, that would be nice—nice drink in a nice pub with a nice man (or, at least, a man who wasn’t likely to get him killed or thrown in Azkaban). This Dexter seemed intelligent; doubtless he’d welcome Snape’s input. Perhaps he would even want a business partner.

Snape could picture it now: Dexter listening to Snape’s ideas with rapt attention. Dexter buying another round. Dexter smiling. Dexter shaking Snape’s…elbow?

Snape twitched.

Something squeaked.

Snape frowned. Surely, Dexter wasn’t the squeaky type?

The squeaky probably-not-Dexter something resumed tugging at Snape’s elbow.

“Perfesser Snape! Please, sir, wake up!”

Snape jerked awake, limbs flailing. Basins sailed through the air or skittered across the floor, sloshing potion every which way.

“WHAT THE...?” Snape bellowed. He instinctively went for his wand, grimacing when he saw that his hands were still coated in potion…as was his desk and a good portion of his lap. Eyes narrowed, he rounded on whoever had been tugging at his left elbow.

It turned out to be one of Hogwarts’ house-elves, peeking through its spindly fingers at the mess. “Whoops-a-doozie,” it said with dismay. “Big, big whoops-a-doozie. So sorry, perfesser. Fleagle will clean—”

“Never mind that!” Snape cried. “What is it? Is the castle under attack? Is the headmaster…?”

The house-elf lowered its hands and stared at Snape with its bulging eyes.

“Attack, sir? No, sir; Fleagle doesn’t think so. But the young mistresses and mastresses are arriving. The Dumblehead is in the Hall, and he says sir should be in the Hall, too. The door was locked and the fire was blocked, so he sent Fleagle to fetch—”

“What?” Snape blinked up at the clock. Then he leaped to his feet, swearing. The house-elf pinched its ears shut and stepped back in alarm, but Snape ignored it. The start-of-term feast was about to begin and he was standing in his office barefoot, coated in cold, congealing Dexter’s Dexterous Digi-Mint.

And then, suddenly, he wasn’t covered in Dexter’s Dexterous Digi-Mint. All traces of the blue-green goo simply vanished. Snape glanced at the house-elf. It bowed.

“Fleagle make whoops-a-doozie. Fleagle clean,” it said.

Snape examined his robes and hands with suspicion, but the house-elf had done a thorough job. He couldn’t find a single fleck of the potion under his fingernails, and the mint smell was gone. He nodded his thanks.

The house-elf bowed again, fluttered its ears happily, and with a squeaked, “Enjoy your feasting, perfesser sir,” disappeared.

Snape wasted no time. He retrieved his socks and boots from under his desk and tugged them on, noticing as he did so that the warm, tingly feeling from the Digi-Mint remained. The joints in his hands and feet felt alive and supple. Even his skin seemed softer.

He scowled. Soft skin and pain-free joints were well and good, but were they worth the loss of an afternoon? He supposed that it would all depend on how long the relief lasted. If he were still pain-free at the end of the week, then Dexter might still get his drink. If not, then he had some serious poison pen letters to write, aching joints or no.

Snape shook out his robes, unlocked his door and—ready as he was ever going to be for term to begin—stepped out into the corridor.

Five minutes later, he darted back into his office. He grabbed something from a rack on one of the shelves and secreted it in his sleeve. Then, with a twitchy little smile, he hurried back up to the feast.

There would be no poison pen letters, and Snape owed Dexter, not just the one drink, but an entire cask of Elveaux Special Reserve. For without Dexter and his Digi-Mint, Snape wouldn’t have fallen asleep and almost been late for the feast, and if Snape hadn’t almost been late for the feast, he wouldn’t have been slipping quietly into the Entrance Hall just as Draco Malfoy and his friends had passed by…and if Snape hadn’t been in that exact place—concealed in the shadows under the main staircase—at that precise time, he never would have overheard something very, very interesting.

*******

“Oh, really? Oh, really?…no, we’ve never…yes, I’m sure it was.” Petunia glanced at the clock, her pinched face belying the polite tone of her voice. “Mmm hmm, I see…Yvonne? I really must dash; Vernon is due home any minute. He took Dudley down to Smeltings and he’s bound to be famished after the drive…yes, all right…see you then…goodbye.”

Petunia rushed, not to the fridge or the cooker, but into the lounge, where she switched on the television. She hadn’t lied to Yvonne, not really. Vernon had taken Dudley to school and he would no doubt be famished when he returned. However, that probably wouldn’t be for at least another hour, and she already had a chicken roasting in the oven. No, the real reason why Petunia had been eager to ring off was because it was time for “Fancy Plants,” and Petunia was anxious to see if Sahara Vern would mention the upcoming flower showcase at Todmorden—that, and she might have screamed had she had to listen to another minute of Yvonne’s glowing description of her most recent holiday in the Azores.

Petunia poured herself a small sherry and settled on the sofa. A photo from Dudley’s most recent birthday sat on a nearby table, and Petunia gazed at it with a fond—albeit slightly worried—expression.

“Have a good term, darling,” she whispered, raising her glass to the photo.

The adverts ended and the lush piano music that heralded the beginning of “Fancy Plants” filled the Dursleys' lounge. Petunia made a kissy face at her son’s photo before turning her attention back to the television and the familiar sight of Sahara Vern’s greenhouse door opening—as if by an invisible hand—to welcome viewers inside.

As if by an invisible hand…

Petunia shivered. She’d just remembered that her nephew would be starting school as well—that is, if he and that terrible old man hadn’t got themselves murdered or landed in prison. But she supposed that she wasn’t that lucky, and that if something fatal had happened to the boy, she would have already been informed. She was, after all, his guardian.

But not for very much longer, Petunia thought. Soon her nephew wouldn’t be any of her concern. He could finish school (or not—the boy never seemed very bright), find a job (or not—did his kind even have proper jobs?), and get married (or not—who’d have such a scrawny, nasty boy?). He could even sire an unnatural child and get himself blown up, just like his freakish father; in less than a year, it wouldn’t be any of Petunia’s concern.

Resolved to think no more about her sister’s progeny, Petunia sipped her sherry and concentrated on her programme. When Sahara’s gushings over some finicky new variety of fritillary brought to mind the words “flitterbloom” and “flutterby,” Petunia quickly dismissed it as sherry-induced nonsense. And when Sahara’s admonition to beware slugs sounded, to her ears, like “Beware Sluggy,” she did not stop to wonder where she had heard the phrase before; she merely leaned forward and turned up the volume.

*******

Snape saw Nymphadora’s slim, pathetic form standing just outside the castle gates, but he could not see the boy. This threw him for a moment and he paused, trying to recall the exact words Draco had used as he’d bragged to his friends—face flushed, eyes bright with triumph. He hadn’t bothered to lower his voice.

“Let’s just say I don’t think we, or anyone else, will be seeing him anytime soon, Goyle.”

And then the answer—so obvious, so ridiculous—came to Snape: The Invisibility Cloak. He added this detail to what he’d overheard, and in an instant, he saw how it all must have happened.

Foolish, foolish boy, he thought, continuing forward.

Snape had railed against Dumbledore’s decision to return the cloak to its rightful heir. That infernal garment had been enabling Potters to wreak mischief and avoid rightful punishment for generations, and given present circumstances, the fact that the boy seemed particularly eager to carry on the tradition was worrisome. In his argument, Snape had made an especial point of listing all of the instances (known or suspected) in which the boy had put himself in harm’s way with the aid of the cloak, but Dumbledore remained convinced that the protection it afforded far outweighed the potential danger.

But, as every successful Auror, thief, spy, or assassin knew, it was no good being invisible if you were inept at the art of stealth. Snape hoped that Dumbledore hadn’t forgot to factor that little detail into his equation.

When Snape was about ten feet from the gates, Potter appeared. It was a graceless, defeated revelation—a fact duly noted by Snape. However, he was after something far more important than a reassurance of his supremacy in the art of the dramatic entrance.

He held the lantern up and tried to make out the details of Potter’s face. If he’d interpreted Draco’s initial remarks correctly, there should be…yes, there did appear to be something smeared across Potter’s face.

As Snape drew nearer, he felt a thrill of triumph. It was! Potter’s face was covered in blood. Snape could not have asked for a more perfect start of term gift. Here before him was the very thing that he had asked for and been denied, the very thing that had caused his most recent disagreement with Dumbledore.

“Well, well, well…,” Snape began.

He had gone over his argument backward and forward, had couched his request so carefully. Wouldn’t Potter’s blood strengthen the potion and improve Snape’s chances of ultimate success? Couldn’t the headmaster invent some reason to collect a sample? It was such a little thing…

But, no, Potter must not be involved. Potter must not suspect. After the incident in the graveyard, Potter would guard his blood jealously, would be suspicious of any procedure that required it.

Snape sneered. It seemed to him that if Potter was really so concerned with safeguarding his blood (and all of his other bits), he had a poor way of showing it. However, he couldn’t be too upset at the boy’s foolhardiness in this particular instance, as it afforded him a wonderful opportunity. And hadn’t Dumbledore also told him, back when they’d begun this infernal process, that he must take every available opportunity?

“Nice of you to turn up, Potter, although you have evidently decided that the wearing of school robes would detract from your appearance.”

Someone had fixed his nose—Tonks, most likely; Snape doubted Potter knew how to do it himself. He needed to get the boy away from her before she said something about the blood on his face or, worse yet, cleaned it off him. Potter started to offer some feeble excuse for his appearance, but Snape paid him no mind.

“There is no need to wait, Nymphadora. Potter is quite—ah—safe in my hands.”

“I meant Hagrid to get the message,” Tonks said, frowning.

“Hagrid was late for the start-of-term feast, just like Potter here, so I took it instead.”

This was technically true. Hagrid had been late, but only just. He’d still been in a daze of fraternal bliss, however, so he hadn’t protested when Snape, quickly connecting the message from Tonks to Draco’s earlier remarks, had volunteered to go.

Harry started forward resignedly, but Tonks still looked doubtful. Snape couldn’t risk her suspicions, so he resorted to his usual pattern of behaviour where she was concerned: unforgivable rudeness. There was nothing quite like it to drive a good-hearted witch away, no questions asked.

“And incidentally,” he said as Harry slipped inside the gates, “I was interested to see your new Patronus.” He slammed the gates in her face and reset the padlock. “I think you were better off with the old one,” he said, as nastily as he could. “The new one looks weak.”

Snape whirled about and set off toward the castle, making sure that Potter was on his right side, near his wand hand.

As they walked, it was evident to Snape that his parting shot had not endeared himself to the boy; he didn’t even need to use Legilimency to sense that Potter was boiling over with hatred and frustration. In fact, Snape found the sheer magnitude of Potter’s animosity—and the poor job he did of disguising it—a little disquieting. But he wasn’t going to call the boy on his recklessness or try to defuse the situation in any way (both things that he, as the boy’s teacher, should have done). No, at the moment Snape welcomed Potter’s fury, for it kept the boy distracted.

If Potter hadn’t been so angry, he might have felt the whisper of magic along his skin as Snape used a simple nonverbal spell to remove little flecks of dried blood from his cheek. He might have wondered at Snape’s closeness, and at the odd position of his teacher’s arms as the blood was sent sailing into the small vial hidden within Snape’s left sleeve. But the boy trudged on, shoulders hunched, eyes firmly fixed on the lights of the castle. He gave no sign that he suspected Snape’s true motive for the personal escort. Still, it was best to make certain…

“Fifty points from Gryffindor House for lateness, I think,” Snape said. “And, let me see, another twenty for your Muggle attire. You know, I don’t believe any house has ever been in negative figures this early in the term—we haven’t even started pudding. You might have set a record, Potter.”

Ah, yes. There was no doubt about it now. Potter’s hatred was so fierce it blinded him. Snape rather thought he could have charmed the shoes off Potter’s feet without the boy noticing. He smiled at the thought of Potter, barefoot, trudging into the Great Hall with his trainers bobbing behind him, every so often giving him a little kick in the arse.

Snape continued to berate Potter until they reached the castle, where he ordered the boy not to use the Invisibility Cloak. Potter’s face was still a mess (Snape had only taken a little of the blood), and Snape reckoned that the boy could bear, and might even benefit from, a little humiliation after all his grand heroics. He was surprised when Potter marched away without comment. He’d expected a word, a glare—something. Was it possible that the boy was finally learning to control himself?

Snape would have dearly loved to ponder this further—to observe how Potter dealt with the students’ gasps and stares and jeers as he walked past each and every house table—but he needed to get rid of the evidence of his little escapade. He didn’t dare sit at Dumbledore’s side with a vial of Harry Potter’s blood on his person. He had just enough time to hide the vial in his office and slip into the Great Hall before the headmaster began his speech. He’d bet an entire Boomslang skin that Granger would have Potter’s face sorted by then, alas, but the look on it when Dumbledore announced who was taking on the Defence Against the Dark Arts job was sure to be priceless.

*******

Petunia switched off the television with a small sigh of contentment. Sahara Vern had featured the Best Kept Garden Secrets showcase in the “what’s on” segment of her programme, and although Petunia knew that she was being slightly irrational, she took this as a sign that all would go exactly as Mr Prince had predicted. Her flowers would be a smashing success; she would be a smashing success. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Yvonne’s face when she, Petunia Dursley, was featured in the newspaper alongside top gardening celebrities. For what good was being treated like the Queen on some far-flung bit of foreign turf if you weren’t really a somebody at home?

Petunia took her glass into the kitchen. She checked on the chicken, then fetched some carrots from the crisper. As she rinsed the carrots in the sink, she noticed that it was very dark outside. There was no moon—or, at least, no moon that penetrated the cloud cover. The security light over the kitchen door illuminated the walkway around the house and a portion of the back garden, but when it was put out…

Petunia glanced down at her apron pocket, noting with satisfaction the small bulge there. She’d been carrying the ribbon around with her in one pocket or another since it had arrived in Mr Prince’s letter almost two weeks ago. She didn’t quite know why, other than that it was comforting to run the silky length between her finger and thumb (which she’d caught herself doing with increasing frequency of late). But the showcase was in a week, and Mr Prince had indicated that someone would stop by in the next few days to collect her entry. She needed to tie the ribbon onto the rosebush, and tonight seemed like the perfect night to do it. She could turn off the lights and slip out after Vernon had gone up to bed, while she was supposed to be re-scrubbing the kitchen. She wouldn’t be seen, and it wasn’t likely that Vernon would go into the back garden in the next day or so.

If Petunia didn’t know why she’d kept the ribbon by her all this time, she had even less of an explanation for why she’d kept the ribbon a secret from her husband. She’d told him all she knew—and speculated—about Mr Prince’s relatives and estate up north, but by the time she’d realised that she’d neglected to mention (or show) the ribbon to Vernon, he’d been off and running with speculations of his own, and it just hadn’t seemed important.

It still didn’t seem important, but the intervening days had turned it from something not mentioned into something concealed. It would be awkward to say something now, to have to listen to Vernon’s off-colour jokes about men who played with ribbons. Besides, the thought of a little cloak and dagger was rather exciting.

Yes, she would do it tonight.

Petunia heard the front door open. Soon after, her husband called out a greeting. She placed the carrots on the draining board, carefully wiped her hands on a tea towel, and went out into the hall.

“Drink, Vernon? Supper will be ready in about twenty minutes.”

Vernon brought his drink into the kitchen, and while Petunia steamed the carrots she peppered him with questions about the drive and the dormitory linens and whether or not Dudley had left anything that she should send along with next month’s supply of chocolate biscuits. Vernon responded with a rant about the state of the roads, a rave about Smeltings’ new athletic facility, and an, “I’ve no idea, dear, but I wouldn’t worry about it. Dudders is a resourceful lad; he’ll put his hands to anything he needs.”

During this exchange Petunia forgot all about ribbons and roses and sneaking around in the back garden, but her hand found its way, more than once, into her apron pocket.

*******

After the feast, after the students had been secured in their dormitories (and all subsequent outbursts of high spirits and homesickness had been appropriately dealt with), Snape made his way, once more, to his office. He strode directly to the cupboard containing his private stores and retrieved the vial of Potter’s blood.


Snape peered at the vial with keen interest. The blood of the so-called Chosen One didn’t look like much—only a miniscule pile of reddish-brown powder—but Snape was not one to be fooled by appearances. He added a few drops of salt water and swirled the vial, returning the blood to a liquid state. He regarded it critically for a moment then, satisfied, replaced the stopper. Curling his long pale fingers around the vial in a gesture that was almost reverent, he slipped back out of his office and began the long descent down, down, down into the bowels of the castle.

Despite the best efforts of Ministry Aurors and all the promises made by Inside Out Wizarding Security, there were rooms in the lowermost portions of Hogwarts that remained unprobed and unalarmed, largely because few knew of—or even suspected—their existence. Some were merely old storerooms or classrooms that had been sealed off and forgotten as the population of Hogwarts had changed, but others held deeper secrets and were protected by more than faulty memory.

For example, the room toward which Snape was headed was known to generations of Hogwarts headmasters and headmistresses simply as “the Haven.” It lay behind a perfectly ordinary-looking section of wall that sported nothing more conspicuous than a largish patch of mildew. It was true that, if viewed from just the right angle, the patch of mildew resembled a boar’s head with a crooked tusk, but then the dungeons were rife with patches of mildew that looked like all sorts of animal parts if one squinted at them long enough.

The only sure way one had of finding the Haven was to memorise its location—how many levels down, how many lefts, how many rights, and how many steps along which passage—after having been guided there by someone in the know. Even then, the door would not reveal itself unless one knew exactly what one sought inside and, for the lucky guessers, there was a guardian portrait and password system. It was this last security measure that always gave Snape the most trouble.

“Password?” said the hag in the portrait, peering at Snape from beneath her scraggly fringe.

Snape gave it, dearly hoping that tonight she would let him through without the usual nonsense.

“And what, my odd fellow, is your business here tonight?”

“That is not your concern,” Snape said quietly.

All of a sudden the hag pointed one claw-like finger accusingly at Snape. “Where, exactly, were you born?” she screeched. “For whom did you dye your beard green in nineteen sixty-two? What is the last stop on the Circle Line?”

“Those are not my security questions!” Snape snapped. “But any fool with a brain in his head could tell you that a circle doesn’t have—”

“Ah-hah!” The hag waggled her finger at him. “If they aren’t your questions, then why are you answering them?”

Snape glared daggers at the portrait, but he knew from prior experience that arguing with the hag would only prolong his entry.

She cackled for a bit (showing off a stunning set of very sharp, very mossy-looking teeth), then said, “We’re learning, aren’t we? Now, let me see….ah! Here’s one for you. What is the undisclosed ingredient in Botulin’s published formula for Ilemauzer Preparation?”

“Pickled nogtail tails.”

The hag sighed noisily. “Right you are.”

“May I?” Snape said, gesturing at the door.

“Oh, all right,” the hag grumbled. “Your questions are terrible, though,” she added, as the door swung open. “Not secure at all. You’re supposed to use personal information, like the names of sweethearts, locations of unsightly scars, favourite recipes for first-year stew—well, at least that is what I would use, if I—”

Snape shut the door firmly behind him.

The Haven was fairly dim, illuminated only by torchlight, but the basin on the table in the centre of the room seemed to glow of its own accord. Snape kept his eyes fixed on it as he approached.

Dumbledore was right—the mixture did appear thicker. Every now and then a small bubble broke the surface, but for the most part the sluggish currents that moved within the substance remained below the surface. The colour had changed too, from brilliant red to salmon pink. Leaning over the basin, Snape noted that the odour of the mixture inside, while not wholly unpleasant, could also be described as fish-like.

He put the vial of Potter’s blood in a small wooden rack and placed the silver dagger—the very same dagger that had breached his own veins—within easy reach of the basin. After consulting a few of the scrolls, Snape rolled back his sleeves, tucked his hair behind his ears, and closed his eyes. He took several deep, slow breaths and began to clear his mind of all negative thoughts regarding one Harry James Potter.

It took nearly twenty minutes.

At last, however, Snape felt that it was safe to proceed. He removed the stopper from the vial and, grasping the vial in one hand and the dagger in another, held both items over the basin. He began chanting in a low voice. As he did so, he slowly poured the contents of the vial onto the dagger’s blade, which he held parallel to the surface of the table.

“…not purchased or bartered for, nor shed by my hand,” he finished, lowering the tip of the dagger toward the basin. The blood dripped from the shiny metal into the pinkish-orange mixture, sinking beneath the surface without a sound. Snape held his breath, waiting for some reaction.

Nothing happened.

Snape frowned, but he went ahead and plunged the dagger into the mixture up to the hilt and stirred—seven times clockwise, three times anti-clockwise, plus a final clockwise stroke. He removed the dagger, cleaned it, and laid it on the table. All the while, he kept an anxious eye on the basin.

He hadn’t known quite what to expect, but he’d imagined that it would be something along the lines of what he’d observed previously—an emission of sparks, a fresh bout of simmering, a colour change—so this seeming lack of any change worried him.

Could the magic somehow sense the slightly underhanded manner in which he’d gone about acquiring the blood? Had he not been in a sufficiently pro-Potter frame of mind while he’d added it? Had he, Merlin forbid, skipped a word of the incantation or made a mistake in the stirring sequence?

Snape stood staring at the basin for a good long while, mesmerised by the slow swirling of its contents. His furrowed brow grew smooth once more, and the muscles of his jaw relaxed, but there was no change in the potion. His hands turned to lumps of ice at his sides, but there was no change in the potion. There was a twinge in his knee. One nostril itched. But there was no change in the potion.

Discouraged, Snape shook out his sleeves, snatched up the empty vial, and prepared to leave. Somehow, he’d miscalculated; somewhere, he had made a mistake. His efforts had been wasted.

Or so it seemed. For how was Snape to know about the odd events unfolding in a classroom cupboard several levels above his head?

*******

There were many strange and unusual objects at Hogwarts—not surprising, given that it was an ancient magical castle housing a famous school of witchcraft and wizardry. However, for every extraordinary magical object within the castle, there were a hundred or more perfectly ordinary objects, and perfectly ordinary objects, no matter how ancient and famous and magical the setting, did not move by themselves.

For example, most of the cutlery in the kitchens was perfectly ordinary. It could be enchanted, of course, but unless a magical being was specifically directing it to do so, it did not get up in the middle of the night and perform Grindelia’s Flight of the Fwooper (a particular favourite of Dumbledore’s) or re-enact the Battle of Bushy Tor (a popular revision aid for the History of Magic O.W.L. students in the 1950s).

Things like shoes, socks, custard tarts, chalk, pillows, rolls of parchment, balls of slut’s wool, bed linens, and many textbooks (not counting the Monster Book of Monsters) also tended to be perfectly ordinary. If one saw any of these things floating in mid-air or seemingly moving about of its own accord, one could safely wager one’s Galleons that somewhere nearby there was a witch practising her Hover or Summoning Charms, a wizard wearing an Invisibility Cloak, or a poltergeist getting ready to play a nasty prank on an unsuspecting first-year.

So when, without a witch or wizard or poltergeist anywhere in the vicinity, a perfectly ordinary old textbook that had been shoved deep into a corner cupboard in the Potions classroom moved, it was, most emphatically, odd.

At first, the book merely shuddered, as if it had caught a chill. A small cloud of dust rose from its tattered cover. Before the dust could resettle, however, the book lurched to one side and heaved itself up on top of its nearest neighbour. There it teetered for a second or two before toppling toward the front of the cupboard, where it came to a rest.

If the book had remained thus, its prior movements could still have been written off as a fluke—the result, perhaps, of sloppy book-stacking and uneven shelves. But what happened next left no room for doubt as to the unusual nature of the proceedings: The book launched a violent assault on several of its companions. It did not re-enact the Battle of Bushy Tor, to be sure, but it slammed into spines and battered at bindings with a will that would have made any commanding officer proud. Bits of parchment and rotten leather flew as the book’s victims were sent spinning or tumbling end over end to the back of the cupboard.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the assault ended. The rogue copy of Advanced Potion-Making settled in beside its few remaining brethren at the front of the cupboard, spinning lazily so that its cover would be clearly visible to anyone who opened the cupboard door. It shuddered once more and then lay still.

Thus, as it happened, the only mistake that Snape had made was the mistake of assuming that any changes that occurred would manifest in, and only in, the mixture itself.

If Snape had known of his great success, perhaps he would have dropped off to sleep with a satisfied smile on this face, rather than a perplexed frown. Then again, if he had known the exact nature of his success, it is likely that he wouldn’t have been able to sleep at all.

*******

After tying the ribbon around one cane of the James Mason and closing up the house for the night, Petunia eased herself into bed beside her sleeping husband. His warmth felt inviting after being out in the cold night air, but she held herself apart from him. She didn’t want to wake him with her frozen feet.

She lay back on her pillows and sucked on her injured thumb, which she’d pricked on a thorn. She considered the wound a small price to pay for the thrill of sneaking out of the house and tying the ribbon around the rosebush. It had felt significant, almost romantic, like a medieval maiden bestowing her favour on a knight by tying her scarf round his lance.

Petunia frowned, trying to sort out who, exactly, the metaphorical knight would be in her case. She was still puzzling over this question when she dropped off into the kind of deep, untroubled sleep that is usually likened to that of infants, hacked up trees, or the deceased. She slept so deeply that she did not hear the thunk of her mother’s old flower diary falling over on the writing bureau.

*******

Severus Snape awoke the next day with a sense of wellbeing that he was sure he had no reason—and no right—to be feeling on the first day of classes. He, too, had slept the sleep of babies, logs, and corpses, and his joints were still pain-free, but neither of those facts accounted for the vigour with which he sprang from his bed or the thrill of anticipation he felt when donning his teaching robes. It was almost as if he were eager to be back in the classroom.

Or, Snape thought, I’m simply eager for the endgame to begin.

Disgusted with himself, Snape stalked off to the Great Hall for breakfast. There, the sight of three heads—one pale, one dark, and one covered by a garish hat—swiftly drained him of any remaining eagerness and wellbeing. These feelings were replaced, instead, by a grim determination and a sense of unease. Those three heads were his responsibilities incarnate—two to save and one to serve; two to teach and one to obey. It was an awful lot to be confronted with first thing in the morning, before he’d even had a decent cup of tea. And did Dumbledore have to make such an effort to appear alert, when it was plain to Snape that he was bone-tired?

As soon as he’d finished handing out his students’ timetables, Snape retreated to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. He immediately noticed that the curtains he’d added had been drawn aside and restrained with lengths of what appeared to be kitchen twine, finished off with neat little bows. The pictures on the wall had been covered with decorative tea towels, and the sanctity of his desktop had been violated by a shiny red apple and a scatter of tiny pebbles. Snape sighed and passed a hand over his eyes. That dratted house-elf—Flea-something-or-other—had been in here.

Snape didn’t maltreat house-elves on principle, as Lucius did, but he refused to coddle them. No matter how helpful this Flea-body had been the previous evening, Snape couldn’t have it interfering with his pedagogical ambience (he was convinced that a healthy dose of frightful realism went a long way with impressionable minds). If the house-elf was too frightened to let well enough alone, then it would have to be assigned to other duties. He would speak to Dumbledore about it at lunch.

Snape set the curtains and the pictures to rights with a few irritated flicks of his wand, lit the candles, and crossed to his desk. As he dropped into the chair, however, he saw that the pebbles were not pebbles, but Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans in shades of grey and green, arranged to spell out: GUD LUK PERF SNAPE.

Snape blinked. His upper lip curled—the beginning of a good sneer—but his lower lip soon followed, turning the sneer into a strange little smile.

Snape didn’t particularly care for apples, and he hated Every Flavour Beans, but at least the creature had got his name right. Besides, Snape found the idea that a being in the castle wished him well—as if he were an average teacher starting a new position at the start of an average school term—oddly touching. Even if that being was only a house-elf. Perhaps he wouldn’t say anything to Dumbledore after all.

Snape Vanished the apple—he didn’t want any of the first-years getting the idea that his approval could be won via shiny red fruits (plus the older students would never believe that anyone would attempt such a thing, and thus think that he’d given it to himself). However, he couldn’t quite bring himself to Vanish the Every Flavour Beans. After a moment or two, he conjured a small glass bottle and prodded the beans into a pile with his fingertips. He swept the beans into the bottle, sealed it with a ground glass stopper, and placed the bottle in his desk drawer.

As he waited for the sixth-years to arrive, the reality of Snape’s position sank in. Defence Against the Dark Arts—his, after all of these years. He knew that the cursed post could not outlast the school year. Hadn’t he practically begged (albeit indirectly) for his release through these very means by applying for the position year after year? Hadn’t he, in his worst moments, stooped to whinging at the headmaster about it?

And yet, it was strange to think that this year would be his last at Hogwarts. Strange, too, to think that he did not yet know the details of his departure…but such details did not bear thinking on. Normally Snape liked mulling over his options, but in this case, as none of the possible outcomes could be considered anything close to desirable, he was content to pass. He would not wallow in what-ifs. He would concentrate on what would be occurring in this classroom—one of the few things in his life over which he still had complete control.

The students desperately needed practical skills; that much was clear. They could also do with a healthy respect for what they were up against. Between the information they’d had from their former teachers and the Ministry propaganda, there was a great deal of room for improvement. Dealing with Cornish Pixies and Boggarts, memorising the names and effects of Dark Spells—that was not Defence. Nor was it adequate to simply bandy about reports of gruesome terrors and advocate the use of security questions and passwords. The students needed to take the Dark Lord seriously, and scaring them was a start, but they needed so much more. They needed to learn how to reject the Dark Lord, how to recognise his followers, and how to protect themselves and their families. At an even more fundamental level though, they needed to abandon any comfortable notions they’d formed that good and evil were distinct, recognisable entities, and that the latter could never prevail over the former as long as they bided within the walls of Hogwarts, as long as Dumbledore was there to protect them…

Snape buried his head in his hands.

He remained thus until the small clock on his desk chimed, then announced in a cool, crisp voice, “Dunderheads, nitwits and spoilt brats galore in ten…nine…eight…”

Snape stood up and adjusted his teaching robes. He walked to the door slowly. When the clock reached “one,” Snape opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, his eyes sweeping over the queue of waiting students. Granger, of course, was at the front—or rather, a small portion of the Hogwarts library, with Granger’s head perched on top. Fat lot of good those would do her.

“Inside,” he said.

As the students filed past him into the dimly lit classroom, Snape observed their reactions. It was as he’d expected: Many of them looked as if they, too, would have liked to hang decorative tea towels over his pictures. Too bloody bad for them. Until the day a similar treatment neutralised the likes of the Dark Lord, they would have to start looking at the world through Snape’s eyes—even Potter, who, after goggling at the pictures, had sauntered over to a chair and dropped into it with studied indifference.

Especially Potter, Snape reminded himself. For if Potter got himself eaten—or worse—by some minor faction of the Dark Lord’s army before a final confrontation could take place, then Snape’s sacrifices would all be for naught. And that would be, quite simply, unbearable.

“I have not asked you to take out your books,” Snape said, closing the door and returning to stand behind his desk. “I wish to speak to you and I want your fullest attention.”

*******