Brave New World Book Two Chapter 6

The Halloween Feast met Dumbledore's usual standard, though there was noticeable tension in the faculty: they'd been notified of the incident and the subsequent security measures. Other than that, the only thing marring the festivities was a scrum between Malfoy and Co. and one of the Creevey boys, resulting in Goyle being taken to the Infirmary to be de-fanged. Literally.

The staff and faculty met afterwards in the staff room for more refined refreshment -- though I didn't appreciate sherry or port, I had to admit Headmaster's was tolerable, and probably quite nice in comparison -- and I had the misfortune to be backed into a corner by Sybill Trelawney. She didn't eat in the Hall, and seldom even attended staff meetings: if I hadn't seen her at the Leaving Ceremony last year I shouldn't have known who she was.

"Oh, I assure you, dear Professor Hunter, I am seldom incorrect," she sniffed after I'd ill-advisedly laughed at the preposterous statement she'd just made.

Headmaster abruptly interrupted us, with an apology to Trelawney -- and swept me away, saying, "There's a book I particularly wanted you to see...."

"Thank you," I fervently breathed as he guided me across the room to a secluded corner, and he chuckled.

"Well put, horrors. After a long and torrid affair with a tall, dark wizard, we will marry, have seven wizarding children, and I will open a pastry shop in Hogsmeade," I informed him with a shudder.

"Quite absurd," he agreed gravely when he could speak again. "Everyone knows you can't bake pastry." I craned my neck to give him a dirty look, and he chuckled again.

"I'm forgiven this morning, am I?" he said soberly, and I looked at him in surprise.

"Instantly... oh, all right, sometime around three o'clock," I admitted, and he smiled.

"Not really, but I'll deal with it," I replied. He squeezed my hand gently, but, thankfully, refrained from attempting to cheer me up. I wanted to wallow in it a while, to make certain I'd learnt the lesson.

"Whatever your baking skills -- and I am teasing, by the way, the Yule tin was quite enjoyable -- Alastor tells me you can handle a blade," he whispered, leaning down to my ear as he opened the book. "I trust you have it with you?"

"If you'd care to get a bit chummier, you'll find it behind my right hip," I murmured. I'd rigged a belt loop for the sheath, and the dagger hilt was nestled within easy reach at waist level, beneath my teaching robes.

"Tempting -- not that I don't trust you -- but Severus looks quite jealous already," and he stepped aside on the pretext of letting more light fall on the page so I could see Snape glowering at us from (of course) the darkest possible corner of the room. "He looks rather more fierce than usual, though," he added thoughtfully. "Perhaps Sybill isn't that far off the mark."

He was teasing, of course. I'd noticed he'd had quite a lot of sweets at the Feast, and he always tended to become mischievous when on a sugar high.

"Albus, I'm drawing a line in the sand," I said severely. "The instant he starts defacing trees -- like a certain wild youth I could name -- I'm gone."

"What," Snape spat out as he stalked along beside me on patrol, "was all that about?"

"The glances and giggles," he snarled, investing the word with maximum contempt, "that you and Headmaster perpetrated."

"Oh, that," I said lightly. Wounded pride, then, and not jealousy. That I can handle. "Trelawney cornered me and made some asinine prediction, and I was sharing it with Headmaster."

"'Tall, dark wizard' was the representation," I said dryly, "As in 'marriage to.' Of course, she couldn't know Moody had me pinned against a wall in a choke-hold this morning -- could've been him."

I thought it through a moment. "Crabbe or Goyle, perhaps, but Malfoy? I can't see him wanting to dirty his hands."

"You'd be wrong," Snape said bluntly, and then offered, with restrained savagery, "There is a... familial tendency to take pleasure in inflicting pain. Manually, whenever possible." He withdrew a hip-flask from his topcoat, took a healthy swig, and offered it to me. It was brandy, and a good one.

"You know the transfer students best," I noted (most of them had been Sorted to Slytherin, to the point that the dormitories and Common Room had been expanded). "Might it be one of them?"

"Any of them is capable -- almost any student at all, I mean," he responded moodily, "as long as they can manage to slip through the curfew wards, and it's not that difficult. Potter figured that out his first year."

"We just don't understand enough about the human psyche, do we?" I murmured. "Profiling isn't much use; we have to wait for them to slip."

"Precisely," he noted. "And even then, we must consider that they might be acting under Imperio. Speculation is useless."

Nothing at all happened that night, and Snape and I had made bad company -- he, bitter and distracted by his brooding over I knew not what, and I with the considerable upsets of the day.

Sunday I set to catching up on my marking, and made good progress. But something Snape had said Saturday kept gnawing at me, and I left my rooms early, so I could stop by the library before dinner and my appointment with Moody.

It took some scrounging, but I found what I needed eventually -- Alexander's, the Debrett's of the Wizarding World.

I found the entry in short order. A Melisande Snape had married into the Malfoys in 1798 -- to a second son who succeeded to the title when his elder brother died without issue, in rather nasty and questionable circumstances.

A little more flipping through the book and I located the Snape entry. Melisande was Severus Snape's great-aunt, removed by four or five generations -- wizarding generations, that is, about twice as long as Muggle generations.

No wonder Snape was so close-mouthed: these were deeper waters than I'd thought, involving serious questions of family honour and the convoluted twists of wizarding genealogy. And Malfoy, Jr. was Snape's cousin, however distant.

The Snapes were every bit as old as the Malfoys, it appeared; one had come over with the Conqueror and promptly married into a powerful Anglo-Saxon wizarding family. (I noted with some disgust that the Anglo-Saxon blood was carefully noted, and the family not considered pureblood again until the heir was only 1/16th Anglo-Saxon -- in fact, the title "Lord" had been denied until that time). Another ancestor had traveled to the Americas early on, and returned to write an important treatise titled Beliefs and Magickal Practises of ye Native Savauges of ye New World; yet another had managed, less fortunately, to end up in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1690s -- the entry ended, ominously, with the words "Never returned -- presumed dead," which passed the title on to a younger son --

I sat back abruptly. I had my answer; why was I prying further into Snape's background?

Because you're a nosy wench, that's why. Because although you don't want to admit it, you liar, you're intensely interested in this intelligent, dark, complex, difficult man, and you want to know what made him that way --

-- and you know damn well that no list of dates, honourifics or antecedents is going to tell you that.

I closed the book with a decisive thud, replaced it on the shelf, and took myself off to dinner.

I made my way to Snape's rooms late Tuesday night, two weeks into November. We were scheduled to patrol at eleven o'clock, but I sought him out early.

He wasn't pleased -- there weren't any students around to titilate, and he'd obviously been relaxing: he opened the door in his shirtsleeves and braces, hastily buttoning his waistcoat.

Now, well into term, every available flat surface was littered with open books, notes, and cups of old tea in various states of fermentation. The House Elves were obviously not welcome in Snape's rooms.

Too late: he was already slipping on the heavy broadcloth and deliberately doing up its innumerable buttons.

"And secondly," I said as I crossed to the bookcase, "I think it might be time to have that talk with Malfoy."

"Not physically, though he's flirting with verbal abuse. No, he's doing unpleasant things to the other students but he manages it when I'm not looking, so I can't confront him directly about it."

He swung 'round to stare at me. "Then how do you know?" he said harshly, still working at the buttons. "I suppose the poor, put-upon Gryffindors...?"

"No -- not entirely, at least. Let's just say there are one or two Slytherins who are disgusted with Malfoy's tactics as well."

"Really. Curiouser and curiouser." His fingers slowed infinitessimally and then moved briskly again to work at his cuffs. "Informants from Slytherin; that is an interesting development."

"And I'm aware," I continued before he could make another snide comment, "that it might be a personal vendetta on their part, rather than Mr. Malfoy. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt."

"Or it could be the beginnings of an attempted coûp," he mused, and his mouth twitched at my amusement. "It's not unheard of, Slytherin politics are quite complex. I don't suppose you are willing to give me names?"

"If you must have them... but I rather thought if you had a talk with Malfoy and the incidents stopped, we'd have our answer."

"I remain trusted. Whether they're telling the truth or not. As you said, it's an interesting development."

He gave me a long, appraising look, and then granted with a nod, "You're learning."

Praise from Caesar.... An embarrassing blush crept up my face and I turned back to the bookcase to hide it.

"If we determine it's not Malfoy, I'll tell you --" I began nonchalantly, scanning the books.

"It's no matter. I have my suspicions -- the House dynamics have been in flux all term. I'll deal with Malfoy. Whiskey?"

When I turned, surprised at his sudden hospitality, he was suitably armored, buttoned up neck to wrist. "Not tonight, thanks. I really didn't intend --"

He waved away the half-hearted apology. "We leave in half-an-hour, you might as well stay." He retrieved his own glass from a side-table and splashed more brandy in it.

"Oh -- are you aware of anything going on with Barrett -- something wrong at home, perhaps?" I asked him as an afterthought. Delia Barrett was a Fifth-Year Slytherin.

"Her work's slipped a bit. And oddly enough, she's been on the receiving end of some of Malfoy's pranks. He usually doesn't pick on other Slytherins, at least in my class."

"He normally wouldn't. Slytherins usually keep any internal House difficulties private. The Barretts are low on the hierarchy, and she's crossed him somehow. I'll speak to her as well."

Then we studiously ignored each other, engaged in our own pursuits: only the crackling of the fire and the occasional scratching of his quill broke the silence.

"Wizards were inordinately obsessed with mis-Transfiguring body parts, weren't they?" There were several works of literature on his shelves along the lines of J'ai Transfiguré mes Pieds.

"It was a very real problem," he replied severely. "It still is, but we've learnt to fix the errors far more efficiently."

I pulled one slim volume from the case as the spine wasn't labeled, and I turned to the title-page.

"I wondered when you'd find that," he said, amused at my reaction. "You're welcome to borrow it, but you do realise it's original. Not the binding, of course."

"Yes, I can tell by the paper -- I've handled a few this old before...." I murmured as I wandered over to the empty chair across from his. But never without gloves and an archivist breathing down my neck.... "A relative?"

"My God, one could write a decent dissertation on this," I whispered as I carefully paged through, "or a damned good journal article, at least... though there'd be a provenance problem...."

"Less a problem than you think -- the whole John Dee business makes Elizabethan belief in magic a valid field of study, sociologically speaking...." I trailed off.

Twenty minutes later Snape had to almost literally drag me away to patrol: evidently he'd spoken to me three times before impatiently prodding my shoulder to bring me back to reality.

Embarrassingly, I'd unconsciously kicked off my shoes and curled up in the chair, but he didn't comment. Which was just as well, as I'd noted that he'd surreptitiously Transfigured a familiar black Muggle fountain pen into a quill when my back was turned.

Unfortunately, this patrol was not as uneventful as the others had been. Snape was decidedly uncommunicative (as usual). Any attempt at whispered discussion was greeted with monosyllabic grunts, and eventually I gave up and mentally worked on questions for my end-of-term exams.

I was so deep in my thoughts that I nearly missed the noise -- or, rather, the lack of noise in the forest to our left. Though it was too late for crickets the wood was full of owls and other magical night-birds, and they usually kept up a near-constant murmur.

Snape had noticed, too. "Keep going," he instructed under his breath when I hesitated. "We'll circle back."

We walked another hundred yards or so: then Snape reached over to flip shut the lantern I held, veered off the path and into the forest, and drew me by the upper arm behind a huge tree trunk.

"If I tell you to run, do it," he whispered in my ear. "Find Hagrid and bring him back. Stay behind me, and if you can't move quietly, don't move at all." He released my arm, drew his wand from his sleeve, and stepped further into the darkness of the trees, not waiting to see if I followed.

It was hard to keep track of him. His black cloak and hair blended into the gloom of the trees, and he purposefully avoided the few patches of moonlight that filtered through the canopy.

It was no fault of his that the intruder surprised him: perhaps the intent had been to stalk us, and not some other quarry, all along.

At any rate, we were both caught off guard when the attack came from our right. An excited treble voice yelled, "Diffindio!" and a burst of energy struck Snape, knocking him off his feet and sending his wand flying out of his hand. He clutched at his shoulder and twisted his body on the ground toward me as he shouted, "Run --"

I had no bloody intention of doing any such thing. The attacker was closing in on us, crashing through the brush: I dove for Snape's wand, mercifully snagged it on the second try, scrambled over to him, and shoved it in his hand.

"Lumos Solarum!" he roared, and the wood lit up so quickly and brilliantly that my eyelids snapped closed reflexively. I heard Snape call "Stupefy!" and forced my eyes open; the spell missed its mark and rebounded harmlessly off the trunk of an oak.

Our attacker wasn't taking any more chances. He blundered away from us toward the lake, dodging from tree to tree: he was cloaked and hooded, and it was impossible to make out his build or features. Snape struggled to his feet and tried to follow, but I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him -- frighteningly easily -- behind the nearest tree. He cursed at me and tried to shove me away: I shoved back, and my hand came away from his left shoulder sticky with blood, obvious in the dying light of his first spell.

"Are you mad?" I hissed, and flipped open the lantern-gate to check the wound: it was a deep gash, and the left breast of his coat was already soaked through. "You're in no condition to go running through the woods --"

"And bled to death in the process," I retorted, and shoved my bloody hand under his nose. "Hagrid's on his way -- can't you hear Fang baying? They'll track him."

Snape indulged in a few more colourful epithets at my expense, but I was proven right: he slipped to the ground as his knees buckled and clutched at his shoulder, face creased in pain.

"Can you stop the bleeding?" I interrupted him, shining the light on Snape's wound. Hagrid's eyes went wide: he whipped a wand out of his coat -- I hadn't known he had one -- and directed a healing charm at Snape's shoulder.

Hagrid eased Snape up for me, and I slipped his good arm over my shoulder. "There's only one, and he went toward the lake. Be careful, he's not afraid to attack faculty," I told Hagrid, and with a grim nod he and Fang moved off among the trees.

Getting Snape across the grounds and into the castle wasn't easy, though he helped as much as he could. He wasn't as tall as Headmaster, nor was he heavily built, but he was solid and he had to lean much of his weight on me.

We managed well enough until we were outside the Great Hall: but then he started to collapse, and I had to shove him up against the wall to keep him upright (on his bad shoulder, unfortunately). His eyes started to flutter and roll back into his head; I put enough distance between us to give him a good, openhanded slap.

It worked. He inhaled sharply, and his black eyes snapped back into focus, fixing murderously on my face.

"If you keel over on me," I warned him, "I'm going to leave you here for the students to find in the morning. Do you understand me?"

Something in my deliberately contemptuous tone got through to him. Doubt flickered in his eyes, replacing most of the fury, and he gave me a jerky nod. I heaved him up from the wall and got my arm around his waist again, and his around my shoulder.

My rooms were closer than either the dungeons or Infirmary, though he protested. I bluntly told him to shut up, and remarkably he did.

I propped his feet up above his head and staggered over to the bathroom, shedding my coat along the way, and retrieved clean towels and the first-aid box. (My early life with Ian taught me the value of an extensive and well-stocked kit.) I put the kettle on to heat, wrestled off Snape's cloak, and set about cutting Snape's coat from his limp body. (It was ruined anyway, and I was not going to deal with all those bloody buttons, in any case.)

Hagrid had slowed the bleeding, but there was still a fair amount of oozing. I was pulling the blood-soaked linen undershirt away from Snape's shoulder when he roused and tried, weakly, to push me away.

I snapped. I shoved back, threw my weight against his torso, and let loose with a string of profanities in my first language. He froze in shock as I grimly finished the removal and started washing away the gore, and then his belly started shaking against my hip.

"Promise me," he gasped between weak chortles, "that someday you will give me a translation."

"It was about as complimentary as you were in the forest," I said primly. "I doubt you need to enlarge your vocabulary."

He kept laughing until I liberally doused the wound with disinfectant -- with, I admit, some satisfaction.

"Bloody hell --" Snape jerked, and hissed through gritted teeth. "Is this necessary?"

"Either I continue, or I get Pomfrey now," I said firmly. "You'll have to see her in any case, and I'm not having her blame me if it's infected when you do."

He sighed and subsided, wincing, into the cushions. I think he muttered something about "pushy females," under his breath, but I ignored him and slathered antiseptic creme into the wound. It wasn't a long tear, but it was deep; he'd lost a lot of blood, very fast.

"Diffindio, and they don't," he rasped, watching my hands as I taped gauze over the laceration. "Technically, it's used to cut or slash objects, not people. Age doesn't signify anything; as a First I already knew more spells and their variants than most Sevenths."

I started packing up the supplies. "At least now we know it's not one of the Unholy Trio," I commented. As exhausted as he was, his mouth twitched at the nickname.

"The voice was too high. Theirs have all lowered, and they're past breaking. I didn't get a good look before he turned -- did you?"

We sat silently for a moment: he shifted restlessly, and I was suddenly aware that I still had him pinned against the sofa cushions with my hip.

"I'll get you something to wear," I said, and rose abruptly. "Your things are ruined." I took the supplies and bloody towels to the bathroom, disposed of the bloody water, and went to my bedroom to rummage in the wardrobe. The only thing I had remotely large enough was the oversized college tee I sometimes used as a nightshirt -- but what Snape didn't know wouldn't disgust him.

He'd managed to sit upright by the time I returned, and I handed him the shirt and moved to the kitchen. I doubted he'd appreciate help, so I busied myself fixing a tray of food while he struggled with the shirt.

"I don't think so. You're going to stay put, have some soup, and then sleep. I'll wake you up at six --" I cut off his objection, "-- and if someone sees you leaving, all the better. Albus will be pleased."

He glowered at me, and I smiled back sweetly. He wasn't in any position to insist, but he took his best shot at asserting himself.

"I do not understand," he drawled, "how such an overbearing woman could possibly fail to control Malfoy." He tried to be as insulting as possible, and failed miserably.

"When you can say that with real feeling, I'll believe you," I retorted, and took the tray over to him. He stared at the huge glass of water I'd included.

I shrugged. "It's above the sink in the bathroom if you change your mind." And I went into Ian's room to turn down the bed.

By two-thirty he'd finished all he could and managed to put himself to bed, but not to sleep. I could hear him shifting restlessly -- for I'd left my door ajar, so I could hear if he needed me -- and around three-fifteen he stumbled into the bathroom and rooted around in the cabinet. I waited until he made it back to bed safely, and dropped off myself.

"Miranda." When that still got no response, Snape leaned across the bed and prodded me in the ribs. I moaned a protest, rolled onto my stomach, and looked up at him; his body was backlit by a lamp in the sitting room, and while his face was in shadow, he could see mine clearly.

"Where," he growled, dangerously exasperated, "is my wand? Do not tell me you left it out there." His voice held a note of desperation.

I raised my head again, grinned sleepily, and pulled it out from under my pillow. I knew he wouldn't leave without it.

He snatched it out of my hand. "Wench," he hissed, and fled the room, only slightly unsteady on his feet.

It was one of his milder epithets, but he'd invested it with great feeling. Content that he was more his usual vicious self, I dropped back off to sleep.

Brave New World

Book 2, Chapter 6