Chapter 3

"Miss Marple," Hermione said, walking along the row of elves who stood to attention in the huge, gloomy cavern of the kitchen. "Is it your turn to cook today?"

"Yes, Miss Hermione."

"Okay. Kippy..."

"I is Doctor Watson!"

"Sorry, Watson. Please continue your search for Madam Fripperie. Have you tried her cousin's place in Truro yet?"

"I is going today."

"Fine." Hermione ticked a box on the form attached to her clipboard. "Sherlock, you have a list of Crup breeders. I want you to get hold of copies of pedigrees of the litters bred in the last ten years and find out what colours the parents of the litters were, as well as the colours of their offspring. You don't have to mark down every detail, just say if they were black, brown, red and white, tan and white, or whatever." She ticked another box.

"Is I watching Mr Ramsbottom?" enquired the elf in the fedora.

"Yes, we need to find out if he's still in contact with Miss Pritchett."

"I is on it!" the elf squeaked happily. "I is intercepting the owls!"

"No," Hermione sighed, "that's against the law."

"Philip Marlowe ain't scared of no cops!"

"Well, I'm not going to get into another argument with Harry and Ron about illegal owl-post tapping. We want proof of a relationship that can be used in the divorce court, so it has to be obtained legally. Just make a record of where he goes and don't be seen. Brother Cadfael, you're still looking for evidence to connect Edwin Mulciber with his aunt's stolen jewellery, so speak to the elves employed by the Knockturn Alley pawnshops and find out if they saw him trying to pass on the diamonds. Kojak, you'll finish the filing, take messages and hold the fort while I'm out."

"Can I do some cleaning?" the elf asked hopefully. "If I is very good and does lots of fort holding?"

Hermione suppressed her smile. "Very well, as long as you save the kitchen for Sherlock..."

"I is cleaning the kitchen!" Miss Marple exclaimed, her voice so high-pitched with indignation that she sounded more like a bat than an elf. "I is cooking so I is cleaning! Sherlock is a bad elf; Sherlock didn't polish the bottoms of the pans! I finds grains of sugar behind the dresser last time Sherlock sweeps! Sherlock," she drew herself up to her full height, "is a careless elf!"

"I is not!"

"You is! You is too busy doing naughty stuff with Watson..."

"Too much information! Goodness, I'm sure you can sort it all out between you! How on earth do the Hogwarts elves get everything done without squabbling?"

"They is bad elves; they has duels in the under-scullery," Miss Marple said and folded her little arms across her knitted cardigan.

"You is a snitching elf!"

"I is a good elf. Even if I is a free elf, I still cleans properly!"

"All right, just don't have any duels here, please. Miss Marple, you're in charge of the kitchen today; Kojak, look after the office and the business. The rest of you have your jobs. Off you go."

With a series of sharp pops, the elves vanished, apart from Kojak and Miss Marple. They glared at one another for a minute, then scuttled off to their designated domains.

The black cat stretched and strolled out of the shadows under the staircase.

"Hello, Professor," Hermione said. The cat blinked disdainfully. "I haven't forgotten; I'm going to look for your wand myself." The cat turned its back, sat down and began washing its paw. She sighed and picked up her outdoor cloak. "I'm going now, sir. I'll report back soon, I promise."

The cat did not look around until she had left; then it strolled across the kitchen and up the stairs towards her office.

---

Hermione breathed in a lungful of fresh, chilly Scottish air, with its subtle tang of heather and sea, mountains and pine. She had spent far too long in London. She strode up the path from Hogsmeade, remembering when she and her friends could make the journey at a run and still have breath to laugh with each other, shout insults at Slytherins and banter with Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. She sometimes wondered whether things had changed at all: if she could ever make a difference to anything or if the inertia of tradition and habit were too much to work against.

She could see flashes of colour above the Quidditch pitch, and something large flapped up from the Forest, circled and descended with a fierce cry. To be here again as a student, alive with youthful possibilities, unable to see Thestrals... She snorted. She was all of twenty-eight years old! Barely a fifth of the way through the lifespan of a witch.

"'Ermione!" Hagrid roared, his tremendous voice carrying across the lawns. He waved with one hand, clutching the rein of a Hippogriff with the other. His entire class turned to gawp at her. The Hippogriff screeched, insulted that he was ignoring it, and he yelled, "See yer later, okay?" as he turned back to placate the beast. Hermione made a gesture that she hoped conveyed a greeting, then remembered that she was a witch and drew her wand. She sent her otter Patronus with instructions to bow to the Hippogriff and tell Hagrid that she would call on him later.

As she reached the great doorway into the castle, a silvery figure floated towards her and gracefully doffed its hat.

"Hermione," Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington exclaimed, straightening up and hastily shoving his head back onto his neck, "how delightful to see you! Shall I accompany you to the headmistress' office?"

"Hello, Sir Nicholas, lovely to see you, too. I've actually come to see Neville Longbottom," she said. "Do you know if he's teaching?"

Sir Nicholas waved at a large painting of a groom leading a flying horse. The groom approached the front of the canvas and cupped his hand around his ear.

"Sidney, the lady wishes to converse with Professor Longbottom."

"Oh, ar," Sidney said, "roight. Oi better goo up to thiccy staaaaff rroom then, see if 'ee be yer."

"I assume that was English," Sir Nicholas remarked as the groom flung himself astride the horse and urged it to spread its wings and flap up through the canvases lining the main stairwell. Hermione and Sir Nicholas had barely crossed the entrance hall when the horse plunged back down through the paintings.

"Ee be on 'is way up naow, Sir Nick."

"Thank you," Sir Nicholas sighed, and Sidney saluted and allowed his charge to canter right through the middle of a group of picnicking witches, who shook their fists at him. "After you, dear lady."

Hermione found Professors Sinistra and Vector already helping themselves to tea and biscuits and was introduced to the new Charms professor, Filius Flitwick having recently retired. Soon the teachers began arriving en masse, and she submitted to being greeted effusively by those who had taught her and stared at curiously by the rest. Eventually she was able to grab Neville's arm.

"I want to ask you something, if you've got a minute?"

"Sure. It must be urgent if it can't wait till the weekend?"

"Not urgent, more confidential. It's for a case I'm working on. You know how nosy Ron and George are."

"Okay, then. Let's go down to the greenhouse."

As they walked through the corridors, she watched how the students of all houses greeted him: with the affectionate respect that she and her contemporaries had afforded Flitwick and Sprout. Even the Slytherins were courteous.

They entered the warm and humid air of Neville's private little greenhouse. He muttered something, drew his wand and adjusted the skylights, and then perched on a bench.

"How can I help, Hermione?"

"After the battle of Hogwarts, you helped to gather up the bodies, didn't you?"

Although Neville gave a slight twitch, not quite a wince, he gazed at her out of clear blue eyes. "Yes."

"Who went to fetch Snape?"

He rolled his wand between his fingers without looking at it. "I did. I thought we ought to treat him with respect. You and Harry were emphatic about that."

"When you found his body had gone, was there anything left?"

"Apart from a great pool of blood and a few flies?" He hitched himself more comfortably on the bench. "I'm really curious now!"

"Please, Neville?"

"Something tells me you already know. Yes, his wand was in the middle of the blood. He had to be dead. He'd never have left his wand, not Snape."

"What happened to it?"

"I gave it to Professor McGonagall. I reckoned it ought to stay at Hogwarts; he'd lived here almost all his life. It isn't as if we could bury it with him."

"That's what I thought. Thanks ever so much."

"I'm dying of curiosity here, Hermione!"

"Can't explain yet, but I think you'll find out soon enough."

"Are you planning a memorial for him? About time; poor old sod deserved it."

"Even though he scared the pants off us all?"

Neville laughed and flicked his wand to open the door. "Tell you what: he can't have been all bad. The rest of us liked and trusted our Heads of house, but his Slytherins adored him. Here come my fifth-years; we're dividing and potting up venom-spitting cobra lilies today, so I'd better make sure they've got their Herbology heads on."

"I'll leave you to it. See you down the pub on Saturday!"

Neville raised his hand in farewell and hurried towards his approaching class. Hermione returned to the castle and made her way to the headmistress' tower.

---

Minerva McGonagall peered at Hermione over the top of her square spectacles and folded her hands on her blotter.

"Snape's wand? May I ask why you're suddenly interested, Hermione? He died ten years ago."

"I'm working with Slytherins," Hermione said, which was true, after all, "and someone asked me what had happened to the professor's wand."

The headmistress sighed.

"Poor Severus. Not a day goes past... Well, no reason to be morbid on a fine day like today. The wand's behind you."

Hermione turned around. The sword of Gryffindor hung on the wall in a protective glass case flanked by the Sorting Hat dozing on its shelf, a painting of a phoenix, and a thin, dark splint of wood held against the stone wall by two metal clamps. She walked across the office and peered at the wand. She could see where the two different woods were joined, the ash handle darkened by use to almost the same shade as the cherry shaft. As she reached to touch it, she heard the headmistress draw in a sharp breath.

"Please don't move it," she said. The anxiety in Minerva's voice alerted Hermione's investigative instincts.

"Is it dangerous?"

Minerva's lips thinned into narrow lines. Hermione remembered the Elder Wand and all the chaos and misery that had resulted from Voldemort's desire for its ultimate power.

"The wand isn't...oh, Merlin, I suppose I might as well explain. Please don't let this go any further than these walls. Do you recall the problems we had after the school was renovated?"

Hermione shook her head. "I was at college. I remember Harry said something about the wards not being right and he helped to raise them."

"Indeed they were not right, and still are not balanced correctly. The wards were originally created by the four founders, and any major changes are made by representatives of all four houses. Voldemort destroyed the wards, and after the war we needed to rebuild them. Pomona, Filius and I very swiftly realised that Horace Slughorn, for all his willingness to assist, was not suitable. Hogwarts would not accept his help. When we tried to force the castle to raise its wards, the backlash knocked poor Horace off his feet, and only Filius' quick wand-work saved the old fellow from being crushed by falling stones. Aurora Sinistra tried with a similar result except that, this time, we didn't push so hard and she was uninjured. Harry suggested that, as the Sorting Hat almost put him into Slytherin, he should try. Hogwarts seemed to grudgingly accept his presence, but only when Filius suggested that Harry use Severus' wand did the wards reform. That wand remains in contact with the stonework, pinning the Slytherin quarter of the wards to the structure. As soon as it is removed, the wards start to unravel. The past headmasters and headmistresses tell me that they have seen similar things happen before, when one of the houses no longer has the strength to sustain its share of the wards."

"Is Professor Sinistra still head of Slytherin?"

"Yes, and a perfectly effective one, too. I really don't know what the castle is playing at, sometimes."

"I warned you, Minerva," the thin, sneering voice of Phineas Nigellus Black remarked from the darkness of his portrait, "if the house of Slytherin is allowed to wither away, the entire school will suffer."

"Slytherin is perfectly all right," the headmistress snapped.

"Slytherin is derided and scorned as much as ever!"

"Now, now," Dumbledore murmured, "being all bitter and twisted isn't going to make you any more popular, young Phineas, and the same goes for the Slytherin students."

"Exactly! You see what I mean?" Phineas appealed to the portraits around him. "If we're quiet, we're being bitter and twisted; if we talk to each other, we're plotting, since Merlin knows, no-one else will talk to us! Deride us and scorn us, and see what happens! Oh, excuse me, you've already tried that tactic, haven't you? Why don't you–"

"Enough!" Professor McGonagall snapped, and Phineas turned around and stalked out of his portrait, the very embodiment of offended pride. "I'm sorry about that," she sighed.

"Don't worry; I know what he's like."

"Yes, you do, don't you? Wretched fellow, he has a chip on his shoulder big enough to make a broom handle with. Enough of my ruminations, Hermione; tell me how your detective business is going. Would you like tea?"

They moved to the fireplace and busied themselves with tea and scones and strawberry jam, and it was all Hermione could do to rein in her impatient desire to speak to Snape.

---

The black cat had gone when she returned home, so Hermione sent an owl to Snape telling him that his wand was at Hogwarts, but that she had been unable to obtain it for him. Not surprisingly, he arrived that evening looking decidedly displeased.

"Surely Minerva isn't so emotionally attached to it that she refused to sell it to you?"

"I didn't even ask, to be honest."

He glared. Ten years away from the dungeon classroom had not diminished his ability to convey his displeasure nonverbally. Hermione felt perversely gratified, particularly as it was hardly her fault.

"Your wand is holding the wards up."

His glare morphed from irate to interrogative, so she explained the situation as the headmistress saw it. He was Snape, and therefore she was not allowed to get away with that.

"And what is your understanding of the situation, Miss Granger?"

"Hogwarts is aware of your survival."

"You equate a castle with a grieving pet."

"It's sentient, isn't it? It locked Dolores Umbridge out of the headmaster's office when she tried to take over."

"Yes," he said quietly, "it's sentient. I did not die, resign or retire, so the castle allows Minerva to run the school and hold the wards, but she is still operating as my deputy even if she is unaware of the fact."

"You need to go back, sir."

His lip curled into the old sneer. "Really? Do I?"

"Even if only to hand in your resignation, so that the wards can be rebuilt from scratch. Hogwarts won't allow them to be stripped completely because you haven't given your permission, and there isn't a strong enough Slytherin presence to rebuild them on the existing base. The castle can't be left undefended until you die naturally, can it?"

He snorted. "And what if I don't want to go back?"

He was as bad as Harry and Ron rebelling against doing their homework.

"Then don't. You asked me to find your wand; I found it. I'm not going to steal it for you and wreck the wards of the school that you were prepared to commit murder to protect."

Snape's shoulders relaxed, a barely visible change in his posture that nevertheless indicated a change in his emotional state.

"Very well, Miss Granger. Kindly make arrangements with Minerva to gather the representatives of the other three houses. I will assist in the rebuilding of the wards."

"Can I warn them that you're back?"

"No," he said, turning to the door in a flurry of black, "I'm damned if I'll run the gauntlet of the press and a crowd of idle onlookers. Owl me when you have fixed a date."

---

The house-elf sucked on the mouthpiece of his meerschaum pipe. He had cut two holes in his deerstalker hat to accommodate his ears; the overall effect was disconcerting.

"I has found the pedigrees and makes notes of the colours of the Crups," he told Hermione.

"Excellent! Thank you, Sherlock. Now we need to see if any of the colours indicate cross-breeding with Muggle terriers."

"I has seen many, many Crups," the elf said. "They is lots of pretty colours."

"I'm sure they are."

"I has only seen one stripey Crup."

"Stripey? Do you mean brindle?" The elf appeared puzzled, so Hermione Summoned a library book on coat colours and inheritance patterns in dogs and opened it, flicking through the pages.

"Here, that's a brown brindle Great Dane, and there's a black brindle and white Whippet."

Sherlock pointed to the Whippet.

"The stripey Crup was like that but no white." He touched the non-moving Muggle photograph and Hermione watched as the coloured coat pattern flowed across the entire dog. Sherlock frowned and the colours morphed, flashing through shades of black, blue and grey before settling into a pattern of dark grey stripes on a blue-grey background.

"A blue brindle? Well, according to this book, brindle is dominant over non-brindle, and brindle isn't a recognised Crup colour, so that's definite evidence of cross-breeding to a Muggle dog. Where did you see it?"

Sherlock sucked his pipe, making a rather disgusting slurping noise. "Stripey Crup was in Western Piercy."

"Where's that?"

"Mister Malfoy's house is a mile from Western Piercy."

"Had one of Malfoy's Crups escaped?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Not a Malfoy Crup. It ran away when I saw it."

"Was it definitely a Crup, not a Muggle dog?"

"Tail," Sherlock said succinctly.

"Interesting. Thanks, keep an eye open for it and we'll bear it in mind." Hermione made a note to mention the brindle Crup next time she reported to Malfoy.

---

"You're being very mysterious, Hermione," the headmistress remarked as they ascended the staircase.

"I know, and I'm sorry, but my client insisted. All I can say is that this is your best chance of repairing the wards."

"I do hope you're not expecting me to allow Lucius Malfoy into the school," Professor McGonagall said repressively.

"No, although Lucius has made an effort to reform."

The old witch sniffed audibly. "Be that as it may. Here we are. You and I shall represent Gryffindor, of course; Professor Vector is here on behalf of Ravenclaw; and Professor Jeremiah Causley, our new Transfiguration professor, is a staunch Hufflepuff. I also took the liberty of asking my dear old friends Filius and Pomona to be present. They're both happy to assist."

She opened the door to her office. The teachers, past and present, stood in a group around Dumbledore's portrait. They turned to greet Hermione or, in the case of Pomona Sprout, to give her a hug that smelled vaguely of compost. Not be outdone, Filius Flitwick levitated himself and Hermione hugged him and kissed his cheek, making the little wizard blush.

"So," Flitwick said, rubbing his hands as he sank back to the floor, "we have two strong representatives of each of three houses. Who have you rustled up for Slytherin, Miss Granger?"

Hermione took a deep breath. "Please be prepared to be shocked," she said. "I mean it. He said I wasn't allowed to tell you, but I don't want anyone to have a heart attack."

"She means us oldies," Sprout said, nudging McGonagall with her elbow.

Flitwick cocked his head. "You've never been prone to exaggeration, Miss Granger, so I doubt that you're starting now." He turned to stare up at a dark painting high on the wall. In it, a figure sat immobile in his painted chair, not slumbering as many of the older headmasters and headmistresses did, but flat and unbreathing. "Minerva, Pomona and Septima, we spent many a long evening after the war lamenting one death in particular. I don't say that the emotion was wasted, because we had a great deal to feel guilty for, but I do believe that Miss Granger is trying to tell us that our grief was misplaced. Am I right?"

Before Hermione could formulate a reply that would not break her promise to her client, McGonagall gave a little gasp. Hermione felt the floor twitch minutely beneath her feet, a subtle movement as if the castle drew in its breath.

"Merlin," the headmistress breathed, "the wards just shifted."

"Are they breached?" Flitwick drew his wand.

"No. They opened and closed again, just as they did when Albus used to Apparate in or out. Someone came through them...no, two people. One was brought in side-along. How strange."

They waited until Hermione heard footsteps running lightly up the stairs followed by someone tapping on the door to the office. She felt the tension in everyone around her, and McGonagall cleared her throat before calling out to the visitor to enter. In walked Draco Malfoy.

A slight smirk twisted his lips, as if he recognised the moment of anticlimax. "Good morning, Headmistress, Professors, Miss Granger." He bowed very correctly, his beautifully cut robes of heavy silk swishing around his feet.

"How did you get through the wards, Mr Malfoy?" Hermione could see McGonagall's wand settled in her sleeve, ready to be drawn in an instant.

"I didn't," Draco said, his grey eyes wide and innocent and no less cold than the headmistress' voice. "I was brought in. My friend asked me to assist with the rebuilding of the Slytherin quarter of the wards and I felt that it was the least I could do. Reparation should be made," he paused for emphasis and added, "but not by him: never by him."

"He owes no-one," Flitwick said quietly. "I no longer have the right to thank you on behalf of the school, Mr Malfoy, but I'd like to thank you personally."

"Actually, no, you should thank my father, Professor Flitwick. I was somewhat ineffectual at the time."

"Ah." Flitwick, who never held grudges, rubbed his chin and shrugged. "Fair enough; I shall owl your father tomorrow."

"Great Merlin," McGonagall breathed, "can it be true?"

"Shall we go down? He's waiting. If I may?" Without waiting for permission, Draco held out his hand and said, "Accio Snape's ash and cherry wand."

As it flew past her shoulder, McGonagall snatched the wand with reflexes that would not have shamed a Seeker.,"Mr Malfoy," she said in a clear, steady voice, "I should like to return that wand myself." She tucked it in her robe and led the way with her head high.

They came to a halt just inside the staff entrance, clustered together apart from Draco, who wandered off to one side. Across the Great Hall, the heart of the castle, the sun cast stripes of honey-gold light on the empty stone-flagged floor. Then Hermione heard footsteps that could never be mistaken for Draco's. The emphatic, staccato tap of Snape's boot heels and the almost inaudible swish of his robes brought a lump to Hermione's throat. She heard Flitwick give a little gasp, and Sprout murmur, "Oh, mercy me, it really is him," in a choked voice.

Snape strode through the open doors, gliding from shadow to light to shade, the sunlight briefly illuminating his impassive face. As a child, Hermione had thought him cold and aloof, but now she recognised his unflinching self-control. He came to a halt facing them, his robes settling about his angular frame.

"Headmistress," he said, both a greeting and an understated challenge.

Hermione clenched her hands until her nails bit into her palms, willing McGonagall to rise to the occasion, to show herself to be a witch worthy of the highest regard, as Hermione had always believed.

"I have something of yours," McGonagall said, producing the wand. She reversed it and held it out handle first, supported across her wrist, presenting it as an opponent returns a wand to a worthy adversary disarmed in a duel. Flitwick nodded his approval and Snape's lips twisted in a wry smile. As he reached for the wand and curled his fingers around its long-familiar shaft, she said clearly, "Headmaster."

Snape's gaze, black on black, rose to meet hers. Whatever she looked for in those almost impenetrable eyes, she obviously found it, because she exclaimed, "Oh, Severus! Welcome home, my dear boy, welcome home," and her voice quavered and broke on the final word.

Now it was Snape whom Hermione waited upon. He could easily take a petty revenge for decades of mistrust and rivalry, and although she hoped that he would rise above his baser impulses, this was Snape, after all. Draco shifted slightly behind her. Snape glanced up, not at young Malfoy, but at Hermione, before he replied.

"Thank you, Minerva."

"I'm so sorry..."

"Severus..."

"Forgive me for doubting you..."

The apologies overlapped in a chorus from the teachers, except for Causley, who had not been at Hogwarts during the war.

"No," Snape said, "stop. You all believed what Albus and I intended you to believe; had things been otherwise, I would have failed."

"But you could have trusted us!"

"No, I could not," he said softly, holding up one hand. "Could you have hidden the fact of my duplicity under Veritaserum or Legilimency? Could you have fought me, truly fought to kill, had you known? I do not think you could, but perhaps more to the point, Dumbledore did not believe you could."

"You're right," Flitwick said sadly, "but I still need to say it. We were friends once, or so I believed."

"For my part, we always were."

"You're a braver man than I am, Headmaster Snape."

Snape inclined his head and reached down to accept the little man's hand. Flitwick clasped it, gulped and turned away, trying not to sniffle. Pomona Sprout wiped her sleeve across her eyes, leaving a slight smudge of earth on her forehead. She swayed a little towards Snape, as if acting under an impulse to embrace him, but the sardonic lift of his eyebrow dissuaded her. Minerva McGonagall reached out and delicately placed a hand on his shoulder, gave it a quick squeeze and released it again.

"I offer my apologies anyway, Severus, and I'm so glad to see you looking well. I hope that you're happy in whatever you're doing now."

"Thank you, Minerva. Shall we attend to these recalcitrant wards?"

Without waiting for a reply, he strode to the centre of the hall, pointed his wand at the floor and wordlessly levitated one of the great flagstones, setting it to one side. Hermione approached, and saw that he had revealed the top of a flight of uneven steps leading down into darkness. Snape lit his wand, again without a word, and led the way down.

They descended into a stone chamber, its groined ceiling supported by thick pillars. The acrid tang of ancient stone hung in the air. Flames rose in the wall sconces, and Hermione felt something prickle across the tiny hairs on her arms and neck: the touch of powerful magic.

"Hogwarts," Snape said in a conversational tone, "I'm back."

Hermione gasped. Rising out of the floor, emerging from the walls and fluttering down from the roof were thin filaments of silver like spider's webs. The gossamer strands gathered around Snape, translucent and fragile, weaving into a web that was still attached to the castle by a multitude of hair-fine threads barely thick enough to see. He raised his wand. "Slytherin," he said, "now Hufflepuff."

Jeremiah Causley stepped forward, rather tentatively, and stood transfixed while the castle wrapped him in its fragile web. His expression changed from wary to rapt. "I can feel the entire castle..." he said, "thousands of tiny magical connections."

"Ravenclaw."

Professor Vector took her place confidently and turned up her face, closing her eyes as she felt the castle embrace her.

"Gryffindor."

Minerva McGonagall did not even move; she held up her hands and gathered the strands of magic out of the air.

"Minerva, Pomona and Filius, you have done this before. For the benefit of everyone else, we will now assist our fellows to draw the strands together until we have four ropes of magic. I will then plait them and send them out in a loop to circle the grounds of Hogwarts. Filius, please demonstrate the requisite charms."

"These are nothing like the wards on the Manor," Draco remarked in a whisper.

"This is old, elemental magic," Flitwick told him. "Fascinating stuff. The charms involved are highly complex, yet they have aspects..."

"Filius," Snape said sharply, "later. I would rather not allow these wards to slip."

"Oh, good heavens, no! Sorry, Severus. You do your bit; everyone else, watch me and copy my wand movements."

The strands seemed slippery and insubstantial, and Hermione found that it took a great deal of concentration and careful wand work to gather them and twist them together. Eventually there were four thick, shining ropes of pure magic linking each house representative to the castle. Snape then guided his own rope (shaded subtly green, Hermione noticed) to Draco and strode to the centre of the chamber. As he directed the magical cables to twine around one another, she saw that the Ravenclaw magic shone a pearly blue, the Hufflepuff strands were faintly suffused with gold and Gryffindor's pulsed with a hint of scarlet.

Snape stood with his feet braced apart, both hands wrapped around the shaft of his dark wood wand as he knitted the great seams of tangible magic together. Hermione had never seen anything like this. Duelling wizards threw magic at one another...she had watched Harry and Ron duel often enough, and even joined in on occasion...but this was different; this was a vastly powerful force under total control.

He was not a large man. She remembered how he had loomed over her when she was a student, but she realised that he was actually shorter than Draco. He had put on only a few pounds in weight; Snape was still lean and ascetic, but no-one could deny the force of his personality or his magic. She could see sweat gleaming on his face, the slight tremor in the muscles of his arms and the total concentration in his black eyes as he twined the magic of the four houses together. Then he paused, took in a deep breath, and cast the great shining rope away. It rippled, thinning like elastic as it stretched, and its vibrations created a high, sweet, humming note like the dying echo of phoenix song. Hermione's scalp tingled, and she could feel the strands of loose hair writhing around her head as they escaped from their bun. A few seconds later, the end of the rope reappeared through the opposite wall. Snape caught it with the tip of his wand and brought the two ends together. There was a shower of sparks, a whiff of ozone (fresh, invigorating and sharp, like the wind blowing over fresh snow), and the shining rope that was the visible aspect of the wards sank into the floor and vanished.

Snape replaced his wand in his sleeve and turned to McGonagall. "Minerva, you will find that the wards are now in full operational order."

She held up her wand, frowning, and concentrated for a moment. "They are indeed. Thank you, Severus. That was a most remarkable display of magic."

Flitwick and Sprout murmured their agreement.

"Didn't you do that with Professor Dumbledore?" Hermione asked, and Flitwick laughed.

"Each headmaster or headmistress calls on the wards to appear in a form that they are most comfortable with. Albus believed in incantations, howling winds, flights of coloured fire and thunder. Scared the pants off me the first time I helped raise the wards."

"It was meant to be impressive," Sprout agreed. "Albus was always very Gryffindor."

Snape snorted. "I suppose multicoloured snakes were to be expected from a Slytherin."

"They weren't snakes, were they? Not quite. I imagine that you've gone off snakes somewhat." Flitwick asked the question with his little head cocked, without guile or intent to cause distress.

Snape allowed himself to smile. "Indeed, Filius, I have."

"I instructed the elves to prepare lunch in the staffroom," McGonagall said briskly, leading the way up the stairs. "Hermione, Severus, Draco, I'd be delighted if you'd join us."

"I must decline; I've a business meeting this afternoon, and I need to go through my paperwork," Draco said immediately, "but thanks for the offer."

They clambered out the trapdoor and Flitwick levitated the stone slab back into position. Draco bowed and strode out the main door.

McGonagall turned to face Snape, lifting an eyebrow at him in a manner that eerily echoed his own expression. For just an instant, so fast that she barely registered the movement, he glanced aside at Hermione.

"I'd love to stay for lunch," Hermione said.

"I might as well assuage your obvious curiosity," Snape remarked, sounding slightly put-upon.

As Hermione made her way through the castle next to the garrulous Sprout, who was happily describing her garden, she noticed that Snape had fallen into step with Flitwick. The retired Charms master's hands moved like fluttering birds as he talked about the aftermath of the war.

Had he really agreed to stay to be interrogated because she, Hermione know-it-all Granger, wanted to have lunch with her old teachers? How very strange!