Three: The Lion and the Serpent

Autumn 1995

I might have avoided the whole subsequent entanglement had I had not been naïve enough to bring the trivial lakeshore incident to Albus's meddling attention at our next weekly meeting. But my mere mention of Granger (properly said with sneer) brought a half-smile to his lips and a grandfatherly chortle: He was glad we'd had a 'chat', I believe his words were. I protested his poor choice of language (too loudly, I think); detailed her spell experimentation and private practice thereof; interpreted (correctly, in hindsight) that she was teaching other students; and carefully omitted any hint of interest or involvement on my own part.

Across his large desk, he frowned, as if deliberating. His fingertips rubbed against each other in slow circles; he then glanced several times at his pocket watch. I wondered if he had even listened to what I said and was instead inwardly planning out his day's schedule. But after several moments, he made the following reply: Since I thought her transgression so serious, perhaps I ought to monitor her behaviour, say, under the ruse of a Potions assistantship.

At first, I thought him facetiously mocking me. But he regarded me so steadily that –

"You cannot be serious."

Oh, he was, he assured me.

"Certainly not," I replied. After all, she was not my charge, but McGonagall's; I was quite occupied with Slytherin house and my Order 'duties', as he often so casually referred to them; I had no time for babysitting.

He replied, "Well, you are precisely correct. You have precious little time these days, do you not? That is why I believe a teaching assistantship for Miss Granger would benefit you as well."

At once, I recognized my supreme folly in citing overwork to the wily Headmaster. He raised a hand in warning to quiet my protest and proceeded with some sort of ludicrous argument:

"I've been thinking on this matter for quite a while now – in fact, since Tom's return as Voldemort once more." (Why did these Gryffindors insist on naming him always?) "Severus, I'm not blind. It has not gone unnoticed to me that the summer's intelligence operations have sapped much of your time and energy. Certainly it is necessary that, during the school year, you must divide your time between teaching and Order business. But I believe it is becoming of great strategic importance for you to focus less on school requisites and more on espionage. Severus, you cannot afford to become overwhelmed. You know as well as I do that one slip could be fatal."

Clearly he doubted both my abilities and my loyalties. "You are unhappy with my performance thus far?"

"Not at all. You said yourself there is the question of time. There are only 24 hours in a day, and you are spread so thin already. And it will not get any easier over the course of the year, I'm afraid. This is only just the beginning. Surely you cannot expect to teach five years of Potions plus the N.E.W.T. class, run Slytherin house, and ably conduct your Order duties, with no assistance whatsoever?" he said, rushing on before I could speak. "It is not so unusual, as you know – you assisted Slughorn, did you not, your seventh year? As for my choice of student, I think it is obvious. It is true that Miss Granger is a bit young for an assistantship – but she has got the top marks in the school and she already knows of your involvement in the Order, so you needn't sneak around her. If only she were a few years older, she would be quite a valuable Order member herself. But as it is, despite her youth, she is more than capable taking the work off your shoulders. And if you, in turn, uncover any . . . Gryffindor plots, as you call them, I always appreciate your bringing them to my attention."

I attempted a litany of feeble but vehement objections. She was too young and incapable of independent thought; she was thick as thieves with Potter, regularly violated school rules, thus was inherently untrustworthy with the most menial of tasks; furthermore, I needed no assistance, and besides which, she would never assent –

"Ah, but she already has! You see, I asked her just the other day if she might be willing to take part in a task just such as this – in complete secrecy, and in service of the Order, of course. There are very few students I would recommend to you, but . . . as you must already know, she is most capable. And she readily agreed, so her willingness is not in question. In my opinion, she respects you a great deal, my boy –"

How I loathed his secretive manipulation of my affairs and his continual reference to me as 'boy' – as if I were not older than the fathers of some of my students – not that he could appreciate this age distinction, as he was clearly going senile enough to even suggest this preposterous idea. Had he forgotten, I asked him, that I had performed as Potions master – plus myriad extra 'duties' – to his perfect satisfaction for nearly twenty years with no assistant?

"I haven't forgotten. But this year is like no other before it. Severus, I have your safety in mind. It is a harmless means to increase your chance of survival. Think of it as a contingency plan," he said in an unconcerned tone.

"Marking homework has nothing to do with survival."

"Of course not, but your full attention to the war does. You needn't be bothered with trivial marking tasks when your Order position is so much more vital. Severus, listen to me. The wizarding world is changing. Hogwarts is changing. Perhaps a change is in order for you as well . . ."

"And if I refuse?"

But my protest was but another tactical error, with painful consequences. Albus jovially, ever so casually, played his trump card: the invocation of Lily Evans. He reminded me (needlessly) that my devotion to her memory included adherence to his orders, however distasteful they may be, and that this little conversation had convinced him that I was plainly in need of assistant Granger.

I glared at the man to whom I had sold my soul so long ago (and for nothing! He had done nothing to protect Lily!), who now ruled the Order and his staff by affecting omniscience, tossing about cryptic but supposedly wise commentary, and disclosing nothing of value to us lesser mortals. Had his present directive involved a task instrumental to the war effort, it would not have so rankled. Let me be clear on this point: I doubted not the imperative to defeat the Dark Lord, or at least to subdue his malignant influence on wizarding society. Not that I had ever been swayed by such meaningless phrases as 'Satan incarnate', 'immoral', and 'evil' that plastered his name through the first war – no, my political objections were wholly pragmatic. From a practical standpoint, the Dark Lord's design for repressive dictatorship was, at best, ill-conceived, and at worst, senselessly brutal and possibly genocidal. Though I cared little for humanity's fate, I wished needless suffering on no one; I had long since learnt that the Dark Lord's self-serving ends in no way justified his means or the excesses of his Death Eaters.

But of course, there were also my personal reasons. No one sought the Dark Lord's death more fervently than I. Indeed, it is no stretch to say that in the vision of his death lay my only certitude and purpose. How many endless nights had I longed for vengeance; how many shuddering breaths had I drawn through the years, as the silent, smouldering hatred for Lily's murderer carried my every step. If I could, I would unmercifully cut him down myself. I would creep towards him ever so quietly, with equal parts silence and cunning, keep him close at hand and unaware until the precise moment of readiness wherein his destruction was assured – and then would I strike. How I would relish every moment of his agony! But this was not Albus's plan. It seemed instead, from the half-prophecy I had heard as a young man – the fatal, terrible words that both of my masters alike now set so much store by – that the Dark Lord's fall would come about only by Potter's hand. This I could accept. I needed no fame or laurels, no empty accolades from the fickle masses that turned hither and thither with the sway of this hour's hero the demagogue's promise. I could accept that such 'honour' must fall to James Potter's worthless whelp, if it meant the Dark Lord's end. For me, his death would be enough. And I could only trust Albus, who knew more than I of the prophecy and of Potter's history, to guide the boy's protection until the day he could exact the final retribution – if not for me, than for Lily, for my Lily.

But this – this concession Albus demanded so casually seemed (and still does) but an arbitrary exercise of his will. Was my submission in all matters so necessary to prove my loyalty? Were not his episodic Legilimentic forays into my wretched mind enough? Was fellow Gryffindor Granger to spy on me for him, as part of some machination of his with Potter? Even after all these years, he clearly had no trust in me and no regard whatever for my interests. But, bound by my word and my past, I could no sooner refuse Albus anything (anything! I had so stupidly promised him) as I could escape the Dark Mark's burn. And there was nought to be gained by accusing the Headmaster or throwing a tantrum, so Servant Severus took care to keep his mouth shut and set his jaw in resignation. In war, even a highly irregular one such as this, one exists perpetually under his captain's command. I had clearly been given my orders and the reminder not to question them. There was no exit, no choice but to submit. I was trapped, yet again.

* * *

Thus I was summarily assigned an overly eager, insufferably chatty 'teaching assistant', as they are called, who scarcely reached my stockroom shelves on tiptoes. Quite aside from my natural bitterness at Albus's lordship over me, I approached this arrangement with a great many reservations. As I mentioned, I had never before deigned to take an assistant, much less one so young. (At that time, possibly due to her slight stature, I mistakenly believed her even younger than her actual years.) Envisioning myself besieged by high-pitched chatter of clothing fashions and childish gossip, I resolved to give her only small, menial tasks, keep our encounters to an absolute minimum and her mouth as firmly shut as humanly possible.

Our first meeting: She appeared in my classroom precisely five minutes early. To forestall future repeats of this behaviour, I insisted that she sit in silence for those minutes while I finished writing out an exam. At last, when I could no longer ignore her fidgety presence, I informed her in no uncertain terms that her 'assistantship' was the Headmaster's idea; in actuality, I had little need of an assistant, and I wished her to bother me as little as possible during our meetings. (Upon her face flashed a quickly repressed petulant frown and visible second thoughts in her eyes. Good.) In fact, I added with unveiled contempt, if she was so intent on aiding the war effort, she would do well to speak little and ought not to reference her assistantship in the classroom or other public spaces. She was not to think herself above her classmates or that she had in any way earned her position. We would meet twice weekly, whereupon she would work quietly for one hour. Her instructions for this and every evening would be located on the blackboard, supplies in their usual spots in the classroom.

She passed the hour extracting Salticid eyes – a delicate procedure as the eyes are quite easily damaged, and one best performed by someone with small hands like hers. After extraction, the eyes must be separated according to their position on the cephalothorax and rinsed in salamander blood in order to strengthen them – more than enough tedium for the hour. I continued to plan out the year's exam schedule in silence at my desk until the hour was up, at which point I dismissed her curtly.

The evening of our second meeting, I made certain to tarry in my office until the point of the hour before arriving at the classroom. When I did, I discovered her slouched in the corridor beside the warded classroom door, frantically scribbling a list of possible extra credit projects she could pursue – since, she said meekly, I had mentioned I had no need of an assistant.

I took her suggestions in hand without a glance and dispatched her silently to her chores. But I did read them – after all, she was not such a bad student, certainly above the abysmal average, despite her irritating classroom antics:

Potential Potions Projects:

4) Magical effects of combining moonstones with diamond dust

And so on, five or six other suggestions as well. I was hardly about to hand her a N.E.W.T. for her ideas, but she seemed to be making an effort to 'think beyond the book', so to speak. It occurred to me that she might be up for some more advanced literature research, perhaps even some experimentation on the doxy egg problem, which I had not yet had the time to tackle. I set to wondering about that dilemma again and before long, her hour was up, and I dismissed her.

So it continued. Hardly a fortnight had passed before it was irksomely apparent that Dumbledore had been correct. I was lagging in marking homework and even preparing for classes, due in large part to Order meetings and the increasingly frequent Dark Summons. I could no longer waste time on wondering if Miss Granger was planted in my care to report on my actions, or on carefully planning her assignments and instructions, and I at last resorted to vocal explanation of the required tasks. As the mass of laborious tasks seemed always to multiply with every hour I was called away, it was at times even necessary to work simultaneously on laboratory preparations.

To my surprise, I found her to be even more severe at marking homework than I – a common characteristic of those new to teaching, before dismal reality lowers their expectations. I confess it was rather pleasant to hear her outraged commiseration at the typically execrable state of student essays. Naturally her standards met with my approval, and I apportioned increasing quantities of homework to her exacting quill.

These factors, however, necessitated an increase in the length of meetings to two hours. This duration proved sufficient to answer (most of) her questions on curricula or lessons, complete class preparations, and any other necessary transactions, with a bit of spare time left over for marking. I gradually became aware that she took piles of homework with her and marked on her own time, thus freeing up her scheduled hours in the Dungeon for work that needed completion in the lab or under my supervision. I supposed her to be seeking some house points or perhaps positioning herself for preferential treatment in the classroom, and certainly I provided neither of these; if anything, I was more severe with her. But as she made no complaint, I grudgingly admitted a sense of relief as my late-night homework concurrently decreased. (Whinging students never realize how much harder we work than they do.)

Despite the prodigious workload, I found I could prepare more thoroughly for laboratory assignments with an assistant. During our meetings, I devised several additional lessons to the Potions curriculum, some of which were in fact supplied from her written list of project suggestions. (When explaining the new additions to her, I saw no need for explicit acknowledgement of their source, and she quite prudently did not brag.) Some I implemented in class; others were lost among the shuffle of scribbles that now lie dormant in my old Potions archive. They shall go to Slughorn, the current Potions master, who will never read them, or to whomever is unlucky enough to assume the Potions professorship after his tenure. More likely, whoever tidies this office after my death – you, perhaps? – will simply throw them out. In any case, there is no need to detail them here.

I shall, however, endeavour here to remind Hermione of one particular project – her favourite, I believe – in an appeal to her academic inclination. Perhaps it takes a fond scholastic memory to induce her, if she ever finds this letter and my memories, to continue wading through my wretched Pensieve. For instance, does she recall the black dragonfish experiment? The gist is this: Most organisms lack the visual pigments necessary to detect infrared light. The deep-sea dragonfish, however, which is sold in limited quantities for the academic market, produces two very useful chemical compounds, a luciferin and a photosensitiser, that confer the unique ability to internally generate and perceive infrared light in otherwise total darkness. In the laboratory, extraction and replication of the compounds to adequate quantities is followed by a stabilisation charm (to delay their breakdown) and their gradual emulsion in a preservative solvent to produce the active Scintillia Solution, which, as in the fish, both produces infrared light and adjusts the visible spectrum of the user to enhance infrared perception. Why, you may ask? By this mechanism, the potion's recipient gains sight in total darkness as if it were daylight for hours, possibly days if he brews it well. At the same time, his light cannot be perceived by other wizards nor by most other magical creatures¹. His night vision is an enormous advantage over prey and predators alike.

I had brewed this potion on several occasions, but had not yet adapted a protocol for classroom experimentation. I set out a preliminary procedure, which she refined with the assistance of some references from the literature. She then conducted several preliminary tests to work out the methodology. On the final test of it before class, I dimmed the lights for full effect. I set the cauldrons ready. She set to extracting the compounds. She kept dropping the phosphorescent fish, which were slippery, and apologizing profusely as they slid across the floor. In addition to 'red' infrared light, these fish also produce a pale blue-green luminescence, which humans can see quite readily, so that within ten minutes of the extraction's commencement, the room lay brightly splashed with this colour, with little candent spots here and there where the fishy fluid had landed. It was guilty, glowing proof of her sloppiness, but I did not much mind. Under my watch, she proceeded: Extraction of the elements. A delicate transfer. Addition of stabilising surfactants. Simmer and stir and a settling phase. And at last, the potion's creation completed, I drank, then she.

It is typically some minutes before the potion's effects are felt. But soon enough the room clarified, its details sharpened: the glint of glass all round us, flasks and phials and funnels; crucibles, mortars, and pestles, lined along the narrow shelves; creatures large and small, embalmed, on the far wall; aliquots of class reagents; heaps of fish in wait for the students. The same familiar setting, the commonplace classroom items, now emerged free from daylight mundanity, each lone form lit in relief against the others, more authentic somehow when held by soft surrounding darkness. I saw that the pads of all her fingers glowed red in the dark, and a spot where she had brushed her hair from her forehead. She let out some girlish gasps of delight and generally looked exceedingly pleased with herself. When she thought I wasn't looking, like a child with finger-paints, she stealthily sketched with her finger a little red school of fish making their way across the countertop through a luminous green sea-current. (Their echo persisted for several subsequent nights, these watery colours, as did a trail of little red ridged fingerprints, upon the countertop). I ignored her, and pleased at the potion's success, left her to her enjoyment. Eventually, as nothing more remained to be done, I bade her good evening and retired.

Later that night, I indulged in a long run in the forest, my favourite section of the Hogwarts estate. It was a customary exercise of mine, but one quite enhanced by the faculty of perfect sight. The moon, nearly new and only a sliver high above the forest, hidden by the dark wooded treetops, cast but a feeble light. But I saw, in the spaces of night between branches, Auriga rise through the sky and Capella shine fiercely within, and a glimpse of Perseus's sword high above, before the canopy closed all around me. At the pierce of my eye, the forested secrets lay open and bared now before me. I passed an old Acromantula colony and treasure-hordes, an old rusty gate and crumbled stone cottage of a long-past intrepid or foolhardy settler. I passed countless night-creature eyes gleaming from shadow and stared them down through my own. I slipped through the darkness with only the rush of the wind and the cold and the feel of my strength, as I trod lightly over tree-roots and tendrils that grew up through the cracks in the soil and sought to obscure my passage, as the yielding of moss and rock and shadow before me gave proof of my newfound power. (How fleeting it was! The morning after, I was once again but a lowly schoolmaster.) I have no idea what Miss Granger did, but I am certain she enjoyed the potion's effects as well.

Needless to say, the potion also went over very well in the fifth-year class: Most of them managed to figure out how to brew it, and after they drank, I divided them to two groups, 'blind' and 'sighted' (Potter was carefully selected as 'blind', of course), and killed the light. It was highly amusing to watch Miss Granger stumble round in utter darkness, not so funny to watch Weasley assault her, the pimply brute.

It was due to such experiments that the autumn term seemed tolerable, notwithstanding my gnawing disquiet at the Dark's brewing power and Dolores Umbridge's attempts to seize Hogwarts by the throat. Considering these developments, the term was surprisingly ordinary. The drum-taps of battle still seemed faint and distant, my forthcoming doom still unseen. The students were badly behaved and lazy, as always, but my humour was not unduly sour, no more so than ordinary. At the very least, I found time to think on matters outside of O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s and Quidditch and house points. And I must confess a certain thrill in the air at times, for after all, espionage was far more engaging than lecturing to adolescents, and – if I may say so – it was obvious to all in the Order that I did it very well. Even if – especially if – they hated and feared me for it.

I desisted from griping to Albus about Miss Granger's assistantship, for he had never listened very much anyway, and I was unenthusiastic about the prospect of resuming the especially menial tasks I now delegated to her. I reasoned that if he was determined to shackle a student to me, I supposed, it might as well be a clever and reliable one. She was tolerable, at least in small doses.

Her character was not so shallow as I had initially feared. She was serious, studious, and earnest to a fault; she engaged in neither obsequious fawning nor superficial vanities. She seemed immune from the small-minded habits of her contemporaries, such as Witch Weekly subscriptions, excessive waste of time on personal grooming, or 'dumbing down' one's speech patterns to impress the troglodyte Quidditch players (thus rendering most teenaged girls virtually unintelligible to their teachers)². Not that she was flawless – her cleverness, in particular, was a double-edged sword. Despite her initial subdued manner at the inception of her assistantship, she quickly grew bolder and soon peppered me to no end with enquiries on everything from historical giant wars to Protean charms to any other subject that popped into her indefatigable mind. While I was actually lecturing at her, she stayed respectfully quiet. Indeed, she typically whipped out quill and parchment and copied me word for word, in rapt contemplation (a habit that both flattered and unnerved me, for I suspected she might be searching for a stray comment in order to glean wartime secrets and pass them to Potter). But, it seemed, the moment I turned my back and put her out of my mind, she thought of some trivial matter to pester me about, any excuse to seek attention (Gryffindors!). When this habit of hers first emerged, on impulse I banished her to the library to seek out the information herself. But this strategy quickly backfired, as it tended to compound her questions and did nothing to curb her curiosity. Eventually, her tenacity wore me down and I reluctantly began to discuss her queries with her.

She may have been precociously clever, but her intellect was by no means mature. The most obvious symptom of this was her perpetual search for 'the answer' and her smug self-assurance when she thought she knew it. Though, by the age of sixteen, she was quite skilled at abstract operations and logical reasoning, certainly as compared to the average young witch or wizard, she nevertheless applied these talents inflexibly and within her own tightly bound parameters.

She did not take well to contradiction of her principles and disbelieved or dismissed as irrelevant any results that did not fit her preconceived notions. She could develop sound hypotheses but then fell into rigid adherence to them based on inflexible assumptions. Possibilities and shades of grey unnerved and rattled her, and so she was easily blindsided. For instance, if posed with a challenging question, she would invariably race unthinkingly through a litany of memorized text; the deeper my sceptical frown or critical argument, the greater her anxiety, and so she would pile more words on top of the previous ones, as if more data on the matter could compensate for lack of insight. In short, her implicit trust in textbooks and teachers alike, having no doubt sprung from an educational system designed to create unblinking automata, severely hampered her creativity.

This was not a cognitive deficit, but rather, I believe, an immaturity in her perception of adults and authority figures. To her fifth-year self, right and wrong were immutable and clear. (This was doubtless encouraged by the Gryffindor house culture, where the concept of 'bravery' was cheered and revered without very much discussion about what they might actually be fighting for or why.) Likewise, there were right people (teachers, Potter), whom she would believe and follow into Hell itself if they proclaimed it the correct thing to do (dismissing in the process all common sense as well as Hogwarts rules, as she had already demonstrated on numerous incidents as a younger student), and wrong people (probably Slytherins) whose judgements seemed to carry no weight at all. On several occasions she spoke on the matter of Dark Arts with the same tone of disapproval she had for disobeying one's parents or the letter of the law. She steadfastly refused to admit ever having studied, or ever considering the study of, a textbook not Ministry of Magic-approved (though granted, her reluctance to admit deviance from the Ministry, even in the privacy of my office, may have been prudent given Umbridge's watchful eye over Hogwarts). In any case, it was clear that Miss Granger held anything labelled Dark by the Ministry's myrmidons as thereby off-limits for study, regardless of merit, regardless of a wizard's intent or method, simply in deference to 'their' decree.

Nevertheless, an incipient intellect was beginning to surface. For instance, upon one of her Standard Book of Spells recitations, I enquired, with no small amount of scorn, upon what grounds she felt she could trust the book's authority. She proceeded to speculate shyly on the merits and limitations of the book, and it occurred to me that she actually might wish to discuss and argue beyond the scope of pat answers, but simply lacked confidence and a developed methodology for cultivation of healthy scepticism. Could she learn to strip off the layers and years of book learning and classroom rigmarole to expose the creative heart of the endeavour, to seek and find those kernels, however rare, of truth? Her curiosity was certainly prodigious enough to provide her intellectual fodder. And (I realized later in the school year) she was in fact taking her first subversive steps against the Ministry's canonical death grip on 'truth'.

So I do not lay out these critiques to spite her, merely to describe. And this is not the place for me to detail her academic development – there is, as for all Hogwarts students, an academic file on record for her, and I have made appropriate comments within it, as have all her other professors. Mine tend more towards honest, unsparing at times, appraisal, and less towards the hyperbolic nonsense of, say, McGonagall. But that is not because Miss Granger lacked promise, for I must grudgingly admit that over the course of the years, despite all incentive from professors who handed her grades on a plate and did nothing to shake her foundations, she did begin to rise from her fears. She did indeed begin to think for herself. And allow me to finally note that by the term 'begin' I mean no disparagement – a proper education is, after all, a lifelong process. One never stops seeking mastery of his or her chosen disciplines; to live is to continually discover. She has already achieved more than most wizards ever will. And if she survives the war, she will still be young. She will have much time.

¹ There are several notable exceptions to this rule. In particular, several families of serpents, including basilisks, some species of insects such as fire beetles, and vampire bats, utilize infrared vision quite readily; all employ the sense in order to perceive the 'heat' produced by warm-blooded prey. Animagi may gain this ability if their transformation is to one of the above creatures. Excepting these creatures, the potion is still extremely useful for the vast majority of wizards.

² The boys were no better. The popular ones collected pretty girls like trophies and displayed their masculine worth by jinxing unsuspecting, less popular students. They smuggled in pornography and illegal potions, ingested unknown toxins out of mere curiosity, revelled in the juvenile amusement provided by bodily functions, and generally ignored the basics of personal hygiene. And so on – the list of student vices is nearly infinite.

Author's Notes:

* Many thanks to Countrymouse, Hollimel, and Sorceress Sarah for editing and assistance.

* Disclaimer: All errors, inaccuracies, and tired old plot devices are fully and solely the fault of the author.