Chapter 3

Morning found each back in his own bed, and when they met in the kitchen for breakfast, there was no hint of the fire that had marked their couplings. If Moody were remembering the arousing feel of a pale, sleek flank under his hands, if Snape were recalling the kick of pleasure that had filled him as he filled Moody, neither indicated it by so much as the flicker of an eyelid.

Moody puttered about making tea and porridge. "Now that I've got my magic back," he said as he sat down, "I'm going to do something about the pitiful wards you've got on this place. They wouldn't keep a sodding kitten out."

"Excuse me," said Snape, "but I am able to manage my life quite well without any doses of paranoid interference. My wards are perfectly adequate."

"Bollocks," snorted Moody. "The greenest kid in Auror training could blast through your defences in no time. Don't worry, though; I'll work on it. Now, what about that boy who brought me here? Find any trace of him?"

For a moment, Snape looked as if he might not answer, but then he shook his head curtly. "No."

Moody didn't gloat. "Been thinking," he said. "Kid must be Hogwarts age."

"Early teens, yes," Snape nodded. "I've thought of that, that he might be a student at Hogwarts. But I don't recall ever having seen him before. He could easily have escaped my notice during my year as headmaster; I did no teaching then, and"...here his lips twisted wryly..."I had a few other things on my mind. But before that year, he would have been in my classes. And he wasn't."

"Remember every student, then, do you?" asked Moody.

"Yes. Unfortunately," Snape said. "At the very least, I would have remembered seeing him before. And I don't."

"Still. He's a school-age kid in wizarding Britain. We should at least check out Hogwarts."

"I agree. I thought I'd floo over there this afternoon. Talk to Minerva."

"Good." Moody scourgified his cup and bowl and sent them zooming back to the cupboard, a pleased look crossing his seamed face as they settled in without a sound. "I'm going with you."

"Out of the question."

"Dammit, boy. I said I'm going, and I'm going. You wouldn't deny me the chance to shock the hell out of Minerva, would you?"

"Don't call me 'boy.' You're not coming with me because I don't want to have to endure the endless explanations that Minerva will require about where you've been the last two years. Save your touching reunion for your own time. I have work to do."

Moody leered. "Don't you want to find out the punch line of the rhinoceros joke?"

"No."

"It's not as if you can stop me, you know. I've got my magic back. And my leg." He leaned forward, his leer now verging on the obscene. "And as you well know, I've got my fucking strength back. I can floo wherever I damn please."

Snape sighed and pushed his chair back with a screech. "Fine. Come along, then. But if Minerva hexes the hell out of you for shocking the hell out of her, don't expect me to heal you."

~~~~~

The Headmistress of Hogwarts, her stern face and black hair nearly unchanged from Snape's student days, was working at her desk when his head appeared in the fireplace.

"Minerva?"

She looked up and smiled. "Severus. How are you? Is everything all right?"

"I am quite well. As to everything being all right, well...that's something you may decide for yourself, after you see who it is I'm bringing with me. May we come through?"

"Of course." She began to rise, but Snape cut in quickly, "Don't get up. You'll want to be sitting down for this."

"Goodness, Severus, you're being mysterious. Just how worried should I be?"

But Snape's head had already disappeared, and a second later the man himself was stepping into the room, closely followed by Moody, walking stick in hand.

"Hullo, Min," the latter said.

"Alastor?" McGonagall stared, the colour sliding from her face so precipitously that Snape took a step towards her in concern. But he needn't have worried; she was out of her chair and in Moody's arms before Snape could have reached her.

Moody hugged her tightly enough to rob her of breath and then after a long minute stood back and grinned, his hands still on her shoulders. "Miss me?"

McGonagall ran one hand over his rugged face and used the other to wipe her eyes. "Damn you for drama queens," she said, smiling through her tears. "The both of you. Well, go on...sit down and get comfortable, because you're going to be here until I have a satisfactory explanation."

"Get comfortable?" Moody glared at the straight-backed chairs ranged in front of the desk. "Who could be comfortable in these cast-offs from an Azkaban interrogation room?" With a wave of his wand, he changed one wooden chair into a plush armchair and sank into it. "Didn't you hear the lady?" he barked at Snape. "Sit down, boy. I've got a story to tell."

"Don't make a novel of it, old man," Snape said, moving away to examine a stack of books on a table in the corner. Taking one to the wide window seat, he sat down with his back to the others, while Moody, waving away the offer of tea, launched into his tale.

"Yep, a rhino," he was saying ten minutes later. "Complete with a ruddy great horn sticking straight out of my head. Standing at attention. That was for you, Min. For old times' sake. Get it?" And he cackled until he coughed.

McGonagall rolled her eyes. "Yes, I get it. More's the pity. Old times, indeed."

"Yes, well. Good times while they lasted, eh, Miss McGonagall?"

She smiled and touched his hand. "Good times, Mr Moody."

Snape continued to read, but he turned the pages with an annoyed snap that caused Moody to glance at him from under bushy brows. But then the talk turned from the rhinoceros to the boy who had brought it into the shop, and Snape came over to rejoin the conversation.

"The boy is what brought us to you today, Minerva," he said, taking one of the hard wooden seats. "Well, that, and Moody's...not my...desire to dazzle you with his resurrection from the dead. I need to find that cache of dark objects that Moody says the boy's family has. He was Hogwarts age, but I don't recall ever seeing him here."

He described the boy in detail, and McGonagall looked thoughtful. "He doesn't sound familiar to me, either. Not all wizarding children attend Hogwarts, of course. But if he was born in Britain, he'll be in the birth book."

She stepped to a cabinet against a far wall and murmured an incantation over it; when its doors opened, she removed a parchment folio and spread it on her desk. "I'll include all the boys who turned eleven in the past four years and who didn't end up coming here," she said, occasionally stopping in her perusal of a page to tap a "copy" quill onto a blank sheet.

"Here you are," she said at last, handing the now list-covered parchment to Snape. "Almost two dozen. I've marked the ones to whom I spoke, though I don't recall any of them fitting your description. Filius visited the others. He's on holiday just now, but he'll return on Monday, if you want to question him."

"I do," said Snape, at the same time that Moody said, "We do."

The two men each eyed each other for a moment, until Snape smirked and said, stressing the pronouns lightly, "I will be going now, Minerva; I'd like to get started. Moody, I'll see you this evening. Unless you and Minerva have more, er, catching-up to do? Some further discussion of rhino horns, perhaps?"

"Keep your shirt on," Moody grumbled, Summoning his stick. "I'm ready to go." Heaving himself to his feet, he put his hand on Snape's shoulder to steady himself and turned toward the fireplace. "I'll be back another day, Min," he said, not moving his hand. "And we'll talk. Meantime, I'm leaving with the potions master."

McGonagall looked from him to Snape and back again. Then she smiled. "I see. Like that, is it?" she asked.

"I think so, yes," Moody replied. Still with his hand on Snape's shoulder, he reached for the jar of floo powder.

~~~~~

The flat above the shop seemed cramped after the spaciousness of McGonagall's office. But Moody moved about the kitchen almost cheerfully, whistling through his teeth. Snape leant against the doorframe and watched him with a mixture of irritation and sardonic amusement. Finally Moody thumped the floor with his wooden leg and snapped, "What?"

"The rhinoceros was a penis joke? What...you're regressing to adolescence in your old age?"

"A penis joke? No, boy, it wasn't a penis joke. It was a cock joke. A raging hard cock joke to remind Minerva of the good times we spent in her bed. Is that what you want to know?"

Snape scowled. "This is how you choose to inform me that you're romantically involved with Minerva?"

Moody shook his head and sat down. "Not involved. Not that way. Friends, is all. We've gone through a lot together, Min and me, one way and other. And yes, we've done the nasty...maybe half a dozen times over the years. War makes strange bedfellows; you take your comfort where you find it. Min knows that as well as I do."

"You're telling me that Minerva McGonagall goes in for casual comfort sex?"

The scarred mouth quirked. "I see you still haven't got to know her very well, have you? When it comes to sex, 'casual' is all Minerva ever wants; she's given her heart to her job. Besides, she knows my usual inclinations don't lie in her direction." He gazed at Snape steadily before continuing, "In any woman's direction. If you get my drift."

Snape didn't move from the doorway; he merely raised a slow eyebrow. "Like that, is it?" he asked, echoing McGonagall.

And Moody again responded, "I think so. Yes." But this time, he added, "If you're interested."

"You've had internal injuries, Moody," said Snape. "I'd be remiss if I let you leave my home before you were completely healed."

"Aye. And it's not as if you don't need someone to come with you on these scavenger hunts of yours. Fine, then. That's us sorted. We'll start on Minerva's list tomorrow."

"We? Hmm. I'll have to give that idea some thought. Tracking down dark artifacts is a subtle science, Moody, a thing of finesse and delicacy. In other words, the opposite of you. So perhaps you should just stay home. The last thing I need is a paranoid ex-Auror tramping around like a herd of...rhinoceros."

Moody got to his feet and stumped round the table to shove his dented chin into Snape's face. "The day will come when you'll be glad of a little paranoia on your arse," he said, his voice a low growl. "Death Eater or no Death Eater, you're a rank amateur when it comes to the dark arts, and don't you forget it."

Before Moody could finish his last word, Snape thrust his arm across the other man's chest and pinned him against the wall. "I think you'll find," he said, something tugging at his mouth that could have been either snarl or smile, "that there are a number of things neither one of us is going to forget."

Moody's good eye glinted; he could not have been unaware of the hard length of Snape's cock between them. "Trying to be the one on top, are you?" he asked, grinning and moving his hand to the other's hip. "Well, we'll see about that. Boy."

Snape leant forward and nipped the smirking lip. "Oh, yes," he said. "We'll see. Old man."

~~end