Part Second: The Hart Rampant: Chapter 15

Chapter 15:

January gave way to February, and more snow and sleet – but somehow the bitter weather didn't seem as cold and depressing to Emily in the week following her weekend with Lucius. And there was always the promise of seeing him again, very soon.

The fervour following Rita Skeeter's unflattering article about Rubeus Hagrid had died down considerably, and he had resumed his duties in Care of Magical Creatures class and was again taking meals with the other teachers. Everyone was very kind to him in the weeks following his return – even Professor Snape was more polite to him than usual. Of course, "more polite than usual" for Professor Snape would have translated to "extremely stiff and formal" for anyone else, but at least he was visibly making an effort, Emily thought.

The Arcadian spring festival of Imbolc fell on Tuesday, February 2nd. At home, everyone would have been gathering offerings of spring wildflowers for the Mother and carousing with mead and metheglin, and come evening, groups of young girls would have been performing dances together in the fields to the sound of merry fiddles, whistles, and drums. Here in Scotland, there were no dancing maidens, and if there had been, the bitterly cold blankets of snow would have probably kept them inside next to the fire. Emily observed the holiday alone, sharing a traditional mead toast with the Lady of the Worlds by setting an offertory glass for Her in the west-facing window. There were absolutely no wildflowers to be found amidst all that snow and ice, so she had resigned herself to doing without that tradition.

But then, a screech owl scratched at Emily's bedroom window at about nine p.m. and delivered a small box addressed in Lucius's familiar handwriting. Inside was a ribbon-tied bouquet of fragrant, artfully arranged spring wildflowers – lily of the valley, clematis, primrose, bleedingheart, narcissus, and half a dozen others – kept from withering by some cunning Warming Charm. He must have looked everywhere, again... and to remember that this was a holy day to her... there was really no end to his regard and consideration. She laid the little bouquet next to the mead goblet, with a bow to the western and northern skies.

A letter was also enclosed. She opened it with eager anticipation, which rapidly turned to disappointment as she read –

Darling –

Happy Imbolc, my love.

Tragically, I'm obliged to stay in the country this coming weekend – Queen Mum Troglodyte is having some sort of landmark birthday, and I have been informed that my presence is required.

Believe me, I would rather be with you. I shall miss you dreadfully. Please see me next weekend?

"Oh, bloody hell," she snapped. She made as if to tear the letter up, then stopped.

Leave it to that decrepit old fossil of a Druella Black to have been born on an inopportune day. Of course Lucius was going to have obligations to his family now and then, she knew that, but... But. None of that stopped her from craving all of his attentions for herself.

She composed a reply, to be taken to the post office the next afternoon, in which she carefully kept her annoyance to herself:

Darling –

That's disappointing news – I shall miss you dreadfully as well.

Be sure NOT to tell them what you gave up to be there.

Next weekend should be lovely.

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In Emily's class on Wednesday, it was time to test the Amulets of Protection they had been working on all week. She arrived in the classroom a moment after the bell had rung, carrying a large cardboard box, and plunked it down on her desk.

"All right, class, you know what today is. We're going to put your amulets to the test and see how well your enchantments have taken hold."

Opening the box, she pulled out something made of bright orange plastic. It had a gun barrel and a trigger, and sloshed when she picked it up. She assumed a desperado's stance in front of them, crossing her arms over her chest with the little pistol in hand. "Does anyone know what this is?"

"It's a squirt gun!" Hermione Granger cried, giggling.

"Absolutely, Miss Granger. Now, for everyone who's never used one before, here's how it's done. You put your finger on the trigger, and – " Then she sauntered down the aisle and playfully squirted the stone floor in front of Dean Thomas's feet, making him jump back in his chair. The class laughed.

"Now here's how we're going test your amulets. If you've done your amulet up correctly and followed the ritual exactly, the water should jump right past you. Miss Granger, come on up here and help demonstrate, would you?" Emily reached into her desk and came out with an Amulet of Protection she had made for herself shortly before the last Orc conflict – a large round silver locket on a long chain – and looped it around her neck.

Emily pointed into the box. "All right, my girl – choose your weapon. And then tell us what you chose to enchant with the Protection ritual."

Hermione came to the front of the classroom and picked out a lime green squirt gun. "It's my favourite necklace." She held up a dainty bit of gold filigree and seed pearl on a ribbon around her neck.

"Excellent – something you're likely to be wearing most of the time. Now take one of these." She took a hooded plastic rain poncho out of the box, one of those flimsy, disposable macs available in any dime shop in the United Kingdom, and threw it over the girl's head and shoulders, and then threw one over herself as well.

"All right now, face me – " They faced off in front of the class. "And let's do this properly." Emily assumed fencer's first position and saluted Hermione with her squirt gun. Hermione did the same – and the class laughed harder.

"Okay... squirters ready?"

"Yes," Hermione said, assuming en garde position with her little green water gun in front of her, grinning at Harry and Ron over her shoulder.

"Squirt!" Then they emptied their pistols on each other, for all the world like a couple of little girls playing Cops and Robbers.

The water flumed out from the guns until it came within an inch of both Professor Swain and Hermione – whereupon the streams abruptly bent at crazy angles and leapt around both of them to fall on the stone floor behind them. A few cries of Cool! erupted from the students. "What's even better, class, is when the water jumps around you and soaks the other fellow behind you." Emily told them with a wicked little grin.

Then she took off her plastic-film mac and handed it to Neville Longbottom. "Tell me, how wet is that, Mr. Longbottom?"

Neville shook the mac over the floor, and ran his hands over the hood. "It's dry," he said. "Totally dry."

"How about this one?" She took off Hermione's mac and handed it to Harry Potter. Actually, since Potter had been unusually distractible and prone to whispering with Ron Weasley lately, she more dropped it on his head than handed it to him.

"Just a bit damp," the boy reported, turning an impressed look at Hermione. "Some water drops only."

"Well then, great job, Miss Granger! Thanks for helping out," Emily said, applauding the girl as she went back to her seat. "All right, everyone up, and push your seats back against the wall, let's make some room in the middle. Slytherins on my left, Gryffindors on my right, pick a partner and get into pairs of two... " She passed out macs and squirt guns to everyone and had them stand facing each other.

"Now – the more powerfully you've enchanted your amulet, the more fearsome of missiles it can repel," she told them, slowly pacing between them. "Right now, your amulets can hopefully repel not only squirt gun water, but rain, cold winds, that hot tea you accidentally spilled in your lap at breakfast. If you repeat the ritual, and work hard at collecting energies into your amulets, they will get more and more powerful, and the more they will be able to protect you. I've seen protective amulets strong enough to deflect short-bow darts on their own, but those are really rare, as you can imagine. All right, everyone, face your partners... "

By the end of that class session, as she suspected – some students were soaked, two or three were nearly dry, but most were some level of damp. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle both ended up wet to the roots of their eyelashes, whereas Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, and surprisingly, Neville Longbottom, were barely dripping.

"All right, everyone, remember we're starting an important new topic next week," she called as they piled squirt guns and drippy macs back into the box on her desk. "Everyone take one of the new syllabi before you go and be ready to take lots of notes on Tuesday."

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Emily Swain was not the only Hogwarts professor having difficulty in the classroom due to the heightened resentment between the Slytherins and Gryffindors following the article about Hagrid. In the first months of term, the hostilities in the Potions classroom were often as volatile as the substances being concocted.

Once, while browsing through a newsstand kiosk in King's Cross as a teenager, Severus Snape had come across a little Muggle paperback book that had intrigued him enough to purchase and read – The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. Now, after thirteen years of teaching, Snape was of the opinion that the Muggle author had penned the most accurate depiction of schoolchildren ever committed to paper. Sometimes, as he paced the aisles of his dungeon classroom when the collective mood of his students was especially anarchistic, he thought he could hear the buzz of those flies in his ears and feel their tiny feet crawling across the back of his neck.

That Friday was one of those days when he could feel himself about five minutes away from having his severed head mounted on a stake as an offering.

Unlike one of his colleagues, Snape would have regarded the use of tactics like humming popular music on the backs of chairs, or using Muggle toys to demonstrate the effectiveness of enchanted objects, to be as theatrical as they were desperate, and he had not the advantage of trotting out extremely rare and showy Faery armaments in order to rivet his students' attention. He had another poison antidote to demonstrate today, a very useful anti-caustic that neutralised the effects of any number of virulent poisons, and now he was again direly reflecting that perhaps he would need to poison one of them in order to make them listen.

He surveyed his classroom. Draco Malfoy was being his usual smug, annoying self; Crabbe and Goyle (or, as he had come to think of them, Crabbengoyle, because they were just one person with two heads anyway) were flanking him with looks of stolid menace on their faces, as always; and Pansy Parkinson was finding occasion to giggle shrilly at everything Malfoy said, and everything Neville Longbottom did. The grating repetition of her joyless laughter was beginning to give Professor Snape yet another Friday-afternoon headache.

Hermione Granger was holding forth to all the Gryffindors near her in her usual officious, pedantic, self-satisfied voice. While it had never occurred to Snape to deny the girl's obvious intelligence, and he invariably gave her the marks she had earned, he thought no one was more aware of Granger's own cleverness than herself. He saw her as later becoming the kind of teacher who could extract every drop of wonder and fascination out of everything she taught by the sheer power of her insufferably complacent know-it-all's attitude. But today he didn't feel much like correcting her.

That hopeless dolt of a Neville Longbottom was of course listening to Granger like she was his only lifeline in the face of imminent failure, which, of course – she was. Snape thought about giving another strict warning that they should never add the bezoar shavings to the cauldrons while the active reaction was still going on, but he knew from long experience that the most foolproof way to induce Longbottom to do something dangerous was to issue a strict warning against it in the beginning of the practical session. At least there were no combustible or toxic ingredients or potential reactions in this antidote, so the likelihood that Longbottom would find some way to spectacularly do himself in or destroy the classroom was low... that day, he reflected darkly. He comforted himself with the thought that no sane OWL proctor on Earth would ever give the boy a decent mark in Potions, which guaranteed that he would have to suffer Longbottom's presence in his class for a total of one more year at maximum, thank whatever gods that be.

He surveyed the classroom again. That overrated little prat of a Harry Potter was furtively examining a sheet of parchment behind his cauldron. As Snape watched, Potter became so absorbed in whatever was on that sheet that he forgot to add the (rare, budget-eatingly expensive) narwhal ambergris at a crucial time during the active reaction. Snape got up and silently approached Potter – the boy didn't notice his approach until he had jerked the paper away from him in one deft movement.

"What is it, Potter? Has another friend of yours ended up on the front page of yet another scandal sheet?"

Potter looked up at him, green eyes blinking in surprise. "No, sir. It's just schoolwork. Really, it's just – "

"Why do I not believe you, Potter?" Snape glanced down at the sheet in his hand:

DEFENCE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS, Elective Session

Third Unit Syllabus

III. FAERY GLAMOUR, in Theory and Application

A) Visual Glamours

~ To Be Seen As You Are Not

B) Auditory Glamours

~ To Be Heard As You Are Not

~ To Be Heard Where You Are Not

C) Tactile Glamours

~ To Feel What Is Not

D) Olfactory Glamours

~ To Smell What Is Not

E) Taste Glamours

~ To Taste What Is Not

F) SYNTHESIA

~ Any Combination or All of the Above, At Once

"It's just the new Defence Against the Dark Arts syllabus, sir... We just got it this week," Potter protested in a low voice.

Of course that Swain woman couldn't possibly begin her curriculum at term's beginning like everyone else – that would just be too conventional for her. Snape thrust the syllabus back to Potter with a scowl.

"Five points from Gryffindor for your inattention," he growled. "Fascinating as your other classes may be, Mr. Potter, might I remind you that in this class, the subject is Potions, and I do expect you to listen. Now – you have about thirty more seconds to add the ambergris to this mixture before it becomes completely useless, so I suggest you do it at once."

"Sorry, Professor," Harry said, grabbing for the phial of ambergris crystals. His hand was so unsteady he nearly knocked the damn thing over.

Snape glanced at the clock as he made his way back to the front of the classroom – one more hour until the weekend started. It was bad enough that he was going to lose most of Sunday to the latest bloody overdone soirée at Malfeasant – but at least he had Saturday to himself.

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Mercifully, the last class hour progressed uneventfully, and Pansy Parkinson had stopped her goddamned giggling. As the bell rang, and the students began to file out of the classroom, Snape called to Hermione Granger before she left the room. "Miss Granger. I need to speak to you."

Granger paused to exchange suspicious glances with Potter and Weasley, who looked back at her as though they thought they would have to identify her body later. (With Gryffindors, one couldn't simply speak to one of them privately without the rest of them assuming one had a nefarious ulterior motive for requiring such conversation. There was no such thing as trivial interaction with a Gryffindor – every damn thing was a Holy fecking Crusade.) "Today, please, Miss Granger?"

So Granger then dismissed Tweedledee and Tweedledum with a heroically beleaguered gesture of her head, and approached his desk. The bag slung over her back was so heavily burdened with books that Snape briefly wondered if her spine would end up permanently bent by seventh year. "Yes, sir?"

"I have been checking periodically at the library for Buckminster Swain's Encyclopaedia, and every time I inquire, I am informed that it is still checked out in your name. Tell me – do you intend to monopolise that book for the duration of your career at Hogwarts, or only just this year?" he asked impatiently.

Granger at least had the decency to blush and apologise, unlike most of her House cronies. "I'm sorry, sir, I didn't know that anyone else wanted it. I'll take it back to the library today – "

Snape stopped her with an impatient gesture of his hand. "That won't be necessary. Do you have the book about you now?"

"Yes, sir, I do – "

"I would like to borrow it from you until next Friday. Do realise that you are not the only person at this school studying Arcadian magic, and it would show some consideration on your part if you were not to completely monopolise one of the few resources on campus for this kind of study."

"I... I'm sorry, sir." Two apologies from a Gryffindor in one day – well, that had to be some kind of record. Hermione disengaged a heavy bound volume from the twenty or so books in her bag, and set it on Professor Snape's desk. "Also, sir, Professor Swain has all of Buckminster Swain's books for reference in her office – if any of the Slytherins go to her office hours, they can read any of them there – "

"Thank you, Miss Granger, that will be all," he interrupted, dismissing her with another impatient gesture.

Once Snape was alone in his classroom, he flipped through the book until he arrived at the page he wanted – a word that headed a long, long entry full of subsections and historical notes –

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"GLAMOUR. Proper noun. The Faery magical discipline concerned with the creation of sensory illusions.

Glamouring originally entered the Fae magical canon in approximately the eleventh century. It is thought that this art originated amongst a group of small rural wizard peasant communities of then-predominantly Celtic Wales, although distrust of this art kept Glamouring from gaining widespread popularity amongst wizards.

The growing population of Fae who assimilated into these Welsh communities, however, readily embraced the practice of Glamouring to such an extent that many witches and wizards do not realise that the Fae did not in fact create this discipline themselves. The abstract, diffuse nature of Glamours does not seem to take well to use with a wand; the use of a Faery Mot de Puissance to invoke Glamoured effects seems to suit this art more readily... "

Snape skimmed through the historical notes – he would go through all of that later – until he came to the section he had been looking for:

"Practical Glamouring.

The key to producing believable Glamours is through the use of effective visualisation and sense memory. By confidently seeing, feeling, smelling, etc. the effect one wishes to project affecting the world around oneself is the illusion thereby projected – "

Snape pulled the book closer to him.

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That Friday evening at seven o'clock, Emily met Professor Snape for the latest of their combat instruction sessions.

He was, she had to admit, still progressing awfully well – after spending the first hour in parry, riposte, and sequence drills, they spent the last hour in a succession of hard-fought bouts. Soon the hardwood floor and stone walls were ringing with the decisive sound of crashing lunges and steel rasping against steel.

Yes, this bloke had a will to win, all right – competitive didn't even begin to describe him. Seemed to take it very personally that he couldn't land a point on her yet – as though he expected to be able to defeat an opponent with a thirty-year head start in training and experience in a few weeks. Yet the more she evaded him, the harder he fought her – and the more his teeth clenched in fury behind the mask.

"Well – good work, Professor, you're coming along admirably," she said at nine o'clock, pulling off her mask and raking her forearm across her soaked hairline. "I've decided, though – your sword training isn't going to be the most intensive part of this."

"What will be the most intensive part of this, then?" he asked sourly, still breathing hard with exertion.

"We've now got about five months before the end of term. I think we'll work with the sword until the end of February and then move on in the first week of March. What with the situation you're in, what I think I'll concentrate on is the dagger and unarmed combat," Emily said, going over to her work table, where she had left her workout towel, and mopping her face with it.

This met with a prolonged silence. When she turned back to him, he was regarding her with an intensely adversarial attitude – as though he had suddenly recognised her as a threat and was now sizing her up for the potential damage she could do to him.

"The situation I'm in," he repeated, in a very low and deliberate tone. "What has Dumbledore told you?"

Seeing this attitude in him made her hackles rise involuntarily. "Not much, and he swore me to strictest confidence about what he did tell me," she replied, leaning back against the work table and folding her arms in front of her chest. "But I've come to a few conclusions on my own."

"Really." Attitude of sarcastic over-politeness. "Do let's hear them, then."

"All right. You've obviously done a lot of wand duelling – don't try to deny it, sir, I know combat experience when I see it. Yet, you don't swagger about talking about your Auror days like Professor Moody, so I'll assume you were never an Auror."

He fixed her with a flinty stare, but didn't correct her.

"From what some staff members have said in passing, it seems as though you started here when you were about twenty, have worked here ever since, and this your first real job – so it doesn't seem to me as though you ever worked for the Ministry in any capacity. You teach at a highly reputable school and have a staunch supporter in Albus Dumbledore, so I take it you didn't do anything illegal, or too illegal. And Dumbledore, like most excellent leaders, maintains a wide variety of contacts in sometimes unusual places. From that much – I'd imagine you had some kind of intelligence-gathering research function, perhaps working with Dumbledore outside the Ministry's jurisdiction?"

Silence. He regarded her extremely warily, arms folded over his chest.

"Perhaps," he said, after a long pause. "I've heard it said that you hold the rank of Commander at home – commander of what?"

"I don't see what that has to do with anything. I'm not the one training for an impending conflict, sir," she said matter-of-factly.

"How can you expect me to answer your questions, if you'll never answer mine?" he asked. The black eyes were impenetrable.

Well... Emily had to admit that wasn't unreasonable. She turned away from his piercing gaze, feeling the blood rising to her face. "I can't imagine why you're interested, but all right. Our units are divided up into the archers' corps and ground troops, who use melee weapons. Archers are the first wave, because they can attack at a distance, and then the ground troops move in and wipe up whatever survives. I lead a platoon of ground infantry."

"Lead – present tense," he said.

"Present tense. It's back into active service when I go home."

"Our Lady of the Blade," he muttered, turning to put away his practice sword and mask.

"Where did you hear that name?" she asked, a bit sharply.

"Lucius," he said casually, turning back to her.

In months past, Emily might have been irritated with Lucius for disclosing information about her to other people – but she was currently much more inclined to forgive him for the occasional indiscretion than not. "All right, your turn now," she said. "Was I right about what you used to do?"

"Yes, your powers of deduction do seem to be entirely accurate," Snape said quietly – but with a distinct hostile edge to his voice. "However, the truth about my former involvement in politics is not common knowledge, and if it was widely known, would put me at risk for retaliation from quite a few people. Those people have substantial amounts of money and influence at their disposal, and could make life extremely difficult for me. So you have to understand, madam, that none of this can ever be repeated to anyone, no matter how close that person may be to you."

What – did he think she was going to write chatty postcards home about it? "Sir," she said, looking at him unflinchingly, "throughout history, it has often been noted that Faeries are notoriously difficult to question or interrogate. And I've already been sworn to strict confidence about all of this by Albus Dumbledore. So in all honesty, I don't think I'm too much of a risk as a potential information leak." And I've already been concealing an embarrassing secret about you for the last four months, she thought.

Snape looked thoughtful for a very long moment. "Like you said... this is an impending conflict, and any information regarding it is very sensitive." He paused, watching her closely; she realised that he was choosing his words very carefully. "I don't doubt your ability to keep this a secret, Professor. It's... in my experience, people who become involved in this conflict, even peripherally... often have cause to regret it."

"I understand, sir," she said, without rancour. "I can only conclude that your situation must be very precarious if you're this worried."

"It is, madam," Snape replied gravely. "Now... are you absolutely certain that was all Dumbledore told you?"

"He told me you had cause to believe that... He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was seeking to return to power, and that he wanted me to teach you as many means of self-defence as I could," Emily said. "He also said that you were among the most valiant and self-sacrificing of the wizards who opposed... him, but that your involvement had to be kept secret. That was all."

He finally seemed satisfied with that – the threatening eyebrows relaxed a little.

"So, shall we say same time Monday?" she asked.

"All right."

She expected him to take his leave of her then, but he paused, his arms folded in front of him. "Why do your people call you their Lady of the Blade?" he asked.

They regarded each other silently for a long moment.

"My unit gave me that name after my first battle. You can probably imagine the sort of thing I did to earn it," she replied, meeting his eyes unapologetically. "Why did Dumbledore commend you for valour and self-sacrifice?"

"It's safer for everyone involved if you don't know, Professor," he said.

Then he nodded farewell to her – very respectfully, she later remembered – and left the room without another word.

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At breakfast that Saturday morning, the prospect of an entire weekend without Lucius looked very long and very dull.

Hermione Granger approached Emily after she had finished eating. "Professor Swain? Sorry to bother you, but could I have a look at your copy of Swain's Encyclopaedia some time this weekend? I want to read the entry on Glamours and make an outline for next week."

"You want to look at my copy? I thought you practically slept with the library copy under your pillow," she said jokingly.

"Professor Snape borrowed it for this week," Hermione said. "He said there's only two copies on campus, yours and the one I had, and someone else needed it."

"Oh, there is? I didn't realise there are so few... " she turned back to Hermione. "Well, come with me to my office, then, and I'll temporarily loan you my reference copy. I know it's not supposed to come out of my office, but I'll make an exception. After all, you are Hermione Granger," she said, winking at the girl, who grinned back. "Just make sure to give it back at Sunday supper so I have it for my Monday office hours, all right?"

"All right. Thanks!"

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That evening, Emily made a trip into Diagon Alley to Flourish and Blotts, and placed a special order for six copies of A Wizard's Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Faerielands to her father's publishing house, Obscurus Books. (She was pleasantly surprised to discover that something called a teacher's discount was apparently given to academics here.) If there was a shortage of reference works on Faery magic and culture at Hogwarts, she figured someone ought to do something about that.

She wasn't sure of the Second-World manner of presenting a gift of reference books to an academic institution, so she had a browse through the bookstore's Etiquette section for some pointers. (At home, if she had wanted to give books to a library, it would have been a matter of "Here you are, Da," "Thanks, dear," – but here, perhaps there was some sort of tradition to observe.)

She wasn't turning much up. Wizarding etiquette writers seemed to only be concerned with the really antiquated kind of upper-class British social custom. According to The Witch's Guide to Painstakingly Correct Behaviour – "A Countess is properly addressed as "Lady [Surname], or "Your Grace," "Referring to a serviette as a "napkin" is hopelessly bourgeois," and "A gentleman should always memorise the knots of his mistress's corset." (She debated passing that last gem on to Lucius for the space of about one second.) Alternatively, they seemed quite anxious to get along with, or at least avoid being eaten by, fantastic beasts. How To Be Totally Inoffensive To Hippogriffs and How to Appear Exceedingly Unappetising to Dragons both seemed popular choices these days.

"Ah, Mrs. Tumnus. I'm so pleased to see you've discovered this section," someone's archly amused voice said. Emily looked up to discover Felina Rosier paging through the Magical Interior Decoration section a few feet to her right.

"Good evening, Mrs. Rosier," Emily said with as much dignity as she could muster. "Yes, I'm looking for the usual manner of presenting a gift to a school." No need to tell Felina Rosier that she was just giving them some reference books – let her think it was thousands of Galleons to the scholarship fund or some such. She turned back to her book with an air of not wishing to be disturbed.

"How lovely," Mrs. Rosier said in a thin, pleasant voice. "I'm sure Elsie and Priscilla will be delighted to hear that you've taken an interest in our etiquette. From what Priscilla's told me, it sounds as though they used to have a time of it curbing your antics when you were little. Always pulling you out of trees and finding tadpoles in teacups when you were at Swaincroft, they say."

Emily flushed hotly – so apparently Mrs. Rosier knew her father's first family, then. Miss Elspeth and Miss Priscilla Swain were her half-sisters, now both in their early fifties and living in the family manor in the Cotswolds.

"Well, Elsie and Pris weren't the tree-climbing sort, as I'm sure you can imagine," said Emily, not lifting her eyes from the book. Thought Emily: As far as I can tell, Elsie and Pris weren't the sort for much of anything except extolling the achievements of male relatives, throwing fussy little tea parties, complaining about how expensive everything was getting, harrying their house-elves half to death, and mortally insulting my parents.

"Yes, they both always struck me as exceedingly well-bred," Mrs. Rosier said, with poisonous agreeability, in a tone that implied she was not so impressed with the breeding of the other branches of the Swain family.

"I'm sure they would," Emily said, with an affable little nod.

As before at the Malfeasant tea – it took Felina Rosier several seconds to realise that Emily's reply had not been entirely approving. Then her dark brows drew together and her eyes flashed fire. "Of course you must be an excellent judge of breeding," she said cuttingly. "No doubt the example of your Muggle family was absolutely... enlightening."

"Oh, you must be referring to my grandmother, the late Mabel Greenbarrow," Emily said, closing the book with a decisive little snap.

"Was that her name?" Mrs. Rosier said, with an air of elaborate disinterest.

"Yes, it was," Emily said, ruthlessly tamping down the desire to send every stinging and biting insect in a mile's radius swarming after the bitch in front of her. "You know, I continue to be endlessly amused by how a well-bred lady like you can refer to her as 'my Muggle family,' when your own etiquette authorities state that you should properly refer to her as 'Princess Mabel' or 'Her Highness.'''

That seemed to give Mrs. Rosier pause. "Your Muggle grandmother... was a Princess?" she asked – but now her voice seemed to be lacking some of her usual belief in her own absolute irreproachability in taking the upstart foreigner down a peg or two.

"Yes, last I checked, that was the title given to a Prince's wife, both here and in the Faerielands," Emily said, as though she was addressing a particularly dim student. "If you weren't aware of that, then here – perhaps you ought to read this book."

She swept out of Flourish and Blotts, leaving The Witch's Guide to Painstakingly Correct Behaviour in the shocked hands of that good lady.

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That Monday, as promised, Emily began her final, and most challenging, topic of that school year – on the one sort of magic that most humans thought of as synonymous with the Faery people – the art of illusory Glamour.

"All right – so far this year we've learned how to hide from attackers through Obscurantis, and we've learned how to protect ourselves through the use of magical amulets. We've also learned how to defend ourselves with swords, and we're beginning to learn the dagger as well.

"However. There is another very important art that we'll be studying until the end of this year – the art of Faery Glamour. Glamour has two extremely important defensive uses – "

Quills poised over parchment as they waited for her to continue... but then went skittering across many desks in surprise as a loud, jarring sound – like a long string of firecrackers suddenly going off – came from the back of the room. The class collectively and instinctively flinched and turned in the direction of that sound, no doubt expecting to see flying sparks – but there was nothing.

When they turned back to their professor – she wasn't there. A collective susurration of wondering whispers came up from the students.

"That, class, is called an auditory Glamour," Professor Swain said – and everyone turned hard in the direction of her voice, to where she was now standing in the middle of the room. "It was meant to demonstrate the first defensive use of Glamour – which is?"

Harry Potter's hand was the first to fly up. "It's distraction," he said. "Diversionary tactics. So that you can make your opponent look away from you, so you can Obscure yourself and hide."

"Exactly, Mr. Potter. The combination of a Glamoured distraction and the Obscuring of oneself is used so commonly in combat situations in Arcadia, that it's known in some circles as 'the old one-two,' or 'the old bang'n'dash.'

"However," she continued, "you can also distract your foes by assuming another appearance. In this manner, you can project a temporary illusion of how you wish yourself to be seen. Who wants to assist me?"

As usual, Hermione's hand was the first to fly up, but Professor Swain only smiled at her. "Give someone else a try today, Miss Granger. Mister... let's see, Mr. Weasley. Come up here." Ron joined her at the front of the classroom.

She put a piece of wood in his hand in place of his wand, just a foot-long section of wooden doweling that could be gotten from any hardware store. "All right, pretend this is your wand. Now – imagine you're a robber in a dark alley for a moment. You're going try to use a Stunning spell on me and steal all my Galleons. Ready – go."

Ron struck a threatening pose with the dowel wand, glowering at Professor Swain. "Your Galleons or your life!" he bellowed.

Professor Swain took a step toward him. Her expression changed... her hair had suddenly grown longer... blonder... she had gotten taller, more statuesque... more veela-ish... no, she was a veela, how silly they had all been to think that she was anything but a veela. She laid her hand on Ron's arm and crooned, "Actually, my sweet, I think you need to give me all of your Galleons."

Ron had his hand in his pockets and was emptying them into the Professor's hand before he suddenly looked up to a roar of laughter from all of the female students. Many of the other male students had been starting toward her as well, digging in their pockets for change.

But then the veela had gone, and Professor Swain was grinning at all of them again.

"That, class, is called a visual Glamour. Let's thank Mr. Weasley for being such a good sport." She applauded Ron as he went back to his seat, red-faced. He and Harry exchanged sheepish looks, while Hermione looked at them both and shook her head.

"So, now, can anyone tell me what the second defensive use of Glamour is?" Their professor asked, surveying them all with a challenging look. Hermione's hand strained toward the ceiling immediately, but otherwise, her question was greeted with a long silence, as students exchanged questioning looks, but no other hands went up. "Anyone have any idea? Mr. Finnigan? Mr. Goyle? Miss Patil?" Hermione leaned forward with a little gasp; but Professor Swain quieted her with a look.

"Really? No one but the redoubtable Miss Granger can think of any other way to use Glamour to deter an attacker... ?" As she spoke, the grey February light in the classroom seemed to dim... the shadows to lengthen... her long black robes were suddenly trailing like funeral wrappings... her hair and complexion lost their gleam of health and became ashen... her lips peeled back over her long canine teeth – until their teacher appeared before them as a vampiress, fangs glinting, and accompanied by a sharp stench of graveyard moss and freshly turned earth. The class let out a collective gasp; many cringed backward in their seats.

Hermione couldn't keep quiet any longer. "Intimidation," she called out. "You make yourself or the situation look scary."

"Exactly, Miss Granger. If you can look so terrifying that you send your attacker running off into the night with his tail between his legs, you can certainly keep him from attacking you." Then she was just Professor Swain again, with her usual teeth and ruddy blonde hair, all appearances back to normal. There was a long exhalation of breath as the class relaxed.

"All right then, everyone, take this down. The way to successfully project a Glamour is to first be able to experience it yourself with perfect recall... "

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Emily's order from Obscurus Books arrived by owl post that Wednesday.

She had decided to go the simple route and just present them to the appropriate people with as little ceremony as possible. So that afternoon, as the teachers were having tea after classes in the teacher's lounge, she handed copies to five of her colleagues, inscribed with Best Wishes from Professor E. B. Swain-Tumnus, School Year 1994-'95. A second library copy went to Madam Pince (To the Hogwarts Library), to Professor McGonagall (To the Gryffindor House Library), to Professor Flitwick (Ravenclaw House Library), Professor Sprout (Hufflepuff House Library), and finally Professor Snape (Slytherin House Library). She kept the last for a second reference in her own office.

Minerva McGonagall put on her glasses and read the inscription on the flyleaf. "Why, thank you, Emily, that was very kind of you. I'm sure Hermione Granger especially will be pleased to see this in our House library."

"You're welcome, Minerva. One of the students brought to my attention that there were only two copies on campus. I didn't assign any required textbooks in my classes because the most comprehensive works in the field for a Wizarding audience were all written by my father, and at the time it struck me as a bit crass to require everyone to buy one of his books," she explained.

"Oh, believe me, compared to some of the other Defence Against the Dark Arts professors we've had here, that wouldn't have seemed crass at all," Professor Sprout told her with an irreverent grin.

"Yes, I think the high-water mark for professorial crassness has already been well and truly established," Professor Snape said unexpectedly, from his usually silent seat by the fire. There were chuckles from some other professors and an heartfelt A-men from Professor McGonagall.

"Oh, is this yet another story from before my time?" Emily asked Madam Pince.

Irma patted her hand. "Tell you later, dear."

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Emily was lying restlessly on her bed that night, trying to read, and trying to pretend she wasn't listening avidly for the scratch of a furtive little urgent-post owl at her window. When she finally did hear it at about ten-thirty p.m., she couldn't fling the window open fast enough.

Darling –

I'm supposed to spend Valentine's weekend at home, but I can't stand the idea of another week without seeing you.

I can get away Friday night. Meet me at the Hulot after seven?

She penned a quick, breathless reply:

Darling –

Friday at seven it is. I can't wait to see you.

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Friday night finally arrived – now Emily couldn't be packed and away fast enough. At 7:00 exactly she was Disapparating from just beyond the Hogwarts boundary gate.

After only two weeks separation, she was as eager to see Lucius as some randy schoolgirl with a crush. After Apparating into the middle of the room, to find him sitting in one of the armchairs before the fire in another of those luscious silk robes, brandy snifter in hand – she dropped her things on the nearest chair and kissed him adoringly. "I missed you so much."

"I missed you too, love," he said, setting down the brandy glass and drawing her onto his knee.

"How was the party? Not too excruciating?"

"Yes, too excruciating," he said, raising a sardonic eyebrow. "Why can't the bloody harpy give up the ghost already? The house-elves have to change that tough old troglodyte's undergarments for her. I simply can't wait till she dies." This was an awful thing to say about his mother-in-law, but when she remembered Druella Black's petulant expression, she couldn't help laughing.

"About one hour before the guests were to arrive I thought about sending you an invitation by urgent owl post." He caressed her black-stockinged thigh in what was fast becoming a favourite gesture. "But then I had to decide against it, because you would have hated the company of all those judgmental old biddies. And of course I would have pulled you into some little out-of-the-way guest bedroom and molested you repeatedly before the first round of appetisers was passed."

"Can't molest the willing, love," she said, leaning in to kiss him heatedly; an obvious incitement to riot.

Sudden anarchistic gleam in those cool grey eyes. "Well then – it would seem to me then that someone is wearing far too many clothes."

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Something – work frustrations? the enforced separation? some family conflict? – was giving an extra incitement to Lucius's already intense appetites that night. When he scooped her up and tossed her amidst the silk and velvet bedclothes, it was with the air of some triumphant conqueror with a highly prized concubine. Whatever it was, it had him worked into a fine frenzy of excitement already, even before she had arrived. The scent of lust was already heavy on his skin and hair.

He undressed her quickly, sprawled her on her back; his usual artfulness impelled with a nearly teenage urgency. Lifted her ankle to his lips, traced the sensitive inside of her knee with his tongue; then his brandy-warmed breath moved languorously over the inside of her thigh, and upward – before long she had to crush one of the silk pillows against her mouth to stifle her cries.

She was still shuddering with the convulsive aftershocks of her first orgasm when he abruptly turned her onto her belly and covered her from behind, the soft weight of her breasts falling into his hands. Then he was lifting her hips with one arm, and slipping inside her, already painfully hard with little foreplay or preamble. What hands he had, cleverer than any thief's... coaxing her nipples into raw little peaks, then slipping between her thighs, flicking in a delicate rhythm against her sex until she was gasping, straining back onto the muscular heat of him until the second climax took her. His arms locked around her hips as he came; pulsing spasms of heat and a long, delicious tenor groan.

"My word, love – you are absolutely on fire tonight," she breathed afterward, when he fell away from her, panting, and laid his fair head on the space between her shoulder blades.

"It's been a long couple of weeks." He slanted another of those catlike, satisfied smiles at her. "A lot has been happening."

"I hope they're not working you too hard at the Ministry... "

He only smirked all the more. "The Ministry is the least of my concerns. Let's just say I've been planning something for a very long time, and now all my hard work looks to be paying off, very soon."

"Really? What is it, a business deal?"

"I can't tell you right now," he said, raising himself on one elbow to kiss her shoulder.

Emily was intrigued. "Come on – tell me," she entreated.

"I promise I'll tell you later... if you're still really interested." Lucius reached for her hand, led it down – she could feel him already semi-erect again.

"Are you... always like this when business... goes well?" He was swiftly getting even harder under a series of ever-lengthening caresses – and then he was lowering her onto her back beneath him. "Must be the deal of a lifetime."

Ssssssh, he whispered, turning his lips just a fraction from hers. Fuck me.

She was in no mood to argue with an invitation like that.

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Lucius had an early breakfast sent up the next morning, as he had to return to Malfeasant early for Valentine's weekend with his wife. He told his Faery mistress all about it while sharing a breakfast of champagne and exotic hothouse fruit.

"Do be sure to do something nice for her," Emily said roguishly, clinking her glass against his.

"Oh, it'll be the usual. Dinner, the opera, something from the family jeweller's. She'll take two hours to get ready for one hour in my bed, and if she's had enough to drink, maybe... I'll even get to see the mother of my son naked." He punctuated that with a slap on the brazenly naked arse of the woman next to him in bed.

"Aren't you lucky," Emily said. "Family obligations two weekends in a row – I shall never let it be said that you aren't a devoted husband and father."

"My dear – I am a pillar of the community in general," Lucius said, with an all-encompassing wave of his hand. "Ask anyone."

"Especially Queen Mum Troglodyte," she teased him.

"Especially Queen Mum Troglodyte. I gave up a weekend of shagging the most fetching woman imaginable in order to celebrate something like her six hundredth birthday – she ought to be eternally grateful to me. Oh, and that reminds me." He turned another of those wicked smirks toward her. "Felina cornered me at the party – told me all about how she ran into you in Flourish and Blotts. She was just terribly indignant about the whole thing, poor dear."

Emily looked down and blushed. "Of course there was no chance that someone hadn't already told you about that. I'm sorry, I know she's your widowed family friend, but she never fails to treat me like dirt every time she sees me."

"Did you really throw a book of etiquette at her head?" He sounded endlessly amused. "I wish I could have seen that."

"No, I didn't! I just put it in her hand and walked off kind of huffily... " She blushed even more hotly. "She's just being insufferable – "

"Oh, there there," Lucius said in a very soothing voice, gathering her into his arms. It felt ridiculously self-indulgent – and incredibly good – to be stroked, patted, and comforted by him after the bruising Mrs. Rosier had given her ego.

"Let me tell you a little secret about darling Felina for the next time she gets insufferable," Lucius said confidingly. "That dear lady lives off the proceedings of a very large settlement from the Ministry of Magic, awarded after the alleged wrongful death of her husband, Evan, at the hands of some allegedly overzealous Aurors, who attempted to take him in for questioning due to some yet again allegedly faulty information regarding the criminal activities of said Evan Rosier."

"You're kidding," she said, sitting up and staring at him with raised eyebrows. "Am I to now assume that dear Mr. Rosier was actually guilty of said criminal activities?"

"As sin," Lucius said with another smirk. "And the star witness in this melodrama, who gave the evidence that cleared the departed Mr. Rosier of all wrongdoing, is the same dear chap who made you have those nice pillow-chewing orgasms last night and this morning. So, you see, if I tell Mrs. Rosier that it's in her best interest to kneel and kiss your ring every time she comes within a hundred feet of you, believe me – she will."

"You gave evidence that her husband was innocent, when you knew he was guilty? Lucius!" she said, in a tone that would have been scandalised – if she was not at that moment basking in the afterglow of the aforementioned pillow-chewing orgasms while lying naked in a rumpled hotel bed, next to her married lover, with a glass of champagne in hand at 8:30 in the morning.

"I didn't lie – I just didn't volunteer everything I knew, and the solicitor didn't ask the right questions. Really, it was for reasons of charitable utility – the man was already dead, and his widow would have been left destitute. Don't think I don't agonise over it to this very day, love," he said. Had an allegorical painter been looking for a model to personify all the splendid trials of Tortured Integrity, he would have needed to look no further than Lucius Malfoy's countenance in that moment.

"And let me guess – she would have been coming crying to you for help every bloody day otherwise," Emily said.

"Well... there was that to be considered as well," Lucius said drolly. She laughed again before she could stop herself.

This was, more or less, a few shades on the safe side of admitting that he had committed intentional perjury... but he made doing so sound so pragmatic and sensible, somehow. Emily herself was certainly no wide-eyed naïf with no idea as to how criminal law worked. After all, there was practical policy to be considered in applying the law. He was leaving it for her to decide – but wasn't it more sensible for an institution like the Ministry of Magic to provide for the widow of a man killed by their Aurors, rather than the family and friends of that widow? As a witness, he wouldn't have had to volunteer proof of Rosier's guilt if he wasn't very specifically asked for it, and why volunteer that proof of his own accord when it would most likely mean a lifetime of being asked to provide for the profoundly disagreeable Mrs. Rosier... and Emily had to admit that she understood absolutely why he wouldn't want to do that.

"Well... I suppose you couldn't let a friend's wife be turned out of her home, even if he was a criminal," Emily said, laying her head on his shoulder. "The man was already dead."

"Exactly, dear. It was just a bad situation all round," Lucius said, contentedly brushing his lips over her forehead. "Evan wasn't an evil man, just a weak fool. But I'm quite serious, love, I do think it's an absolute crime that she can't treat one of my dearest and oldest friends at least civilly, after everything I've done for her. You've done nothing wrong – other than show up at a few parties in a prettier frock than hers, perhaps. So really, I'll just have a chat with her and point out that she's being ill-mannered."

"Well... that would be all right, if you promise to be tactful," she said.

"I promise, darling. I'll be the soul of tact and consideration," he assured her, with another kiss.

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After breakfast, Lucius unfortunately had to quickly ready himself for departure. He left only after kissing her lusciously in farewell and promising to see her the following weekend.

Once he had gone, Emily felt, strangely, rather like a trespasser in his hotel room. She hurriedly bathed and readied herself to go out as well. It was still early in the morning, and certainly she could find any number of ways to spend the day in London.

As she was dressing, she found a white parchment card sitting on top of her trunk, on which Lucius had written:

Happy Valentine's, darling.

Beneath it, was a tiny black velvet jeweller's box.

Emily briefly and perversely wondered if it had come from the same "family jeweller" as Narcissa's Valentine something – but then she opened the box, and could only think of how prettily diamonds caught the light for a very long moment. If the Malfoy family jeweller had made Lucius's present to her – a large pair of perfectly matched emerald-cut diamonds set in earrings of antique platinum filigree – then the Malfoys' jeweller was one very talented fellow indeed.

She wore her hair up that day.