Part Second: The Hart Rampant: Chapter 18

Chapter 18:

In the weeks between New Year's Eve and Emily's first tryst with Lucius, the time until she could see him again had seemed the bleakest stretch of ennui she had ever faced. But now, in the week following Beltane, the time until she could see him again felt like the incubation period of a fever, one whose symptoms could only be relieved by another dose from the original infection. Several times a day, she found herself checking the calendar to see how many more days there were until she could see him again.

More and more often, though, she was beginning to see the logic of moving to London after the school year was over, just for a few months. Why not spend the summer here? Her term of service to Dumbledore was technically a year and a day, but of course Gwydion had used that unit of time because he thought like a Faery King, and not a Second-World school headmaster, which was why her arrival had overshot the beginning of the Hogwarts school year by nearly a month. More than likely, Dumbledore would bid her farewell at the year's end Leaving Feast and call her obligation to him discharged. So why shouldn't she take a bit more time off? Just a temporary arrangement, nothing permanent – anything too long-term wouldn't have suited her or Lucius.

The evening after her return from Malfeasant, Emily noticed the fingerprints bruised into her forearms, no doubt from when Lucius had held her down on the bed. She could have gotten rid of the bruises with a few drops of Healing Potion – but instead she bore these marks with a strange pride and kept worrying at them sentimentally so they wouldn't heal.

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Emily's eagerness to get back into Lucius's presence left her distracted while teaching that week – occasionally she would find herself answering questions rather shortly. Her two most diligent students, Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy, almost annoyed her with their increasingly complex and challenging questions in class.

She had scheduled the first Glamour practical session for her fourth-years on Thursday of that week and, also annoyingly, found herself less prepared for it than she would have liked. To make matters worse, Professors Flitwick, McGonagall, Sprout, and Snape had evidently gotten wind of the practical session and turned up to sit in and observe, making her feel even more ill-prepared and self-conscious than before.

"All right, settle down, please," she called to the group, again acutely feeling the heat of Severus Snape's black eyes on her face from his vantage point in the back of the classroom. "Today, as you all know, is our first practical Glamour session. Anyone able to conjure up a successful defensive Glamour, for use either in distraction or intimidation, is invited to come up and demonstrate for the class. You can invoke one either with your wand, or with a Mot de Puissance, if you've created one. Would anyone like to volunteer?"

Of course, Hermione Granger's hand shot up instantly; Emily grinned at her. Of course Miss Granger would have prepared something interesting and effective for this class session, which would make a good impression on the other teachers. She motioned the girl to the front of the class.

"All right, Miss Granger, come on up here. And tell us which variety of defensive Glamour effect you've chosen, distraction or intimidation."

"Well... I suppose it could be either," Hermione said, joining Emily in the front of the room.

"And is it a visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, or taste Glamour?" Emily asked.

"Ah... olfactory, and perhaps taste," Hermione said.

"And it could be both distracting and intimidating? All right then, my girl, let's smell or taste it," Emily said, smiling.

Hermione faced the class, her brow furrowing in intense concentration, and silently spoke a word... and suddenly a smell grew in the room, the smell of an especially musky and robust skunk who felt very, very threatened. The scent was so strong, so sensually pervasive, one could almost taste its oily reek. Everyone present hunched forward, pressing their nostrils shut. Groans of disgust filled the room.

"Oh, vile!" Emily said, squeezing her hand over her nose. "All right, Miss Granger, I would certainly be distracted and intimidated by that Glamour. Now if you could please get rid of it... "

Hermione dispelled the effect, and the class relaxed, coughing.

"Fantastic job, as always, Miss Granger. And take ten points for being the first student here to demonstrate a Glamour." A murmur of approval went up from the Gryffindors, and Minerva McGonagall's chin went up proudly in the back of the room. Emily turned to the rest of the class. "Now, anyone else?"

Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy immediately put their hands up. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown put theirs up a second later.

"Let's see... Mr. Malfoy. What have you got prepared? Intimidation or distraction?"

"Intimidation, definitely." Draco got up from his seat and joined her in the front of the class. Drawing his wand from a pocket of his robes, he turned to Emily and assumed en garde position with the wand in front of him, throwing his head back with a particularly rakish fillip of silver-blonde hair. As she watched, his black school robes lengthened, paled to pewter grey, until they appeared as a long cloak, embroidered about the cowl neck with the familiar device of a black goblet, and red and violet grapevines. Draco's grey wool school sweater lengthened, the stitches becoming larger and looser, then silvery and metallic, until he appeared clad in a hauberk of Arcadian mail. His wand elongated as well, grew into a rune-inscribed blade, bell guard, and leather-wrapped grip, until it had taken on the image of an Arcadian short sword.

In a few seconds, the boy's Glamour was complete, and he appeared in the garb of a Third Kingdom knight. Emily knew exactly where he had drawn these images – from the engravings of Morrigan knights in her father's books.

"Nicely done, Mr. Malfoy, extremely detailed," Emily said, pleased, and a bit flattered. She moved in closer to examine the runes on the boy's Glamoured sword. "You've obviously researched the Third Kingdom's Fianna garb and armaments as well. Take ten points for Slytherin for diligent preparation." (Emily noticed Professor Snape's shoulders go up with satisfaction at that.)

"So, this is what I'd look like as a knight?" Draco didn't drop the Glamour immediately – he knew he looked very handsome in shining armour and a trailing cloak, and took a moment to preen in the class's admiration and envy.

"Well, that's what you'd look like for your first parade right after you were knighted, perhaps. After you'd been through some real fighting, your sword and armour would look a bit more beaten up and used – it would get some scratches and chinks and notches in it. Plus your boots and the hem of your cloak would be muddier and stained with – and stained. Anyway, very nice work." The Slytherins gave Draco a polite little polo-club round of applause.

Draco dropped the Glamour, reappearing as his usual, school-uniformed self, then headed back to his desk. Before he went, he fixed Emily with a very deliberate gaze and took his leave of her with what she thought was a very rakish smile and nod. Well – it appeared that someone had inherited his father's suavity as well as his good looks. What an infant lady killer in training.

Emily called on several more students to demonstrate defensive Glamours, with varied results. Pansy Parkinson, one of the only Slytherin students to create a Word of Power, had come up with the idea of conjuring up a disturbingly detailed illusion of a case of advanced leprosy, which certainly would make any would-be attacker run the other way. Pansy seemed to take a perverse glee in the disgusted reaction her leprous self provoked in the class, even pretending to be about to go up and kiss Harry Potter at one point ("Oi! Unclean, unclean! How 'bout a snog, Potter?") Emily glimpsed Professor Snape hiding a smirk under his hand as Harry all but huddled under his desk in revulsion.

Then she called on a few other students. Parvati Patil conjured up the illusion of a threatening, animated skeleton to come to her aid – a rather cartoonish caricature of a skeleton, more like, but with the element of surprise and in dim light, it might give her enough time to escape. Lavender Brown had the simple, but effective, idea of conjuring a flash of white light to blind an attacker – the flash was so bright that Emily saw green spots in front of her eyes for several seconds afterward.

Finally, Emily turned back to her class. "Now, does anyone think he or she's gotten advanced enough to try to use two different sensory Glamours at once?"

The students eyed each other. Some faces looked doubtful – other students seemed to challenge each other. Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy stuck their hands up. After a long moment, Pansy Parkinson raised her hand, followed by Lavender Brown, Parvati Patil, and at last, a trembling Neville Longbottom.

"Let's see... how about someone we haven't had up here before. Mr. Longbottom." Emily motioned the boy up to the front of the classroom, smiling encouragingly at him, but Neville was visibly nervous as he made his way down the aisle. She noticed Professor Snape impatiently rolling his eyes at the ceiling as though he expected Neville to flub this demonstration in a spectacularly catastrophic manner.

The hapless little Gryffindor turned toward the class, closed his eyes, and seemed to concentrate almost pathetically hard, and then silently spoke a word. At first, nothing happened. Pansy Parkinson let out one of those grating little titters.

Neville closed his eyes again, composed himself, and concentrated so hard that the freckles stood out in stark relief on his pale face.

Suddenly, the boy's short, chubby figure shot spectacularly upward – his silhouette grew taller, and thinner. His hair whitened and elongated... then his nose was suddenly much longer, and had been broken multiple times... his black school robes lengthened into flowing dark purple velvet, edged with gold embroidery... until Headmaster Dumbledore was standing before her. The illusion was marvellously, convincingly detailed, down the Headmaster's half-spectacles, his veined, age-spotted hands, and the springtime blue of his eyes.

"I'm... I'm Albus Dumbledore," this vision said, in the oddest voice, as if Dumbledore was doing a flawless imitation of Neville Longbottom's piping, insecure intonations. "I'm the most powerful wizard alive! Even You-Know-Who fears me! You leave me alone, or I'll... I'll make you leave me alone! I'll hex you! I'll jinx you... I'll... I'll... "

The boy was using an auditory Glamour, calling on his memory of the Headmaster's voice to project its sound, and again, the illusion was flawless. Neville had Dumbledore's slightly weary, low tenor tones down cold.

Emily stepped back, amazed. "Well done, Mr. Longbottom, that's an awfully impressive Glamour. That's a very clever choice of identities to assume – while Headmaster Dumbledore's appearance will provoke fear in a common thief or a Dark wizard, it won't cause a widespread panic if other people are nearby."

Dumbledore's – Neville's – jaw dropped. No one except the kindly Professor Sprout ever praised Neville's schoolwork, and no one, as far as anyone knew, had ever called Neville clever. And now Professor Swain had done both in front of everyone in the classroom, including all the Slytherins and Gryffindors of his year, and Professor Snape in the bargain. The shock of this was enough to break Neville's concentration completely, and he reappeared as his usual self, blinking in amazement.

"And take twenty points for Gryffindor as well – for being the first student at this school to successfully create both an auditory and a visual Glamour at the same time. Well done." Applause and cheers went up from the Gryffindors. Minerva McGonagall looked extremely happy, as well. As Neville went back to his seat, his two nearest House-mates, Ron Weasley and Dean Thomas, clapped him on the back and shook his hand. Neville looked like fainting was a very real possibility.

The bell rang at that moment, and Emily dismissed her class to lunch.

"Perhaps you're impressed with that, but I'd say borrowing the Headmaster's voice and appearance in that manner is bordering on disrespectful," came Professor Snape's silky undertone, aside to her – he had somehow materialised at her elbow as she cleared her desk in preparation to leave. "And isn't twenty points just a bit extravagant of you?" The last students were filing out of the classroom toward the Great Hall.

"You saw what he did," she replied, also in an undertone. "And I didn't hear you complaining when I gave Draco Malfoy all those points during his end-of-term practical."

Snape scowled, shaking his head. "Neville Longbottom, of all people. Wonders really do never cease."

"That's not as surprising as you might think, actually," Emily replied. "We have a saying at home – 'The Lady loves poets and children, geniuses and fools.' It's always the wisest and the most foolish people who seem to create the most powerful Words of Power. So in that way it doesn't surprise me that you, Hermione Granger, the Weasley twins, and Neville Longbottom have all demonstrated some facility with it."

"You think I've demonstrated proficiency, then?" Again, he looked pleased by that, but not inclined to say that he was pleased by that.

"Well, as far as I know, you created your Mot de Puissance entirely through self-study – that takes some doing. And you certainly seemed to have a handle on Obscurantis at the Yule Ball," Emily said matter-of-factly, gathering up some papers on her desk. She slanted a curious look at him. "Dumbledore didn't help you create your Word at all? You did it entirely on your own?"

"No, he didn't assist me," Snape said. "Dumbledore has created a Word of Power?"

"Oh, yes, most definitely," Emily chuckled. "I've been told he picked up Fae magic as easily as breathing."

"So that's why I don't see him sometimes until he starts talking to me," Snape muttered. "I'm not surprised that he was good at it, if the Lady is supposed to love the wisest and the most foolish."

"Gwydion was the one who taught him, back when he was Prince Gwydion. Dumbledore was a Tithe page over a century ago, and he's been back during his summer holidays now and then. Gwydion likes to tell stories about how the two of them used to dress up as rustic woodsmen and then gallivant all around the countryside having adventures. But I shouldn't stand here gossiping about him – if he's not told you, probably he prefers to keep it private."

She finished gathering her notes into a portfolio and headed to lunch herself. Snape preceded her to the door, opened it, and motioned her through it first with a curt, but courteous, gesture. Dislike her as he might, Severus Snape would no more have dispensed with an English gentleman's politesse toward women than he would have awarded an even thousand points to Gryffindor. "Thank you," she said.

Draco Malfoy sauntered up to her outside in the corridor. "I've got a question, Professor Swain – how did you become a knight?"

"For the most part – by being my mother's daughter," she replied.

"Seriously. Do you have to be born to it, or can you sign up, or what?" Draco asked.

"Anyone in the kingdom can sign up after their twelfth birthday, provided they can pass the physical screening tests. You start out as a page and then work your way up. Military pages have a time of it, because they have to do all sorts of menial tasks like mucking out stalls and waiting on officers' mess and the like."

"But, you know, the well-born sorts of pages can get out of that kind of thing, right?" Draco asked in a conspiratorial undertone.

"Er, no, they can't," Emily said. "I did plenty of serving at mess. The Crown Prince did as well. If you're well-born, that just means they expect you to handle more responsibility."

Draco looked taken aback by that, but his enthusiasm didn't wane. "All right. So anyone can sign up? Could I sign up if I wanted to?"

Professor Snape, who was standing next to Emily and listening to this conversation, suddenly had a brief but violent fit of coughing.

"Well, no, you couldn't – you have to be a native-born Arcadian subject to get in. Really, I'm just here to teach a self-defence class, not on a recruiting drive," she said, ostensibly to Draco, but more in the direction of Professor Snape.

"What if I was a Tithe page?" Draco asked.

"Tithe pages are a rule unto themselves, to some extent. We had a former Tithe page, a Muggle emergency doctor named Catherine Orson, working at one of the field hospitals during the 3022 conflict, but that was very unusual. But Tithesmen aren't allowed to join the Fianna, even as medics. That's why Cat didn't hold any official rank, even though she performed all the same duties as a field surgeon. Truth be told, she was training field surgeons."

"Oh, they didn't let her in because she was a Muggle?" Draco asked, looking as though if that were the case, he understood completely.

"No. They didn't let her in because she's human."

The boy's smug look faded. Draco Malfoy was used to being on the privileged side of most standards of exclusivity, and the idea that he could be excluded from a certain elite group solely due to his racial heritage was a new one to him. "Well... that doesn't seem fair," he said. "Why don't they take humans?"

"Tradition," Emily replied. "Worry over conflicting loyalties, that sort of thing."

"Oh," the boy said, disappointed. Then he took his leave of her, and Professor Snape, with a polite nod, and headed to lunch with Crabbe and Goyle, who had been hovering in attendance on him in the corridor.

Professor Snape watched him go, again with that look of faint shock and surprise on his face. Neville Longbottom had actually displayed talent in front of him, and now Draco Malfoy wanted to become a knight – the Head of Slytherin was having quite a day.

"I wouldn't take that too seriously, sir," Emily said aside to Snape, seeing his look. "He wouldn't be the first teenager I've known who liked swaggering about in an impressive uniform." She nodded politely to him. "I'll see you tonight."

He nodded back with all the warmth of a polar ice cap. "Madam."

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"Good evening, sir," Emily said, as the door to the practice studio opened at – of course – 6:53 on the dot.

She had added a ten-by-ten padded practice mat to the polished wooden floor, designed to cushion the inevitable falls taken by opponents during hand-to-hand combat practice, and was sitting in the middle of it, finishing up some stretches. She had dressed as per her usual preference for this kind of training – loose black sweatpants, a zippered fleece sweatshirt, bare feet.

"Good evening, madam," came the terse reply.

"All right then, on to a new discipline tonight."

Snape joined her on the practice mat, decidedly unobligingly.

"Now, we started with the sword and then moved on to dagger combat, and now we're into hand-to-hand combat – your distance from your opponent is steadily getting shorter. The style of unarmed combat I'm going to teach you builds on the system of parries and attacks you've already learned – you're going to be attacking and blocking using exactly the same forms. Only now you'll be punching with your fist instead of thrusting with a blade, and blocking with your hands and arms instead of parrying."

"Seems simple enough," Snape said curtly.

"Now tell me – have you ever punched someone before?"

"I defy you to find a man who attended boarding school in the United Kingdom who hasn't," he muttered.

"Well then, sounds like you ought to be an old pro then." Emily reached for his right hand and held it up in between them. "Let's see you make a fist. That's fine, but don't tuck your thumb in like that, it's more like – " She corrected the clasp of his fingers so that his thumb sealed down his first two fingers, instead of bracing below them. "There you are. Most of what you're trying to do with your thumb when throwing a punch is keep the damn thing from getting broken or dislocated. Good."

She turned his hand palm down, then pressed his first two knuckles against her own palm. "That's the strongest part of your hand, there – that's what should take the pressure of the hit. Again, don't bend at the wrist, it should be rigid. The form is straight out from the forearm, just like dagger and sword thrusts. Like this." She brought his fist forward until his first two knuckles lightly impacted with the heel of her hand.

"All right," he said, nodding.

"Now, let's start with some very basic drills. The opening stance is very similar to the dagger fighting opening, only you're now facing your opponent a bit more, and now the right hand comes forward and the left hand is held a bit lower down, balancing it. Like so," she said, demonstrating. Snape nodded.

"These will be exactly the same as the usual dagger drills, but now your reach ends at your natural reach, not at the end of a blade. How about the basic first set – fourth through eighth." The fourth through eighth spatial fields covered the upper shoulders and chest, and were the four most frequently used thrusts and parries in the Arcadian system. After being trained for all these months, on both the sword and dagger, Snape could probably have performed this drill in his sleep. Emily assumed the combatant's stance in front of him, ready to block. "All right, ready? Go."

But instead of punching at her, Snape stopped dead – from all appearances, quite shocked. "You mean – I'm to throw a punch at you, in fourth?"

"Yes, go ahead. I'm ready."

"Are you mad?" The air around him suffused with a tremendous amount of agitation and disquiet – his heart rate must have lurched at the very suggestion.

"Don't worry, sir, I assure you I can keep it from connecting. It's just to demonstrate the first set of punches and blocks in – "

"You misunderstand," he interjected, teeth clenched. "I. Do. Not. Hit. Women." Every word sounded bitten off and spat.

Emily frowned. "Well, that's going to put you at a decided disadvantage, sir, because I hit men all the time."

"Yes, somehow I don't doubt that," he muttered sarcastically.

"Very funny," she said, annoyed. "I defy you to teach people how to fight without smacking them around a bit – and when my squires get good at smacking me back, I applaud them. The same way I will with you. Now the simple fact is, sir – I'm female. For our purposes here, I suggest that you conveniently forget that."

The heat of that exchange raised her own heart rate enough that she took off her sweatshirt, threw it onto a chair, then rejoined him on the sparring mat. To her credit, Commander Swain-Tumnus was entirely focused on the lesson she planned to teach at that moment and did not really register the dichotomy presented by the suggestion that her opponent forget about her gender, and the reinforcement of femininity presented by the close-fitting, bare-armed black jersey she was wearing under it.

"Now, as I was saying, unarmed combat is much the same as dagger combat, only now you're punching with your fist instead of thrusting with a blade and you're blocking with your hands and forearms instead of with the blade. When someone punches at you, you need to block – force their punch to change direction with an equal and opposing motion, or stop the blow and absorb its momentum in some less vulnerable part of your body. You'll want to block with the heels of your hands and your forearms – think of them as similar to the forte of your sword."

"All right," he said tightly.

"Now, if you're concerned about someone getting hurt, we'll go very slowly until you feel more at ease," she said in what she thought was a very reasonable tone.

"Fine," he replied after a moment.

He still seemed profoundly uncomfortable, but he went through the first drill competently enough. More than competently, truth be told, but then she had come to expect no small degree of natural ability from this particular student. The way he moved, and his personal scent, however, betrayed a great deal of nervousness, as if he was being forced to endure something he ordinarily would have avoided with all his might.

"There, that wasn't so hard, you can do it," she said, as though she had expected such from him from the beginning. "Now let's try it with you blocking me. How about in first through third. Ready?"

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Emily never knew, until a great deal of time later, why Professor Snape reacted the way he did to her first punch – to her, this was just another simple drill in the spatial fields covering the head and face. All she knew was that a second after she threw her first blow at his right cheek, she was shaking her head hard, ears ringing, and gingerly rubbing her jaw, while he stared at her.

"Well, you sure didn't like that, now, did you," she said, then crossed to her workout towel and spat blue-tinged saliva into it.

"I'm... I'm terribly sorry, Professor," Snape said with a touch of an uncharacteristic stammer.

"No, no – good work. That's the first time you've landed an attack on me all year, you know – if you were a student, I'd give you twenty points for Slytherin. Your right hook's even faster than your parry seconde." She crossed back to him, and reassumed the combatant's stance. "Ready?"

"You're bleeding," he said, quietly horrified.

"Oh – my lip's a bit cut." Emily drew a fingertip over the inside of her lower lip. "It's nothing."

Apparently to Snape, it was not nothing. He immediately came forward, caught her jaw in one hand, and peeled back the corner of her lower lip with the other to inspect the extent of the damage.

"Really, sir, it's not serious," she said, shaking him off. "I've gotten my eyes blacked, my teeth loosened, and my fingers broken in sparring sessions before. This is trivial. I'll see Poppy for a drop of Healing Potion tonight, and it'll be gone. Come on, it's not even half-past seven yet."

But despite her assurances, Snape seemed so unnerved and disquieted by the accidental injury that he never really regained his concentration for the rest of that evening. He excused himself early, at eight-fifteen, claiming he had an excess of work to do.

Emily watched the door close behind him. I do not hit women, he had said, every word full of bitter resolve.

She remembered Lucius Malfoy's mocking drawl – I'm sure that he hit her, and often. I'm positive he did the same to Severus. From what I can tell, all the man ever did was sit about brooding over his business losses, nurse old grudges, and terrorise his wife and son.

She traced the fading finger mark bruises on her own forearm.

That evening, when she visited Poppy Pomfrey's office to get some Healing Potion for her cut lip, she took a slightly larger dose of it than she had originally planned, enough that her arms healed completely, to their usual unblemished state.

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When Emily returned to her apartments from the medical wing that night, there was another of those urgent little post owls scratching at her window with a note from Lucius:

Darling –

Saturday night at ten p.m. Bathsheba Hotel penthouse.

Don't be late.

She was a bit annoyed at being scheduled so late on a Saturday, instead of a Friday night or Saturday morning. He had never asked her to meet him so late before. This was the least amount of time he had ever allotted to her visit, other than the abbreviated tryst they had enjoyed on Valentine's weekend – but the circumstances of that Friday hadn't bothered her in the slightest. Really, it had been flattering that he would make time to see her during a holiday weekend.

Still... Lucius had occasionally cautioned her that this would be a very, very busy year for him. Not the least of his concerns was the projected Department of Interdimensional Cooperation, which was his pet project at the moment. Probably he had some meetings to attend or some social function at his club. If the Minister of Magic had asked him to some event, of course he had to make that a priority now. Or perhaps he had some family obligation to attend – it might have occurred to Narcissa to feel neglected of late.

Or... there was always the possibility that he just didn't want to spend that much time with her.

Emily re-read his note with a touch of anxiety. It didn't seem altogether different from various other of his notes to her – he told her the day, the time, and the place. Addressed her as Darling, like usual. But the note seemed curt, almost testy. He hadn't wasted a syllable on endearments of any kind or an explanation for cutting short their time together. And why did he have to tack on that curt little admonition of 'Don't be late?' Had she ever been excessively late in meeting him? She didn't think so. It seemed to her that she was unusually punctual in meeting him, actually – lust had proven to be a strong motivating factor in that respect.

But perhaps he was finding his attentions turning elsewhere, his fancy lighting on some new interest. Lucius was a very desirable man, that much was obvious. Extremely handsome and charismatic, able to make a woman all but swoon with pleasure in bed, obscenely rich, extravagantly generous and indulgent; even, at times, affectionate and sympathetic. Even tender, on occasion. Ensnaring his attentions would be quite a coup for many women, if one didn't mind the presence of the wife back at Malfeasant. No doubt there were more than a few ambitious little adventuresses out there who would kill to take her place in his affections.

What if... someone else already had taken her place in his affections? On the day after their first Beltane together, when she had taken offence at his comments about Muggles and decided that perhaps they were better off as friends, he hadn't wasted much time questioning that decision. Hadn't even asked her why until seventeen years had passed. It now seemed to her that he had gone on a tear through every seductive beauty at Court practically the second she walked away from him the morning afterward.

Emily lay in bed that night with a new, cold, insecure place in the pit of her stomach.

Tell me you love me, he said – and she had. Now, searching her memory, she didn't think he had ever said he loved her.

It seemed very important to her now to hear that he did.

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Saturday dawned warm and muggy, with slightly overcast skies. Emily had a long, pensive lie-in that morning, listening to the students larking about on the green in front of the castle.

In the late afternoon and early evening, she drew a hot bath, and took a long, luxurious time of washing and combing out her hair, smoothing fragrant oil over her skin, making up her face, and choosing her clothes for that evening. She dressed to attract, or reclaim, a man's attention, in scandalous bits of black lace lingerie, sheer stockings, and a lacy, delicious little black cocktail dress that left a great deal of arm, thigh, and soft white cleavage exposed.

"Goodness, my pretty, let's hope he deserves all of that," Emily's mirror said as she checked her lipstick just before leaving her apartments.

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Emily arrived in Diagon Alley at least an hour earlier than Lucius had asked her to meet him. She was in an eager, excited mood, and didn't want to hang about at Hogwarts for another moment.

This late in the evening, at about nine p.m., most of the shops in Diagon Alley were closed for the night. She thought about going into the Leaky Cauldron for a drink, but changed her mind at the last minute – on a Saturday night, there was too much of a risk of running into someone she knew, maybe even one of the other Hogwarts professors. Instead, she decided to go for a walk and explore a bit. Perhaps there was another, more out-of-the-way sort of pub to be found, or an obscure little late-night bookshop where she could while away the time until she could meet Lucius.

A ways beyond Gringotts Bank, she noticed a corridor leading off into a winding street of small shops, most of which still appeared to be open. Knockturn Alley, the sign read. It looked run down, but picturesque in a sinister, gothic sort of way.

It seemed as good a place for a brief stroll as any.

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Emily spent an amusing quarter of an hour poking around a shop called Borgin & Burkes, which looked like some kind of museum of the macabre. There was definitely a good chill to be had out of looking at the cases of shrunken heads, blood-stained playing cards, elaborate jewelled rings with chambers for poison, gallows rope – even what purported to be a genuine Hand of Glory. The owner, who introduced himself as Mr. Borgin, tried to interest her in a cursed opal necklace that supposedly had claimed the lives of nineteen Muggle owners to date. "It would make a wonderful gift... for a rival, perhaps?" Mr. Borgin insinuated. Emily pictured it around Felina Rosier's or perhaps Druella Black's neck for a second, but then decided against it.

Her attention was caught by a glass case full of elaborately crafted small bottles, most of them fashioned of bright faceted glass in jewel colours, with engraved and bejewelled stoppers. "Ah, yes, the finest poisons – entirely tasteless, and nearly undetectable," Borgin said. "Someone you would like to be rid of, perhaps? Like... a lover who doesn't treat you with the respect you so obviously deserve, dear lady?"

Finally, Borgin's oversolicitious behaviour began to get unnerving – he followed her around so closely that she could smell the boiled cabbage he had had for dinner as intimately as if she had prepared it for him – so she nodded farewell to him and moved on down the street. A moment later, her attention was caught by the stacks outside of a bookseller's shop, and she spent a few minutes poring over titles: De spectris et apparationibus, Summa diabolica, De Consummatione saeculi, a verse play called The King in Yellow.

"Well hello there." A fortyish wizard in a dandyish velvet robe and silk waistcoat, his hair slicked back with what smelled like an inordinate amount of Sleekeazy's, had appeared at her elbow while she riffled through the pages. "Haven't seen you around this part of the Alley before."

"Just doing a bit of window shopping," she said with a quick, meaningless smile. From the look of him, just another idiot labouring under the stereotype that Faeries are all easy, apparently. She turned back to perusing the rack of books, clearly indicating that this conversation would go no further. This was the game of Surreptitiously Ogling Emily Swain the way she was used to playing it before she met Severus Snape or re-encountered Lucius Malfoy. The next step of the game would be the one where he properly went away now.

The dandyish wizard, however, didn't seem to be playing properly. He moved up close to her elbow – the scent of agitation and testosterone almost overpowered the smell of hair tonic. "So tell me, what, er, sort of girl are you? Which is it?" the fellow asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

She looked at him uncomprehendingly. "I'm sorry? Which is what?"

"Your poison of choice," he said, smirking. "I could get either for you, if you want to come along and talk about it."

"My poison of choice," she repeated, thinking of jewel-coloured glass bottles with ornate stoppers in Borgin & Burkes. Evidently this fellow was expecting her to be conversant with some sort of street lingo, but she had no idea what he was talking about.

"You know, darling – are you a speed or a smack sort of girl? We've all got our pleasant little habits." The fellow stepped closer to her – then, to her utter disgust, he slipped his arm around her waist. A second later, however, he drew it back, gasping with pain and surprise.

"I'm the kind of girl who's going to hand you that arm on a platter if you try that again," she said evenly. "You'll be going now."

The dandyish fellow took her advice and stood not on the order of going. As Emily watched him hurry off, she thought that this particular fellow would not be making assumptions about a woman's easy virtue based on the shape of her ears in the future.

He darted into one of the windowless, well-kept private clubs lining this end of Knockturn Alley, the sort of establishment that had a burly doorman out front, and that only well-heeled male patrons seemed to frequent. Emily glanced at the discreet sign above the door –

Pasiphäe's.

Either the owner was Greek or someone was making a heavy-handedly ribald folklore reference. Probably what some pretentious owner thought was a classy name for his strip club. Emily checked her watch – fifteen minutes to ten p.m., almost time to meet Lucius. She had best be off.

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Emily was turning back toward Diagon Alley. In another ten or fifteen seconds, she would have been gone, and entirely missed seeing the two people who emerged from Pasiphäe's at that moment. As events fell out, however, she was standing just outside that establishment at just the right time to see a very slender, very young girl emerge from the darkness within, closely followed by a very fat middle-aged wizard, dressed in fine silk business robes, a brilliantly coloured waistcoat straining over the bulk of his middle, and a white Saville Row dress shirt with a starched, rumpled collar.

The girl had the look of a Faery sluagh, instantly recognisable to anyone of Arcadian birth. There could have been no mistaking her huge black eyes, the transparent white complexion, the blue-black sheen of her hair. She was wearing a little blue Arcadian dress not unlike the one Emily was wearing at that moment, that revealed a great deal of black-stockinged leg and pale bosom, and a short blue velvet jacket. Her hair was done up in a stylish little upsweep, the almond shape of her black eyes exaggerated by cosmetics. She looked exotic and sensual, a sexy little nymphet out for a very good time – or so the Glamour she had conjured would have had the observer think.

But it was not an ordinary human observer watching her from across the narrow street, but one of her countrywomen, and one who had been trained to see through Glamour at will. And what Emily saw through that Glamour commanded her attention at once.

Clearly, this child was sick. Under the illusion of pleasing slenderness, her face and legs were positively gaunt; there were deep shadows under her eyes and cheekbones. She looked like one of the Faery refugees whom the King's Seventh had helped relocate, after their farms were destroyed in the last conflict. Emily hoped that wherever this girl was going with that fat wizard, there was going to be a good dinner at the end of it.

It seemed, however, that wherever this fellow was taking her, she wasn't in any hurry to get there. She was shrinking away from the heavyset wizard, who had her by the upper arm and who was rather violently nuzzling his lips against her neck. The bloke had clearly had too much to drink; he was punctuating every remark with overly emphatic gestures, fists in all directions. He looked belligerent, accidentally violent, as though the slightest provocation would send him into actual abuse.

"Miss? Are you all right?" Emily called to the girl.

"Yeah, yeah, fine," the girl said offhandedly, her eyes never leaving the bellicose wizard in front of her.

"Who's that? Get rid of her, Lisa," the fat fellow said, pulling the sluagh girl against his bulk in a rather violent caress. He dragged her close, slopped a wet, explicit kiss on her lips. Then he wrapped an arm tightly around her waist, and was off down the street, pulling her along with him.

The young woman didn't go along entirely compliantly, however – she stopped, drew away from him, muttered what was probably an entreaty not to be handled so roughly. The fat wizard was having none of it, as he shook his head and grabbed her around the waist again – but now the girl extricated herself with some vehemence, seemed about to turn around and walk back into the club they had just left, leaving her drunken escort alone on the street.

"Fine, Lisa," he said. His hand went into his pocket, came out with a small white packet. "Shall I see if someone else would like a bit of this, then?"

Whatever he was dangling in front of her, it did the trick of securing her compliance. She turned back to the wizard with a little, apologetic smile, and took his arm again, her head hung down on the fragile white stem of her neck.

What on Earth was going on? But no matter what the situation, the girl was her countrywoman, and Knight Commander Swain-Tumnus didn't like the way she was being treated.

Emily put down the book in her hand, and followed them down the street.

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She caught up to the little sluagh girl, still being brought along by the fat, aggressive wizard. Then reached out and grasped the girl's insubstantial wrist. "Miss? I need to talk to you."

"Oh bloody hell, I said I was fine! Get your fecking hands off me! Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?" the girl demanded.

Emily wordlessly pushed her cloak back to reveal her bare right arm – and the brilliant colours of the Fianna armband. The girl's black eyes took it in and, as she suspected, knew who the hell she thought she was immediately. "My Lady Fianna," she said in a stunned whisper. "I didn't know... I'm sorry."

The fat wizard had turned hard around when the girl in his grasp had been stopped. At first he seemed annoyed, but his expression changed when he saw Emily clearly in the gas lamp-light. "Well, hullo there, Pretty. Who's your friend, Lisa? Are you two ladies working together this evening?" He leered frankly down at the cleavage revealed by Emily's skimpy black dress. She realised a second later what he took her for, and her skin burned with humiliation. The sluagh girl cringed.

Are you a speed or a smack sort of girl? We've all got our pleasant little habits. Are you ladies working together this evening? And the white packet the fat man had dangled in front of the sluagh girl, when she seemed briefly recalcitrant.

Suddenly, everything was extremely clear to her.

Emily stared at the fat wizard in glacial disgust. "Leave. Now," she ordered, keeping a firm grip on the Faery girl's wrist.

"Well now! No need to be so hostile. I'm sure I can meet your price," he said cajolingly, then slipped a hand under her cloak, and ran it down over the bare skin of her upper arm. She caught a long whiff of undisguised, unwelcome masculine lust.

She furiously shook him off. "I don't have a price, and neither does she. I told you to leave." Her tone would have had students, or squires, scattering like leaves in the wind.

The fat wizard's red face flushed even redder as he gave her a very unpleasant look. "Well, you may think yourself out of my league, girlie, but I know durned well what Lisa's going rate is. Now if you're not working tonight, perhaps you'd best be flitting your little pixie arse along so I can continue chatting with my friend here."

"I'm not a pixie. And I'm going to tell you once more, that it is very much in your best interest to walk away right now. And I'm not going to tell you again," Emily said in a very measured, deliberate, and warning tone that few people other than Orcish military, Faery criminals, and Jayson Robinett had ever heard from her.

"Listen, you little pointy-eared cunt, I don't give a toss about who you are or what you want me to do," the man snapped back at her. "Lisa, tell this bint to get bent and come on."

Lisa's terrified gaze darted between her angry customer and the steely-eyed Morrigan knight confronting him, neither of whom seemed willing to back down for a second in this contest. But unlike her customer, Lisa knew what the Fianna were and what they were capable of. "Mr. Boswell... er, you really might want to go, sir. I'll... I'll talk to you later, all right?"

"Why, you stupid little Faery cow – who the bleedin' hell do you think you're talking to?" the man snapped – then cuffed the girl despisingly across the cheek, making her gasp. He turned back to Emily with an impatient, warning look. "And there's more where that came from if you don't get a move on, slut."

For one very long, vivid moment, Emily pictured how this son of a bitch would look after an elbow smash to the hinge of the jaw – but instead, she threw back her head and silently spoke one word.

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The heavyset wizard who believed that he had purchased Lisa's favours for that evening was a wealthy man, the possessor of much property and thousands of Galleons. He was accustomed to ordering his wife, his children, and his employees about, and seeing them cringe when he raised his voice. As such, he expected the blonde Faerie in the black dress and cloak to back down once he threatened her. After all, she was a woman, he outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, and she had just seen a lordly demonstration of the way he treated women who crossed him.

He never expected for that blonde Faerie to stand her ground in front of him, for all the world completely uncowed and unafraid – and the last thing on Earth he had ever expected was what she did next. Suddenly he was blinded by a white light – the shadows of Knockturn Alley were illuminated as if by a floodlight – the blonde Faerie was no longer wearing a short black dress but something metallic, brighter than chased silver –

Then that light was reflecting off a tall, magnificent figure clad in brilliant chain mail, with a slender sword strapped over her back and a wicked-looking dagger at her hip. Her face was painted with sinister symbols in blue, her hair woven with black feathers. Storytellers in this world and others had long told tales of the terrible glory of the Shining Host burning like the light of a star, and Commander Swain-Tumnus took some of that mythic Glamour for herself that evening. Draco Malfoy may have borrowed this appearance for a classroom demonstration, but he was a boy in a fancy-dress costume compared to what confronted the Honourable Edmund Boswell, Esquire, that night.

The fat wizard turned from her pitiless gaze with a sob and ran away as fast as he'd ever moved in his life.

Then the Fianna warrior turned back to the Faery girl, and held out her hands, said something in a language that none of the human denizens of Knockturn Alley could have understood. But there was no mistaking the entreating tone of her voice, the way she beckoned to the girl – Come away with me.

A second later, both Faeries had vanished completely.

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Five minutes later, while the startled inhabitants of Knockturn Alley tried to figure out what had just happened, two women unobtrusively made their way toward Diagon Alley, and the entrance to the Muggle world, unnoticed by anyone. The fair woman held the tearful dark one to her side like a long-lost younger sister.

They paused in the alleyway just outside the Leaky Cauldron to give the girl a chance to compose herself. She took a few deep breaths, calmed her crying, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She looked about twelve, hunched there against the brick wall in her thin jacket, short dress, schoolgirl tights and shoes with her eyes watering and her nose running. Emily dug in her purse for a handkerchief and handed it to her. "Thanks," she said.

"Anytime," Emily replied, gently tucking the samite-black hair behind her ear, so she could get a good look at the slapped cheek. There was no bruising.

The sluagh blew her nose, noisily. "That was a really cool Glamour back there."

"Don't mention it." Emily glanced down at the Fianna armlet. "You sound like you might be from the Third Kingdom yourself, if you know what this means."

"Yes," the girl whispered. "Oakhaven Valley, north of Rivendale, originally."

"I'd like to know your name," Emily said gently.

"They call me Lisa here," came the spiritless voice.

"Lisa. I've not met many Lisas in Gwydion's lands."

The girl kept her eyes downcast, snuffling into the borrowed handkerchief.

"Tell me, if you will, child, what name your mother gave you – I'll not betray it."

"Liria," the girl said, almost inaudibly.

"Liria. That sounds more like one of us." She had relinquished her hard grip on the girl's wrist and was now gently holding her by the shoulder. "I've no idea how you came to be here, but I'll not leave you here, in this place, if it's within my power to get you out."

"I can't leave, I'm... " Liria said miserably.

"Why not? I'm sorry to ask so baldly, but what holds you here? A husband, a child? Some debt or obligation?"

"I don't have any family anywhere," Liria said. "My mother died when I was little... My father died in the last war."

"I understand," Emily said. They were both silent for a long moment, bound by sympathy and mutual loss.

Finally Liria looked up. "Well, where to?" Her expression so meek and dispirited that Emily's heart broke for her.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

"I'm never hungry anymore," Liria murmured.

Emily's hand curved gently around Liria's cheek as she examined the girl's face. It was impossible to tell if a sluagh's eyes were more than usually dilated, but there was no mistaking the listlessness, the shivering, the light film of sweat on her face, and the mild, unmistakable tang of something foreign, and toxic, in her sweat.

"Liria, forgive me for this, but I need you to tell me... what drug have you been taking?" she asked.

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Emily had found another red call box, gently held Liria against her side as she called a telephone number out of her personal address book. Oh please, Sacred Mother of Us All – please let Cat be home.

"Hullo?" a sleepy voice said on the other end of the line.

"Hello? It's Emily Swain calling for Dr. Catherine Orson, please, and it's urgent."

"Em? It's me. What's up?"

"Catherine, thank the Mother you're home. How soon can you meet me at the hospital?"

"What's going on?" Catherine asked, her voice taking on a sharp, aware edge.

"Who is that?" Liria asked, stirring peevishly against Emily's shoulder.

"It's all right. She was a Tithe page," Emily said to Liria, then addressed Catherine. "We've got an addiction case, Cat. Can you meet me at your work?"

"Give me fifteen minutes," Catherine said. "I'm there."

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Dr. Catherine Orson, a Muggle Tithe page of the class of 1978, had for some years worked in the Emergency ward of St. George's Hospital in Summerstown, London. To this day, that highly respected member of the medical community explains the gaps in her Curriculum Vitae, from 1978 and 1979, and from 1987 to 1989, as "sabbaticals abroad with my family."

During her Tithe service, Catherine had wholeheartedly devoted herself to learning as much about Faery physiology and Faery medicine as she could. When she returned to Arcadia during the most recent war, she had been among the most valiant of the field medics treating wounded soldiers and civilians.

As a result of these studies, Catherine Orson was one of a very small number of British physicians capable of treating the various ailments unique to the expatriate Faery community in the United Kingdom, which she did from a small clinic hidden within St. George's Hospital itself. It is entirely probable that she was then, and is now, the foremost human expert on Faery addiction medicine, but it is unlikely that that achievement will ever be commemorated by any medical association or scholarly journal.

Catherine met Emily and Liria in the parking lot of St. George's, at quarter-past eleven that night. She was a tall, statuesque woman with pale skin and striking, sardonic green eyes, dressed in jeans, black boots, and a black turtleneck, her light red hair hastily combed back into a ponytail. Emily hurriedly made introductions.

"All right, you'll both want to Obscure yourselves, and follow me," Catherine said. "This way." She led them through the hospital back entrance.

"Good evening, Dr. Orson," the admitting receptionist said as Catherine strolled by her desk.

"Good evening, Sally," Catherine said, giving no indication that she was being followed by an Arcadian faun and sluagh. But then Sally Haverforth was a hard-bitten realist of a woman who had worked in the medical field for over twenty-five years, who probably didn't believe in either of them anyway.

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The clinic was located on the hospital's sixth floor inside a long-unused two-room storage facility. Catherine led them down a long hall, then halted by a seemingly blank section of wall, and passed her hand over it – "Ende Obscurant" – and silently spoke a word. A scuffed, institutional-green door appeared.

Catherine unlocked the door and led them in, illuminating the interior with a whispered "Lioht" and another inaudible invocation. Immediately inside was a small anteroom with a desk and chair. Through a doorway just beyond was a larger room with two hospital beds, a rack of clean patients' gowns, an IV stand, and a neat stack of boxes of medical supplies stacked on a table and against the wall. Beyond it, another storage room had been converted into a makeshift medical laboratory.

Cat took an anxious look up and down the hall, then turned back to Emily. "All right, bring her in."

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Catherine went right to work examining her patient with the characteristic cool efficiency Emily had come to expect from her friend. She performed a thorough examination, then talked to Liria for a long time, making notes of some of her replies. Then she took a vial of blood and dispatched the girl into the tiny w.c. for a urine sample. Emily remained out in the anteroom during the examination, in order to give doctor and patient their privacy.

"Can you tell me anything?" Emily asked after Catherine had gotten Liria into a clean hospital gown and into bed.

"Yes, she's said it's all right for you to know. It looks as though you've been deemed In Loco Parentis in this case, my Lady Fianna. But I need to run some more tests before I make a diagnosis," Catherine said. "Stay here with her – I'll be back in just a bit."

After Catherine had gone, Emily glanced at the wall clock at the front of the room – quarter till midnight.

Don't be late, Lucius had written her.

Well, it looked as though she was going to be.

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Catherine carried a whiff of strong agitation upon her return, riffling through some papers attached to a clipboard. "Come here, Em. I need to talk to you privately." She turned to Liria. "Pardon us, honey."

Outside in the anteroom, Catherine turned to her with a worried expression, speaking in an urgent undertone. "Apparently, she came here to live with a human boyfriend she met at her first Beltane about a year ago. The guy used to drink a lot, and when he was really drunk, he hit her. So she left him, but he broke her arm on the way out. And of course they put her on a morphine drip for the pain when she was in hospital," she said.

"So when she got out, she had to have more of it," Emily replied, also in an undertone.

"So the story goes – she tested positive for opiates all over the place," Catherine said grimly. "The veins in her arms are so ruined I could barely get a blood sample."

"Bloody idiots," Emily snapped.

"Em, it's because they don't know any better, and your kind isn't going to tell them. That poor kid probably didn't have any idea what was going on," she said, nodding in Liria's direction. "Now if I had my way, there'd be giant bloody warning signs in every hospital in the Wizarding world – 'Do not administer opiates to Faery patients under any circumstances, addiction danger.' You bloody know that."

"Yes, Cat, I know." She stared down at the floor. "What can we do about it?"

"Well, she tested low on everything – I'd say she's borderline malnourished right now, but she says she has no appetite. I'm going to have to put her on a glucose IV. But from all the test results, the physical symptoms... it's a classic case of heroin addiction, Em. What we really need is some of my opiate inhibitor Potion. Unfortunately, she's the second heroin-addict patient I've seen this week, and it's not easy for me to get all the components in the first place – which means I'm now clean out."

Emily stared into Catherine's face, stricken.

"Yeah," Catherine said, nodding grimly. "It looks as though we're going to have to wait until the apothecaries in Diagon Alley open. Then you'll have to get the ingredients for me so I can make up the detox potion."

"Isn't there anything else we can do?" Emily glanced at Liria, lying in bed. Her face was bathed in a light sheen of sweat, and her breathing was coming huskily. The skin seemed stretched painfully tight over the knuckles of her hands. Liria looked up, offered her a cheery, pathetic, little smile.

"I can try to keep her sedated till then... or maybe give her some methadone to cut the worst of the withdrawal, but neither one of those will really help anything. What she needs, desperately needs, is to get detoxed. I'm halfway tempted to figure out where some apothecary lives and drag his arse out of bed, myself."

"And of course, seeing as how it's past eleven on a Saturday night, none of the apothecaries are going to be open until Monday morning." Emily's head tilted down onto her clenched hands. "Shite."

"Okay, let's go to Plan B," Catherine said. "You work at that Wizarding school – they've got to have a Potions department, don't they? Don't you know anyone who could help?"

Emily thought of Professor Snape, bristling every time he passed her in the halls. "They do teach Potions, but unfortunately the Potions master there cordially despises me."

Catherine gave her a look of hard incredulity, her green eyes flashing yellow with annoyance. "Good God, Swain – how did you manage that?"

"Anyone with a pulse could probably manage that," Emily protested, though in a tone that lacked complete conviction even to her own ears. "If you knew Professor Snape at all... he's known to everybody who's ever met him as one extremely tough bastard."

Catherine was unfazed. "But this tough bastard presumably has his own key to his own stores for Potions? And you know where to get a hold of him right away?"

"Well, it's late, so he's probably asleep in his quarters, but... "

"Then I suggest, as your doctor, that you go wake this tough bastard up, plead your case to him, and ask him for help – and just suck it up if he's in a bad mood about it, Em. Liria's not doing well – she was going through withdrawal when you found her, and it's getting worse. I'm still afraid she'll go into convulsions before morning," Catherine said severely. "He's the only plan either of us have right now. What's the worst he's going to do if you ask him? Say no? Maybe get angry and yell at you for disturbing him?"

Severus Snape – the only plan anyone had right now.

"Catherine, you don't know what he's like. My chances of actually getting him to help are pretty much nil. And appeals to his higher instincts are probably wasted on him – most of the time, I can't tell if he's got any."

"Well, he's a man, right? Maybe try flirting with him a little? You're wearing the right clothes for it."

Emily glanced down at the black cocktail dress – she had completely forgotten what she was wearing. "I don't think he'd respond to flirtation, quite frankly."

Catherine stared at her in disbelief. "Swain? Hello, you're a fucking Faerie – you gals have been driving humans to doing all sorts of crazy shite for centuries. No mortal man is immune to your Fair Folky wiles, remember?"

Emily grimaced. "This one is. Very much so. He scoffs at my Fair Folk-iness."

"Is he gay?"

"No, I'm pretty sure he likes women – he just doesn't like me."

Catherine threw up her hands in annoyance. "Then I don't know, do something, because if he's got the potion components readily available, we need him. Ask him if he's got a consulting fee, for Chrissake – you forget, we don't use the barter system here. Everybody here likes money."

Silence. They both listened to Liria's laboured breathing. Emily felt a bead of sweat break free from her hairline, and drop down her neck.

Catherine was having none of her friend's indecision – she stalked to the desk, whipped out a few sheets of hospital letterhead stationery and a prescription pad. "Okay, he's a teacher, right? I'm going to give you something guaranteed to instantly command the attention of any teacher – a doctor's note. And as a Potions master, he'll no doubt immediately recognise an apothecary's compounding prescription. Just ask him to fill it, and promise him whatever the bloody hell he wants in return. If he says no... all right, fine, we're no worse off than we were before."

"There might be an apothecary's open in Australia right now," Emily offered desperately. "I could Apparate over there and – "

If looks could kill, the glare Catherine gave her would have splattered her broken corpse all over the wall behind them. "I'm sorry – I was under the impression I was talking to a sword-swinging, Orc-hacking knight?"

That sword-swinging, Orc-hacking knight took the note and prescription from Cat's hand, now very abashed. "Sorry," she said meekly, and a second later was gone from there with a crack of Apparition.

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Emily reappeared at the gate outside of Hogwarts a moment after leaving the hidden clinic at the hospital. She Obscured herself the second she arrived at the gate, then ran back up toward the dimly lit castle looming above her. Cursing a blue streak to herself the entire time.

Why, oh why, couldn't this have been a library science emergency? Damn it all, why not a Charms emergency, an injured Magical Creature who needed Hagrid's sort of Care, or an urgent need for a Transfiguration specialist? She knew people who not only would have helped with such crises, and but who would have been bloody well reasonable and pleasant about it as well. Flaming Christian hell, why did it have to be a potion that Liria desperately needed to keep from going into convulsions? Or alternatively why couldn't Hagrid, or Moody, or Flitwick, or anyone other than Severus Snape, have been the fellow staff member who she had to accidentally mortally offend through an injudicious bestowing of sexual favours?

Holy Chaucerian phuque, why did he always have to be so bloody difficult? Were social skills, the ability to forgive, an ordinary person's sense of not behaving like a fecking bleeding raw nerve all the time, so utterly beyond him?

And where, oh where the hell was Slytherin dungeon again?

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Professor Snape did not like being disturbed while he was reading. Especially not when he was reading Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia, a volume which had long been one of his favourites. Particularly especially when he was lying comfortably in his bed with a half-drunk glass of twenty-year-old Oban whiskey on his night table, at half-past midnight on a pleasantly balmy May night, wearing nothing but the bottom half of his favourite grey flannel pyjamas.

But the knock at his door came again, much more insistently this time. He reluctantly threw back the bedclothes, put on a robe, and went to answer the door, with the intention of giving whomever was disturbing him a good dose of what for.

"This had better be a matter of life and death," he snarled at whomever was knocking on his door – then discovered, somewhat to his mystification, that he seemed to have thrown the door open on a completely empty corridor.

But then someone said, "It is, Professor," and suddenly Professor Swain was standing in the hall, materialising solid as life, her face burning whitely with high anxiety.

Snape took one look at her and accepted the gravity of the situation, whatever it was, immediately. "What is it? Has another mountain troll got in?"

"No. Can you mix a potion?" she asked, in an urgent whisper.

He stared at her, both sinister eyebrows reaching an alarming altitude. "You got me out of bed... to ask if I can mix a potion? Yes, I can. Quite a few of them, actually. Now that we've established that – good night, Professor."

Snape nodded to her, barely perfunctorily, and started to turn away and close the door.

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Emily threw a shoulder against the door, and stopped him. "Wait – it's a specific medicinal potion. Someone I know is extremely sick and needs a dose of it immediately."

"Who is the someone?" Snape demanded. "A student?"

"No. You don't know her."

"Her." He looked at her in hard disbelief. "Oh good Lord, if you tell me it's some student who's fallen pregnant, I'll – "

"No, nothing like that," she interjected quickly. "But she's very ill. I know you're not happy to see me, especially this late, but please believe I wouldn't have bothered you if it wasn't a dire emergency – "

"Professor. Since you've already gotten me up, perhaps you could please be so kind as to spare me the meaningless protestations, as I already know exactly how valuable my time is to you. Tell me – is there any reason at all why you can't simply take whomever this is to St. Mungo's?"

Emily shook her head emphatically. "Most wizard Healers wouldn't have the first bloody idea how to treat this sort of ailment."

"Really," he said, in an arch, unconcerned tone. "And exactly which potion it is that you supposedly need?"

Emily handed him Catherine's note and prescription, hastily handwritten on hospital letterhead stationery, from out of her pocket. He accepted it grudgingly and turned away to scan over it.

"Well, this Dr. Catherine Orson certainly seems to know what she's about, doesn't she?" he snapped, tossing Catherine's note aside, then glanced at the compounding prescription and began ticking off ingredients to himself. "All right, I've either got all of this or can get it easily enough from the greenhouses... but, inactivated sap of Tibetan poppy? You've got... not one but three controlled substances in this potion. Do you have any idea what kind of hell I could catch from the Ministry if this is improperly administered?"

"I realise that, sir. It won't be improperly administered, I promise."

"And this Dr. Catherine Orson, who works at some establishment with the very Muggle name of St. George's Hospital, somehow knows how to administer a Wizarding medicinal potion?" He stared at her in hard, accusing disbelief.

"Yes, she does. Sir, she was a Tithe page, she – "

"Tithe page – you and the Malfoys keep using this phrase, and I still don't know what it means. Care to perhaps tell me?"

"Sir... I haven't time to go into all of Cat's various credentials, but she's familiar with Wizarding, Muggle, and Faery medicine. I can't take our patient to an ordinary wizard hospital because it was going to a doctor that got her into the situation she's in in the first place."

Snape glared at her, his brow creasing. "What happened? What sort of ailment is it?"

Like many, many others at Hogwarts, Emily had come to dread Severus Snape's penetrating black gaze, demanding whys and wherefores. She been quite serious when she suggested to Catherine that perhaps she Apparate to Australia to find an apothecary's that was open for business. She felt wildly edgy under that stare of his, and when a Faerie is under duress, her natural tendency is to divulge absolutely nothing. "I can't tell you that," she said.

Snape almost threw the prescription sheet at her. "Why not?"

"I can't," she implored.

Snape had reached the end of his never-exemplary patience. "Professor – listen to me." He slammed the prescription face down on the low bookshelf nearest the door, making it tremble. "If you get these concentrations wrong, and give this potion to this – girl, woman, whomever she is – she could end up sedated into fecking cardiac arrest and die, do you understand me? Why can't you tell me what in the bloody hell is wrong with her?"

"Look." She was beyond polite entreaty. The tendons in her jaw and throat peeled back as she bit off the words. "If I could have made it myself, I would have – but I haven't the skill with Potions that you do, and I don't have access to these components right now. I cannot ask you – entreat you – more humbly, to help me.

"But please tell me, will you do this, or not? Because if you won't, I'm going to have to find somebody else, and I don't have much time. Actually – I don't have any time. Every second that I don't bring this to her, she's in pain – you didn't see how sick she was when I left – and I can't stand knowing that. If you won't help, can't you at least – just out of ordinary decency – give me the name of someone who can – "

"Dammit, woman!" Snape spun around and stalked a few steps back into his quarters. He made as if to punch one of the bookshelves, but did not. "I bloody well will not make it – unless you tell me what it's for and generally prove to me that this woman, who you claim you're so concerned about, won't be dead by this time tomorrow. I do have some passing familiarity with pharmacological ethics, thank you very much."

"Professor, please – I would tell you if it was for me, but this is a countrywoman of mine, and she has the same sort of feelings about personal matters being widely known that I do – "

"I have no interest in knowing her name or her bloody mailing address, and I'm not going to demand her bloody True Name in return, all right?" he snapped back at her. "You say you haven't time to explain everything to me – well, perhaps I haven't the time to even have this bloody conversation, did you ever think of that? If a lady is going to bang on her colleague's door in the middle of the night and ask for his help with some difficult and arduous task – because believe me, preparing this potion is not going to be any picnic – then perhaps she should realise that she's in no position to dictate terms to him? Do you really think it's such a great honour for me to help you?"

She froze, staring at him in shock, realising that this hope had been a vain one. He wasn't moved at all by her entreaties and didn't care what was going on. He wouldn't help her, but he was willing to take this opportunity to elaborate on her seemingly endless array of personal shortcomings. Now she had no plan at all, and had come all this way, and made Liria suffer just that much longer, so she could become the target for another scolding, yet again.

Humiliatingly, she felt her chin trembling. She muttered a half-audible apology for disturbing him, and in another second, would have slunk miserably away.

But then, astoundingly – Snape paused, seemed to take a few deep breaths, and addressed her in a lowered tone. "All right. You're telling me someone's health is at stake... and contrary to popular opinion, I don't want anyone to suffer horribly if it can be avoided. And none of the apothecaries are going to be open until Monday morning."

She nodded silently.

He regarded her with a chilly, unreadable black gaze. "Professor – I have to be absolutely certain that this extremely powerful potion, which you're asking me, the Potions master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to make up for you, would be used properly. So perhaps, for just one moment, just out of ordinary decency, you can just forget you've got a bloody secretive national character, and for the very first time since I have known you, tell me what is going on, or I don't see any reason why I shouldn't put you out into the hall and shut the door on you exactly the same way you did at the Malfoys." His tone that let her know very clearly that he had been quite irked about that little display of temper since the day it had happened.

"Oh, all right." She turned back to him, head lowered; admission of defeat. "If I tell you, will you do it?"

"I might," he growled. "Now – and I'm going to ask this once more – what's ailing her?"

She took a deep breath and exhaled very slowly. "She's going through heroin withdrawal."

He paused for a long moment, then indicated the apothecary's prescription. "This is a cure for opiate addiction?"

"It's an opiate inhibitor. It has the same effect as a Muggle drug called Naltrexone."

"But this version is based on Faery physiology?"

"Yes."

"How is it administered?"

"Initially, the patient receives it intravenously while under anaesthesia for about a day, so as to get through the withdrawal. Then she takes a small oral dose every day for about six months."

Snape sighed. "All right, if I'm to consent to this... this late-night mission of mercy, I'll need to work with this Muggle doctor or whomever she is to make sure that this woman is treated properly. If I can't personally oversee this treatment, I won't do it, and that's final."

Emily's heart leapt into her throat and her hands jittered. She was afraid to speak lest she say something wrong, and somehow offend him into refusing at the last second. She fought off the wild desire to hug him. "All right. Yes, of course. If you insist."

"I do insist." He glanced down at his bathrobe-clad chest. "Now would you terribly mind leaving, so I can get changed?"

"Oh – pardon me." She turned to leave, but when she reached the doorway, she remembered something and turned back around. "I'm sorry – Muggle clothes are best if you own any, sir... ?"

But he had already started taking off his dressing gown – flash of pale olive skin and bare, sinewy shoulder, arm, and back. While she had always found his looks intriguing – not exactly handsome, but somehow she would rather look at him than at many another man considered more attractive – she had never quite realised that he was such a specimen with his shirt off. Certainly several months of six hours of combat practice a week would have left anyone in fairly decent shape, but... for just a moment, she forgot herself and took a much longer look than she really should have under the circumstances. Snape half-turned and raised a questioning eyebrow in her direction – and she all but fled back into the hallway, emphatically closing the door behind her.

Minutes later, he emerged from his quarters dressed in plain black trousers, a white dress shirt, and a long black raincoat, clothes that would not have attracted too much notice anywhere, with his black satchel in his hand. He locked and warded his bedroom door behind him.

"By the way, how did you get down here?" he asked, turning back to her. "How did you get the passwords?"

"I don't know the passwords. But... your painting heard them correctly. Professor, please, I promise I'll explain later," she said, seeing his look. "Now we probably shouldn't be seen leaving the campus this late at night, or Filch will question us. Here, I'll Obscure both of us and – " She held out her hand.

"Why don't I just do it myself," he said coolly.

She stared at him, amazed. "You've gotten that advanced already?"

"The Lady loves children and fools," he said wryly. "Now I have to make a trip to my office and down to the greenhouses, but then I'll meet you in front of the gate, and we'll Apparate together from there."

"All right. Now you'll want to turn your back to me."

He turned his back on her, and she turned hers on him. Both silently whispered words under their breath.

A second later, anyone looking down that hall would have thought it was completely deserted.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

While Snape was down in the greenhouses, Emily made a dash up to the Hogwarts Owlery and dispatched a swift barn owl into London in the direction of the Bathsheba Hotel. Affixed to its leg was a hastily scrawled note:

Darling –

Delayed unavoidably. Matter of honour, must see it through.

Please see me next weekend?

And please don't be angry – I'll make this all up to you.

But when that note was received, a minute or two after half-past one a.m. that morning, her imploring "Please don't be angry" went entirely unheeded. Lucius Malfoy wadded up her note and threw it aside with a furious scowl, muttering several quite profane descriptions of Lady Swain-Tumnus which would not look at all nice in print, and thus are not recorded here – and then hurled the crystal hock glass beside him into the fireplace.

Then, he wrapped himself in a hooded black cloak and headed toward Knockturn Alley in search of other entertainment.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

When Malfoy arrived at Pasiphäe's, however, the place was buzzing with scandalised gossip. The vampiresses at the bar were muttering fearfully amongst themselves, and no one appeared to be working. The proprietor, a short, burly, round-faced man known only as Pandarus to the clientele, was wiping down glasses behind the bar, keeping an anxious eye on the door.

"Pandarus, old man." Malfoy took a seat at the bar.

"Evening, sir, haven't seen you in awhile. Strange night, ain't it?"

"If you say so," Malfoy said dismissively. "Is Lisa about, perhaps? Do tell her someone would like to see her, if she's free."

"That's the strange thing about it," Pandarus said, with another anxious look at the door. "Lisa's gone. Vanished."

"Vanished? Do you mean she's run off?" Malfoy's expression betrayed his opinion of being inconvenienced by the unaccommodating behaviour of yet another Faerie that evening.

"No – more like some crazy bint with a sword carried her off."

Malfoy froze. "'Some crazy bint with a sword carried her off?' What happened?"

"One of Lisa's regular visitors showed up to see her tonight. So as she was leavin' with this good benefactor, some blonde bint came up to her. This blonde bint came in from Diagon Alley and starts trouble right away, folks are saying. She'd just lit into a fine gentleman outside, just for saying hello to her, he said. So this very troublesome little blonde didn't want to let Lisa go with the feller. So, rightfully, he tells her to shove off. Then – they say she rises up like she's about ten feet tall and made of fire, and threatened to cut his twig and berries off with a sword. Nearly frightens the poor man into a heart attack. Then she grabs Lisa – just kidnaps her, I'm told – and vanishes with her like a bleedin' ghost. No one's seen Lisa since."

"She wasn't a ghost," Malfoy said, turning his bemused gaze toward something very far away. "She was another Faerie. And I see she's still an insufferable do-gooder, at that."

Then he turned back to the pimp behind the bar. "Your best brandy, please. A double."

Pandarus poured the brandy into a snifter, his eyebrows knitting together. "You know her, sir?"

"Yes, I know her," Malfoy said, taking a deep drink to calm himself. "And if I know her at all, Lisa, if that ever was her real name, is probably in hospital right now. By this time tomorrow, she'll be back through one of the portals with letters from a king's kinswoman in her pocket."

"Sir? How did you – who is – how did she – ?" Pandarus was spluttering with rage. "Lisa owes me for – that bitch has got a lot to answer for! Thinks she can waltz in and scare the customers – making off with other folks' employees like that – if I ever see her back in this part of the alley, she better – "

Malfoy laughed despisingly. "You couldn't possibly hope to make her account for anything, you ridiculous little man. If you see her in this part of the alley again, you'd be best advised to stay away – because if she had actually felt threatened enough by Lisa's customer to draw a sword on him, he would have died."

Pandarus was silent, staring at him.

Lucius Malfoy turned his back on the proprietor and downed the brandy in one long swallow. Then he tossed a Galleon behind him onto the bar and left.