Part Second: The Hart Rampant: Chapter 20, Part 1

Chapter 20:

Severus Snape never thought he would see the day when he had a Faerie sitting on his office worktable, asking him if there was anything he really wanted.

It was a scenario straight out of one of the books of fantastical adventure he had loved as a boy, in which the good Faerie arrived to offer the hero the means to save himself, if he only gave the right answers or asked the right questions. Or perhaps this was really the scenario in which the evil Faerie appeared to tempt the hero from his quest – he wouldn't have put that role past her. As always, her real motivations and agendas were as mysterious as they were suspect. Tam Lin or True Thomas might have faced much the same predicament – but somehow Snape doubted that Tam Lin or True Thomas ever met the kind of Faerie who sauntered into one's office wearing a short black frock under an open professorial robe, casually perched herself on one's workspace, crossed one black-stockinged knee over the other, and then leaned forward with that sort of smile.

If they had – Merlin help them.

Professor Swain had apparently been quite serious when she said that she owed him an obligation for what he had done for Liria. It had now been over a week since the night he made up the opiate inhibitor potion at St. George's, and she showed no signs of letting up with the gratitude. She was now practically following him around like a slender blonde shadow, discreetly pestering him as to what she could do for him in return. Her attention was as frightfully embarrassing as it was obscurely gratifying.

Truthfully, if he could have had his own way in this matter, Snape would not have required anything further for his efforts. Catherine's heartfelt, "Thank you, you've been a godsend tonight," and seeing Liria's suffering alleviated had really been quite enough reward for him. (Well, that and the sight of Emily Swain swallowing her pride to humbly entreat him to grant her a favour had also been a rare, choice moment.) He hadn't gone to the hospital that evening with the notion that he was bravely sallying forth on some absurd Gryffindorean Quest to Help the Innocent and Oppressed; he had decided to lend his aid that night purely for reasons of utility. Someone else was suffering. It had been well within his power to put a permanent end to that suffering, at the cost of a few hours' work and some lost sleep. The opiate inhibitor potion was challenging to make, but had not taxed his ability to the limit – it wasn't Wolfsbane, for pity's sake. The benefit to Liria had been immeasurable, and the cost to him comparatively minor, so to Snape, his logical and appropriate reaction to such a situation had been clear. He regularly worked far harder than that for far less appreciation and had been very much resigned to that state of affairs for most of his life.

But today, Professor Swain had turned up on the dot of 3:53 (his office hours were to start at 4:00 p.m. that afternoon, but somehow the little minx had figured out that he would be there early). Since students almost never showed up to his office hours, there now promised to be an unbroken two-hour stretch in which he had nothing to do but listen to her lay offers before him.

"I've never met the apothecary who didn't have some legendary grimoire he would give his eye-teeth for in the back of his mind," she was saying. "So if you'll tell me which one is your particular favourite, sir, I know people who are extremely good at locating that sort of thing."

"There really isn't much that I can't find in the main library here," Snape replied, despite the fact that he could have named three or four staggeringly rare and expensive tomes that he would have loved to own at that very moment.

"Well, all right," she said. "Then, not to be indelicate, but it seems that in this world, with the invention of things like banks and instalment loans, everyone has some kind of financial obligation he or she would love to see disappear forever."

"Possessing neither a mortgage nor a bank loan of any kind, I'm afraid I can't help you there, madam," he said, even though there was a certain estate tax payment looming ominously in his fiscal calendar.

They had been going on like this for awhile, and neither of them were about to surrender their respective positions.

He pictured himself crossing the dungeon floor and seizing her, taking another of those long, selfish, callbox-ish kisses of her. There had been a time when he could have done just that without consequence, albeit with a very different kind of woman. In the past, he had known women to whom he could have snapped, "There, I've done something for you, and you owe me. Now come into my bedroom and I'll describe all the various lascivious and generally obscene acts I want from you in return," and had that curt demand honoured – but he had given all of that up a long time ago.

She was still sitting on his worktable, damn her. From all appearances totally unaware that seeing her looking at him like that felt like metal grating on the exposed root of a tooth.

Yes, you ridiculous, unobservant, catastrophically oblivious female – I can think of something I wouldn't mind having. But for now, why don't you just sit there and woo me for another hour.

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What a reversal of fortune this was, Emily thought, as she sat in Snape's office.

Lucius apparently wasn't speaking to her. She had now sent him three apologetic, adoring letters, asking him to name a time, any time, when he could see her. Ten days had gone by, and there had been no reply.

And now, she owed Professor Snape a rather large debt of gratitude – and he seemed bound and determined to not let her discharge it. Instead, he was playing the stiffly formal English gentleman to the hilt, acting as though helping reclaim the life of a Fae drug addict was just the sort of thing someone like him did, thank you very much. All in a day's work, you see, a brilliant Potions master's job is never done.

Lucius was being stand-offish and impossible, and Professor Snape was being gracious and generous – in his own sullen, stoic sort of way.

It staggered the imagination.

She gripped the edge of the table and racked her brains for some bloody thing Severus Snape might want; obscure, hard-to-find information had been at the top of her list, some debt paid off had been second, as per Catherine's suggestion. From there, she really couldn't think of anything else that might appeal to him, other than perhaps early retirement.

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Finally, that Thursday evening – there came the scratch of a secretive little post owl at Emily's window, bearing a letter in Lucius's familiar handwriting:

Madam,

So glad you could take the time out of your busy schedule to notice my existence again. For future reference – I dislike being kept waiting, my dear. I have gone out of my way to make you a priority, and I'm a bit hurt to discover that I do not warrant the same consideration from you.

I suppose I could manage to make some time to see you this coming weekend, if you aren't distracted by another pressing matter of honour.

But don't think you can simply sashay in and expect a moment of your usual sort of feminine wiles to win me back, either. I shall expect rather more effort than that. Extra points if you expend said efforts in fetching black lingerie. This Friday night at the Cockatrice, I shall be amenable to receiving such efforts in the penthouse suite after half past eight or so, but unfortunately I shall be in a meeting with my dear brother-in-law that may run late that evening. Just wait for me in the hotel lounge until you see him leave, then come up.

Now if you will excuse me, I must need go indulge myself with another sulk because my treacherous lover so scandalously neglects me.

All right then, so he was playing coy, was he – darling Lucius, the poor wounded lover with his hand nailed to his forehead. So he wanted her to win him back, woo him, play the supplicant in bed for him.

This could be managed, she thought, smiling roguishly to herself.

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Friday night arrived, and Emily took the usual long coquettish time after that evening's supper to slither into the right sort of evening wear to appease a sulking Malfoy. She then covered the low-necked, low-backed dress and explicit lingerie with a long velvet robe, and tucked a small volume of Christina Rossetti's poetry into her bag. If she was going to have to wait for Lucius in a hotel lounge, she was not going to give anyone the idea that she was particularly approachable, as the impression left by the fellows who had solicited both her and Liria in Knockturn Alley still left an unpleasant taste in her mouth.

The Cockatrice Inn was a small but very elegant hotel built in the 1920's in the Art Deco style, situated right where Diagon Alley intersected the bespoke shopping street of Sartor Alley, and Theatric Alley with all its cabarets and theatres. Emily had spent the night in its most lavish penthouse and club suites on more than one occasion, but she had never yet been in its lobby or cocktail lounge. When she arrived, at perhaps quarter past eight that evening, she thought the vivid Deco floors of black and silver marble, the lyrical metal railings, and etched glass mirrors behind the bar were quite beautiful. She ordered a snifter of French Armagnac in the lounge, and took a seat on one of the slender, velvet upholstered stools at a table that afforded her a clear view of the lobby. Then she opened her book and pretended to read – all the while trying very much not to look like someone who was there for an illicit assignation with Lucius Malfoy.

Nine o'clock came and went, and Emily began to get impatient. What could Narcissa's brother possibly need to talk to Lucius about that took this much time, she wondered – she wouldn't have thought Menzentius had enough raw brainpower to sustain an hours'-long conversation. She wondered for a long moment what they were meeting about in the first place – some joint business interest? Or, more than likely, the dissolute Menzentius was begging Lucius to bail him out of some gambling debt or wheedling for a loan he would never pay back; that wouldn't have surprised her in the least.

At quarter past nine, Menzentius finally made his appearance, descending the sweeping staircase into the lobby. He looked every bit the profligate aristocrat, in expensive and slightly rumpled robes, his ash blond hair loose around his shoulders. Emily hid behind her book, waiting for him to cross the lobby and be gone.

But then – oh no – he was turning toward the lounge bar, he was making a beeline for the door – of course he was the sort who couldn't walk past this sort of establishment without stopping in for a drink. Emily glanced desperately around, waiting for a moment in which she could Obscure herself, but the lounge was too crowded, there was no way she could manage it without creating a distraction, and there was no time for that, he had gotten to the door, and –

He had seen her. Shite.

"Well, hey there. Fancy running into you, my fair lady," he called out immediately, all the way across the bar, in a raucous, carrying voice. Emily cringed.

Then to her absolute horror, he sauntered down the aisle to her table and slid onto the stool opposite her. "Garçon," he said, catching the bartender's eye, "I'll take a double Glenlivet, thanks." From the smell of him and the slight slur to his speech, this would not be his first whiskey of the evening. He turned toward her with his usual sort of overly familiar look. "So what brings you into London, my lady?"

Emily managed a weak smile. "Just getting out of Hogwarts for a bit – it can be dull there at times unless you're about fourteen years old," she said, with false gaiety. She closed her book and put it back into her bag. "Just came from some book shopping." That was true enough – she had peered into the Flourish and Blotts window on her way in.

The bartender put a cut crystal glass of whiskey at Menzentius's elbow, and he indifferently handed the man a Galleon. "Lucius is staying here tonight," Menzentius told her. "He's got some Wizengamot thing he's going to, at his club."

"Really," Emily replied neutrally. "How nice."

Menzentius picked up the whiskey glass and took a long swallow, then regarded her with keen grey eyes over the rim of the glass. "Let's see... when did I meet you," he mused aloud. "The masquerade ball, at home, wasn't it."

"Yes, I believe that was it," Emily said, with a bright, meaningless little smile.

"Prettiest little thing I'd ever seen in my life, I thought, when you got there. Crying shame I didn't get to dance with you at the Daughters of Wendelin thing at the Ministry, I thought. Under the weather that night, I was," he told her, gesturing earnestly with his glass. "And I don't care what Felina says, I think wearing negligées to formal occasions is dead sexy."

"Er, I didn't wear a negligée to the New Year's Ministry ball, sir. I wore Arcadian dress robes."

Menzentius grinned at her. "Negligées, Arcadian dress robes, what's the difference. Either way – dead sexy."

Emily hid a disbelieving smirk in her brandy glass. "Thank you."

"Ever since then... I've been doing some thinking." He fixed her with a long, thoughtful look, toying with the glass in his hand – then, to her surprise, laid his other hand over hers, where it rested on the lounge table. "I'll lay it all out on the table, love – I've fancied the pants off you since the day I met you, but you seem like the kind of girl who doesn't put it out there unless the bloke is serious. I understand that, you've got your standards, that's fine. I know the Swains are a good lot, and Lucius tells me the rest of your family is sort of all right, for foreigners. I think I could get past the hooves and stuff if you don't come to bed like that. So what do you say?"

"What do I say to what?" Emily asked, not at all sure what he was getting at.

"Come on, darling, I'm not going to get down on my knees here. But my family'll get you the biggest, fanciest diamond ring you've ever seen."

Oh by the Mother – he was proposing to her.

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Emily had had a man propose marriage to her once before.

It had been shortly after the treaty of 3022 had been signed. Emily, her lieutenants William Blake, Victoria Priquette, and Corvus Greenwood, had each been awarded the King's Arms for exceptional valour that day, along with several other members of both the Order of the Morrigan and the Sixth Kingdom's Order of the Lady Cliodhna. Sir Dorien Tumnus, Emily's lover, had been accorded his long due honours in that ceremony, alongside her, and their fellow Fianna. Although she had fought alongside Dorien for over two years, the two of them had only admitted to their intense mutual affection some three months before.

After the medals ceremony, after the feast, and the dancing, Dorien had asked her to take a walk with him, out onto the balcony overlooking the river. Please marry me, he had whispered, holding her hands, gazing into her eyes. Yes, she had answered instantly. So few words, but such limitless love and desire expressed within them. That had been a real marriage proposal.

This, on the other hand, was ridiculous.

Menzentius Black was still looking at her across the table, waiting expectantly for her answer. He took advantage of her moment of silence to down another deep swallow of whiskey.

"I... I was married once," she said quietly. "Just a bit less than four years ago. Truthfully, after the way it ended, I really have no desire to ever be married again. So, while I appreciate your... regard, I'm afraid that I have no choice but to politely decline."

Menzentius fixed her with a disbelieving stare. "Lucius isn't going to like that," he said flatly.

Something perverse and rebellious flared up in Emily. "Then Lucius can kiss my arse."

With that, she pushed her stool back, and walked out.

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Five minutes later, when Emily Disapparated into Lucius's sumptuous hotel suite, it looked as though Lucius expected to be the recipient of some arse-kissing more than he was inclined to mete it out.

He was sitting in an armchair near the hearth, in a white shirt and rich waistcoat, collar unfastened; and with a brandy glass in his hand. His sensuous mouth was petulant, his grey eyes flashing fire. Lord Byron himself could not have looked more 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know.' The whole effect was enough to cause a curious melting sensation in the pit of her stomach. He nodded a cool greeting to her. "Lady Swain."

"Darling, I haven't seen you in so long." She wasted no time in putting her robe and bag aside and rushing to his side.

"Yes, it certainly has been some time," he said, not-quite-glaring at her. An edge in his voice, as if he was too much a gentleman to castigate a lady, but only just.

"How have you been?" She twined her arms around his neck and leaned in to kiss him.

"As well as can be expected," he said, sulkily, turning his lips away from hers at the last second.

"Please, dearest, can't I at least kiss you?"

"Oh, I don't know," he drawled. "Is there another matter of honour you have to see through before I can have a moment of your time?"

"Come on, darling, you can't imagine how much I've missed you," she whispered, running her lips humidly over his cheek. "I would never have kept you waiting if it hadn't been a matter of life and death. What happened was... a friend of mine was extremely ill and there was no one but me to look after her. I simply couldn't leave her alone in such a state," she pleaded.

"And who exactly is so important that she takes priority over me?" he demanded, his scent spiking upward with annoyance and irritation.

"She was another Faerie – no one you know," Emily said quickly. Her sketchy explanation, however, clearly annoyed Lucius a great deal – he raised the brandy snifter to his lips and drank it off in one swallow, then stood up, and stalked away from her, turning his attention to some papers spread out on an expansive desk.

Emily followed him. "It's not that I don't value my time with you – you know I do," she implored. His scowl said that he would be the judge of that, thank you very much.

She wrapped her arms around him from behind, laid her head supplicatingly on his shoulder. "Please, my love, don't be like this," she whispered, in a tone so meek and mild that many people would not have believed it of her.

His response was to spin her hard away from him, and push her down on her stomach over the desk. Her belly pressed against a land deed, her breasts against a transfer of real property title, her cheek against a business licence. Sound of a belt being unfastened, and then his hand parting her thighs. Emily held her breath as she waited for what would come next.

Lucius's idea of penance for a long wait apparently consisted of taking her, roughly and without preamble of any kind, as she lay over the desk – but as always, he could somehow conjure heat and pleasure in her no matter what the circumstances. She writhed back onto him, crumpling a great deal of important paperwork beneath her. As always, it never seemed to matter how he wanted her, how unsettling his demeanour, or who would disapprove of this; somehow her body wanted him, craved him. If this was punishment, the Mother knew she had no motivation to be especially good.

His arm was hard around her hips, forcing her back and onto him, and his teeth bared against the back of her neck. The orgasm churned up like a storm – but then he pulled away from her at the last second, making her moan with disappointment. In another second, he had whisked her up and effortlessly thrown her over his shoulder, and the next, he had sprawled her on the bed.

"Now," he drawled, stretching himself out next to her, and looking like a cruel taskmaster indeed. "Let's see how persuasive you can be, shall we?"

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Some hours later, after Emily's methods of persuasion had rendered them both naked, satiated, and covered with sweat, Lucius finally seemed appeased. He relaxed against the silk pillows, and allowed her to coax a smile out of him with many kisses and caresses.

"Oh, I've got the strangest news," she said, after she had left his lips and moved on to nibbling on his ear.

"Do tell," he purred.

"I ran into your brother-in-law earlier this evening," she said. "I was waiting for him to leave, like you said, but he decided to come into the bar instead."

"Oh," Lucius said, unconcerned. "How is he?" He ran his fingertips over the cusp of her throat, making her quiver.

"Drunk."

"What else is new," he murmured, with a droll little shrug. "He smelled like a distillery when came to see me."

"So he sat down with me and got drunker, and then he asked me to marry him," she said incredulously. "How do you like that?"

"Good," Lucius said calmly, his hand stroking the curve of her neck down onto her breast. "Congratulations. This October, I think, ought to work for the family."

She half-extricated herself from his grasp. "You cannot be serious."

"I'm quite serious. I'd dearly love to have you for a sister-in-law," he said, drawing her back against him and affectionately squeezing her rump.

"Let me make certain I understand – you want me for a sister-in-law?"

"Absolutely. It'd make things wonderfully convenient, with you living with us. We'd just wait until your darling husband passed out in a drunken stupor, throw the counterpane over him, and shag away."

What he was suggesting was appalling, but the image struck her as so funny that she couldn't help laughing. "Er... wouldn't I have to let that idiot touch me occasionally?"

"Not that often – from what I hear, he passes out drunk so much that he's fairly useless most of the time, and when he can manage it, it's over very quickly."

"Well, that's not surprising," she said, laughing. Then, she gave him a funny look. "Wait – how do you know that?"

"Women like to talk to me," he said, with a shrug – then gathered her warmly into his arms. Her favourite of Lucius's moods, the warm, expansive, purring side of him, was back. "Come on, marry my brother-in-law. It'll be great fun. You could move into your own wing of the house, like you wanted, and I would father all your children. Then Menz will have drunk himself to death by the time he's thirty-five, and you'll be free again, and between the Swain money and the Black money, and what I could do for you, you'll be richer than... " He whistled, shaking his head. "You'd be pretty bloody rich."

"Excuse me – what are we going to say when, after my totally hypothetical marriage, I have a bunch of completely theoretical children that look more like you than like my titular husband?"

"Believe me, dearest, in the Malfoy family, there's a long established tradition of saying absolutely nothing when a child resembles a brother-in-law or father-in-law more than the titular father."

Emily stared at him. "That's unbelievable," she said.

He just shrugged again. It was such a comic little anti-reaction that she actually laughed.

"But – what will your family say regarding the new infusion of Faery blood into the family tree? I remember hearing myself described as 'Buckminster's little sylvan afterthought' by someone while at your house."

"Well, if your children are fathered by a wizard, it's entirely probable that they won't be Faeries at all, will they?" Lucius said smoothly. "Your father was a wizard, and your maternal grandmother was at least human. But at any rate, that makes you only one quarter Faerie – wouldn't the Fae blood breed out?"

"Probably, seeing as how they would be fourth generation, like Cat Orson is. But I've never thought of it that much, seeing as how I don't want to have children. Remember, I've always said that I have less maternal instinct than a fence post? I told you that when I was seventeen?"

He moved breezily along with plans. "Then in a few years Druella will be dead, Draco will be leaving school, and I'll send him and Narcissa off on lots of holidays, Menz will still be snoring away in pools of his own vomit, and you and I will have a splendid time."

"You've got it all planned out, don't you?" Emily said, with a laugh half of amusement, half delicious horror. Scandalous as he undeniably was at that moment, the smug, perverse glee he took in it was hilarious. Oh, the cleverness of me!

"Well – the Malfoys don't get divorced, dear. I can't offer you the security of marriage myself, but Menz can. So you'd be his wife by law, and mine in practice." He leaned down and put a lingering kiss on the swell of her breasts. "Just promise me I get to have you first on your wedding day, all right?"

"You don't get to have two wives, Lucius, I'm sorry," she said, with mock reproach.

"Why not? I can afford them," he said, with an airy smile.

"Darling, part of why this – " she gestured from him to herself " – suits me so very well is because there is no chance of it getting serious. I'm only here temporarily. You're married, you're not about to get divorced, and there it is."

His pleasant mood evaporated, and he turned away from her with a scowl. "Well... that hurts a bit," he said, visibly trying to hide his dismay under a tight smile. "You can really make a fellow feel used, at times, my Lady Swain."

This struck a nerve. Occasionally, she still remembered Professor Snape telling her, with such brooding hurt on his face, that he had not appreciated being seduced and unceremoniously abandoned, and writhed with self reproach over it. Now, Lucius had to go and rake up all the same sort of guilt. She wrapped herself around him from behind, kissed his shoulder, but he was not about to be pacified that easily.

"You know so very well how I feel about you, Emily, you always have. Even when I was a callow youth at Court, you've always just amused yourself with me. Every day I'm with you, I know you're going to leave." He heaved a long, heartfelt sigh, his face averted from her. "I've always loved you, even though I know you never really felt the same."

She buried her head in his shoulder, feeling every muscle melting with helpless affection. "Dearest, please. I can't say I've... never felt the same."

"Can you really blame me for wanting you to stay here with me?" His voice had lost some of its self-contained polish and became for a moment raw with emotion.

"Well... no, of course not."

"I'd spend every night at home if you were there," he whispered with boyish longing. "When I think of waking up every day to see you at the breakfast table... having you there at Christmas... I can't imagine anything more wonderful. Would it really be that bad?" He was looking at her like some dreaming child might look on a far-off star, and again, she couldn't help but melt to see it.

"No... it wouldn't be that bad," she said, averting her eyes, her arms tightening around him.

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That Sunday, Professor Snape had decided to treat himself to a day at the Main Library of Magic, being well caught up on his lesson plans, potions budget reports, and all of his grading duties. He arrived just after lunch (the elderly beggar was not at his usual post on the front steps, he noticed), and had soon holed up in one of his favourite haunts with a pile of interesting reading. Ever since the night he had spent at St. George's, he had become increasingly interested in opioid antagonist potions like the one Dr. Orson and her friend Collier had created and was now reading up on them to satisfy his personal curiosity on the subject. Truth be told, he had genuinely liked Catherine Orson, and by the end of that night, had very much respected her work. If he could somehow add to the body of knowledge she was now pioneering, it seemed to him a worthy goal.

After several hours of pleasant study, he took out a quill and a piece of parchment and had begun trying to draft a consulting invoice for Professor Swain. Both the idea of presenting her with a huge bill as a means of establishing that his time was in fact valuable, and presenting her with some small niggardly amount to show her how very little he needed anything from her, appealed to him. Admittedly, she had been rather more tolerable and respectful since that night at the hospital; but no matter how much she perched on that table and cajoled him, her aloof ice maidenly demeanour remained firmly intact. He wrote down a staggeringly large figure, but then frowned, and crossed it out.

Snape had noticed that Professor Swain hadn't been at breakfast that day, though it was far from the first Sunday breakfast that she had missed at Hogwarts. She had stayed at school the weekend after he had assisted her with the potion for Liria – it had been a tiny, but real, relief to see her looking over some new books with Irma in the school library. But this weekend, she was away again, and for some reason her absence was especially irksome to him now. The thought came unbidden – likely she had another bit of a date with whomever she had been going to see the weekend she ran into Liria. But then he reminded himself, There is no commitment whatever between that woman and me. It was a shag, you idiot, not a fecking marriage proposal.

He wondered, for a moment – because he had always had a habit of tormenting himself with dwelling on grievances – with exactly whom she had this date. Someone I met at the Ministry ball, she had said. Well, forgive him for noticing, but as far as he could tell, the group of men she had met at that particular function seemed to him to have been a small crowd, thank you very much. Podmore, Whimple, Shacklebolt, that Goblin Liaison bloke who was always toadying up to Lucius, even the Minister of Magic. No, the description she gave was so vague it could have been any man there – well, except those she already knew. And thankfully, that excluded Lucius, Menzentius Black, and Walden Macnair.

But then – she hadn't really excluded Lucius from that group by saying that she had a date with someone she met at the Ball, had she.

Snape had, through his continued research in Swain's Encyclopaedia, come across any number of references to the Faery tendency to tell the truth in an ambiguous manner, so that the listener could make whatever assumption he or she most wanted to hear. They considered oaths and promises magically binding – and believed that their Mother Goddess meted out karmic punishment on oath breakers. As such, they misliked telling outright lies and went to great lengths to avoid them. But Faeries often reserved conditional loopholes within the meaning of what they did say – Snape now mentally referred to this as the Faery Dialectical. For example, when he had asked Professor Swain where she was from, she had answered with, "My family hails from the Lake District," knowing full well that he would assume that she came from there too. She had told him nothing but the truth – but in such a manner that he thought her just another English girl from the Cotswolds, and Arcadia's existence had been entirely and conveniently omitted. And she had, in fact, met Lucius at the Ball – she hadn't travelled there with him.

Then the impulse had taken him – perhaps Professor Swain should know more about her date, if he was in fact Lucius Malfoy. Snape gathered up his papers and books, quill and ink, and potions satchel, and headed off for another wing of the Library.

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Down in the Queen's Bench legal archive, Snape turned up a particular judicial decision, dated January 9th, 1982:

The Crown vs. Lucius Malfoy

It was the case brief chronicling Lucius's acquittal for criminal conspiracy and crimes against society, as an accomplice of one Tom Marvolo Riddle, styling himself Lord Voldemort. Snape had read this decision so many times that he had committed some parts of it to memory. Not guilty by reason of duress and coercion – duress and coercion of course being the Imperius Curse, or so Lucius had made the Wizengamot judges believe. Any number of witnesses had come forward to testify on Malfoy's behalf – Snape often wondered how much that had cost him. He himself had been served with a witness subpoena, but as it turned out, the defence had never needed to call him to the stand to testify under oath to Lucius's good character – at least he had been spared that weight on his conscience.

Snape laid clean sheets of parchment over the pages containing the Malfoy verdict, and copied the text of the decision onto them with the Copia charm and an inaudible word.

Was there any way to see that this document somehow found its way into Professor Swain's hands?

And – would it have any negative effect on her opinion of Lucius if it did?

It occurred to Snape then, with Lucius's acquittal before him, that he really had very little idea as to where Emily Swain personally stood on the politics of his own world.

In the matter of Arcadian politics, he had always assumed that his colleague was a monarchist, a supporter of the Greenbarrow crown, seeing as how she was related to the king, and served in his military. As to the matter of the trial by combat – Catherine Orson had tried to explain her reasons for defying the King's wishes in the best possible light, but Snape had also noticed that Catherine was the Professor's devoted friend, and that no doubt biased her opinion. Whatever the black mark that situation had left on Professor Swain's reputation, it didn't seem to have interrupted her military career, as this assignment to Hogwarts proved. The king may have meant for this to be an unofficial disciplinary action – a sort of shite detail, if you will – or, he could have sent her here based his sincere belief that she was the best candidate for the job. He might have even fancied that a change of scenery would cheer his widowed young kinswoman up; certainly Hogwarts and the U.K. were no one's idea of purgatory.

All that aside – it shed not one ray of light on how Emily Swain felt on the matter of Wizarding politics. And given what she knew about his own past, and his current situation, it occurred to Severus Snape that he would very, very much like to know.

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After an hour of searching, however, all he found under the name "Emily Beauregard Swain" in any of the archives of the Main Library of Magic was a birth announcement in the society section of the Daily Prophet. To Buckminster Ludwig Leonardo Swain, formerly of the Wizengamot, author of Ars Alchymia: A Biography of Nicholas Flamel, and his second wife, Elaine Andraste Greenbarrow Swain, a daughter. Born February 20th, 1960, at 5:37 a.m., somewhere in the Third Kingdom of Arcadia.

Other than that – nothing.

It was as if she had never existed in the British Wizarding world until September of 1994, when she arrived to teach at Hogwarts. Given that the staff at Hogwarts ranged from those fanatically devoted to Albus Dumbledore, to the totally apolitical Chester Binns, to the likes of one Professor Quirinus Quirrell, there were no real clues as to any political leanings there. One bit of information caught his eye, however – Buckminster Swain had been in the Wizengamot? Lucius had said that Swain was a historian and anthropologist – he had never mentioned that he was a politician as well. And in Snape's experience, a father's political views very often had a tremendous influence on those of his children.

He next headed down to the Wizengamot archives, where the records on every aspect of the Wizarding government assembly were kept.

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Buckminster Swain appeared to have been the last in a long line of many scions of the Swain family to serve on the Wizengamot. His career had spanned nearly two decades, from 1939 to 1957. His voting record showed him to have been something of a moderate liberal, in favour of protections for Muggles, and of government grants for the maintenance of historical homes of pureblooded families. He was in favour of tax benefits for both labour and business interests. He wanted more public services, and to lower the rate of estate taxes on inherited wealth. He wanted to protect the environment, and at the same time was in favour of encouraging industry and business. (Really, it seemed to Snape as though the man had been in favour of just about everything.) He had also frequently participated in formal debates, both during his time in government and after his retirement.

Snape turned a page and came across a long list of issues Swain had debated before the Wizengamot assembly. Most of them seemed commonplace enough – Involuntary Memory Obliviation of Muggle Witnesses to Magic: Necessary Evil or Tyranny? Gringotts Bank: August Institution or Hostile Monopoly? Should House Elf Living Conditions Be Regulated? But one particular debate heading stood out vividly amidst all of the other topics:

THE VOLDEMORT QUESTION. October 30th, 1979.

The name of the speaker opposing Swain in this issue had been one Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.

Snape made a note of the debate title and date, and then headed for another section of the Wizengamot archive, where the transcripts of every debate ever argued before them were kept.

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The Voldemort Question of 1979 had been one of the many debates argued before the Wizengamot in the early days of the Dark Lord's rise to power.

Albus had always been on to Voldemort's true motives and goals – he had from the first seen through the former Tom Marvolo Riddle in a manner that Snape often envied. In this debate, he advocated open governmental opposition to the Dark Lord. Snape's look relaxed into a thoughtful, almost fond expression as he read over Albus's sometimes puckish and enigmatic, but always wise and sensible commentary, all backed solidly up with precedent from Voldemort's own stated goals, and recent and actual events. The wizard now styling himself Lord Voldemort, he argued, was a terrorist, a eugenicist, a would-be dictator; he was a real and immediate threat to all Muggles and everyone in the Wizarding world who disagreed with him. Albus advocated a full-scale investigation into his sect and his activities, and if necessary, Wizarding law enforcement should prosecute his crimes and see him imprisoned, as his lust for power was great and his scruples non-existent.

And then Swain had made his rebuttal – in favour of extending friendly overtures to Voldemort, and making concessions to him in an effort to find common ground.

As he read Swain's argument, Snape's eyes widened in disbelief. What was the man thinking? He suggested that the Wizarding government try to reason with Voldemort? Compromise with Voldemort? Pacify Voldemort? Was the man insane? How could anyone be this much of a criminally naïve, ivory-tower intellectual? Snape had been impressed with Swain's scholarship in the Encyclopaedia, but now he saw all the same strengths that served the man so well elsewhere failing him miserably in this debate – he had imagined and described a wonderful, bloodless solution in which Voldemort was pacified and made happy, and the greater good was served without conflict or loss of life. He had detailed his glorious vision so attractively that the reality of the Dark Lord's true goals were lost beneath all his beautiful visionary rhetoric, and high-flown and interesting, but totally irrelevant, historical precedent. Swain had been wonderfully eloquent and convincing, but he was so wrong wrong WRONG that just reading his side of the debate made Snape's teeth hurt, made him want to go find the man and shake him.

Snape had, of course, heard about the short-lived pacification movement that had found support in certain prominent pure-blood families and some members of the Wizengamot in the late seventies. They had faded away in disgrace in 1980, when the Dark Lord and his followers had begun to engage in more and more acts of overt violence, both toward Muggles and toward the wizards who opposed them. Or at least most of them had faded away in disgrace – but Snape knew for a fact that members of the Rookwood and Nott families had begun as pacification sympathisers and ended as full-fledged Death Eaters.

And here was Emily Swain's father, at the forefront of that movement. Was this why the man had permanently decamped to his adopted homeland?

Just then, the archive staff made the announcement that the library would be closing in five minutes, and Snape started to ready himself to leave – but not before he made a copy of the Voldemort Question debate transcript as well.

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Snape took a quiet half-hour with a glass of excellent whiskey in the Leaky Cauldron before heading back to Hogwarts to mull over what he had read that day. As always, a bit of twelve-year-old Dalwhinnie did much to soothe his nerves – until a familiar cultured drawl sounded from over his shoulder.

"Severus, good evening, cousin." Lucius slid onto the seat opposite him. "Fancy meeting you here. What brings you into London?"

"Just some Potions research in the Library of Magic," Snape said, casually closing his satchel over the papers inside.

Lucius nodded to a passing waitress and ordered a glass of Napoleon brandy, with such a winning smile that the woman actually bobbed a little curtsy to him as she left their table. "Working on a weekend, then, old man?" Lucius asked, smiling commiseratingly at him across the table. "That old fool of a Dumbledore works you far too hard, as always."

Snape sighed, exaggerating the air of an overworked and underpaid academic for his cousin's benefit. "As always. So what brings you into London on a Sunday night?"

"Just come from a ridiculously decadent dinner with yet another potential appointee for the new department I'm trying to create at work," Lucius said, with a smug, airy smile. "I swear, nine-tenths of my real work goes on after the Ministry closes. It's a wonder one can find the time to sleep." He smirked slightly at his own words, as if he was in on a fine joke indeed.

"Still trying to steal Mockridge from Goblin Liaisons?"

"Yes, and I think we'll get him, too," Lucius said, with an expansive smile. "Really a good chap – his attitude is just exemplary."

"Good, good. Hopefully Narcissa's stopped bending your ear about all the time in London?"

"No, tragically. I am, as always, expected to be all things to all people, and have it done in time to get home for supper. Don't let anyone tell you different, Severus – women are bloody exhausting." He rolled his eyes heroically at the ceiling. "Really, sometimes I think all you confirmed bachelors have the right idea."

Snape smiled thinly. "It certainly does keep the number of birthdays and wedding anniversaries I have to remember down to a manageable level."

"Oh, you've reminded me – I've got some splendid news," Lucius said, with another expansive smile. "Don't tell anyone yet, it's still in the planning stages, but it looks as though we'll soon be having another wedding in the family."

"Really," Snape said. "Menzentius?" Lucius had confided to Snape numerous times about his difficulties in finding a suitable bride for Menzentius. The fact that Narcissa's brother was now facing his late twenties as a bachelor with no prospects was something of an embarrassment to the family. Most of the women willing to marry him were too nouveau riche or genteelly penniless to suit Lucius, and Menzentius had too many alcohol abuse problems to suit the women Lucius would have approved of.

"Yes," Lucius told him. "At last. It's very early on as yet, nothing set in stone. But really a fine match for him, I couldn't be more pleased with the whole arrangement."

"And who is the lucky soon-to-be Mrs. Black?" Snape asked, although he personally considered Menzentius Black's future wife to be just about the unluckiest creature ever conceived. "Have I met her?"

Lucius smiled delightedly at him. "You certainly have."

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Another of Lucius's little fly-by-night post owls appeared at Emily's window late that Monday night – and she was elated with this prompt contact, certain it meant that she was back in his best graces.

Darling,

The family will be away visiting some distant relations in the south of France this weekend, and I am again longing to debauch you repeatedly at home.

This coming Friday evening, put on the enclosed Portkey at nine – you may as well get used to thinking of it as your home away from home.

Don't be late – I can't wait to see you.

Enclosed with the note was a black velvet box – oh no, not another of Lucius's criminally extravagant gifts, he really shouldn't have – but then she opened the box, and decided, well, yes, maybe he should have.

It was a Queen Alexandra collar fashioned from platinum filigree set with diamonds, designed to fit close around the base of a woman's neck, with an ornate rectangular clasp to be worn at the hollow of one's throat. Emily wondered for a moment why people ever used Portkeys made from the customary bits of disposable rubbish, when such options as this were available.

She spent the next half hour selecting the perfect dress to frame her throat to best advantage in such a necklace. It occurred to her, as she teased her hair up into an upsweep on the top of her head, studying her reflection in the mirror, that she really did have the ideal sort of neck to be encircled with diamonds – then blew a little kiss in the direction of Wiltshire.

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6:53 p.m. arrived that Thursday night, and Professor Snape arrived at the practice studio. "Good evening, Professor," Emily called.

"Good evening, Professor," came the desultory greeting. Snape sounded tired tonight, she thought. She had noticed some strain in his manner at their practice session on Monday of that week, and again on Wednesday. But tonight, his voice had an absolutely bone-weary tone to it.

She turned around and looked more closely at him. "Are you all right? Have you been under the weather this week?"

"I'm fine."

"We don't have to do this tonight if you don't feel up to it."

"I said I was fine," he growled.

"All right, have it your way. Anyway, we're going to do something different tonight. Grab your practice dagger," she said and motioned him onto the sparring mat.

Snape paused, looking at her suspiciously. "Aren't you going to take up your practice dagger?"

"No. We're starting another kind of training tonight – how to defend yourself in an unevenly matched confrontation. I want you to be able to stop an armed attacker with only your bare hands."

The eyebrows went up alarmingly. "That's a rather tall order, madam."

"It can be done," she assured him, "and sometimes needs to be done. The people you'll potentially be facing won't care about whether the fight is fair or not, and don't think you'll always have a weapon about you at any given time. What if someone attacks you in your sleep, and you don't have time to do anything but react?"

Snape's eyes flashed fire at that question. "All right, I understand," he growled back. "So I'm to initiate a confrontation armed with a dagger, and you're going to show me how to win it unarmed, yes?"

"Hopefully. I think it would be a useful thing for you to know."

The corner of his mouth curled in a cynical grimace. "Yes, I can see how it would be," he said and joined her on the practice mat.

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"Now, the most important thing to remember is if he's got a bladed weapon and you're unarmed, chances are you're going to get cut," Emily told him bluntly. "What you have to do then is get the weapon away from him while keeping yourself from being seriously injured. You usually block by turning the inside of your forearms and palms toward your opponent – " she threw up a forearm block in fourth, to demonstrate " – but in this instance you can't do that, and I'll tell you why. Give me your hand for a second."

Snape transferred the dagger to his left hand, and grudgingly held out his right to her. She turned it over between them, palm up. "The reason why you never turn the inside of your arm toward a bladed weapon is – all the most vital veins and arteries in your arm and wrist are located just under the skin, here." She pushed up the sleeve of his black cotton jersey, traced her fingertips along the faint tracery of blue veins in the pale underside of his wrist, and extending up his forearm. "You'll want to be careful of your palm, and the webbing between your thumb and forefinger as well. Your ulnar and radial arteries are here – and here. If your opponent really lays your wrist open, here – " she covered the most vulnerable part of his wrist, just beneath his hand, with her palm " – the blood loss could put you in grave danger. You must protect this area at all costs."

Then she turned his hand over. "But see what you've got here, on the back of your arm?" She pressed her fingers firmly against the back of his hand and forearm. "Mostly bone and muscle. Not so many major blood vessels. This is where you take the parries, if you absolutely have to."

Snape nodded. "I see, madam."

She released his hand and stepped back. He saluted her with the practice dagger, and she put her arm across her chest, and bowed to him. Then he assumed the dagger fighting opening stance, and she faced him in the sparring stance, and they had at each other.

"The first thing to remember if he's armed and you aren't is to always disarm the sonuvabitch first," she said, as he came on with a wickedly fast thrust to her chest in seventh. She dodged, turning aside so that his dagger hand passed within an inch of her chest, then stopped his blow, imprisoning his wrist with her right hand. "Never take the attack until the weapon's no longer a threat. If you don't, he can recover and hurt you," she continued, wrenching his hand forward at a vulnerable angle and pressing her stiffened fingers firmly into the inside of his wrist. He grunted in pain, and the dagger fell from his slack fingers. From there, it was a simple matter of subduing an opponent using the usual hand-to-hand techniques.

Then she held out her hand. "Your turn," she said. Snape glanced down at the weapon in his hand and reluctantly handed it over.

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"Good – very good," Emily said, after they had spent the evening working on unevenly-matched bouts. Toward the end of the night, he had consistently been managing to get past her reach with the weapon, and once had come close to disarming her, without allowing her blade to come in contact with his skin at all. "You really are a natural at this, sir. Tell me, which of the three sorts of combat do you like the most? The sword, the dagger, or hand-to-hand?"

"Which do I like the most, madam?" he asked. "What do you mean?"

"Which of them feels most natural to you? Which do you feel most confident, and competent, with?"

Snape thought about it for a moment. "Er... the dagger, I suppose," he said finally. "There's something comforting about having a weapon in one's hand, it lends one a sense of surety that isn't felt barehanded. But unlike the sword, a dagger feels, in my opinion, very precise, immediate, and controlled."

"Then I think you've found your weapon of choice, then. And the dagger is very much a stealth weapon, so I think it will serve your purposes very well," Emily told him. She crossed to her workout towel and wiped down her brow. "See you next Monday night, same time?"

"All right." Snape crossed to the silver pitcher of water near the window, and poured himself a cup. "So, now, I suppose felicitations and best wishes are in order," he said, his back to her, mopping at the back of his neck. Whatever he was referring to, however, he didn't really sound happy for her. He sounded disgusted and angry.

"For what?" Emily asked, her forehead crinkling.

"For you and your betrothed," he replied.