Part Second: The Hart Rampant: Chapter 21

Chapter 21:

"Except THAT."

When Emily came to herself, shaking her head and slapping her cheek to clear the fog left by the potion, she had dragged herself away from Lucius and off his bed. She grabbed up her dress from the chair and covered her naked chest with it, if only for the sensation of some barrier between them.

Lucius sat up in bed, the sheet barely covering his hips and looking about as annoyed as a man interrupted just before his desires are satisfied can be. "You said you would give me anything I wanted," he snarled, his nails curling against the mattress.

"Except that! You should know better than to ask for that!" she shouted, yanking on the dress in her hands before furiously turning back to him. "You're not just imagining anything – you're negotiating terms with me," she accused him. "You are absolutely serious. That's exactly what you want – if I allowed it, all of that would happen."

"Yes, it would. You asked me what I wanted – I warned you that you might find it shocking," he said, utterly unashamed, still lying supine in bed. "But think about it – is anything I showed you really that bad? You liked it and you know it. You came all over me as you imagined it. I think you wanted it as much as I did – you just can't admit it to yourself yet," he drawled, his eyes boring into hers.

"So I'd be your son's wife, but your whore. No, thanks." She fastened her cloak around her shoulders and threw everything else into her bag.

Then Lucius was off the bed, wrapped in a robe, and stopped her. "Yes, my whore. My cherished, my beloved whore – the kind of political mistress who has the fear and respect of our entire fucking world. Throughout history they've wielded more power than queens." He grasped her arm and dragged her back to him, and she could feel rage and desperate possessiveness wash over her when he touched her. "I've wanted you since I was a boy, Emily – there is nothing I can't do for you now. I know you want to help the Fae to a position of political power in this world, and I can help you. You've always wanted Wizarding society to finally accept you as you are – I can give that to you."

She tore herself out of his grasp. At that moment, she could have hit him, bloodied those flawless cheeks with her fingernails – or fallen into his arms and never left them.

"Oh yes, there's nothing you can't do for me, if I marry the man you choose and breed as you order me. I know you think I'm a ruddy great slut, but I don't think I'm up to the task of loving whomever it is you say," she snapped back. "No, I'll not be your Uncle Tom of a Faerie – I'll not play Tinkerbell for you, thanks. Go into the kitchen for an elf if you want a servant."

"Yes, of course. You'll only serve a human's will if his name is Albus Dumbledore," Lucius drawled mockingly.

"You're wrong," she said, a flat, inalienable declaration. "What I'm doing now at Hogwarts – that's a royal command, the honouring of an alliance. What I'd be for you – that would be voluntary servitude. The most intimate sort of it at that."

"Stupid woman – what do you think marriage is?"

"Your marriage, maybe," she flashed back, her eyes burning with resentment. "You couldn't even comprehend the idea of marrying for love – you pure-bloods never can. Don't think for an instant that I didn't know that. You didn't meet, court and marry Narcissa in the eight months that passed between the day you arrived home and your wedding day, did you?"

"No, I didn't," he admitted baldfacedly, without a blush or hesitation. "But I had to watch you swear to forever love and cherish some peasant farmer's son, when you dismissed me without a word, so I'd say we're even."

"He wasn't just some peasant farmer's son – he was a knight," she retorted furiously. "And he was proud to make me his wife – you would never have caught Dorien expressing his great affection by trying to marry me off to his sot of a brother-in-law."

"Yes, Menzentius is a waste of good wine, I'll give you that. But my son would be the kind of husband any woman could be proud of – "

"Yes, he would be – which is why I can't possibly marry him with the intention of making him a cuckold, right from the off!"

"Do you have any idea how many women who would kill for what I just offered you?" he demanded. "Is what you have at home so very much better? Do you really love hacking Orcs to pieces – do you really enjoy constantly risking your life as Gwydion's obedient little butcher's girl?"

"For all your talk about patriotism, honouring your people's traditions – you tend to hold your nose an awful lot when you hear about me getting my hands dirty actually defending my country," she snapped. "You wouldn't know real patriotism if it bit your admirable arse, do you know that?"

She had hit a nerve – the look of ice-cold anger in his eyes was frightening. "Yes, you love your country and your King. And your Uncle Gwydion loves you. Loves you so much that he sent you into exile here, for avenging your husband's murder."

Emily slapped him.

Hard enough to knock him off balance – and he fell back against the bedpost. It was the sort of stunning blow she might have dealt to an Orc hooligan in an Arcadian tavern; her only concession to nicety was that she used her open hand instead of a closed fist.

He stood there a moment, breathing hard, a red welt starting up on his ivory-white cheek. Then he slapped her back, equally savagely.

In another second, she had sprung out of his reach. Emily saw his eyes narrow, saw him recognising the aggression in her stance – if he had gone for her then, she would have defended herself as became a knight. But Lucius was either not that angry with her, or not that stupid.

"You're disgusting," she snarled. "And my answer is no."

"You don't have to say anything right away, my love," he said softly. "The offer stands. I can wait until you're ready to come back and accept it."

Then he left the room, leaving the door thrown wide open.

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Emily never recalled later how she got out of Malfeasant unseen and into the outlying woods outside its grounds. When her thoughts cleared, she was kneeling beside a white birch tree, her arm around its trunk, her cheek pressed against its bark.

Someone almost found out my True Name, she thought, in profoundest horror, and the worst part was that she had been complicit in that violation herself. Lucius had lied – those were no surface impressions. Whatever that potion was, it left the entire scope of her memory, imagination, and emotional life as open to him as any book.

She sat huddled against that tree for a long time, breathing the clean scents of wood and mud, water and grass, trying to clear her head of Lucius's drives, agendas and desires, allowing the fire of her own will to pulse in her veins again. Letting the cool rain wash the scent of him from her skin.

What struck her with a desperate, clammy terror was – when she had seen his plans for her...

He was right. She had found it exciting.

I will not be his whore, she told herself, driving her nails into her upper arms. I will not be his creature.

Even if I'd like to be.

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With that, the grand Lucius Malfoy affair seemed to be over.

In the week following the scene with Lucius, Emily would sit in her apartments of an evening, reading or working on her endless professorial paperwork – all the while half-listening for the scratch of a little urgent-post owl at her window, bearing a letter of sincerest apology, protestations of I didn't mean it. She longed to hear some plausible reason as to why he couldn't possibly have really tried to learn her True Name; she was waiting for some assurance that their horrible argument had been meaningless, as without substance and as easily explained away as a bad dream.

But nothing came.

Nothing at all.

On the eighth day, she left off sleeping in her bed and took to curling up on the window seat under a quilt, leaving the transom window wide open. She woke at every creak and every noise, hoping to find a letter from Lucius that set everything right again... but none came.

A week, then two, passed. Before she knew it, they were well into June. A new empty, unfulfilled place came to live in the pit of her stomach.

I will not marry as I'm told, have children I don't want, or share my True Name just to keep a man, and someone else's husband at that, she would tell herself, her expression hardening with the force of her resolve. But then another Friday night with nothing to look forward to approached, and the task of filling up all of these empty new hours without her lover seemed onerous, an unendurable imposition. And the idea of never touching him again, an absolute end to those hours of being held forever, all that dark, dreamlike sex simply being over was the worst part of it all – it felt as though she had been forbidden to drink wine, or smell grass, or hear music ever again for the rest of her life. Her physical reaction to just the thought of Lucius carried on like some inconvenient, recurring malarial fever – now and then she would come across the scent of his skin on some bit of clothing she had once worn in his presence and feel lust for him wash over her afresh.

To make matters worse, it was now difficult to even look at Draco Malfoy, because the sheen of his hair, the shape of his eyes, the inflection of his voice, and just everything about him reminded her so much of Lucius that just hearing the boy talking to his friends in the halls left her on edge. Plus, the memory of her physical reaction to the suggestion of sex with him was so vivid at times that even casual interaction with Draco made her feel guilty and a bit unclean.

And so – that was the end, and she was left alone with her memories yet again.

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For everyone else at Hogwarts, however, life seemed to go on just as it had despite the demise of a visiting professor's formerly glorious love affair. The Third Task, the climax of the entire year, was to be held on June 24th, and the day was fast approaching. The entire school was constantly a-buzz with chatter over it. Hagrid had seeded a gigantic boxwood hedge maze in what was formerly the Quidditch pitch, and it got taller every day.

Something had also happened to upset the Durmstrang headmaster a great deal. By the first week of June, Headmaster Karkaroff couldn't seem to go from here to there without accusing someone of plotting against him and his Tournament champion, Viktor Krum. If Professor Snape, or Headmaster Dumbledore, or especially Hagrid was about, it took almost no provocation for him to launch into spit-flecked diatribes about corruption and international conspiracies. Emily bumped into him one day outside the teacher's lounge, and it took repeated apologies and protestations that she had nothing against Bulgaria, until that year she had never met anyone from Bulgaria, she didn't even follow Quidditch, and was from another dimension besides before he was convinced that she hadn't intended to assassinate him. More than once, Emily used her old trick of Obscuring herself and flattening against the wall when she saw him stalking toward her in the corridors.

Disappointed lovelorn pining and strange confrontations with visiting headmasters aside, Emily had, as per her decision, begun working with Professor Snape on every aspect of Faery martial art at the end of May, expanding their work from physical training into formal instruction in defensive Glamours and Obscurantis, the magical arts at which Emily herself was most adept. As with his earlier training, Snape was absorbing it all at an amazing rate. More than once, she mused on how difficult it would be to go back to teaching her regular squire's classes at home, after serving as private tutor to someone who picked it all up so damned easily.

Oddly enough, Professor Snape seemed to take a genuine pride in his prodigious talent in Faery magic and was definitely continuing to work at it on his own. His ability had grown so much by that June that with it, came an odd sense of familiarity. The more facility he showed with her people's magic and combat style, the more he had ceased being a foreign wizard professor and became just another journeyman squire – and being no more a saint than the next Fianna combat instructor, Emily was sometimes guilty of taking her bad moods out on her squires. As such, the dynamic between them had reversed somewhat just after her painful falling-out with Lucius – Snape had become the interested student doing his best to work with a sometimes sullen and recalcitrant teacher.

"Have you been under the weather these last weeks?" he asked her one evening, after she had been going through Lucius withdrawal for some time. His extreme punctuality had annoyed her so much that evening that she hadn't even bothered to respond to his duty greeting of Good evening, Professor.

"I'm fine," she replied.

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

"Oh, leave it alone, and come here," she snapped, motioning for him to join her on the mat.

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"We've been working on Glamoured distractions and Obscurantis combinations all week. Now we're going to start working them into combat situations, which I think you'll find is considerably more difficult than just escaping from a bore at a party by making everyone think the curtains have caught fire."

"All right," he said, nodding.

"Now, what you'll have to do is manage all the same sort of concentration and visualisation that goes into Glamour and Obscurantis – while under the pressure of fighting an opponent. If you're not already experienced at thinking on your feet, this process will definitely teach you how. I'll demonstrate – "

She had intended to conjure up a monstrous visual Glamour as he came at her that evening – perhaps give the impression that she had morphed into a fanged harpy as he took his first attack. But instead, as she turned toward him, he looked at her, silently spoke a word – and completely blinded her with a brilliant flash of white light. She recoiled and pressed her hand to her watering eyes.

By the time she recovered and tried to focus on him again – he was gone. The room appeared completely empty.

"Oh, you tricksy little blighter," she said, half surprised, half grudgingly admiring. "So you think you've got it down, then, do you? All right – "

Then – the familiar scent of another person, a male sweating a great deal of healthy competitive aggression, became suddenly much stronger just behind her, and she turned hard in its direction. Snape had apparently intended to subdue her by seizing her around the shoulders from behind, but hadn't managed to take her entirely by surprise. Instead of being immobilised by his attack, she turned into it, half-averted it – with the result that he knocked her to the mat, but she threw him over her right hip and onto his back on the way down.

"So you've already done some work on timing Glamour-Obscurantis combinations for combat, have you?" Emily got to her feet, then held out a hand and helped him up.

"Yes," he admitted, breathing hard. He took her hand and stood up, a bit stiffly. "Although it didn't go over quite the way I planned it."

"You shouldn't always expect yourself to be able to take me down the first time you try," she said, crossing to her workout towel and scrubbing at her forehead. "I've been pulling the old bang'n'dash for years, thanks." A second later, she realised what she had just said, and to whom, and was acutely glad that she was facing away from him with a towel over her face.

"I don't doubt it," Snape said, with caustic agreeability.

Emily threw the towel aside and fixed him with a very We are not amused sort of look, but only for a moment – one simply couldn't expect someone like him to be able to resist a straight line like that one, and she knew it.

"Oh, behave yourself or I'll tell everyone you cribbed an idea from Lavender Brown. Now let's try this shite again."

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Sometime in the second week of June, Hermione Granger came to see Emily in her office. As the students' bright chatter interfered rather a lot with orgies of lovelorn self-pity because Lucius had so ill-used her, she had been posting rather fewer office hours than before.

"Professor Swain? Do you have a minute?" The girl's bushy brown-curled head poked into the room.

"Miss Granger, come on in. Have a seat." Emily put down her quill. "I was about to make a pot of tea, any preference?"

"How about loganberry?" the girl suggested.

"Loganberry it is."

When they were both comfortably situated on the window seat with mugs of tea in their hands, Hermione brought something out of her pocket – a round silver medallion on a long chain – and handed it to Emily. "I wanted to give you back your Amulet of Protection. Thanks for loaning it to me – I've not had any more letters full of bubotuber pus arrive, but my robes have stayed really clean all this term, even in Potions."

Emily laughed. "Good, I'm glad to hear it." She put the amulet away in her pocket.

"But... I wanted to talk to you about something else." Hermione reached into her schoolbag, then handed her a Muggle paperback book.

The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien.

"Oh, splendid – I love this book. Where did you get this?" Emily asked.

"From the W.H. Smith's 'round the corner from my parents' house."

"I read all of these when I was twelve," Emily said, paging fondly through the book. "Tell me, did you have a big crush on Aragorn the moment he was introduced too?"

"I had rather more of a crush on Legolas," Hermione said, with a small smile. "And I wanted to be friends with all the hobbits."

Emily looked downcast for a moment, as the character of Tolkien's wood elf, with his brave, loyal heart and deadly accurate bow far too closely resembled someone she would never see again for her comfort at that time. "Yes, I think everyone in the Fellowship would have been a good friend. Even poor Boromir had his moments." She handed the book back to Hermione.

"The reason I wanted to show you this was that... well, back when I went to regular Muggle school, before I knew I was a witch, I used to read fantasy books all the time," Hermione said, looking up at her with earnest brown eyes. "Tolkien, The Chronicles of Narnia, the Oz books, Grimms' Fairy Tales, all the old Irish Faery stories."

"True Thomas, Tam Lin, The Shoemaker and the Elves, the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, that sort of thing?" Emily prompted, with a smile. "The bravest, most cunning son and the good-hearted youngest daughter always save the day?"

"Yes," Hermione said. "And it made me wish so badly that I was a witch, or a good Faerie, myself. I wanted to do magic and find the way to Faerieland – I think all girls do, at some point."

"But now you've found that you are a witch, and you're learning Faery magic," Emily said, smiling fondly at her. "You get to live the dream. It must have made you feel very lucky – and very alone, what with your glorious secret that you could never, ever share with anyone."

"Yes," Hermione said, in an even more impassioned tone. "And now I've read in your father's Encyclopaedia that Rivendell and Lothlorien are real places."

"Rivendale and just Lorien, actually, but yes, they are real. Tolkien was a Tithe page way back in the teen years of the twentieth century, and he actually travelled to both cities while he was there."

"So it's true then," Hermione said excitedly. "What Tolkien saw in your world influenced his Elven culture, didn't it?"

"To some extent. You'll find that he changed the names a bit, and neglected to mention things like outhouses and trash heaps and pigpens, but yes, they're something like what he described. And he certainly got the part about the land wars with the Orcs right, although they've never been led by a dread Lord Sauron with a lot of magical rings – we'd probably all be speaking Orcish at home if there had been." Emily looked down at her teacup with a little laugh and grimace. "And we do have races much like elves, men, dwarves, and hobbits – the sidhe, boggins, and trolls, pixies and halflings – and unfortunately the racial tensions Tolkien described are pretty accurate too, in some parts of Arcadia.

"But what I love most about Tolkien are his characters and all the original folklore, history, cosmology and languages he created. He was an Oxford don, you know – he taught Old English and Middle English. Did you know that from the time he was a boy, he used to make up original languages, just for fun? He had entire lexicons made up for all the languages of Middle Earth, and had not only Elvish but variant dialects of Elvish worked out. Can you imagine?"

Hermione stared at her with a delicious hunger in her eyes. "I want to go there, Professor. Like Samwise Gamgee... I want to see the Elves. More than anything."

"We're not elves, dear heart," Emily said, her tone taking on a more serious tone. "The Fae don't like being called elves, especially by witches and wizards. Elves are what make up the fires and cook dinner around here. You know – little high-pitched voices, talk about themselves in the third person a lot, can't hold their butterbeer?"

Hermione laughed, but her expression was meltingly earnest. "You know what I mean. Please, Professor... how can I become a Tithe page?"

"Oh, my dear girl. My brilliant girl. I knew you'd be the one to ask." Emily put her arm around Hermione's shoulders and leaned her forehead against her temple, for all the world like an older sister embracing a younger one. The girl shivered happily.

Then Emily pulled away and faced her student seriously. "Hermione... you've perhaps heard about how in Genghis Khan's Mongolia, a virgin with a sack of gold could ride from one end of the country to the other without losing either her virginity or the gold, yes?"

Hermione nodded.

"Well, in Arcadia... that same virgin with a sack of gold wouldn't necessarily want to still be a virgin, or not to have spent some of her sack of gold, by the time she rode from the First Kingdom to the Ninth... but, she'd have some seriously amazing stories to tell in that Ninth Kingdom pub just before she left to go home. Do you understand?"

Hermione grinned. "Yes, Professor."

"Does that frighten you?"

The brown eyes glinted. "No."

"All right then. Can you keep a secret?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes, of course."

"I've already drafted your recommendation. And I'm going to get my mother and father to put one in too, and the three of us recommending you together pretty much makes you a shoo-in."

Hermione bounced up with a girlish squeal of "Yes!", her face alight. "This is going to be SO brilliant!"

Emily found the girl's excitement so contagious that she squealed and bounced up and down too – in another moment they were both bouncing up and down, squealing like little girls. Luckily no one else came into Emily's office at that moment, or whoever it was would have thought they had both gone barking mad.

"All right now, you can't tell anyone, and I mean anyone – not even Ron and Harry," Emily cautioned the girl. "None of the pages are supposed to know about it until they're notified. That rule gets broken all the time because the recommendation and selection processes are unbelievably corrupt of course, but those are the rules and we should at least pretend to follow them."

Hermione nodded her total understanding with a very grave expression. No Faerie could have taken the safekeeping of her True Name more seriously than Miss Granger was sealing her lips over this advance notice of her shoo-in nomination for the Tithe. "All right then, I'm going to go tell... no one! And thanks so much," she said, wringing Emily's hand in hers. In another moment, she had gathered up her bookbag and scurried from the room.

Emily sat back down at her desk, her eyes still on the door where Hermione had just left. In the past, the Tithe had often been instrumental in encouraging brilliant young people to greater confidence in their abilities; it had been a transformative experience that left them with a new maturity and polish in their artistic or scientific pursuits. More than one former Tithe page had gone on to produce works of lasting importance and genius.

But traditional family connections carried much weight to the Tithe committee. Legacy candidates, whose parents or grandparents had been Tithesmen, often received priority, which meant that some not especially promising pages got in because a relative had been talented and spent the entire year and day doing little more than wooing Faeries and carousing. The institution didn't always select the most talented of a generation, and Emily knew it. Perhaps, however, she was only disillusioned with the custom because she had just ended a relationship with a former Tithesman who, in barest truth, hadn't done much but chase Faeries and carouse during his time at Court. Unfortunately, at the time, she had been too blinded by his charisma and good looks to notice. Ah well, Hermione didn't seem the wastrel type, not by a long shot – perhaps the experience really would be good for her.

But meanwhile, a very happy young Gryffindor all but flew down the halls back to her common room, her eyes alight and bushy curls flying, all the while whispering I'm going to the Faerielands, I'm going to the Faerielands under her breath.

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The next day, Emily had noticed that she had only a day or two to finish her research for an important end-of-term lecture regarding physical methods of defending oneself from hostile curses. As work also interfered quite a lot with orgies of lovelorn self-pity because Lucius had so ill-used her, she had been quite surprised to look up from her depressed, mournful funk one day and discover that there were only a short time to go before term final exams on June 23rd and 24th, and the Third Task on the Thursday evening of the 24th.

Not only that, but the Midsummer Revel was scheduled for the Tuesday night of June 22nd, which meant that she would be staying out late, which of course meant that she would need to be ready for all of her term finals on Monday the 21st.

That meant that she spent much of that weekend in the library with a stack of Defence Against the Dark Arts texts and treatises in front of her, making notes. Unfortunately, however, she found very little concrete analysis of the three Unforgiveable Curses: the Imperius and Cruciatus Curses, and, of course, the dreaded Avada Kedavra. Most of the accounts she read were about the legal penalties for using such curses, or breathless true-crime sorts of accounts of how Dark Wizards like Grindelwald and the infamous Lord Voldemort had used such curses. There was no good source deconstructing the exact component steps involved in casting or countering these curses, which ultimately came as no great surprise. One really couldn't keep a how-to manual sort of book on Unforgiveable Curses around a school, after all, even if it was for the reference of Defence Against the Dark Arts professors.

So Emily figured she would go straight to the source. She had heard any number of students describe Moody's lectures on Unforgiveable Curses in awed whispers, so she noted down a list of questions, and resolved to speak to him on Monday.

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But when Emily spoke to Moody that Monday, it seemed like he just didn't want to be bothered.

She caught up to the retired Auror in the teacher's lounge during a free period between his classes on Monday afternoon. He and some of the other faculty were sitting around nursing cups of tea and poring over books. Chester Binns was in his accustomed seat before the hearth, and Professor Snape was sitting near the window, engrossed in another of his ubiquitous leather-bound tomes.

"Good afternoon, Alastor," Emily said pleasantly, pausing at Moody's elbow. "Do you have a minute?"

Moody's electric blue eye swivelled to fasten on her face; a moment later, his other eye did too. "How can I be of service, Professor Swain?" he asked, in a lazy, almost insolent tone.

"I'm shortly to be giving a lecture on pre-emptive physical methods of countering hostile spells, and I'm having a hard time finding anything on the specifics of the Unforgiveables. Can I ask you a couple of questions?" Peripherally, she saw Professor Snape turn slightly in her direction when he heard her question. Emily's gaze went past Moody to Snape for a second, then dropped back down to the page of questions in front of her.

"If I know the answers, sure," Moody said noncommittally. "Always glad to come to the aid of a lady."

"Wonderful, thanks. All right, as far as Crucio, Imperio, and Avada Kedavra go, in order to use one successfully, what are the practical components of the spell? Just the incantation, or is there a specific sort of wand gesture involved as well?"

To Emily, this was a simple conditional question, but Alastor Moody made it sound as though there were any number of mysterious conditions and mitigating factors to be taken into consideration; he answered her so non-specifically that she still had no real idea either way by the time he finished. She tried to rephrase the same question in a different manner, hoping to make it clearer – and received the same response.

Then her eyes again went past Moody to Professor Snape, sitting a short distance behind him. Snape was looking at the back of Moody's head with a quizzical expression, as if puzzled that he couldn't give the answer to such a simple question. A second later, Snape noticed Emily looking at him and nodded affirmatively.

Emily acknowledged his answer with an infinitesimal quirk of her eyebrow and made a note in her notebook, then turned to Moody again. "All right then. And if there was, er, both an incantation and a wand gesture involved, can these be performed concurrently, or does it have to go in any particular order? Incantation then gesture, or the reverse?"

Again, Moody said nothing illuminating, and he rattled on for a bit in order to do so. Emily casually glanced past him to Snape again – he held up a forefinger for her attention, then pantomimed a flick of a wand followed by a hand gesture for a jabbering mouth. Then he directed a contemptuous look at Moody and rolled his eyes direly at the ceiling.

"All right," Emily said, now more in Professor Snape's direction than Moody's. "Let's say you have to perform the wand gesture first, then the incantation – is the same true of all three Unforgiveable Curses, or is there a different order for each of them?"

Moody still had nothing specific to say about her question, but instead related an anecdote about some nasty Dark Wizard he brought in once who could get off all three and ten Stunning Spells in a minute flat. Snape directed a look of withering disgust in Moody's direction, caught her eye, and impatiently glanced toward the door with a curt, unmistakeable nod of Talk to me outside. Emily acknowledged this with a tiny, barely perceptible nod over Moody's head. A moment later, Snape got up, closed his book, and left the room with a swish of robes and a click of boot heels on the polished floor.

Emily waited until Moody had talked himself out, nodding and making the appropriate sounds of acknowledgment when he paused for breath. When he was finished, she smiled brightly at him. "All right then, Professor, thank you for all your help." She then gathered up her notebook and left the room as well.

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Snape was waiting for her in the corridor when she got outside. "Let's talk in my office," he said brusquely, once the door to the teacher's lounge closed behind her.

When they reached his dungeon office, Emily perched herself on the worktable again and opened her notebook. "All right – so it's a wand gesture and then an incantation for all three Unforgiveables, then? One can't perform the wand movement simultaneously to save time – it has to go in that order?"

"Yes, that's correct, it has to go in that order."

"All right." She scratched down a note. "And in order to cast one, the entire incantation has to be enunciated, right?"

"Yes, all of it. The curse is activated once the last syllable is uttered, if the wizard has managed it."

"Do you by any chance know the wand gestures used for all of them? Is there any distinction between the three? I was thinking that one could get some advance notice of which curse was about to be thrown at you if you knew what the three gestures looked like."

"Unfortunately, no. The usual wand-pointing indicative gesture is used with all three of them."

"Damn, there goes that theory." She regretfully inked out a paragraph. "In your opinion, is it at all worthwhile to try to dodge them physically? Stunning Spells produce a bolt of red luminescent energy that can be evaded – how about Cruciatus, Imperio, or Avada Kedavra?"

"No, it isn't. One could perhaps Apparate away before the incantation is complete if one had the presence of mind to do so, but the field of influence created by the Cruciatus and Imperius Curses is invisible and far-ranging. One can see a Killing Curse coming in one's direction in the form of a bolt of green energy, but it moves so fast that attempting to outrun it or some such is probably futile. I've seen people knock flies off walls with it before." He was suddenly very interested in brushing dust off the surface of his desk.

"My word, how bored and punkish would you have to be to do that," Emily said, shaking her head. "All right, last question. So there's no magical way to counter the Killing Curse, right? Once an assailant gets one off, it's unstoppable."

"Yes."

"Got it." She scratched a final note, then closed her notebook and slid down off the table. "Well, thanks so much then, sir, I'm glad there was someone around who knew what he was talking about. This has been a tremendous help – I do really appreciate it." He acknowledged her thanks with a cool inclination of his head.

Emily then took her leave of him with a polite nod and turned toward the door, imagining he would want to be left to himself – but as she was turning away, he reached out and verbally plucked her back. "So, what exactly is involved in pre-emptive physical methods of countering hostile spells, Professor?"

She half-turned back to him. "It's... well, it's a defensive theory that the Headmaster came up with and that I've been working on. We both think that if there's no magical way to counter a Killing Curse, then perhaps a non-magical means of countering one could be effective."

He regarded her silently for a long moment. "When are you giving this lecture?"

"The first one is on Thursday just before lunch. My Slytherin-Gryffindor fourth year session." She glanced down at the floor, then back at him. "You're welcome to come listen to it, if you have time."

"I shall. Thank you."

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Later that night, Bartemious Crouch, Jr. and Lucius Malfoy shared a round of Napoleon brandies in the drawing room at Malfeasant.

"Your Faery princess isn't being a good girl," Crouch, Jr. said. "She was at me to help her with a lecture on ways of pre-empting the Unforgiveables today."

"Of course she's not a good girl, Barty, that's why we want her," Lucius said pleasantly.

"So, you want to tell me why the woman you said you had in your hip pocket still seems to think she's a real Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher or something?" Crouch asked.

"Well... I've had a setback as far as the Faerie alliance," his companion said with a delicate little scowl. "We've... had a bit of a falling out, and haven't been speaking to each other for a bit."

"Not speaking to each other? Malfoy – you told me she'd be begging to take the Mark by the end of May. And I notice you're still using your wand, so what of this mysterious source of airy-Faery magical power she was going to share with you?"

"That's why we had the bit of the falling-out." This admission was accompanied with an eloquent curl of his lip. "She was coming along beautifully until I tried to access that – then she got upset and bolted."

"You should have given her a dose of Mens Appugnare, that could make anybody tell you anything – "

"I did," Lucius snarled. "And it still didn't work. She's not what one would call the most tractable creature alive, you know, none of her kind are. It hasn't been at all easy bringing her along according to schedule – once she gets distracted by something, she's off."

"Oh, poor beleaguered Lucius," Crouch sneered. "Had to spend all this time shagging a Faerie – I'm sure that must have been a trial. You've got the cushiest job of any of us, and you still couldn't manage it. Imagine if you had to spend all your time clomping about looking like this clown. You'll get no sympathy from me, thanks."

"She has a great deal of promise still," Lucius protested. "I misjudged the situation before, but I can bring her back into the fold, properly this time. And once I do, we'll have a more valuable ally than even the giants – you bloody well know that, Crouch."

"You always had a soft spot for anything in the shape of a pretty woman, Malfoy, and she already knows far too much," Crouch said, shaking his borrowed, grizzled head. "All right, one more chance for her, and I won't tell about your little falling-out. But if she doesn't join us this time – I'm sorry, you'll have to find another pointy-eared charmer to replace her, because that one won't see the light of another day."

"All right, you're being more than reasonable. Thank you." That thank you was delivered in a decidedly sulky tone, with a liberal swallow of brandy.

"Oh, cheer up, mate, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Women are like trains, old friend, you miss one, there'll be another along in half an hour. Tell me, is Pasiphäe's still open?"

"Buzzing, last time I was there," Lucius replied dryly.

"Well, why don't we head down and distract ourselves? Maybe we'll find you another little friend to play with, get your mind off your Faery princess for a bit."

"Knight Protector of the Realm, actually, but she considers title-dropping to be unutterably gauche."

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With her research for her final lectures finished that Wednesday evening, Emily turned her attention to something much more diverting – the Midsummer revel that coming Tuesday night.

It had been over a year since she had been to such a revel, since she had been amongst her own kind, free to dance on her own hooves in the open, instead of hiding from the xenophobic herd. It depressed her not a little to think that even here, amongst people who Apparated from place to place, flew on broomsticks, and made up shrinking potions in cauldrons, that people could be so uptight about something as mundane as the occasional shapechange. Look at Felina Rosier and Narcissa Malfoy – she knew entire herds of Muggles who were less threatened by that which was different from themselves than those two.

She spent a bit of time in front of her closet choosing something to wear – that dress with the skirt made of silk panels was fun to dance in, and she hadn't worn that little corselet in awhile. Definitely shoes for dancing, and hopefully she had some silver body powder left.

Now, was there any companion she could bring along?

Dumbledore would probably enjoy it, but he had far too many demands on his time at the moment, what with the Third Task approaching and the visiting Headmasters so restless. Irma? Well, Emily thought a Midsummer revel might be a bit much for Irma, and she knew that a sometimes prim and easily titillated lady like her would be an irresistible target to a certain, prankish contingent of her countryfolk. The same was probably true of Pomona and Minerva as well.

But, wait, she knew someone who would probably love to go, and who seemed like she would be wonderful company anywhere. She reached for parchment and quill and penned a quick letter:

Dear Tonks,

I'm hoping you remember me from the Ministry Ball at New Year's!

Anyway, do you still want to hit a club? I know a fantastic spot, and I guarantee you've never heard of it.

It's a Faery place, having their yearly Midsummer revel. I can even swear you to secrecy and take you there blindfolded if you want the full living-history sensory experience. I hope you like to dance.

Tuesday night at nine-ish p.m. Let me know if you can go & I'll pick you up.

Cheers,

Emily Swain

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But unfortunately, the post owl returned with a cheerful letter with some disappointing news from Tonks:

Dear Swain,

Of course I remember you, and I would LOVE, el oh vee ee, to get stolen by the Faeries and carried off to one of their super-secret nightclub establishments. I TOTALLY love to dance, you kidding?!

But oh phuckety phuque fuk – I have to work Tuesday night!! Very secret Auror stuff. I'd tell you about it, but then I'd have to kill you.

Next time? Please let me know about next time?

Have fun & be sure to attract lots of attention!!

Cheers,

Tonks

Damn, that was disappointing. It looked as though she would just have to go to the revel alone and try to meet up with Catherine and Roddy, and perhaps Raith if she didn't have to work that night. Or maybe she might run into someone she knew – anything could happen.

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Thursday of the following week, Emily took her Slytherin-Gryffindor Defence Against the Dark Arts classes on a brief excursion to the green field just outside the gate that marked the end of the Hogwarts wards. Professor Snape had turned up for the lecture, as promised, and surprisingly, so had Professor Moody. The two of them stood at either side of the milling crowd of fourth-years, now and then darting ferocious looks at each other.

Emily had brought out some equipment with her: a couple of fencing masks and a handful of wooden-dowelling prop wands. She wore her usual fencing-class costume of chain armour, plastron, breeches and boots.

"Now, all of you, listen closely," she began, "for this may be one of the most important ideas I teach you all year.

"A favourite author of mine, a fellow named J.R.R. Tolkien, once wrote, 'Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.'" She tried not to let her gaze linger on Professor Snape as she spoke.

Moody smiled thinly at her. "Good advice, that," he growled.

Emily grinned at him before continuing. "Indeed it is. However, some decades later, another author, Steven Brust, countered with, 'No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.' We're proceeding in the spirit of Mr. Brust's statement with today's lesson." There was a faint susurration of laughter from her students.

"The reason I brought all of you out here today, past the Hogwarts anti-electronics wards, was so we could use one of these during this demonstration." And she held up a small, metal device on a lanyard. "Does anyone know what this is?"

Hermione Granger's hand went up immediately. "It's a Muggle stopwatch."

"Exactly. Do you know how to use one of these, Miss Granger? Yes? Then come on up here and assist me, if you please." Hermione made her way to the front of the class, and Emily handed the stopwatch to her, then turned back to her class.

"Today we will be discussing and demonstrating methods of physically pre-empting hostile curses, focusing especially on the three Unforgiveable Curses," she said. "Until now you've all focused on magical methods of defending yourselves against the Dark Arts – counter-curses and counter-hexes, Disarming Charms, special mental exercises and such. But now I want you to put all that temporarily aside. At the moment, we're concerned with those situations in which the only approach that can really protect you is physical force."

There was a faint murmur of commentary at that remark, but then Professor Snape directed a glare at the class – and they instantly fell silent as mice. Really, the way the man could keep a class under control was amazing.

"Professor Moody has given you the particulars on the Unforgiveable Curses already in his class session, but let me expand a bit on his description from another perspective. Unfortunately for all those Dark Wizards out there, all of the Unforgiveable Curses are invoked by a relatively slow and particular sort of process, with long, unwieldy incantations. In order to get off a Cruciatus Curse, you have to gesture, and then enunciate three syllables. For Imperio, it's four. For Avada Kedavra itself, it's an excruciatingly long, drawn-out six syllables. I've sparred with every single student here, and am quite familiar with all of your levels of physical ability, and believe me, there isn't a student in this class who couldn't get off one, or two, or perhaps even three fencer's actions in the time it takes to point a wand and pronounce a six-syllable phrase."

Emily picked up one of the prop wands, just a foot-long section of plain wooden doweling, and nodded to Hermione. "If you would time this please, Miss Granger – " She pointed the wand off to one side, and said, "Avada Kedavra," then turned to Hermione again. "How long did that take?"

"Two point one seconds," Hermione reported.

"All right, now let's try it more quickly, the way it might be said in the heat of a battle. Ready?" She pointed the wand swiftly, then cried "Avada Kedavra!" very fast.

"One point seven six seconds," Hermione said, with an apprehensive little quaver to her voice. There was a concerned murmur from the class.

Emily turned to face her audience again. "Now – what are you going to do when you see this gesture, and hear the first syllable of Avada Kedavra?" she asked, pointing with the prop wand again. "Are you going to stand there blinking as he comes on and just give up? What can you do in the approximately one and three-quarters seconds of life you potentially have left?"

This question was greeted by such a dead silence that Emily could suddenly hear the wind stirring the leaves on the ground behind her with vivid clarity. A wave of agitation and fear poured toward her from the group in front of her. She saw a momentary apprehension in even Professor Snape's eyes. Moody alone looked impassive.

"Pray the Our Father?" Seamus Finnigan offered finally.

"More like kiss your arse good-bye," Ron Weasley's voice murmured from the back of the group. There was a grim little laugh from a few students.

"Oh, come on! Listen to yourselves, you're all defeated before you've even begun!" Emily cried. She grabbed up the prop wand and assumed en garde position in front of them. "What's this – " she made another indicative pointing gesture with the dowel " – but a straight thrust? How is it any different from a fencer's first aggressive movement? And what do you do when someone offers you a straight thrust? Anyone?"

"Parry it," Draco Malfoy said instantly.

"Yes, of course, Mr. Malfoy, you counter it with an equal and opposing motion. But tell us – what's an even better move strategically than just a parry?"

Draco's blond brows creased. "Er... a parry and then a riposte?"

"Mr. Malfoy – think of the French foil rules, and Arcadian court duel rules. What's even better than letting the other bloke take the straight thrust and establish right of way, and then parrying him? I know you know the answer."

"Er... don't let him get a straight thrust on you in the first place, take the straight thrust yourself before he can – "

"Yes, that's it," Emily said excitedly. "And what's that called?"

"It's... oh Merlin, what is it... " He shook his blond head, thinking hard. "Attack into preparation."

"Yes, exactly – five points for Slytherin." Emily turned to the rest of the class. "Now, everyone take what he said down – attack into preparation. When you see your adversary getting ready to let fly with an attack – what you then have to do is land your attack first. There's no magical way to block a Killing Curse? Then screw magic, it's failed you, try something else. If you're going to die anyway, it can't hurt to try to fight him with everything you've got before you go down, can it?"

More dead silence. Someone who sounded like Neville Longbottom whimpered. From somewhere in the back of the group came titters of nervous laughter.

"Your professor said for all of you to take that down," came Professor Snape's low, warning voice – and everyone fell to with parchment and quills propped on books and knees.

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"Now, would anyone care to see a demonstration?" Emily asked. "Professor Moody, would you assist me, please?"

She picked up one of the fencing masks and a dowelling prop wand and handed them to Moody, then put on a mask herself. "Face me, please, sir, you're to be my duelling opponent. Let's assume wand duelling first position, if you please." Moody nodded, assuming a duellist's stance very similar to fencer's first position, the prop wand held out in front of him.

Emily turned back to her students. "Now, imagine for a second that this gentleman before me isn't really our own dear Professor Moody, but a terrifying Dark Wizard who's Glamoured himself up into the image of Professor Moody, and who's now coming to kill me." She turned back to Moody. "Now, sir, come on with the attack. If you would time this please, Miss Granger, from the moment I begin my attack – "

Moody came toward her... and she paused, sniffing the air. Something about her last remark had caused Moody's personal scent to intensify exponentially, indicating a very rapid increase in his heart rate and the rate at which he was perspiring – and now, he was sweating anger, upset, and aggression at a frightening rate. Her eyes sought his under the wire mesh of the fencing mask – as he raised the prop wand toward her, his eyes were blazing, and his teeth bared in a snarl of rage.

They both moved at exactly the same instant – Moody raised the prop wand, pointing it at her, and Emily's hand extracted something from the edge of her hood, her lips moving silently as she did so – and then her arm swung back in Moody's direction as a sword flashed out from nowhere as her attack approached him in fourth –

Then her sword's edge connected with the dowel wand, and shattered it in half – splinters went flying past Moody's mask. Had it been a real wizard's wand, her attacker would have been rendered powerless.

"How long did that take?" Emily asked.

Hermione glanced up. "Point eight six seconds. A little less than a second."

Moody glanced at the shattered stub of wooden dowel in his hand. "Clever, aren't you, lassie," he rasped, his eyes fixed malevolently on her face.

Emily stepped back, her own heart now hammering. The aggression in Moody's scent was overpowering, washing over her like sick fear – there was enough hatred and murderous anger there to intimidate a troll. She stepped back from Professor Moody, eyes riveted on his face, watching for signs of aggression or attack. Had a Dark Wizard been coming toward her with a proper wand, looking and smelling like that, she would have indeed known that she had perhaps a second to save her own life.

The last time she had breathed this kind of scent had been during the Defence of Ardensea, when she had crashed into an alley and found three very large and murderous Baalorite Orcs bearing down on her, muscles rippling under their grey-green mottled skin, lower tusks gleaming. Her hand was instinctively ready on her sword, as it was then.

Moody's eyes were fixed on hers – something like recognition flashed between the two of them. For one long moment, the two of them gazed on a committed enemy, and knew it.

A moment later, Moody smiled. "Quite a fighter, lassie," he said and threw the stump of the prop wand despisingly aside. "But it's time for lunch, isn't it?"

Emily checked her watch. "Ah, yes," she replied. "Can't hear the bells out here, but it looks as though class is just about done."

Her students turned back toward with castle with no small sense of relief. They moved off toward the Great Hall for lunch, chattering amongst themselves in subdued voices.

Emily waited until Moody had moved out of sight, then caught up to Snape and put a hand on his elbow. "Professor, can I talk to you privately for a second? It's rather important."

Snape glanced down at her in surprise. "All right," he said, and waved her into an empty classroom.

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"Something is very wrong with Professor Moody," she told him the moment the door closed.

Snape slanted a quizzical look at her. "Of course there is. Have you looked at him recently?"

"Yes, but this is... rather more disturbing than that."

He paused, his eyes narrowing. "All right, what is it?"

Now how did one initiate this conversation? Moody stinks of murder and mayhem, and may be dangerous? Has Professor Moody exhibited any strange sociopathic tendencies in front of you lately? Do you tend to find yourself fearing for your life around any of our colleagues in particular?

Oh bloody hell, just talk to him. He's capable of understanding this, he teaches school and all.

"Do you want to know how I knew that you had wanted to kiss me for the last hour and a half the night you met me? And how I knew that second-year in your House had the bad tooth on the day of the Yule Ball?"

All motion within him stopped absolutely dead as he stared at her. "How did you know I heard about the bad tooth?"

"Because you're the Head of Slytherin, and the Slytherin students tell you everything," she replied. Really, she thought that would have been obvious to anyone by now.

"All right, madam, I'm listening," he said quietly. "How did you know about that fateful hour and a half? And how did you get the advance notice that Collingsworth was going to need a root canal?"

Emily took a deep breath. "I could smell it," she said.

"Smell it," he repeated incredulously.

"Yes, smell it! That boy's breath was so rotten it made a stinking cloud in front of him. And smell you – you were exuding so much bloody testosterone you were practically knocking me over with it. And yes, I can detect that."

He stared at her, not quite convinced, not quite disbelieving.

"Do you need further examples?" Emily asked. "All right. Sybil Trelawney sometimes starts on the cream sherry in the afternoons – I can smell it on her when she comes to the teachers' lounge. Rubeus Hagrid likes his mead full of allspice, cloves, and orange peel. Filius Flitwick has probably never touched a drop in his life, but he's a fiend for cherry Italian sodas. Minerva McGonagall keeps orris root sachets in her cupboards, and Irma uses lavender hand cream and dusting powder every morning. Professor Grubbly-Plank smokes cherry-vanilla pipe tobacco. Professor Moody practically subsists off that herbal tonic he keeps in his hip flask, but occasionally he'll go out in the evening and come back smelling like expensive brandy. You wash with castile and witch hazel soap, and a couple of times a week, you'll use some Bay Rhum shaving lotion. You've handled wintergreen berries, fluxweed, and civet sometime today. During the week, you stick to black coffee and Earl Grey tea, but now and then on weekends, you drink a bit of fine aged Scotch. You also take some kind of willow bark tincture headache potion before supper nearly every Friday. The elves do your shirts with heavy starch in the laundries and your woollens smell of cedar. Do you need me to go on?"

Snape's eyes were fixed on the floor in front of her. "All right, I suppose I'll have to concede that you have rather a good nose, then. How did it come to be that way, if I may ask?"

"I've always had it. Amongst fauns, it's normal."

"Why have you never mentioned this to anyone before?" he demanded.

"Why should I? As with many other distinctive traits of ours, most humans tend to find that sort of thing disconcerting," she said, perhaps more snappishly than she intended. "I still have some deer characteristics in this form, same as I retain a partly human form when I'm... anyway. Strong emotions – fear, anxiety, lust, aggression – all of them produce a distinct odour that triggers a certain emotional response in me. I can't describe it any more scientifically than that.

"Anyway the reason why I'm bringing this up to you at all was because of how Professor Moody smelled to me during the demonstration we put on today. That was a great deal more than just a fit of bad temper."

"How so?" he asked, crossing his arms in front of him warily.

"It wasn't just ordinary anger or upset in his scent. Moody wanted to kill me out there today – he positively reeked of it. When I face any enemy who smells of that much aggression – and I am not saying this just to shock you, sir – it's usually during a mortal confrontation. If you added the smell of blood and metal and fear to that... to me, that's the stench of battlefields."

Snape took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. "You're absolutely certain of this. You would swear to this under oath, on your word of honour."

"Absolutely," she said, without hesitation.

He turned away from her, his brow deeply creased with thought. "Professor... let's try to look at this rationally," he said, after a long moment. "Alastor Moody is a retired Auror, and his experiences in the field have left him extremely paranoid, as I'm sure you've noticed. During the course of your demonstration, you were acting in an aggressive manner toward him. Can you be sure that you didn't – all unintentionally – set off some kind of panic response in him, perhaps? Just an irrational reaction to the appearance of an attack?"

Emily paced a few steps, mulling that over. "All right, that's plausible... but I don't think so, somehow. He didn't seem panicked to me, not at all. Seemed to very much have his wits about him. Did he seem panicked to you?"

"No, he didn't," Snape said thoughtfully. "He just seemed to be looking at you very angrily. At the time, I thought it was because he was feeling a bit overly competitive."

"Do you think I should say something to Dumbledore?"

Snape deliberated that. "To be absolutely honest, madam, I would hesitate to trouble the Headmaster with most anything at this time, what with the Third Task almost upon us. He has any number of extremely pressing worries at present."

He turned back to her, coolly folding his arms in front of him. "Madam, you're obviously convinced that Moody is somehow dangerous to you, and I believe that you sincerely believe that, at least. He may be – I think everyone on staff would agree that he's not the most mentally balanced individual in this world. But really, are you prepared to go to the Headmaster and tell him that we should suspect an old friend and ally of his of harbouring murderous intent, all because he smelled bad for a moment?"

Emily started to protest, but Snape wasn't finished; he held up his hand for silence. "I'm not saying that you're wrong, Professor. You do sound as though you're experienced in these matters. And I'm certainly willing to believe that Moody's mental state has taken a turn for the even more psychotic," he said, with an eloquent scowl. "But consider this – if you were to go to the Headmaster and make such a charge, I think you would make a more effective case if you backed it up with more evidence than a bad smell, even if that smell was detected by someone with a nose subtle enough to detect, er, human pheromones." He looked at her rather suspiciously, as if wondering what else she could discern about him at that moment.

"All right... that makes sense," Emily said finally. "But I'm not going to feel safe until I'm a dimensional plane away from him, I tell you. I'm now tempted to put a Ward of Impassability on every door between him and me until the end of the year."

"I'm certainly not going to tell you that you shouldn't. Confidentially... " he lowered his voice with another eloquent scowl – "I'll be glad to be away from him at the end of the year as well – believe me, he's no friend of mine."

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Knockturn Alley is home to not only macabre little shops dealing in Dark Arts artefacts and brothels catering to exotic tastes, but many other establishments as well – rumour has it that one can satisfy any magical fetish at certain nightclubs, and one can contract any sort of deal in the back rooms of certain pubs. The Cask of Malmsey was one such pub; nearly any service can be procured in its dank, smoky depths, and its patrons tend to closely guard the privacy of their conversations.

Later that same Thursday night, a pale, freckled man with a mop of fair hair, his face hidden under a wide-brimmed hat and voluminous cloak, entered the pub and made directly for the back room. He took a seat in a dim little booth opposite a fellow who had been sitting alone and nursing a pint for some time.

"Thanks for meeting me on such short notice," Barty Crouch, Jr. said. "I have a contract for you."

The man hunched over the pint glass was middle-aged, of average height, with greying, thinning hair and an unremarkable, thin-lashed face. Even his closest acquaintances would probably have had a difficult time recalling what colour his eyes were. His clothes – grey trousers, a greying shirt, boots, a long grey tweed overcoat – were the sort of thing you could have gotten in any working-class shop. As he talked to Crouch, he opened a packet of common-label cigarettes and lit one with a mass-produced plastic lighter. There was nothing extraordinary about him at all, except for his profound degree of unmemorability. The eye seemed to go past him without effort.

"Who's being contracted?" the grey man asked Crouch. His voice was just as easy to ignore as the rest of him.

"Her name is Emily Swain – she's a professor at Hogwarts. About five foot eight or nine, thin build, fair hair, brown eyes. Wears a lot of black. Has a red, purple, and black Irish-knotwork sort of tattoo on her right arm. And pointed ears – she's a Faerie."

"I never contracted a Faerie before," the grey man said. "Folks say they're a strange lot."

"They are," Crouch agreed readily. "Uncanny buggers, the lot of 'em."

The grey man flicked ash off his cigarette unconcernedly. "I don't need to know what you want her contracted for, but I'll have to be messin' her up a bit to carry it out, as I can't use fancy Kedavra Curses like some other blokes. My methods is more direct and immediate-like. Don't be coming to me because you like my price, then complaining afterwards how the body's too ruined for whatever magics you need it for, now."

"No worries," Crouch replied grimly. "I asked for you specifically because this particular young lady has ways of protecting herself against magical attacks – you probably wouldn't be able to take her that way. Your way of working will be just fine, provided you use this."

Crouch laid a weapon on the table between them. It was an ugly, functional sort of dagger, about eight inches long. But Crouch had not chosen this weapon for its style or beauty – he had chosen it because its blade had been forged from cold, pure iron.

"If you come up behind her unawares and put that between her shoulder blades – I think you'll find that it'll seriously cramp her style," Crouch said with a demonic little chuckle. "Faeries don't like cold iron – it quite disagrees with them. As far as a time and a place – she lives in professors' quarters at Hogwarts, don't even try to take her at home. But she goes into London quite a bit, so I've got a bit of something to help you there."

He laid a street atlas of Wizarding London on the table, and then a Knut coin dangling from a length of string, around which was wound a thick strand of red-gold hair in an elaborate knotted pattern. "That's her hair – I nicked it off a brush in her pocketbook. The coin'll twinge when she's in London, so then you'll hold it over the map on that thread, and it'll tell you whereabouts she's gotten to. And – " Crouch fixed his companion with a stern look " – time is important. I want to be rid of her right away, before she gets too much said. Understand?"

The grey man picked up the dagger with a disturbingly deft gesture – the coordination and grace of his movements were the only really remarkable things about him. In another second, the weapon disappeared into his grey tweed overcoat. Then he picked up the coin and street atlas and pocketed them too. "All right then," he said. He held out his hand to Crouch, and a pouch of clinking coins changed hands.

"Half now, the rest when I get word that she's dead," Crouch said.

"Yeh've got yerself a deal."

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The scene in the drawing room of Malfeasant was one of happy domesticity that Friday evening. Lucius had been spending a great deal more time at home since the end of May, and his wife's mood had greatly improved as a result.

The two of them sat side by side in their accustomed armchairs in the drawing room. Lucius was absorbed in the day's Daily Prophet (he had been following the reports on the International Magical Cooperation audit very closely), now and then sipping from a snifter of excellent brandy. Narcissa was engrossed in a leather-bound Ann Radcliffe novel, with a glass of elderflower wine at her elbow.

The scratch of a post-office hire owl at the drawing room exterior doors caught Lucius's attention at about ten o'clock. He got up, and retrieved the message, scratched in a stark hand on plain parchment:

She knows.

I don't know how, but she does. Damn Faeries.

I'm taking care of it.

Sorry to do this to you, but I'm certain you'll manage to find entertainment elsewhere, old friend.

Next trip out to Pasiphäe's is on me?

~ Regards,

B.

"Oh, damn it all to hell." Lucius's tone was a soft hiss of angry disappointment as he crumpled the letter in his hand.

"Darling, is something wrong? What was it?" Narcissa looked briefly up from her reading.

"Nothing, dear," Lucius said. He crossed to the wastepaper basket by the side of an antique writing desk, dropped Crouch's note into it, and reduced the paper to ash with a quick Reductor Curse before returning to his armchair, newspaper, and brandy glass.

Narcissa Malfoy said nothing further on the matter, and looked only mildly interested. More than likely she had seen her husband casually dismiss and then disintegrate many a previous communication and was quite accustomed to this habit.

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It was a very quiet, endless weekend.

The mood in the castle was like the prolonged pause before a storm hits; some great pressure seemed to be gathering soundlessly in the air. Even the students seemed unusually subdued – their excited chatter and bright voices seemed muted in the halls and as they played games, studied, and gossiped out on the green. The library was unusually full, as students got in extra review for the upcoming exams.

There was, of course, no communication from Lucius.

Emily took advantage of the time to finish composing her final examinations and devise practical tests for her last sessions. On Monday, her students began to turn in their final compositions. She had assigned a scroll's worth of essay overviewing the Faery magic they had learned that year, and for the second, she had asked them to devise their own instruction manual for either fencing, dagger fighting, or hand-to-hand combat. Both were free-form assignments, for which they could use outside sources, pictures, both Muggle and Wizarding media, whatever they liked, and she was looking forward to reading the efforts of some of the more creative of her students.

On Tuesday, she collected the last of their compositions, and then let them have a quiet study period in which they could review whatever they liked. To them, the highlight of their school year was coming up on Thursday night, but to their professor, the social event of the year was coming up that evening. Nothing about that day, classes or meals, could be over soon enough, so she could get out to London.

After supper, Emily headed up to her apartments, showered quickly, and hurried through dressing with the glee of a very young woman going to her first real party after months of drudgery. It was great fun to powder her shoulders, slick back her hair, put on a bit more eye makeup and redder lipstick than usual, and have an occasion to use the good perfume. She all but capered down the path toward the gate on her way out at about 8:00 p.m. that evening.

A moment later, she Apparated onto the street in Diagon Alley. As she crossed the street and headed toward the Leaky Cauldron, Emily never noticed a man in a grey tweed overcoat step out of the tunnel leading to Knockturn Alley. His colourless eyes fastened on the fair-haired figure in black as she made her way through the crowds of late shoppers and commuters on her way up the street.

A moment later, he had merged with the random home-goers behind her and followed her through the crowd, unremembered by anyone.