Chapter Fifty Five—Propitious

“I’ve not seen anything like it before. It’s called an ivy.”

Snape looked dubiously at the plastic bag of clear liquid on the table.

“It’s an intravenous drip,” he corrected the apoth. “Muggles use it to introduce liquids into a patient—a somewhat barbaric but usually efficacious treatment. For how long has she been dosed with this?” He picked the plump bag up and squinted at the print on the plastic.

The fat man shrugged, plucking at his heavy, purple robes to try and unstick them from his sweaty skin. He was still unnerved from his last visit to the werewolf den. The stink had been dreadful, and the atmosphere even worse. Greyback had been in a towering rage, one that even his followers had shied back from. The day before the full moon was a terrifying one in a den, and in one with an alpha male as insane and violent as Greyback, it was a promise of an impending horror that would have even the doughtiest quaking. Comparatively, this exchange seemed like blessed relief.

“I can’t be certain, but not long, I believe. Although I’d not seen her for a week, I guess a couple of days at most judging from the way Greyback spoke and from her physical condition. There is some improvement, but not as much as Greyback is hoping. There was the bald threat that whoever fails to prove their skill at reviving her is dealt a… desperately painful end.”

The apoth’s cheeks went even paler at the thought of potential failure on his part.

“If you do what I tell you, that painful end will not be yours,” Snape told him confidently. “What I have given you is markedly superior to this.” He dropped the bag back on to the table. “Have you dosed her?”

Todianus mopped his forehead with an already damp handkerchief. “Yes, but I was concerned it would react badly with this… intravenous… thing.” He waved a chubby digit at the bag. “I didn’t know what was in it, which, I suppose, was fortunate. I told Greyback there might be a bad reaction from mixing medications, that I’d need to take a sample of what the Muggle had given the woman to check it was harmless. He wasn’t very happy about that.”

“Why?”

The apoth sighed. “I think because his supply of this liquid isn’t as free as he would like. Allowing me to take even one bag away seemed to be a huge risk. He told me that if I didn’t bring it back, unspoiled, he’d peel the flab off me with his own hands.” He leaned forward slightly to squint at the bag. “Is it really harmless? If she dies, Greyback might blame me. The flesh around the needle in her hand was quite inflamed.”

“Let me see.”

Todianus waited while the images flicked through his mind, shuffled like cards, random ones selected and studied. He was used to the invasive rummaging but still disliked the ease with which Snape could do this to him. At least it didn’t hurt. Scant comfort, but enough. What the dark-haired man made of his memories was hard to tell, but there was a crease across his forehead.

“Who is this Muggle that Greyback has bringing him this liquid?”

The handkerchief was dabbed at perspiring jowls and then disappeared into the apoth’s pocket.

“He’s some kind of trainee or assistant at a Muggle clinic or hospital. His name’s… ah…” Todianus paused, racking his brain for a few seconds. “… Satash… no, Sarteschi. He’s a strange one.”

“How so?”

The apoth fidgeted in his chair under that black glare.

“He doesn’t seem worried by Greyback. At all. Even if he were a Squib, his lack of fear is highly unusual, and Greyback is being particularly violent lately. Muggles don’t normally deal well with wizarding world contact, which means he’s either familiar with it or…” The apoth’s high voice trailed off uncertainly. “There’s a funny look about him, about the way he talks and carries himself. He looks… drugged.”

“Let me see.”

The red-rimmed eyes, greyish complexion and slow speech replayed in the apoth’s mind.

“It’s possible he’s a male-lyc, but that still doesn’t explain the lack of fear,” Todianus mused.

“What else do you know of this Sarteschi? Which clinic does he work at?”

Todianus shook his head. “I’ve told you all I know. Perhaps if I knew the suburb Greyback is currently in, I could look into clinics and hospitals nearby for this man, but there’s still too little indication of where the den is. There is a train station nearby, though. I heard it while I was there.”

“How long until you return to the den?”

The apoth glanced at the clock on the wall of his small office and made the calculation.

“Just over four hours. I’ve been told to wait in Trafalgar Square this time for my chaperone.”

Snape spent a few moments mulling over the information.

“Tell Greyback that you need to analyse the Handler’s blood to determine if she is diabetic.”

The apoth frowned. “Why would—”

“If she is diabetic, the IV she’s being given could cause complications. Convince him to allow you to remove the IV until you can confirm there will be no contraindication. If he’s stubborn, tell him the conditions in which the Handler is being kept are not sterile and an infection could result from a pathogen entering the bloodstream via the injection site. There’s only so much he’ll risk. There’s no potential allergic reaction in mixing what I’ve given you with this IV. However, IV solutions vary. If the Muggle gives the Handler a different solution, there could be problems. Have you seen any other bag or bottle piggybacking on the peripheral line?”

“Ah, I don’t know what a—”

“Have you seen any other container draining into the catheter in the Handler’s vein?” Snape clarified harshly.

Todianus shook his head. “No.”

“Until the IV is removed, I cannot determine if a change in the Handler’s health is due to what you give her or from what the Muggle gives her. Keep the dosage the same until I tell you otherwise.”

The apoth pressed the fingers of one hand to his smooth forehead. “How am I meant to get this blood sample from the Handler? Cutting her would seem to be hypocritical if I’m fussing about sterile conditions and pathogens,” he noted a little snippily.

Snape ground his teeth. “There are ways to get blood from her that don’t involve incision.”

A flush of frustration bloomed in Todianus’ face. “You’re requiring me to be a mediwizard and I’m not! I’ve got no training in that area whatsoever, and if I make a mistake and kill the Handler, Greyback will be extracting my blood with more than a few incisions!”

A risky idea occurred to Snape. He glanced at the apoth’s bald pate.

“You have no hair at all?”

Todianus stared at him, flummoxed by the abrupt change in topic. “Not on my head, no.”

Snape suppressed queasiness at the thought of this man’s hair sourced from locations other than his head.

“A piece of fingernail will do instead, and you have no more than an hour to tell me everything about all your previous encounters with Greyback and Macnair.”

It was an extremely dicey course of action, but one that had to be considered.

Reaching the safe-house and by-passing the security charms, Snape hoped that Parr was actually inside. She had told him she was based here for a few days, but that didn’t necessarily mean all the time. She could be out with Lupin, although the sun was only just about to set. They seemed to do their searching during the darkened hours.

It seemed logical to search her out in the small study room where Snape had found her before but logic served little purpose when it came to Parr—she was not there. However, three other people were. He stared at the young girl sitting between Lupin and Tonks on the couch, their laughter abruptly halted by Snape’s appearance in the doorway. The girl reached out automatically for one of Tonks’ hands, her whole demeanour shifting to one of nervousness at the presence of one who was a stranger to her. Her blue eyes locked onto Snape as if she were reluctant to look away from a potential threat.

Lupin swore under his breath and got up from the couch quickly.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed at Snape, trying to draw him away from the room and back down the hallway. Snape ignored him and continued to study the young girl cowering next to Tonks. The skinny limbs, pale skin and scars like scratches across her face gave it away.

“You keep her here?” he asked Lupin, incredulous.

The lyc-girl flinched at his tone, clutching onto Tonks’ hands as if her life depended on it. Tonks scowled at Snape.

“Don’t start that now, Severus,” Lupin snapped, stepping back to place himself between Snape and the lyc-girl as if to provide a barrier.

A prickle ran down Snape’s spine that he shrugged off irritably, leaning to one side to look past Lupin. The lyc-girl blinked rapidly a few times and turned towards Tonks to whisper to her, a crease between her thin brows. Snape didn’t hear what she asked.

“No, he’s not,” Tonks whispered back to the girl. “He’s an arsehole but not one of them.” She said it deliberately loud enough for Snape to hear. The lyc-girl’s frown deepened slightly as she watched him carefully.

“A word, please,” Lupin demanded, grabbing hold of Snape’s coat and dragging him away from the room. Snape snatched his arm back.

“Don’t touch me, Lupin. I’m not one of your furtive nocturnal consorts.”

“Don’t scare her, then!” Lupin shot back angrily. “She only just barely trusts me.”

“Your decision, your problem,” Snape summed up curtly. “Where is Miss Parr?”

Lupin’s expression turned even flintier.

“Why?”

“None of your business,” Snape pointed out with a sneer. “But for the sake of alacrity, there is an urgent medical matter that I must discuss with her.”

“What’s wrong?”

“That is definitely none of your business, as I believe we have discussed on a number of occasions,” Snape mentioned smoothly. “Tell me where she is or I shall employ my talents as an arsehole to make everyone’s life instantly unpleasant. And don’t go for the obvious retort, please.”

“Upstairs, and fuck off! How’s that for a retort?”

“My, my, aren’t we tetchy this evening? Does the imminent full moon always make you so foul-mouthed? I hope you don’t talk like that around your dependant.”

Snape watched with an amused fascination as Lupin talked himself down from a spectacular burst of lunar-induced pugnacity. A slightly shaking finger was pointed directly in his face.

“Don’t push your luck. I’ll not have you upsetting that girl after all she’s been through, so you stay the hell away from her.”

Snape curled the line of his mouth into an eloquent symbol of derision. “With pleasure.” He stuck his nose in the air and swept up the stairs, leaving the frustrated werewolf struggling to manage his temper.

Parr looked down on him with her own brand of suppressed merriment as she answered her door.

“Knocking? That’s evidence of manners I didn’t think you had, Dual.”

There was a peculiar wildness in her eyes that Snape found unsettling, like a deep ocean torn into a maelstrom. It was a stark contrast to the steely control of the rest of her features.

“Prudence rather than manners, Striker. Purely an attempt to avoid a knife in my throat.”

Parr snorted gustily at him as if he had made a joke and stepped back from the doorway to allow him to enter. Her eyebrow rose at his hesitation.

“Now, what would you have to worry about in here?” she chided him softly, bright green eyes as keen as a stalking cat’s.

“The list is too long to go into right now, Miss Parr,” he countered with a confidence he didn’t feel and edged past her. The close of the door behind him sounded ominously like that of a prison cell.

His gaze flicked around the room, noting the unusual, almost compulsive tidiness of the objects inside it. Books on a study table in a series of mathematically precise stacks. Bed linens straightened, with folds but no creases. A pair of knee-high black boots standing to attention below a black overcoat hanging from a peg in the wall, the laces draped with a symmetry that was almost ludicrous in its accuracy. On the floor next to the bed lay a sequence of oddly familiar knives that gave him pause not only for the inherent threat held in them, but from the recognition that he had seen them set in such an order once before.

“You have been practising.”

It was a statement, not a question. He blinked in mild confusion at Parr as she loped slowly past him and back to her line of knives. She sank down, cross-legged, a whetstone in her hand with which she resumed the sharpening of her work-blade. Snape’s eyes focused on the black cord woven around the hilt, cutting between the usual orange and silver bindings.

“Practising?” he repeated.

This time, both her eyebrows drifted up. The scrape of stone across steel set Snape’s teeth on edge.

“Your mental dodging. You’ve been practising.”

He squinted at her, observing the elongated limbs and bowed planes of her face. Good.

“I was given the impression it was of some importance to do so,” he replied.

Parr gave a tight smile and kept her eyes on her knife. “Indeed. It was not an accusation, Dual. I believe that praise is as beneficial as criticism in teaching, though I’m sure you have contradictory examples just waiting to flow off your tongue. Just to give me the shits, of course.”

He ignored her baiting.

“The apoth has medicated your Handler.”

Parr’s hands did not pause at his words.

“Yes.”

Again, a statement.

“You knew?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Parr turned the work-blade over to sharpen the underside.

“I felt better.”

“You mentioned that diabetes ran in your family. Could your Handler have the condition?”

She studied the blade in her hands for a moment before resuming the sharpening.

“No.”

Snape huffed. “You seem very sure.”

“Clear for seven decades, but we test nonetheless. She is not diabetic.”

The twin side-locks of her hair framed long-fingered hands, the palms swaddled in bandages; hands that moved carefully and meticulously under her gaze. There was a studied determination in how she held herself, how she moved, even how she breathed: a person with a level of focus that eliminated all unnecessary sensory input to allow her to attend to the task she had set herself.

“There is an immediate chance to find your Handler.”

Parr’s hands stilled abruptly. She remained frozen for some time during which Snape thought he felt a slew of emotions running through her: hope, desperation, curiosity, relief. Caution. Hesitancy. Concern.

“How so?” she asked evenly in her deepened voice, still in that fixed pose.

“The apoth has to return every five hours to medicate your Handler. I will go in his stead during one visit.”

Again, seconds of silence passed.

“Polyjuice Potion.”

“Yes,” he confirmed.

Her hands placed knife and whetstone down gently, but her head remained lowered.

“When?”

“In another six hours.”

Once more, silence. She flexed her toes apart in their socks as she considered his words.

“You said the apoth must medicate her every five hours. Why is there a delay?”

“The potion won’t be ready in time for the next medication.”

“I thought Polyjuice was effective from the moment the biological sample was added to it,” said Parr quickly. Tersely. Suspiciously.

“If the potion is completed, yes. But I don’t always have a ready supply, Striker. I’ve had to use it more heavily of late. It is fortunate that there is only a six-hour delay for this current formulation, but it will be the last window of opportunity before the full moon. I daren’t go anywhere near a den during that time, even if I could.”

There was a burst of vexation from her that echoed with that inside him. A few breaths and she quashed it with an iron-fisted determination. Did Parr know how easily he could sense the emotional undercurrents in her? Snape was beginning to realise that his ability to read another’s mood had improved markedly, but not nearly to the extent that he could divine Parr’s. It both alarmed him and lured him closer. That he could circumvent her disguise of her emotions, whether with or without her consent, was innervating, enflaming, inciting an intense wave of possession that shocked him with its velvet clinch.

“How will you do it?”

“Apparition.”

“You would not be followed?”

“I have my ways. And they will be looking for the apoth, not me.”

She nodded once at that. Short and sharp.

“Where will you take her?”

“The school. Anywhere else is too risky.”

Another nod.

Agitation. Impatience. A feeling of uselessness. Parr hated that she could not be there to free her Handler herself, but she accepted the situation as the best chance they had. She still hated it nonetheless.

“There must be something I can… do.”

“Help me find another.”

Parr’s head lifted slowly, her green eyes turned up to him, eerily reflective in the room’s light. For a brief moment, Snape was anxious she would sense in him the clutching, near-sensuous ownership of her that he felt, the wave of it rising steadily in a crooning promise to drown him. Then he realised that even if he managed to hide it from her mind, she would surely smell it on him, if she hadn’t done so already: the addict come back for more.

“The Unspeakable?”

“Yes. We must go now.”

Parr’s forehead rippled in suppressed exasperation.

“It cannot wait?”

“No. The apoth has told me something that demands we do this now.”

Parr remained still and quiet, staring steadily at him. There was a… flavour to her thoughts that asked the question. Wordless, but the meaning was there. For a moment, he thought he could smell it. It was like heavy cloth that had been brought into the sun after a long winter, the weight of stone lightened by the touch of the sun, the dust of stillness dissolving into a breath of bitter orange.

“An overheard conversation between Macnair and a previous informant of mine.” Even the thought of Trint made Snape so coldly furious that he had to clench his hands to stop them from shaking. “It seems they have the Unspeakable, though for what purpose, the fat man could not say. They are having difficulty extracting the information they need from him. Macnair is growing impatient and has decided that someone else try their hand, someone gifted in such matters. I fear the Unspeakable will be dead before the evening is over.”

Parr blinked a couple of times. She appeared so calm. Too calm. It had to be a lie—the turbulence of her emotions that washed over him intermittently made a mockery of her composure. He had to stop himself from trying to smell it out. How could he possibly know what a lie would smell like? The shift in his perception was greater than he had realised, sliding towards a layered awareness that whispered to him, a susurration of expanding consciousness of what had previously been a hidden world to him. It sank him into sensation, making it thorny for him to concentrate, to remain above visceral impulse.

“There is a problem,” Parr murmured. She leaned back until she was resting against the side of the bed, looking up at him with an avid, almost feral gaze, on the edge of causing a rather desperate problem arising on his part. “I cannot leave the house clothed.”

Snape had to exert a phenomenal amount of mental discipline on his thought processes at those words.

“What?” he asked with difficulty through gritted teeth.

“Remus has Charmed my clothes so that he knows if I leave the house.” The edges of her mouth curved gently. “He suspects a prudishness I do not possess if the motivation is strong enough. However, winter is not my favourite season to go parading about unclothed, and my health is not the best it could be.”

Somewhat ingenious of Lupin to do such a thing, if a little naïve in his reliance on it.

“What really keeps you here, then?”

Parr sighed softly, her features taking on a tired cast.

“My word. And that is strong enough.” She saw the expression on Snape’s face at that statement. “In my line of work, my word is all I have to maintain credibility.” She shrugged gently, the high collar of her jacket briefly hiding the bandage around her neck. “That is not all, though. If Remus discovered I had left the house alone, the agreement that protects and hides me is broken. No sanctuary. I must tread very carefully. If I can leave the house undetected and return before my absence is noted, the agreement remains in effect.” There was a glint in her eye that looked suspiciously like mischief. “After all, I would not be alone.”

Snape couldn’t prevent a smile at the realisation that she had ensured there was a way to escape yet still hold true to her word. Sly. He liked that.

“Lupin has Charmed all of your clothing?”

Parr huffed, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Why would he Charm all of it? Who would possibly aid me in my transgression by bringing a change of clothing from the school?”

The faux innocence in her voice made the impending venture even more sweetly compelling. They both knew what had to be done.

Snape went to the sole window in the room. Open, it would be wide enough, and it looked down on the small courtyard at the back of the building.

“There is less time than perhaps you hope to be available, Dual. I am to be locked away safely at the school during Lupin’s incapacity, so I must be here when Kingsley arrives to fetch me at eleven. This leaves us less than six hours to find your Unspeakable. It may not be enough, and then I will be unable to assist you until I return to this house.”

“Then this will need to be the fastest track you have ever done, Striker,” Snape pointed out, still squinting out into the night, determining who in the surrounding houses had a view of what could come in, or out, of this window. “Until now, I have reached nothing but dead ends in trying to find this man.” He turned back and headed towards the door. “Wait ten minutes, then tell Lupin you are unwell and need to rest, undisturbed, until you have to leave.” His hand paused on the door handle. “Lupin is an idiot. He should have Charmed your knives, not your clothing.”

“He did.”

This was ill news. Snape looked over his shoulder at Parr.

“Why didn’t you say so before?”

“Because he hasn’t Charmed all of them,” Parr replied with a toothy grin that was both untamed and frightening. “He doesn’t know how many I have.” She splayed her fingers and pushed forward four blades from the array in front of her: two narrow-bladed daggers of identical design, a sgian dubh with a black handle and silver pommel, and a diamond cross-sectioned stiletto. “I still have enough teeth.”

Secretive. Delusive. Wily. Ravenclaw should not have been the house that claimed her.

“Time passes swiftly, Dual. Make sure he sees you go.”

Silk slithered down his spine in a narcotic promise of the fusion between them that he had been desperate for since the first time it had happened. Snape didn’t care how sick it would make him afterwards, how he would curse her name for ache of the separation she would leave him floundering in, how the anguish of fleeting synchronicity would do nothing but increase his starvation. Had he known how, he would have shredded at that infinitesimal point of connection left between them to open it into a torrent to engulf him.

Eyes. Voice. The touch that could not be seen. Knives were not her only weapons.

It was all he could do not to fall down the stairs in his haste to leave.