Chapter Thirteen - A Slip Of The Tongue

Parr rolled up the parchment and set it to one side. Another one down, two more to go, she thought wearily. It probably hadn't been a good idea to drink as much as she had the night before, especially seeing as Lupin appeared to have a hollow leg. Alcohol seemed to affect him hardly at all. At least, it didn't at first.

All right, where was I? Parr thought, tapping her fingers on the table and looking at all the books and paper strewn in front of her. Should she do her Arithmancy assignment on imaginary numbers and their influence or the History of Magic essay on the formative years of the governing bodies of the European magical societies?

Neither option seemed particularly gripping. Procrastinating, Parr made herself a paper hat, stuck her quill in it, and set it on her head at a jaunty angle. Imaginary numbers... governing bodies... imaginary numbers... governing bodies... achingly dull... relentlessly dry... achingly dull... relentlessly dry.

Parr tapped her fingers again, then took her paper hat off and placed it carefully on a textbook on Muggle Parliament and Ministry of Magic interrelations. She decided to do the governing bodies essay. Rearranging the mess in front of her and plucking her quill out of the paper hat, Parr set to work, the nib scratching across the parchment.

Relentlessly dull... relentlessly dull... relentlessly dull!

Not taking her eyes from her work, Parr reached out with her free hand to open the subject textbook to check a reference. The front cover hit the table with a thump. Parr held the required page down with her index finger while her quill continued to scrape across the parchment.

"Is there something I can help you with, Professor?" she asked aloud, starting a new line.

"What are you doing in here?"

"An essay on the formative years of the governing bodies of the European magical societies."

"Why are you doing it in here?"

"The library is closed, and my room is too stuffy to concentrate in." She looked at the open textbook and turned a few pages back.

"Isn't it too late to be doing this?"

"I don't sleep much."

"Students aren't meant to be wandering about at such a late hour."

Parr rolled her eyes and started writing again. "I'm not wandering about. I need to sit still to do this. If you have a suggestion as to how I should unjam the window in my room, I would very much like to hear it, as it's too cold in this hall." She finished the sentence she was writing and closed the textbook. "Are you giving me another detention?"

"You don't seem to be shying away from giving me reasons to do so. I'm starting to wonder if you like being given detention."

Parr put down her quill and twisted around on her bench to face him. "I didn't know you had a sense of humour, Professor," she said blandly.

Snape raised his eyebrows at her. "I was being serious."

"Ah, silly me," she replied with a straight face and turned back to her essay.

"I was also being serious about students not being up at night, Miss Parr. Is there something wrong with the Ravenclaw common room?"

Parr pushed the stubby candle aside and pulled another textbook towards her. She shrugged. "Too many distractions."

"At two o'clock in the morning?" Snape asked and walked over to the bench. "Pick up your stuff. You can't do your homework here or now."

"But I've got two more assignments to do," countered Parr, indicating the mess in front of her with an open palm.

"Tough," Snape retorted. "You can't be writing anything of quality at this hour. Your teachers, I'm sure, would prefer you to do your homework during normal hours when your attention isn't wandering." He picked up the folded paper. "Nice hat. Very artistic," he commended, contempt curling through his deep voice.

"Mmm," said Parr, pressing her lips into a thin line. She started to gather her books together.

"I trust it hasn't escaped your mind that your Potions essay is due tomorrow morning," he reminded her, putting the origami hat down. "And woe betide you if you write it in biro like you did the last one."

Parr reached across the long table to a rolled up parchment that had been knocked aside. She held it out to him. "I've already done it and in quill-ink."

He stared at her. "I'm not taking it now. Hand it in during class like everybody else."

Parr shrugged and stuffed the parchment into her bag with a loud crackle.

Snape winced. "Physical condition of assignments is as important as their contents, Miss Parr!" he barked at her.

Parr dragged the crumpled paper out of her bag and looked at it thoughtfully. She tried to uncrease it. "I suppose I could sit on it to try and flatten it out," she mused.

Snape snatched it out of her hand. "That's the last thing I need," he snapped. "Try moving with some alacrity!"

Parr jammed the rest of her books into her bag and picked up the candle.

They were just leaving the Great Hall when Parr stopped abruptly, nearly causing Snape to bump into her. He saw Filch's cat, Mrs Norris, frozen mid-stride towards them out of the gloom of the corridor, hackles raised and making a yowling sound in her throat, her luminous eyes fixed on Parr like two searchlights. Parr stared back at the puffed-up cat, expressionless. Mrs Norris continued to cat-growl at her for a few seconds before deciding that she needed to be somewhere else and bolting off back the way she had come like a furry streak. Although Mrs Norris wasn't an average cat, the behaviour seemed peculiar, even for her. Parr snorted.

"Don't you like cats?" Snape asked her.

She gave a start and hitched her bag up on to her shoulder. "I like them just fine," she replied and started walking again. "They just don't seem to like me very much, especially that one."

"Cats are very perceptive," he pointed out, following her.

Parr shook her head. "I never had any problems with Aristotle, and he was notoriously bad-tempered."

"You owned a cat?"

"No, he wasn't mine, he belonged to my Ha―" The words cut off abruptly as Parr closed her mouth suddenly. From his position behind her, Snape saw her cringe and miss a step. What did she nearly let slip there, he wondered.

"Belonged to...?" he prompted hopefully.

"It doesn't matter," Parr muttered, knuckles white on the candle she was holding. She turned up the staircase that would take her in the direction of the Ravenclaw tower.

Snape followed her, staring at her back. A seam ran across the high-necked jacket she wore, just below shoulder level. If it hadn't been for the fact that she wasn't wearing her school robes, that the strap of her bag was rucking the grey material, and that he was following closely behind her, he wouldn't have noticed that the seam was actually partially open at the centre.

He squinted and drew a little closer to get a better look. The opening was perhaps a hand's width with no indication that it was due to poor stitching. If anything, the needlework was such that it showed that the opening was deliberate.

Parr turned abruptly to her right, catching him off guard. Snape stopped at the top of the stairs.

"Where are you going?"

Parr stopped and turned to face him. "Back to my room."

Snape jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "The Ravenclaw quarters are this way. For someone who claims to 'find things' as a career, your sense of direction is about as sharp as a wet sock."

Parr hitched her bag up on her shoulder. "That isn't where I sleep." She turned away and continued away from him, forcing him to stalk after her.

She didn't sleep with the other Ravenclaws? Well, not especially surprising. After all, she was nearly twice the age of the students. Sleeping in a dorm with three teenagers would be the kind of nightmare she'd understandably want to avoid. The castle, vast in its sprawling expanse, contained all sorts of rooms. Guest quarters did exist, although they were not often used.

Parr threaded her way through the tangle of intersecting corridors until she reached a dead-end with a ratty tapestry of a group of old wizards standing about looking dull as they proffered bits of paper at each other and pointed in different directions.

Parr shouldered open the dark wooden door and turned her head towards him.

"Are you any good with your hands, Professor?" she asked curiously.

Snape blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?" he responded after a pause, not knowing what to make of the question.

"My window." Parr pointed into her room. "I could ask Mr Filch about it tomorrow, but I still need to finish my assignments, and fresh air would be a plus."

"Carpentry is not one of my skills, Miss Parr," Snape grated at her, tugging one of his sleeves further down his arm. "Leave the door open."

Parr huffed. "That is an option, Professor. However, open doors tend to invite people to enter, and I dislike having people walk in on me unannounced when I'm in my underwear." She swung the bag off her shoulder. "Plus, if the door were open, I might be tempted to go wandering again." She disappeared into her room with her candle, dropping the corridor into shadow.

"I can't imagine anyone would either be able or would want to come down here to bother you, Miss Parr," Snape replied, frowning after her.

"Then you're not as aware of what goes on around the castle at this hour as you think you are, Professor," Parr called back with an unmistakably amused tone.

Snape's silhouette filled the doorway. "Are you saying that there are students regularly creeping about the corridors at night, Miss Parr?" he demanded to know, slightly outraged at this possibility.

Parr turned from her small study table that was pushed up against the stone wall to the left of the room to face him. She had a shallow bowl in her hand and a spoon in the other. Her eyebrows were raised and her lips curved into a slight smile. "I'm sure your night-time patrols are thorough, Professor," she replied calmly and stirred the contents of the bowl with her spoon. The candlelight caught a pale cloud of steam as it puffed up from the bowl, and she wrinkled her nose into it briefly.

Snape stared at Parr as she proceeded to shovel whatever was in the bowl into her mouth. "Do you ever stop eating?" he carped at her. "It's like watching a Muggle garbage truck."

Parr leaned her behind back on the desk and stirred her soup again. "I have a large appetite," she stated and stuck the full spoon in her mouth. "It didn't take much to convince the house-elves to slip me an extra meal whenever I'm in my room." She continued to slop soup into her mouth.

Snape shook his head as he watched Parr use a slice of bread to mop up the leavings. She ate like a teenage boy: fast, copiously, and with an unabashed lack of common table manners. It was a wonder that she didn't spill half of the soup down her front.

She set the clean bowl down on the table behind her and wedged the bread into her mouth with a spray of crumbs. She noticed a blob of soup on her thumb and licked it off in between chewing her mouthful and then looked at him with a slight squint of her misted eye.

"I thought about smashing the glass, but it'd make a lot of noise, and I don't want Peeves bothering me while I'm working. Plus it's a bit rude of me to damage school property." She swallowed her mouthful and dabbed with an exaggerated delicacy at the corners of her mouth with her fingertips.

"Intriguing that you hesitate in exhibiting behaviour that others might consider rude, Miss Parr. Any reason for the sudden upswing in courteous behaviour?" Snape leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms, sneering down his nose at her.

"It must be due to the impeccable manners I see in those around me, Professor," the woman responded dryly, raising an eyebrow at him and pushing herself away from her desk.

She reached for a sturdy metal ruler and stepped over to the window that was set in the wall three feet from the desk. With a thunk, she jammed the end of the ruler into the base of the window and tried to lever the sliding pane up.

Snape watched her for a few moments with an amused twist to his mouth until the metal bent with the force Parr was exerting on it. She pulled it free of the window and looked at the ruined ruler forlornly.

"Oh, well, I didn't really expect it to work," she muttered under her breath and tossed the bent metal on to the study table. She put her hands on her hips and sized up the window again, running through alternatives in her mind. She was about to try using the soup spoon in the same way when she heard Snape come up behind her.

"Spare the school cutlery," he told her. "The wood's probably just swollen from the rain." Parr stepped aside for him. She frowned as he slipped his long fingers into the metal rings at the base of the windowpane.

"You're not going to use magic?" she inquired, somewhat surprised.

Snape turned his head to look at her with a flat expression. "Unlike others, I don't find it necessary to use magic for every simple matter, Miss Parr," he replied frostily.

Parr held up her hands in a ghosting of a placating gesture and took another pace backwards, spinning the spoon between her fingers calmly.

Snape didn't need to look at Parr to know that she had a smirk splashed across her face as he struggled to get the window open. He'd thought that it would've just taken a sharp heave to un-jam the pane, but it sat in the frame stubbornly without even a hint of a squeak to indicate movement.

He ground his teeth and doubled his effort. The pane abruptly gave way without warning and banged upwards, the glass shattering from the impact with the transom. They both jumped back from the blanket of shards that rained down onto the floor with a cacophony of tinkling.

There was a pause.

"Smooth," said Parr, brushing a few tiny slivers of glass from her sleeve nonchalantly.

Snape glared at her sourly, but she returned his look serenely, the corners of her eyes crinkling in evidence of the laughter she was suppressing admirably. He pulled his wand from his pocket and hissed a repairing spell. So much for not using magic. Stuffing his wand back into his pocket, he bent forward to get a closer look at the wooden frame.

It was as he had suspected: the wood had swollen with moisture, and a light sheen of mould had taken hold. He sniffed at the spore-laden air around the window and scrubbed a knuckle under his nose.

"Tell Filch that this window frame needs to be replaced," Snape told her, standing straight again. "And no, I will not fix it with magic," he forestalled her and turned away from the window in a swirl of cloth. Her voice stopped him before he reached the door.

"I was wondering, Professor, if your supply problem has been resolved."

Snape stopped and half-turned his head so that he could see Parr out of the corner of his eye, still standing by the window. He didn't answer her.

"Will I be scrubbing the floor of your classroom with my toothbrush, then?" she added in a low voice.

He had to turn his head to hide the faint smile that found its way unexpectedly onto his face. Parr had bet him in the apothecary that she could make the fat apoth give Snape what he wanted, and if she failed in her claim, she promised to clean the floor of his classroom on her hands and knees with her toothbrush. He'd been caught off-guard enough to actually agree to the bet, especially since the apoth was being such a snide and difficult git. He made sure there was no trace of his smile in his eventual reply.

"It seems that you will not be required to carry out that penalty," Snape sighed offhandedly. That was a gross understatement. The replacement supplies that had been dutifully sent to him the same evening were of exceptional quality. The apoth was clearly, and wisely, taking the promise Parr had extracted from him very seriously.

Something glinted above the doorframe, and Snape lifted his eyes to it. There, with its point a few inches from the top of the door, sat Parr's knife; the one he'd seen her use in the apothecary in Knockturn Alley the day before. Well, two days before, he mentally amended, considering the current hour. The knife appeared suspended against the wall, held in place with a Fixing Charm. His eyes travelled along the length of the blade, noting the scratches and dints on the flat, and the keenness of the edge. Parr's voice just behind him made him jump slightly.

"Professor Flitwick was kind enough to oblige," she explained softly. "It was thought prudent to keep it out of reach whenever possible."

Snape suppressed an impulse to slide away from her close proximity; it made him feel uncomfortable in a way that hadn't been apparent when she had stood near him in London. He supposed it was the fact that he was standing in her sleeping quarters and not out in public.

"A wise decision on the Headmaster's part," he stated, noting the rusty orange and silver cloth bindings around the handle of the knife. "Students shouldn't go around armed with weapons."

That statement brought a clear laugh from Parr, making him stiffen in irritation. "I would've thought, Professor, that would mean that students would need to be stripped of their wands." He heard her retreat from her position behind him. "Besides, it was my idea to have the blade out of reach whilst I am on the school grounds."

That statement made him turn in mild surprise. Parr had her back to him as she stared out of her now-open window, combing her fingers through one of the long side tresses of her hair. His eyes slid to that mysterious seam on the back of her grey jacket.

Parr's performance in the apothecary was indicative of someone extremely proficient with a knife. Snape didn't see where she had produced it from, but he suspected it had been from somewhere up the wide sleeve of her black overcoat. Her hands had moved so fast that the apoth had been pinned to his countertop before Snape had realised Parr had drawn a weapon. It had made him jump back and clutch about in his pocket for his wand in a pathetically delayed reaction. Parr could have cut his throat with one sweep of her arm before he'd have been able to defend himself. That realisation had caused an instant and insistent palpitation that didn't fade until Parr and Lupin had left him standing alone in the alleyway. Like the students who'd heard about Parr's altercation with Lancaster, Snape had taken not only a literal step back but a metaphorical one as well.

The whole incident sketched in a few more details of the mystery surrounding Parr. Snape had seen her spin the silver work knife that students used during his Potions class with a lazy, effortless expertise on numerous occasions, sometimes unconsciously. He'd assumed it was a little trick that she'd taught herself to amuse or impress others.

Then there was the blade-mark scar across her face that had also scratched the iris of her left eye. A remnant of a knife fight? That seemed much more likely now. Snape wondered if the injury around her neck had also come from an opponent's knife. He was inclined to think this wasn't the case. Such an injury would have been easily attended to, one that certainly would have healed by now, especially under Pomfrey's steely treatment. He tilted his head slightly to one side as Parr's fingers nimbly twisted her finger-combed hair into a plait and inhaled deeply through his nose.

The scent of purple coneflower was evident in the air, although it was faded into a thinner bouquet, missing some of its high tones. That usually indicated that the scent had been in the air for some time. It was most likely that Parr had been using it as part of her injury treatment. Along with the cloves and the sandalwood that he could also smell, the purple coneflower would assist in clearing the blood of contamination, reducing inflammation and boosting her immune system.

It all pointed to the likelihood that her injury was infected. Again, this made little sense. An injury that rejected treatment. A cursed injury? That would certainly explain her time in hospital. He rubbed finger and thumb together in thought and dropped his gaze to the cuffs of her trousers.

Her hatred of skirts, the way she'd ball the hem of her robes up into her hand... She didn't like material hampering leg movement. Given how swiftly Parr had pinned that fat apoth down, she was no less skilled at fast movement than she was knife wielding. Snape's eyes flicked back up as Parr started to comb her other side tresses with her fingers. There had been no hesitation or faltering in her strong-arm treatment of the apoth. This was someone experienced in dealing with difficult, possibly dangerous people.

Silver strands wound together in Parr's fingers with the dexterity of a spider spinning a web.

Snape recalled that she had said that prior to her arrival she "found things". There had been no indication as to what those things were. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, considering.

A Sniffer. A Striker. A Barghest. A Tracker. Orion's Pointer, the apoth had called her, and Snape had seen Parr's head rise slightly at the words. He'd never heard of the last term. A Bhargest was another name for a Grim, and although there were some differing interpretations as to the original meaning of the word, it generally indicated a dog-like wraith whose sighting presaged the death of the one who was unfortunate enough to glimpse it.

He'd been through all the relevant literature in the library, plus that of his own personal collection after his return to the castle, to try and patch together all the pieces of information. Some bits didn't fit with others, and he had spent some time shuffling them about mentally as he'd eaten his dinner in the Great Hall in silence. The other teachers, sensing his mood, prudently chose not to bother him by attempting to engage him in small talk.

Snape turned his head to his right and saw a photo tacked to the wall next to Parr's bed and over the small bedside table. The lack of movement inside the frame indicated it was a Muggle photo. He drifted over to it and peered closely, frowning. Peculiarly, it was of Parr herself. His mouth twisted at such a display of vanity. Narcissism was a particularly distasteful human trait to him.

Parr's head was turned aside in the photo, as if her attention was drawn to something occurring outside of the frame. Her appearance was markedly different from her current one. Most noticeable was the rich copper colour of her hair, the absence of the side tresses and the broad, uninhibited expression of amusement on her face, caught for eternity in a moment of laughter. Still that same high-collared, grey jacket, though. His eyes scanned her face, trying to estimate how long ago the photo had been taken.

"Anything else you want to look at, Professor?" Parr's voice came from behind him. "Perhaps you'd like to grub through my sock drawer?"

Snape straightened and turned to face her with a complete lack of guilt at being caught. "People rarely hide anything of interest in their sock drawer, Miss Parr," he replied lazily in a dignified tone of voice, half-closing his dark eyes at her.

Parr quirked an eyebrow at him. "Are you experienced in rooting through a woman's drawers, Professor?" she asked smoothly.

His lips thinned at her question, and he swept past her with his considerable nose in the air.

"In light of your assistance this weekend, you can escape the detention you deserve for being out of your quarters past midnight," Snape announced icily. "Regardless of age, you need to remember and adhere to the same rules as the other students." He deftly ignored the crawling sensation along his spine as he walked under Parr's knife and out of the doorway. He turned briefly. "The next time I catch you, you'll serve a detention that'll require your toothbrush." Parr's reply drifted after him as he stalked off down the dark corridor and away from her room.

"In that case, Professor, I shall ensure that next time I don't get caught."