Chapter Seventeen - Foetor Mortis

It smelled of death. Normally this wouldn't bother him, but his nerves were jangled and the lack of sleep from the previous night had left him jumpy. He picked at a fingernail absently and roved his eyes about the kitchen.

Old. It was all old. Except for the smell of death. That was recent, floating unmistakably beneath the stronger, more insistent bouquet of age... old furniture, old carpets, old dust, old people. Old people who had been dying for some years, as most old people did. A slow decaying of body and mind that tended to have an aroma all of its own. The living, slowly letting go. Musty, tired, distressed. The lines of life becoming sketchy, faded, blurred. The colours bleaching, slipping, falling into darkness.

Snape shook his head slightly, irritated at the maudlin line of thought and focused more sharply on what Dumbledore was saying in an effort to distract himself. The subject matter being discussed wasn't much help in him achieving that aim, however.

Dumbledore had called them together on very short notice, the urgency in his voice uncharacteristically apparent. Due to the abruptness of the summoning, some members of the Order had been unable to attend without arousing suspicion in the circles they spent their days in. Snape also suspected that there were some members that Dumbledore wished to keep deliberately hidden from them. After all, that's what Snape would have done had he been in Dumbledore's place. He had to suppress a snort of derision at the ridiculousness of that thought. As it was, the others in the Order barely tolerated his presence, and many were openly disapproving of his role, so he could only imagine the barefaced outrage that would have been blasted towards him had any of them known that he'd even thought about standing in Dumbledore's shoes.

Those who could attend were now arranged together on mismatched and rickety chairs around a battered table, with a few others standing at the rear with their backs to the peeling wallpaper that may have once been graced with prints of what looked like ducks. Or dogs. It was hard to tell. Dumbledore had positioned himself, standing, in front of the sink with its leaking taps, the drip of water a rhythmic accompaniment to his voice. Motes of dust glinted in the air, catching the poor light valiantly as they spun about in the exhaled nervousness. The evening was darkening, the chill in the air increasing. It made the stink of death sharper, like a rotten sliver of bone that snicked cuts on the inside of the nose.

Snape suppressed an urge to scrub the back of his hand under his own nostrils. That smell was going to cling to him for hours if he didn't get out of here soon, and he didn't see being able to return to the castle until late, so he'd be dragging that damn death odour around with him like a clinging child. This time he was unable to stop the snort that slipped out. Eyes turned towards his position in the shadows of the corner of the kitchen, some showing surprise, but most radiating disapproval.

Snape wrinkled his nose at them. "Dust."

Blindness wouldn't have been a barrier to seeing the look of contempt on some faces, none more so than on that wretched pink-haired, snub-nosed ignoramus sitting next to Lupin. He glowered back at Tonks stonily until she turned back to Dumbledore with a silly little toss of her head. Parr had just glanced at him with her trademark vacant expression, but he noticed her knuckles rubbing her forearm briefly. What was she doing here? A Muggle had no valid function in this situation other than to get in the way and be ineffective.

"... really not sure that they have a plan," Shacklebolt was saying. "I'm concerned that if I direct them any more than I already am, someone's going to get suspicious and start asking how I seem to know so much." He scratched at a chin that was starting to stubble, considering something, the light glinting off the gold hoop in his ear. "Perhaps if the direction came from someone else, it might escape notice."

"One of us?" piped up Doge asthmatically at the back of the kitchen.

Shacklebolt turned slightly in his chair. "No. It'll need to come from someone outside the Order. It's too significant a development in the search for it to be attached to one of us. If questions start being asked, we need to be clear of them."

"Then who do you suggest?" Weasley asked the dark man.

Shacklebolt scratched at his chin again. "Coggerill, possibly. Perhaps Johnston, at a pinch."

"Johnston's too stupid to ever contribute anything of worth to the search," said Jones dismissively, a frown creasing her forehead. "If it comes from her, questions will definitely be asked!"

"Sometimes less shrewd people are unencumbered by the preconceptions of others, Hestia," said Dumbledore gently. "That can allow other lines of thinking to bear fruit that other, more common ones wouldn't. I think it's worth a try." Jones fidgeted uncomfortably at Dumbledore's more prudent choice of words than hers had been, and a slight flush bloomed in her cheeks. Dumbledore turned back to Shacklebolt. "How will you make the suggestion?"

Shacklebolt sighed heavily. "Johnston wouldn't be too hard to direct. The difficulty will be in channelling her line of thinking so that it doesn't skitter off course. Coggerill will be harder to lead by the nose, but once his mind latches on to the discovery, wild dogs won't be able to tear him away. The added bonus will be that he'll be the fastest to claim credit at the exclusion of all others. He'll leave no doubt in anyone's mind that he, and only he, was responsible for the development." He shrugged. "I'm going to have to feel my way through it, I'm afraid. Everyone at the MLE is a bit highly-strung at the moment, and I'm not certain how it'll go." He rolled his eyes. "I've already had to physically separate Tesla and Foggerty from each other's throats twice this week."

Snape's mouth twisted at that. It seemed that lack of self-control and a dullness of intellect were pre-requisites for working in the MLE. Idiots. It was a wonder that they achieved anything.

"I appreciate the awkwardness, Kingsley, but I have utmost confidence in your abilities in this matter," Dumbledore pointed out. "Time is critical here." Shacklebolt nodded.

Dumbledore had revealed that information had come to him regarding the whereabouts of Bertha Jorkins. Initially, the woman's disappearance hadn't caused much concern. Jorkins was a notorious Ministry dimwit who spent most of her time either poking her nose where it didn't belong, or getting lost. Usually both. As the weeks had gone on and no news had arisen as to why Jorkins hadn't returned to work from her holiday in Albania, there were some concerned mutterings at the MLE that Shacklebolt had notified Dumbledore of. When the MLE had started to receive reports of sightings of someone sounding suspiciously like Peter Pettigrew in the same region that Jorkins had last been seen in, alarm bells began to ring. Perhaps Jorkins' nose had poked somewhere rather more hazardous to her health than she had previously experienced.

The greatest concern was what information could be wrung out of Jorkins should she fall into unfriendly hands. Pettigrew alone was not a great concern. He had occasionally manifested a streak of cruelty when pushed to it, but it wasn't generally in his nature. He always sought the easiest path, and that was usually through submission to whatever greater power was in the vicinity at the time. When you held little sway yourself, the best course of action was to ally yourself with someone stronger.

Snape's mouth compressed into a thin line with that thought, the irony not lost on him. Nor was the importance of the next thing that Dumbldore revealed: that it was almost certain that Voldemort was also in Albania. That had set the kneazle among the nifflers. The atmosphere in the kitchen had lurched abruptly into the realm of palpable terror, and Snape would've been lying if he denied that he contributed to that in no small measure himself. Heads had turned in concert to look at him in ominous silence while he continued to pick at his nails for a few moments before sliding his hands into his pockets smoothly and fixing his eyes on the bare light globe hanging from the yellowed ceiling of the kitchen, its rather brittle light imparting no warmth or comfort, no softness or appeal. It merely did its job of keeping the dark at bay when required.

Reitzell had been the first to break the awkwardness with a tremulous question aimed at Dumbledore, and after that, the rest were too busy squawking amongst themselves to maintain their attention on Snape.

His hands clenched in his pockets. It had taken a significant amount of control to prevent them from shaking whilst the others had been staring at him. Sticking them in his pockets had been necessary when the smell of fear in the room had become almost overwhelming. Fear and death: always guaranteed to provoke a visceral reaction.

Dumbledore at least had the foresight to let Snape know before the meeting that Voldemort was in Albania. He dreaded to think what the others might have seen on his face had the news come to him at the same time it had been delivered to them. It was bad enough that they had all turned and gawked at him from their chairs.

Snape hitched his shoulders irritably at the continued whining and lip-flapping coming from those assembled. That Voldemort had finally been located shouldn't have come as a shock to them. After all, that was why the Order was in existence – they were the only ones who believed that Voldemort could still be alive. Obviously the notion paled in comparison to the reality, and Snape had to admit that his own initial reaction hadn't been as controlled as it should have been. A wholly unpleasant sensation of being backed into a corner started to coil around his throat like rusty barbed wire, and his hands started to sweat. He rubbed his palms surreptitiously on the material inside the pockets to rid himself of this physical manifestation of his unease, an autonomic response that disgusted and shamed him. It had always been a matter of personal pride to him that his mind took precedence over his body, imparting a control that many found cold, exacting and, to his twisted amusement, frightening.

Was this where it started? Was this where his descent back into the pit began? Here, in this fusty, crumbling and empty house that sat squashed between equally decrepit clones of itself in a dirty part of London, where the pall of smog and stink of garbage never seemed to leave? A fitting starting point for the path that he'd unwittingly set himself upon nearly two decades ago.

Snape shifted his weight from foot to foot, feeling more bone weary than he had in some months. His time at Hogwarts had been a temporary reprieve, an almost cruel pause in his journey towards eventual and inevitable punishment. During quieter times, he had fooled himself into thinking that he might actually escape. After all, who would be more adept at self-delusion than he? A person who was so careful to hide anything he didn't want others to know, so reluctant to give anything of himself that could be twisted and distorted into a weapon pointed back at him, so skilled at manipulating others into doing what he wanted them to do in such a fashion that they would think it of their own volition.

Snape's mouth curled into a sneer, but this time it was directed at himself. Weakness disgusted him. It was something he never excused in others, and he wasn't about to allow it in himself. That had been something he'd vowed repeatedly as a child until it had become a mantra etched into the very fibre of his physical being: I will not be weak. I will not be a coward. I will not be like her.

Dumbledore's voice filtered into his awareness, arresting the slide towards an internal self-vituperation.

"...completely understand what you're saying, but we have no time. The risk has to be taken, Rory. I don't care much for it either."

Reitzell opened his mouth to speak again but Dumbledore didn't allow him the chance to get the words out, turning his attention immediately to Lupin and Parr. "Remus, we'll need you and Chara to ascertain whether what I have been told is true, before the MLE start moving in. How soon can you leave?"

Lupin looked at Parr, who considered Dumbledore's question with grey eyes tilted up in thought. "Less than an hour," she stated. "Thirty minutes, if the need is great."

"It is," said Dumbledore. Parr nodded, got up from her chair and left the kitchen without another word. Snape's eyes followed her, while Jones started bleating on about the Albanian counterpart to the MLE being recalcitrant about allowing them to conduct their search unchaperoned.

Parr was going to be an active part of this? Information slid about in Snape's mind rapidly. Her previous, albeit ambiguous statement came back to him: she found things. It would also appear that she could find people. Interesting. A Muggle tracker...something not found much any more. The soft, easy lifestyle of Muggles no longer required it. They knew where to find food whenever it was desired. Surveillance and security systems allowed them to relinquish the need to keep their own observational skills honed, preferring instead to leave it up to a small percentage of the population to deal with, and even they showed little instinctual abilities at tracking. Trying to find anyone in the stone and concrete jungle of Muggle cities relied on other people's memories rather than physical signs, such as you would find in the natural world: broken branches on a bush, footprints in the dirt, evidence of feeding, or the hollowed depression of a sleeping area on the ground.

There was the fascinating discipline of forensics that had the potential to identify who had been where, and when, but even that had a narrow focus that needed at least a guiding hand to point it in the right direction, once again relying on the shaky abilities of mental recall. Perhaps this had been the career that Parr had come from, but her sense of smell was something that needed to be used actively in the field. Snape couldn't imagine her stuck in a room isolated from the immediate environment of a search or investigation, and unless the department she worked in was especially violent, he was almost certain that her knife skills were those of a person leading others to the quarry, usually straight into a dangerous environment or situation. A vanguard.

Snape couldn't get the feeling out of his gut that involving Parr in this whole matter was a very, very bad idea. It wasn't just the surprising and uncharacteristic anxiety he'd witnessed in her in the living room just half an hour previously. A nasty suspicion had sprouted in his mind the previous day that Parr was hiding something a lot more dangerous than he had previously surmised.

"Now, I'm afraid I must leave you all before my absence at the castle is noticed," said Dumbledore, obviously winding up the meeting before it disintegrated into aimless and pointless statements of fact about the seriousness of the situation. "I needn't remind you that this could end badly despite our best efforts, but we must make the attempt nonetheless." He paused. "I think our reprieve ends tonight. You must prepare others for that, as well as yourselves, as best you can."

The assembled party shared dark looks of concern and trepidation amongst themselves like biscuits at an exclusive tea party, stood, and broke away into twos and threes, muttering amongst themselves as they left the kitchen.

Snape fixed his eyes on the light globe hanging on its frayed cord. Was it his imagination or had the light from it grown weaker? He could see the filament through the imperfect glass, burning with dogged determination, and setting an imprint of itself on Snape's retinas. Why was there only one light in here? he wondered distantly. It seemed a ridiculously inefficient way of lighting the room. Of all places, the kitchen needed to be well-lit lest someone cut themselves whilst preparing a meal. The filament's imprint started to blur and spread across the back of Snape's eyes, making the surroundings indistinct, lurking, and ominous. Perhaps if he stared at the light long enough, the halo of white would finally fill his entire vision.

"Severus?"

Snape squeezed his eyes shut, and sighed heavily.

"Are you alright?"

Snape left his eyes closed, perceiving the afterimage of the light as a faint, purplish cloud against the dark, the filament a lightning wound of brightness at the centre. The cloud billowed and morphed slowly, like ink in a tank of water.

"I know this must be difficult for you..."

His eyes flicked open. "It is of no consequence, Headmaster," he responded rather more quickly than he would have liked. "My feelings are no more relevant to the situation than any of the others you have spoken to tonight." Although Dumbledore was partially hidden behind the afterimage that was still fading from Snape's eyes, he could tell that the man was sporting a rather blatant expression of disbelief at Snape's statement. Prudently, and surprisingly, Dumbledore chose not to give voice to his doubts.

"Is it possible that you will be able to receive any confirmation through your own channels?"

Snape gave the illusion of considering the man's question, but he already knew the answer. "It's possible," he replied eventually, blinking a few times to try and bring Dumbledore into focus.

"How soon?"

Again, the unnecessary pause. "Perhaps tonight."

Dumbledore's blurry image nodded. "You'll let me know, of course, if you discover anything? It doesn't matter how late the hour."

Snape closed his eyes lazily. "Of course." He let the awkward pause extend out to a considerable distance between them, hoping that Dumbledore would take the hint and leave him alone. Naturally, he didn't.

"Is something else bothering you, Severus?"

What? Something other than the choke-chain being fastened back around my neck and the barbed whip set to my heels once more, you relentless and infuriating bastard?

Snape opened his black eyes and locked them on Dumbledore's clear blue ones, and said nothing. He almost hoped that the man had heard his thought, but if he had, he gave no indication of it. Dumbledore just continued to wait for an answer in that maddeningly patient manner that seemed to increase Snape's own frustration and ill-humour. He pressed his lips together tightly, realising the old man wouldn't leave until Snape replied.

"I have some concerns regarding Parr's involvement," he stated. There seemed no point in dressing the statement up in more roundabout terms. Dumbledore would just pick out the roots of it regardless of how many leaves were in the way. The old man's white, bushy eyebrows rose slightly.

"I see."

The awkward silence returned, this time in Dumbledore's employ. Snape blinked a few times, a little nonplussed at Dumbledore's minimalist reply. Normally the man never hesitated to explain things, even if the explanation caused more questions than it answered. Dumbledore took in a deep breath and opened his mouth. He paused and seemed to change his mind about something, drumming his chest with the fingers of one hand lightly.

"Do be careful tonight, Severus," the man suggested. "But then, I never need to tell you that, do I?" He peered at Snape shrewdly and then drifted out of the kitchen, pulling the airborne dust behind him in a swirling sweep.

The reticence wasn't a good sign in Snape's opinion. The Order's doyen was usually quite open to differences of opinion. Concerns were rarely dismissed readily without lengthy discussion. Diplomacy and democracy was more persuasive than railroading and intimidation, Dumbledore had once remarked during a vociferous debate they'd both had regarding the Ministry's lack of action on preparing for Voldemort's return.

In all honesty, Snape wasn't sure what to make of Dumbledore's response to his concern about Parr. The man could be as hard to read as an ancient Babylonian text if it suited him. Was it indifference, dissimulation, or prudence? Knowing Dumbledore, probably none of them. He had his own secrets, just as Snape had his.

It had been something of a coincidence that just that afternoon the starling had reappeared on the school grounds, another slip of parchment tied to its twiggy leg. This time, the parchment had not been blank. Perhaps to uninformed eyes, it was as good as blank, for the only thing marked on it were three small dots. To Snape's eyes, it represented information. Information that he had intended to gather this evening before the Order meeting had been called so unexpectedly. His eyes were drawn inexorably back up to the light globe, reigniting the bleed of light in his vision.

No matter. He could kill two birds with one stone.

Pulling his gaze reluctantly away from the light, Snape flowed out of the kitchen and into the hallway. A dark figure near the front door made him pause. He spent some seconds trying to translate the distorted image into something recognisable. The silver grey hair gave it away: Parr. She sat on a small chair, forearms on her knees, head bowed forward so that the tips of her long hair tresses touched the toes of her boots. Snape tilted his head. There was something strange about her, stranger than normal. He moved towards her slowly, his vision clearing. She'd changed her attire from grey to black, once again wearing the occluding garb she'd worn on the train, cowl resting on her shoulders. She gave no indication that she was aware of his approach, her face partially hidden by her hair.

Snape had been convinced that Lupin and Parr had been sleeping together when he'd seen the werewolf twist his finger in her hair. It was a curious gesture, and an intimate one at that. Parr didn't seem the type of person to willingly suffer an unwelcome physical touch or indication of affection, so Snape had assumed that there had been something more going on than a tutor-student relationship.

However, Parr had seemed to find the idea hilarious, much to Snape's chagrin. His judgment wasn't normally that far off, and having it guffawed at by Parr was especially insulting.

He stopped right in front of her, turning to face her bent form so that she couldn't fail to see his feet in her line of vision. She tipped her head up slowly, trailing bright green eyes up to his face. There was a faint sheen of perspiration on her forehead, and lines of strain around her mouth. The planes of her face bowed out in an almost graceful arc led by the prow of her nose.

She'd physically shifted her form in less than an hour. Snape had assumed that the metamorphosis he'd seen was involuntary, but it appeared now that wasn't always the case. The question was, if she was able to voluntarily control the change, why did the involuntary incidences occur?

Parr raised her eyebrows slightly at him.

"Are you experiencing discomfort in your left arm, Miss Parr?"

Her eyebrows climbed slightly higher at the question.

"It seemed to cause you trouble in class yesterday when you painted your partner and the floor with ox blood."

Parr's eyes glittered at him.

"I've seen you fuss at your arm at least five times this evening," he revealed quietly. "I wonder if you are in sufficient physical condition to conduct the role requested of you."

"My arm is uninjured, Professor," she replied smoothly in a voice an octave lower than normal. "I am sure that I shall be able to discharge my duties to the Headmaster's satisfaction."

There was no doubt in his mind that she was hiding something, if not outright lying straight to his face.

Snape awareness went for the gap faster than a cobra's strike.

The mongoose trapped him between teeth sharper than a razor-blade.

Parr unfolded herself from the chair and stood slowly, the twin moons of her eyes rising from the south until they crested the black horizon. Snape's mind twisted forcefully, only to find itself ensnared in a bramble of mental thorns. Pain stabbed into his head until he stopped trying to mentally wriggle out of the grip she had him in. He had to tip his head back slightly to look her square in the eyes. She loomed over him by half a foot, shoulders rounded forward as if to stop him from moving to either side.

For the third time in his life, Snape knew he had made a very bad miscalculation.

"The first time, I can ignore," Parr told him in a voice like metal drawn across stone, every word carefully enunciated. "The second time, I excuse because that is politeness. The third time I do not overlook." She leant forward a fraction of an inch, making him sway back, wide-eyed and nostrils flared, trying desperately to think of a way to slither out of the snare before his mind was cut to ribbons. "There will not be a fourth time."

The unseen jaws opened and dropped his awareness on the floor of his brain like a rodent in shock. Parr's mouth twisted into a smile as Snape slammed up the mental barriers. He braced himself, expecting her to batter them down, but the assault never came.

"Chara?"

Damn it! Lupin! How much had he seen?

"Is everything alright?"

Parr swung the beam of her eyes towards the hesitant werewolf. "Everything's fine, Remus," she replied gently, the tone a startling contrast to the one she had used before. "Are you ready to leave?"

Lupin shuffled from foot to foot, looking oddly shrunken in his oversized, moth-eaten coat. He obviously sensed the tension and wasn't sure if being anywhere close to it was a good idea. A part of Snape wanted to throttle the man with his bare hands for being a witness to the mental confrontation, whilst a larger part was perversely grateful that Lupin had appeared and taken Parr's attention off him. He fixed his own gaze on Lupin, trying to shake off any shred of apparent shock on his face.

"Is it time for your walk, Lupin?" he sneered, the words coming automatically to his lips. Normally, the comment would have marked Snape as having the upper hand, but in this instance it had the unfortunate effect of pulling Parr's attention back on him. So Snape did something he rarely felt he had to do: he averted his eyes.

"No, it's time for mine," said Parr, a silken cord of amusement wrapped around the words. She peered closely at him. "You have pretty eyes, for a man. Be careful they don't get you into trouble." With that she turned aside and opened the front door, letting in a winter air that couldn't match the arctic atmosphere that curled about them in the hallway. She paused on the threshold, tucked her hair back and covered her head with the cowl of her coat.

"Come, Remus. It's time to play 'fetch'."

Snape didn't notice as Lupin stepped around him to follow Parr out of the house. He didn't even know how long he stood there, alone, in the hallway, until his muscles unlocked enough to allow him to move.

A/N:My gratitude to froggie-becky, who finds time in her busy life to read my story and fix it up all nice.