Chapter Twenty-Four - Seevy

After many years of leading the type of life that he did, Snape had learned to trust his instincts. They'd saved him on numerous occasions and let him down in less than a handful of incidences. Right now they were telling him that he was missing several very important pieces of information...the sort of information that kept a person out of trouble. He stared blankly over his interlaced fingers, elbows propped on the table, managing to ignore the complaints of his stomach, at least for a short while. The other teachers at the table were still only halfway through their midday meals. He hadn't even begun his own yet.

Lupin was being uncharacteristically secretive about something. It was uncharacteristic in that the man was actually being successful in maintaining the secrecy. Normally Lupin had all the guile of a used teabag, and whatever it was about, he'd gotten extremely cranky at Snape for showing interest.

Snape hadn't been standing in the lounge room of the safe house for long before he'd let Lupin know he was there, but it was long enough to see that the werewolf had been scratching out something rather unusual at the rickety table. From what Snape could tell, it had looked like research of some form. The language had been academically dry and with at least one footnote. Unfortunately, there hadn't been much written on the page beyond two paragraphs, so the actual content had been fairly ambiguous in terms of the subject matter. He'd sensed that Lupin had been about to look up, so had given his presence away in an attempt to disguise the fact that he'd been reading what Lupin had written for longer than was polite. He hadn't missed the way Lupin had covered the parchment surreptitiously to conceal his writing.

Whatever it was that Lupin was working on must be important. The man wasn't naturally a scholar. He read and had quite a good memory for facts, but that was about the extent of it. He'd been a fair student...certainly not one that went above and beyond the requirements. So there was one tangled mystery that needed unpicking.

Snape tapped his front teeth with his thumbnails, filtering bits of lunchtime conversation out from amongst the general cacophony in the Great Hall. Flitwick was gassing on about some trull that'd been exposed in the Daily Prophet for peddling talismans to stupid tourists, claiming they protected the wearer against disease and enhanced virility. The only thing the trinkets had protected against was common sense and the wearer's ability to hang on to their Galleons. Morons. Vector was droning on about not being able to attend an Arithmancy conference in Sweden. Something to do with square roots and backstabbing that was incomprehensible to Snape. Tedious. Maxime was displaying her total lack of grace in complaining about the fish course being too awkward...awkward?...while that moving mountain Hagrid made sympathetic, if overly-loud, noises back at her. Behemoths. Karkaroff was going for a world record of self-serving flattery aimed at Dumbledore, who was valiantly rebuffing some of the man's more pointed questions about the Hogwarts curriculum and attempting to steer the conversation to the latest development in stay-up socks. Dull. The only one who wasn't flapping their lips about trivialities, apart from himself, was McGonagall, although she was giving him cautious looks in case he decided to start knocking stuff off the table and into her lap again. He stopped jiggling his leg and looked up at the ceiling in thought.

It was also apparent that Lupin knew a lot more about the cause of Parr's injuries than he was willing to reveal. It was obvious by now that Parr had been in some sort of accident or fight, if not several. It hadn't escaped Snape how many injuries she was actually nursing, to say nothing of the scarring. When she'd emerged from the bathroom, he'd seen that she owned a veritable road map of scars over her body. Some had been fairly light and neat, but a few were keloidal and ragged, suggesting that they had come from serious tissue trauma or had healed badly. There had been a particularly ugly one running down the length of her left leg, which agreed with Lupin's mention of a shattered leg. Both arms were bandaged from knuckles to elbow, her neck was still wrapped, and one foot sported a small dressing just behind the toes. The woman looked liked she'd gone through a meat grinder and somehow survived. One doubt that had been removed was whether or not the scar that slashed across her left eye affected her sight. There was no way she could have skewered that spider to the wall so accurately with damaged vision.

From her physique, it was likely Parr had a very strong constitution. Where some women turned androgynous or bullish from an excess of physical exercise, Parr had gone curvilinear. She was short, but the contours in her legs represented the sort of muscle that would allow her to kick through a wall with little resistance. Snape made a mental note to stay clear of her feet when goading her; otherwise, he'd probably end up with a shattered leg himself.

After that unfortunate weekend, he'd found it a little awkward to look at Parr during class. He wasn't in the habit of seeing his students in their underwear and therefore was not entirely sure how to process the experience. Being Head of Slytherin did mean that there was occasion...thankfully rare...where he would catch his students in some misdemeanour that involved a state of undress, whether intentional or not. In such incidences, the troublemakers managed to look idiotic more than anything, often because it tended to be the boys who had a problem in dressing appropriately as the situation demanded, which had Snape either grinding his teeth in irritation or shouting in outright anger.

But Parr wasn't a teenager and she certainly wasn't a boy...he hadn't needed to see the generous swell of her chest or backside to know that, although it had been an interesting reinforcement of fact. He smirked briefly at that thought. The few female students who'd had the misfortune of being seen by him whilst they were partially undressed had been mortified and continued to be so for some time after the occurrence. Parr had stared straight at Snape during class without a shred of embarrassment at having been seen in her underwear. In fact, the only time she had gotten even vaguely flustered was when he'd caught her staring at his nose and he had absolutely no idea why. He'd experienced a brief bout of panic, wondering if it had something to do with what he'd done whilst inebriated, but covered it by snapping at her to pay attention to what she was doing. Snape liked to think that had restored the balance of power in his favour, but not knowing just exactly how he'd disgraced himself whilst inebriated meant that the effect could have been negligible. He still succumbed to wiping his hand under his nose when no-one was looking, just in case there had been something there that shouldn't have been. In the end, he decided to ignore what had happened over the weekend, since Parr seemed to be giving every impression that she was doing the same.

He flicked his eyes over to the Ravenclaw table where Parr was sitting. She was writing a letter at the same time as eating an apple, the elbow of the arm not writing pinning the parchment to the table ineptly. She was making a mess of at least one action that he could see. Merlin's beard, she ate like a pig! Snape shook his head and started on his own lunch.

He hadn't gotten that far into it when an owl landed on the staff table in front of him. The tiny bib of white under its beak identified it. Snape relieved it of its message scroll and fished out a piece of string from his pocket. McGonagall made a sound of disgust as he Transfigured it into a mouse and tossed it to the owl.

"Severus, do you have to do that at the table? It's terribly unhygienic!"

Snape rolled his eyes at McGonagall. "I notice it never bothers you when that fluffball bird of yours shakes its feather-dust and mites all over your food, Minerva."

McGonagall's lips pursed. "That's different," she countered primly.

"Obviously," Snape responded drily, unrolling the delivered message. He frowned at the symbols on it: three dots, a six, and a circle with the right hemisphere blackened. Trint had found something – nothing urgent, judging from the numeral. He shrugged slightly and stuffed the message in his pocket.

He was about to go back to his meal when he caught sight of Moody loitering near the doors. It looked like he was haranguing a group of Hufflepuffs about something: no doubt in over-reaction to some minor infraction. Hufflepuffs rarely did anything on the scale of mischief that Gryffindors or Slytherins did. However, Snape had looked up just as Parr was leaving the Great Hall and passing by Moody. She got a few feet beyond the grizzled lump of a man and then stopped abruptly. She stood there for a few seconds and then slowly backed up until she was right behind him, her left side facing his back. Inexplicably, Moody gave no indication that he knew she was there, though with that ridiculous charmed glass eye of his, Snape couldn't understand how that was possible. Parr's head turned slightly to the left, and he thought he saw her nostrils flare. Her head turned back towards the doors. Moody started to punch his finger in the air in front of one of the Hufflepuff's faces, oblivious to Parr's proximity. Was she listening to what he was saying? It would have been hard not to. The man seemed completely unfamiliar with the concept of volume control when it came to speaking. Shouting seemed to be de rigueur for Moody's style of communication.

"You mean whisper?" Moody had bellowed once when Snape had suggested that the man didn't need to yell and tried introducing him to the notion of lowering his voice. "What are you, hypersensitive in the eardrums? Not everyone needs to slide about, hissing like you do, Snape. If you don't like it, stuff a Niffler in your ear!" The conversation, if it could ever have been described as such, had ended at that point.

Parr finally drifted slowly away from Moody and out of the Great Hall. Snape narrowed his eyes. What on earth had that been about?

"–and if you cast your pallid and feeble minds back to fourth-year, you'll recall the significance of ensuring that you have not only the correct genus but the appropriate species as well. Errors on the part of stupidity are no less damaging than those made maliciously, and I expect each and every one of you to study sufficiently to prevent such an error from ever occurring."

Snape paced slowly back and forth in front of the blackboard, his thumbnail scoring a line around the stick of chalk he held in his fingers and the hem of his teaching robes trailing behind him across the stone floor in a sibilant counterpoint to his voice. The scratch of quill on parchment gave the impression that his students were diligently noting down what he was telling them, but he'd noticed that Lynaghan was nodding off. The boy was pretending to review his notes, forehead propped into his hand between thumb and forefinger. Unfortunately, the spread of his hand, whilst covering his undoubtedly closed eyes, couldn't obscure the slack mouth that had begun to drool ever so slightly out of one corner.

Snape continued his leisurely pace to the right side of the classroom, pausing briefly to turn on his heel so he could head back in Lynaghan's direction. "The first part of chapter fourteen in your textbooks lists some of the more common adverse reactions to an Anti-Nausea Potion that has been brewed with the incorrect Canis hair. Be sure to familiarise yourself with each one. The remainder of the chapter covers some of the more common uses of this ingredient. Of particular note is the use of Canis simensis citernii hair over the past three centuries due to its efficacy in reducing and correcting erratic peristalsis in the small intestine. However, due to increasing rarity of the Ethiopian wolf in the Rift Valley, Canis mesomelas has become an acceptable alternative." He snapped off the end of the chalk stick and flicked it at Lynaghan. The white pellet hit the boy square in the chin, startling him back to alertness. "Ten points from Gryffindor's already meagre tally, Mr Lynaghan. It seems that Canis simensis citernii is not the only thing becoming pathetically low in numbers," Snape added acidly with a twist to his mouth. He swirled towards the blackboard.

"Now, for your homework, I expect you to write six inches of parchment on each of the following Canis species with regard to use of their hair in various potions and with particular emphasis on the reasoning behind their usage." The groans of disappointment were especially noticeable. Snape turned slowly. "We can make it ten inches, if you prefer," he added smoothly, raising his eyebrows slightly. The sudden silence made him sneer. "I didn't think so." He turned back to the blackboard and began writing in large, angular letters.

"Canis aureus syriacus..." The chalk screeched sharply across the surface of the blackboard, making everyone wince. "... Canis latrans lestes, Canis lupus cubanensis, Canis latrans thamnos... do not confuse C L thamnos with C L texensis or you will automatically receive a failing grade... Canis epitos paredes, Canis vitric..." The chalked stopped its torturous slide. The students looked up at the sudden halt in Snape's recitation, wondering if someone else was about to get used as target practice. The Potions master remained staring at the blackboard for several long seconds before tilting his head to one side. The students began to fidget, unsure as to what was going on. Snape lifted the end of the chalk off the blackboard and used the side of his palm to slowly rub off some of the letters. Some students craned their necks to get a better look. Snape rolled the chalk between his fingers, still looking fixedly at the blackboard.

The students stared at each other. Was this good or bad? Not having a previous experience to such a pause in their lesson meant that they reached for the logical conclusion based on what experiences they did have in Potions classes: it was, most likely, bad. Was Snape suffering from a mental glitch? He continued to stand there, considering the remaining two letters of the last name on the list with an intensity that befuddled the students. Their eyes roved over the two initials, trying to discern why they seemed so important to Snape. After all, how much information could the letters cee and vee hold?

The class know-it-all, Ellie Ritter, was just considering whether or not to clear her throat as a subtle prompt when Snape continued speaking as if nothing strange had occurred. "Canis vitriculos destro." He filled in the rest of the letters roughly and tossed the chalk onto his desk with a flick of his wrist. "To be handed in on Monday, without exception," he added with an irritable hitch to his shoulders. "The day's agony is at an end. Out."

Snape turned back to the blackboard, ignoring the exiting students. He stared blankly, running the pads of his fingers over his thumb for a few minutes before striding out of his classroom in a rustle of black fabric.

Hagrid was just about to take Fang out for a turn about the grounds when a knock on the door of his cabin sounded. Fang, ever alert to even the vaguest indications that he was about to go out for a walk, whined slightly in consternation.

"'s alright, boy," said Hagrid, ruffling the dog's head with a large hand. "Don't think it'll be anythin' that'll take too long." Perhaps it was Harry. Hagrid smiled to himself. He always enjoyed it when Harry visited. It made him feel... wanted.

Hagrid had been pleased as punch and proud to boot when Dumbledore had asked him to take over as the teacher for Care of Magical Creatures. After all, Hagrid had been overjoyed at being taken on as Keeper of Keys and Grounds at the school, especially considering that whole mess with Aragog all those years ago. Jobs were hard enough to come by for a half-giant like him. But to be a teacher? Well, that had made his head spin. If only his dad had been there to see it.

Taking the teacher role hadn't been easy, as he knew it wouldn't be. Some of the other teachers regarded him with suspicion and a little disdain. Hagrid was perhaps not as learned as they, but that didn't mean he was stupid. No-one was outright dismissive of his knowledge, but he noticed the looks of unease or exclusion that came his way. He tried to ignore it, but it hurt nonetheless. A few seemed pleased to have him alongside them. Hooch was always beaming at him and asking how he was doing. Dumbledore was encouraging, of course, but then that was Dumbledore. He encouraged everyone to do their best without making them feel like they were under pressure. The most surprising ally had been Filch. Hagrid had always been a little wary of Filch. The man tended to appear at the most awkward times, such as just after Hagrid had knocked something over in a hallway or tracked in a trail of muddy footprints through the castle, which tended to elicit a breathless stream of admonishment and tetchiness from the man. But when he'd heard that Hagrid had gotten promoted, he'd nodded approvingly and congratulated him with what seemed to be genuine sincerity. Hagrid had been a little confused, wondering if he were missing something. For a brief, yet shaming moment, he had wondered if Filch had been happy because it meant that some of the duties that Hagrid had held were to be passed on to Filch. However, he'd shaken that thought away as he had shaken Filch's hand and thought no more of the reasons behind the approval.

Hagrid tried his best to integrate himself into the Hogwarts faculty, but he was perceptive enough to know that it couldn't be rushed. The faculty was a beast with complex and convoluted behaviours, mysterious motivations and proclivities. It needed to be handled gently, patiently. It was very much like dealing with a particularly skittish animal that was unused to human contact. So, Hagrid stood back and waited for it to come to him. What that meant was that he was stuck somewhere between two worlds...not an uncommon sensation for Hagrid. He was sort of faculty, but sort of... not, which meant he never knew for sure where to put himself outside of class time, so he tended to retreat to his cabin. Having Harry, Ron and Hermione visit him always put a smile on his face and made him feel a part of something. He was sure none of the other teachers had students visit them willingly, although Flitwick seemed to have a good rapport with his students.

But it was the last person that he expected that had knocked on his door. Hagrid blinked in surprise and experienced a knot of confusion. He tried not to let it show.

"Oh, hallo, Professor Snape," he began haltingly. "Is... uh... everythin' all right?" He looked past the man, wondering what had brought him here.

Snape stared up at him with those inscrutable black eyes. "Yes," he replied laconically, the word taking on an ethereal form in a puff of fogged breath. The day had been bitterly cold, and the evening was shaping up to be frigid, even before Snape's appearance.

Hagrid shuffled from foot to foot in the doorway, unsure of how to handle the situation. Snape always made him feel off-balance. The man was tall...well, for a human, Hagrid supposed...and carried a valid reputation for being notoriously bad-tempered, but he was indiscriminate with that quality, treating almost everyone with an irritated acerbity. So in that sense, Hagrid never felt singled out for a larger dose of scorn over anyone else. Being dressed almost entirely in black gave Snape a forbidding, ominous appearance that did nothing to improve his sallow complexion, and the style of his clothing mirrored his very closed attitude, keeping as much as possible hidden from others. He managed to exert a silent authority and did it effortlessly. Hagrid thought he was very much like a cat in that ability. He knew the students called Snape the bat of the dungeons, but Hagrid thought they had the wrong mammal in mind. He shook his head slightly and realised he'd been staring.

"Is there somethin' I can do fer yeh?" he asked, a doubtful twist to his shaggy eyebrows.

Snape squinted at him out from behind the greasy locks of his hair, his face pale in the fading light. "Possibly."

"Oh," said Hagrid. "Er..." He stepped to one side and held the door open wide. "Well, best come in, then." It seemed the polite thing to do, but Hagrid had no idea where this was going and couldn't help but feel he was about to be reprimanded for something.

"Thank you," replied Snape faintly and swept past him. Hagrid tried his best not to stand on the man's long teaching robes as he followed him inside. On seeing this visitor, Fang tipped himself out of his chair and padded heavily over to investigate. Hagrid winced slightly. Fang was a good guard dog when the mood took him, but more often than not, he was overly enthusiastic in meeting people and had a tendency to slobber over people's clothing in the process. Dumbledore never seemed to mind, but Hagrid couldn't imagine Snape welcoming such a thing.

"Fang," said Hagrid with a light warning in his voice. "Don't yeh go botherin' the professor, now." Who knew what Snape would do to Fang if the dog dribbled on his boots or put dog hair all over his clothing? Fang stopped and sank to his haunches a couple of feet away from Snape, looking up at the man with his plaintive brown eyes.

Snape stared back at Fang. "He's... very large," was the eventual comment.

"Oh, I can send him outside, Professor," said Hagrid hastily, keen to avoid a hexing incident.

Snape held up his hand, but didn't take his eyes off the hulking dog that had already started to salivate in anticipation of snuffling around this new and potentially interesting object. "No, that won't be necessary. It's likely I will not be here long."

Hagrid thought he stifled his sigh of relief well but suspected he wasn't as successful at it as he thought when Snape raised an eyebrow in his direction. "Oh?" said Hagrid, trying to make the lone syllable sound innocent.

Snape narrowed his eyes and studied Hagrid for a few moments. "I find myself in the interesting position of needing your advice, Hagrid," he said eventually.

"Er," said Hagrid, somewhat flummoxed. Was this a trick to lure him into admitting something he had no idea he had done?

"Since you are the resident expert on magical creatures, it seemed wise to seek the required information from you," Snape continued, still squinting at Hagrid as if looking for evidence of guilt that, inexplicably, Hagrid was starting to experience.

"Ah," said Hagrid, patting at his jacket nervously. Fang was starting to shuffle towards Snape without getting off his haunches, his head straining towards the man's pocket. Snape feigned obliviousness to it.

"How extensive is your knowledge of the canids?" Snape asked abruptly, tilting his head to one side and watching Hagrid with the intensity of a hawk about to break a pigeon's neck.

Hagrid blinked a few times. Was this a genuine question or a euphemism for some perceived infraction on his part? "I'm fairly familiar with 'em," he began, a little hesitant. "It's probably one o' the mammal classes I know most about, Professor." He toyed with the flaps on his coat pockets. "Was there... uh... somethin' specific yer wantin' to know?" Fang had edged about a foot closer to Snape and was starting to drop splatters of drool on the floor, dangerously close to the man's boots. Hagrid tried not to look at the dog in case it alerted Snape to how close Fang was getting to ruining the shine on his footwear. This was going to end badly if Hagrid couldn't get Fang away from Snape as soon as possible. "Perhaps yeh'd like to sit down, Professor?" Hagrid asked suddenly, attempting to guide the Potions master away from the slobbering canid right next to him.

Snape ignored the offer. "What canid species do you know that have a species or subspecies name starting with vee?"

"Hmm," said Hagrid, tapping his chest with his stubby fingers, trying his hardest to keep Fang out of his direct line of sight. "Well, there's Canis latrans vigilis, Canis latrans var, Canis vetriculos destro, Canis vortexia cantus, Canis lupus vulagaris – they're extinct, though – and..." Hagrid frowned, trying to dredge up the required information. "...Canis niger varis."

Snape seemed mildly annoyed about something. Had Hagrid missed something in the question and misunderstood what was being asked of him? It wouldn't be the first time, but he'd rather it not happen with Snape.

"There are no others?" Snape asked, running the tips of his fingers over his thumb slowly.

Hagrid tried to get his mind working faster, but it was like pushing a dragon up a stone wall with a piece of straw. "Erm, there may be, but I can't think of 'em." Wonderful. Of all the people to prove his failure to provide the necessary knowledge to, it had to be Snape. "Is there somethin' else yeh can give me?" he asked hopefully.

Snape huffed and looked away briefly as if considering the question. Fang went to lick Snape's coat whilst the man's head was turned. Hagrid gestured frantically at the dog, who looked at his owner with mild surprise and licked his chops noisily.

"A canid with theriomorphic capability," Snape provided reluctantly, looking back at Hagrid with a frown as he caught the half-giant waving his hand rapidly.

"Um," said Hagrid. "Technically, there are no true canids with tha' capability, Professor. There's Homo sapiens lupus, o' course." He saw Snape shake his head slightly. "Ah, but beyond tha'..."

Snape sighed pointedly and stepped away from Fang just as the dog opened his mouth a second time to get a good idea of what the Potions master's clothing tasted like. Fang looked confused as his tongue met nothing but air and glanced about rather unhappily. "Never mind. It seems the identity remains a mystery. I'll have to track the Tracker elsewhere," Snape muttered, heading for the door.

A small candle lit in Hagrid's head.

"A Tracker?" he asked, interest piqued. "Yeh're looking fer a Tracker?"

Snape stopped and turned back towards Hagrid, a keen glint in his dark eyes. "Possibly," he said cautiously. "Are they known by other names?"

"Well, yeah, but that's not really my field, Professor," Hagrid replied apologetically. "Maybe yeh should ask Professor Moody about–"

"I'm asking you, Hagrid," Snape interrupted with that effortlessly authoritative voice that left no room for even the thought of arguing.

Hagrid fidgeted under that relentless scrutiny, the nervousness increasing a notch as he felt himself getting a little out of his depth. "Well, ah, er, sometimes they're called Pointers, or Strikers, or seevy–"

"Why are they called seevy?" Snape interrupted again, his large nostrils flaring. Hagrid started to get anxious, wondering if this was an indication of an approaching outburst of temper and desperately trying to think of a way to avoid that possibility.

"Er, I think it's from Canis venaticus, Professor. Hunting dogs," said Hagrid, hunching his shoulders ever so slightly.

Snape stared at him. "And the reason you didn't mention this before was...?"

Alarm bells went off in Hagrid's head at the skeins of irritation woven through Snape's voice. "Well, technically, Canis venaticus isn't an actual recognised species. And Seevy aren't canids, Professor. I guess it didn't occur to me that it mightn't ha' been a canid that yeh were lookin' for."

"What do you know about them?" Snape inquired, drifting away from the door, the full force of his attention on Hagrid once again.

Hagrid shook his head. "Very little, I'm afraid. They're very hard to find. In fact, many people don't think they actually exist."

"And what do you think, Hagrid?" Snape asked.

First advice, and now an opinion? Hagrid was definitely confused and in such instances, Hagrid's default position was always honesty. "Well, I think that one could pass right under my nose an' I wouldn't know it, Professor."

"Indeed." Snape seemed to find that comment amusing, if the unfamiliar upward curve to his mouth was anything to go by. "What else?"

Hagrid sighed, rubbing his hands together as he thought. "I've heard that they always track in pairs, but if yeh ever need to hire their services, yeh have to go through a third party. They're very prickly about ritual an' formality."

"Are they human?" That hawkish look was definitely back. Snape was paying more attention to him than he had in the past five years, and Hagrid wasn't certain that he was enjoying the experience of having the Potions master put him under his scrutiny.

"Oh, well, I think so, Professor," said Hagrid, trying a jovial tone to try and lighten the atmosphere. "A friend o' mine once mentioned somethin' about 'em bein' similar to other theriomorphs in tha' respect."

"And just what is their theriomorphic ability?"

"Oh, ah, er, I think they must have some shiftin' ability that makes 'em similar to dogs, if the adopted name Canis venaticus is anythin' to go by."

Snape opened his mouth to ask another question, but Hagrid forestalled him.

"I'm afraid tha's all I know, Professor," he said apologetically. "I'm sorry I couldn't be o' much help."

The dark-haired man studied Hagrid for a few seconds before responding. "You've been... surprisingly helpful, Hagrid. I shan't forget it." He squinted up at the half-giant. "Good night."

With that, Snape turned and left Hagrid's hut like the shadow of a mountain's pinnacle that had taken solid form.

Hagrid stared at the closed door until Fang whined gently. The big man roused himself. "Come on then, boy. Let's take yeh out, eh? Mebbe go into the Forest for a bit." Might be safer in there, he thought anxiously and let the dog out into the night.