Chapter Twenty-Nine – Evasion

"I don't believe there's another student at Hogwarts that has such an insouciant attitude to their studies as you do, with the possible exception of Potter."

"Yes, Professor."

"Are you sure you should be in Ravenclaw? I would've thought that bone-idle Gryffindor was more your style."

"Yes, Professor."

"You've got two Potions assignments due next week, and they had better be more thoroughly researched than your last one was."

"Yes, Professor."

"I don't consider an Acceptable grade as sufficient, especially considering the amount of effort I put into teaching."

"No, Professor."

"I confess to be at a loss as to why Fulgor thinks that you have any potential beyond that of a test subject, because as yet you have failed to impress me with any kind of aptitude at Potions beyond that of mediocrity."

"Yes, Professor."

"And you can wipe that stupid smirk off your face!"

"Yes, Professor."

"Are you even paying attention to what I'm saying?"

"I am capable of doing two things at once, Professor."

"What are you reading?"

"Porn."

Snape tutted. "I seriously doubt that." He strode over to the couch, snatched the magazine out of Parr's hands and studied it closely. He flicked a page over slowly with an exaggerated crinkle of shiny paper. Then another. Then another. He turned the magazine on its side and squinted at it. "That's disgusting," he finally announced and thrust the magazine back at her.

"I know," agreed Parr happily. "Good, huh? I've never seen moving magazine porn before!"

He sneered down at her. "I thought you had some modicum of dignity, but I guess I was being overly generous with that assumption."

"Hey, it's not mine. It's Remus's."

Lupin sagged at the table. "Oh, thanks a lot, Chara."

"Ah, I can well believe that," muttered Snape, looking at Lupin as if he were a particularly noisome creature that had trodden a mess into the carpet.

Lupin dropped his quill and turned in his chair. "Shocking though this revelation might be, Severus, not everyone's sexually repressed the way you are!"

"And unlike some, I don't feel the need to flagellate my genitalia every two hours, Lupin," Snape shot back snottily, straightening his coat primly.

"Perhaps if you did, you wouldn't be so uptight," Lupin pointed out and turned back to his research.

Parr laughed gustily from her reclined position on the couch.

"I don't know what you're guffawing at," said Snape, turning his irritation on her. "I expected better out of you. Don't you have any self-control?"

Parr sighed and rolled her eyes as she tried to find her place again in the magazine. "You make it sound like I'm humping the chair leg with reckless abandon. I'm just looking at some tastefully done nude photos, that's all."

"What a bizarre notion of 'tasteful' you have," Snape carped, trying to avoid looking at the pictures. "And subjecting yourself to prurient imagery like that not only sets up unrealistic expectations, but also desensitises you to reality."

Lupin snorted as he scribbled away at his research. "If I didn't know you better, Severus, I'd think you were speaking from personal experience."

Snape stuck his large nose in the air. "And knowing better, as I do, Lupin, I'm almost certain you're dead from the waist down."

"Not if he's reading stuff like this!" interjected Parr, bringing the magazine closer until her nose was almost touching the page.

"How about we stop talking about my below-the-waist area, please?" Lupin asked tiredly, shuffling parchments about awkwardly.

"Hey, Remus, this guy looks like you!" announced Parr, jabbing her finger at the magazine.

"Shush, please, I'm trying to concentrate here," Lupin pleaded, feeling a flush rise in his cheeks.

"Ah, I see. Is that how you're managing to cover your expenses, Lupin?" said Snape snidely.

"Don't be ridiculous, Severus," Lupin answered through his teeth, bending the nib of his quill with the pressure he was forcing it into the parchment.

Snape bent down slightly to look over Parr's shoulder and snorted. "Looks nothing like him."

"Ah, look at the jaw!" said Parr.

"Oh, you were looking at his face, were you?" Snape stood up straight again. "I seriously doubt that Lupin is proportioned like that," he mentioned with a nasty smirk.

Lupin's face went redder, and he hunched his shoulders in an effort to try and avoid any further notice. Perhaps if he concentrated harder, he could block out what they were saying.

"That's a bit ungenerous," Parr noted, looking up at Snape, one eyebrow raised.

"I'm sure Lupin's used to hearing that," said the tall man, widening his smirk even further.

Lupin's quill nib broke, flicking little splatters of ink all over the parchment. "I really hate you sometimes, Severus," he muttered, rubbing his eye.

"It's not necessary to be hung like a horse, you know," Parr stated patiently with a small shake of her head.

"It obviously is in order to get into that magazine," retorted Snape, pointing a long finger at Parr's reading material.

"Feeling inadequate, Severus?" came Lupin's amused voice.

Snape sneered back at him haughtily. "Hardly."

"That would explain what's written on the Ravenclaw bathroom wall, then," muttered Parr.

Snape gawked at her. "What was that?"

Lupin threw his head back and laughed.

"I don't understand this fixation you men have with the size of certain parts of your body," Parr continued, turning a page. "You're supposed to use it for sex, not to drill a core sample through the tundra."

"That's a picturesque analogy," Lupin murmured, fossicking about for a new quill.

"I've never had any complaints," said Snape, staring thoughtfully at the magazine out of the corner of his eye.

The silence was deafening. Parr twisted around to look at him, open-mouthed.

"Well, I haven't!" he maintained angrily when Lupin snorted in disbelief.

"I didn't think there'd be a topic I'd less want to hear about than my below-the-waist area, yet here we are," said Lupin, squinting at the nib of another quill he'd found sandwiched between the leaves of a book.

"Feeling inadequate, Lupin?" Snape shot back snidely.

Lupin grunted and went back to his research.

"Well, being the sex god that you so obviously are, perhaps you can give Lupin a few tips," said Parr, rustling her magazine. "I know I'm dying to hear them."

"I doubt there's anything Severus can tell me that I'd really want to know on that subject, Chara," said Lupin, "and since we're less than an hour away from lunch time, I suggest you might not want to know either, if you want to keep your appetite intact."

"Well, that depends which appetite you're talking about, Remus," sighed Parr, turning to the centrefold. "Bloody hell!" She stared, wide-eyed at the sight before her. Pushing herself up on her elbows, Parr got up from the couch, stood on the armrest and shoved the magazine under Snape's nose. "Is that real?"

He leaned back and peered up at her suspiciously, studiously avoiding looking at the magazine. "How would I know?"

"You do have one to make a comparison, don't you?" Parr asked pointedly.

Snape looked slightly confused. "A porn mag?" he asked hesitantly.

Parr growled. "No, a d–"

"Chara, do you mind?" Lupin interrupted. "I am, in all honesty, trying to work here. Is there any chance you can keep the verbal foreplay to a minimum?"

"Bah," said Parr and flopped back onto the couch again. An uneven cloud of dust rose up from the cushions at the impact of her body, making her sneeze. "All talk."

Snape stared at her back, rather wide-eyed. In his albeit scanty experience, women were frequently more than a little frosty when it came to pornography. Yet there was Parr flicking through a dirty mag nonchalantly as if she were reading the Daily Prophet. He shook his head slightly. He shouldn't really be surprised. Parr was the sort of person who didn't hide her thoughts, opinions or wants unless she thought it absolutely necessary. This obviously extended to porn. That she was reading Lupin's porn seemed even more surreal. Had she asked him for it, or had she just found it lying around? Snape had a sneaking suspicion it was more likely to be the former. He didn't know whether to be disgusted or intrigued.

He watched her hands as she turned another page, his head tilted to one side like an inquisitive bird. For some reason, he was finding the proximity of her hands to the erotic imagery rather arresting.

Stop gawking like a schoolboy, he reprimanded himself.

Parr tilted the magazine up to the light so she could get a better view. It had the effect of the shiny paper becoming occluded from the reflection of the light. That should have lessened the eroticism of the scene before him but it didn't. He started to jiggle his leg in frustration, abruptly realised that this was a bad idea, and kept both feet planted firmly on the ground. Parr was spending an inordinate amount of time studying that particular page. He blinked and wondered what an ordinate amount of time was. He supposed that women had the advantage of being able to hide evidence of arousal much better than men. That thought just skewed his mind even further down the path of licentious contemplation.

Parr tilted the magazine back upright again.

Snape had been rather insulted by the reactions of both Parr and Lupin in regard to anything sexual concerning himself. They seemed to treat it as something ludicrous or unbelievable. They could have at least pretended that his sexuality wasn't a joke. True, he was no Gilderoy Lockhart, but he was hardly a troll. He hoped. That addendum just made him angrier and more offended.

All talk, Parr had said. An idea bloomed in his mind. Very well. If the notion of his physical sexuality was so ridiculous, all talk he'd be.

Snape inched up behind Parr and bent down until his mouth was level with her ear.

"I confess to being very disappointed in you, Miss Parr," he revealed in his smoothest, darkest and most provocative tone of voice. "In my experience, women are unlikely to relinquish the advantage of four of their senses in favour of just one when it comes to sexual satisfaction. Visual stimulation is such a... male reliance." He folded his arms across his chest and leaned forward so that his forearms rested on the arm of the couch, touching Parr's back ever so slightly. "Women know instinctively that being open to oral, aural, tactile and olfactory stimulation can make the erotic experience so much more... penetrative." He increased the pressure on her back slightly. "All sensations are perceived in the brain, so what better way to reproduce them than with your imagination?" He couldn't help but notice Parr blink several times rapidly in response to his words, mouth slightly open. The magazine sat, forgotten, in her hands. "You don't need your eyes to perceive the touch of fingertips trailing across your bare skin, slipping down your body like water that pools in hollows of shivering pleasure, or the gentle pressure of a lover's teeth fastened on the curve of your neck, or the languid glide of his tongue along the soft skin of your thigh." He moved his mouth a little closer to her ear, half-closing his eyes. "You don't need pictures to hear his breath as he covers your body with his own, or to catch his moan as you draw your nails down his back, or even to listen to your own voice urging him on relentlessly." Parr's hands tightened, making the pages of the magazine crinkle. "Sight can't show you the taste of his mouth on your own, the savour of his skin as you consume it again and again, or the tang of salt in the sweat of passionate exertion." She still hadn't moved, so he leaned into her even more until her hair tickled softly along his jaw, and his chin nearly rested on her shoulder. "Eyes can't see the scent of desire that curls around you like a mist at dawn, or catch the spice of two bodies so entwined together that they seem bonded, or the unmistakable essence of pure, unabashed, lascivious lust." He hissed the last word in a whisper, and Parr's breath hitched in her throat. Snape drew away from her just enough so that he could reach out his hand and pluck the magazine from her fingers. "You can't get any of that from this, Miss Parr," he purred. He threw the magazine contemptuously across the room and moved in so close that his mouth could almost taste the soft, plump lobe of her ear, the black strands of his hair interlacing with her silver ones. "Don't let Lupin lead you astray, now."

With that, he stood up, making sure that his arms kept contact with her back for as long as possible, and glided out of the room.

"What the hell was that?" said Parr after a few stunned moments.

"I don't know, but I think I need a cigarette," Lupin answered, looking at the second ruined quill nib of the afternoon.

"I'm certain it'll come as no surprise to you that I have discovered very little."

The sandy-haired man continued to watch the flock of starlings marching about on the grass a few metres away and did his best to suppress a sigh.

"However, what I do have may be of some use."

He swung his gaze away from the chattering birds and to the severe looking woman sitting next to him on the park bench. She was looking off into the trees that grew in front of the metal railings that bordered the park, a faintly glazed look in her eyes.

"There is an indication that the woman has worked for a handful of organisations, some of which are less than reputable, although most notable is her indirect assistance to the Metropolitan Police force."

The man tilted his head slightly at this, and his bench companion blinked and refocused her eyes.

"She worked for them?"

Kettering shook her head slightly, making her shoulder-length plaits shift across the front of her suede coat.

"No. My guess is that she was... a consultant or advisor of some description." She squinted at the birds on the grass as they veered in one direction towards a patch of ground that seemed indistinguishable from any other and began stabbing at the earth with their beaks. "Her name is listed amongst their informants, but with no information beyond that and a contact number. Whatever she did for them, they don't want a written record of." She fell silent as a young couple walked past, arms linked and shoulders rounded against the increasing chill in the air, and waited until they were some distance away before continuing. "The only other regular appointment she seems to have had is for a nightclub in Leicester Square. Door security, according to the owner, who is quite aggrieved that she has disappeared. His best bouncer, he claims." Her quirked eyebrow spoke volumes, even if the rather flat tone to her voice didn't.

The man stared at her profile, all sharp edges and hard planes. One could have used the perfectly straight edge to her fringe as a ruler, and there was nary a crease in her clothing. He wrinkled his nose slightly, picking up the faint scent of starch in the dry winter air.

"I have no information preceding nineteen ninety-four, suggesting that she may have come from another area of the country, or perhaps from overseas." She turned her head to look directly at him for the first time since he had sat down on the other end of the park bench, her eyes unwavering under their long, dark lashes. "I can search further, if you like."

The man considered this for a moment before shaking his head. "Not just yet. I'm more interested in who else is looking for her."

Kettering blinked and turned back to face the trees again, their branches bare and stark against the almost white afternoon sky. He could just see the faint opacity of her exhaled breath as the temperature began to drop further with the approach of evening.

"There appear to be three other parties," Kettering revealed, tilting her head a fraction to one side and drumming her gloved fingers on her thigh briefly. "One I cannot identify, the second has connections to... " She pouted as much as a woman with very little in the way of lips could. "... those that stand in the dark, shall we say?" There was a pause during which she whistled a little trill at the starlings. Three of them broke off from the main group and galloped over to the park bench, looking up at her expectantly. "The third is the werewolves." She stood up and turned to face him, her mouth a thin line across her unmarked, pale skin that contrasted so sharply with the deep auburn colour of her hair. The white opal pendant that hung over her coat and above her heart glinted in the weak light, distracting him momentarily, and he wondered at the significance of it. All her owls were marked in the same fashion: a white triangle on the breast, point down. Both they and she wore the sign like a badge of office whose purpose was unclear, but he had trusted her for many years and hoped that trust was not misplaced. She seemed to hear his thought.

"I have never lied to you, and I am not about to now. I would just as soon as not pursue this matter further, but if you wish it, I shall."

He stared at her, faintly surprised.

"I have seen some terrible things done to those who have come under the scrutiny of those who also look for Chara Parr, and I am not keen to become one of them. It is best that your association with Trint ended."

The man raised his eyebrows a fraction.

"He has kept you dangling on more than one occasion." She laced her fingers together, pushing the soft fabric more tightly in between the digits and running one thumb over its opposite.

"Why did you never tell me?" he asked, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice.

Kettering shrugged slightly. "I didn't think you'd be happy that I knew more than I should have." She noted the set of his features and nodded. "However, he was close to uncovering the triple blind, and more than one of my owls paid for it. I felt it prudent to find out why."

That sent a mixture of anxiety and anger through him. "For how long has this been going on?"

The gangly woman rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, thinking on this question carefully.

"Perhaps a month. Hartford mentioned to me that she'd seen Trint sniffing about her roost, so he must have followed one of Pothrington's owls after he released it. I had wondered if you were being overly cautious, but it seems you were right to have so many message stops between him and you. I think he has been collecting from two parties for the same information."

He looked at the three starlings at her feet, and they cocked their heads at him, their dark eyes unreadable. He made his decision.

"Don't pursue it any further. Distance yourself from it, even if it means you have to disappear for a time." He looked up at her. "I can pay you whatever amount you will lose by doing so."

She smiled at him, managing to make her harsh features a touch less precise and austere. "I appreciate that, Severus, but I think it's time for a holiday anyway." She nodded to herself, her eyes lifting to the darkening sky. "Somewhere warm, I think. I've never gotten used to this season, even after all these years," she sighed. "You'll know when I return." With that, she turned on her heel and walked away. The three starlings took flight and overtook her, three silhouettes against the grey clouds, three corners of a triangle that pointed down.

Avella was nearly finished completing her record of the day's trading in her ledger when the shop door crashed open, waking her dozing sister, Arla, with a start so that the book on her lap slipped to the floor with a thud. They both stared at the broad figure in the doorway.

"I've found her," said Gaelina.

"Do my eyes deceive me? Is it possible that you're actually doing your homework, Miss Parr?"

Parr grunted and didn't look up from the table.

"Chara does her homework, Severus. Just not when you're here," Lupin pointed out, flicking a glance up at him as he leafed through one of his many books that were stacked up around him like a child's fort. "Are you going to be disruptive again? Only I'm in the middle of a very convoluted reference chain and Chara has to finish her Arithmancy assignment before Tonks and Kingsley get here, and I just need to know if you two are going to start brawling or breaking furniture again so I can get out of the line of fire."

Snape peered over Parr's shoulder. "I think you'll find that isn't Arithmancy, Lupin. It's sudoku."

Lupin stuck the tip of his tongue under his incisors and jutted his chin forward, taking a deep breath to try and overcome the surge of agitation that rose in him. He put down his quill and shifted in his chair so that he was facing Parr.

"Is this true?" he asked in a deceptively calm voice. Parr looked up at him with a guilty expression. He held out his hand. "Let me see it."

She handed the paper over, and he studied it intently.

Snape drifted around the table to try and get a look at what Lupin had been writing, as well as put himself in a position where he could smirk at Parr without the werewolf seeing.

Lupin handed the paper back to Parr. "Your bottom line is incorrect. You've got two fours in it."

The smirk changed into a sneer. "Is that your idea of disciplining a student, Lupin?"

"How would you like a sharp poke in the eye with my foot, Severus?" Lupin snapped, fixing him with a glare that distilled the twist to Snape's mouth to a more impressive concentration of contempt. "And you!" He stuck out an accusing finger at Parr. "You seem to forget all too easily that whilst you may be an adult, you are also a student of Hogwarts and therefore required to attend to your studies with diligence and responsibility instead of frittering your time away! You were the one that pushed for it, so I find your laxness extremely disappointing."

Parr actually hung her head at that, a slight flush sitting on her cheeks.

"I won't hesitate in telling Professor Vector that you find her subject unworthy of your focus," Lupin rolled on, getting into quite a snit. Having Snape standing behind him, no doubt smirking the entire time, was making him even angrier. "Maybe you can spend your weekends at the school where, perhaps, you'll take your studies more seriously!"

Parr looked up at him from under her furrowed brow, like a puppy being shouted at for chewing its owner's shoes.

"I'm sorry, Remus," she said in a very good approximation of contriteness, making Snape blink. "I didn't mean to upset you." She clutched her hands onto one of her long tresses of hair, managing to make her eyes look twice their normal size.

Snape couldn't believe it. She was pulling the winsome little girl trick on Lupin! Parr, who could stab a person as soon as look at them, who could overpower a fully-grown man as if it were second nature, and who manifested as much femininity as a stone gargoyle.

And Lupin fell for it.

"Just don't do it again," the werewolf muttered, looking flustered and sitting back down in his chair.

Parr stuck her tongue out at Snape, who glared stonily at her.

"So, you'll be wanting a set of replacement balls for the ones that Miss Parr is currently keeping her brass Knuts in, will you, Lupin?" the Potions master sneered nastily at his back.

Lupin's quill bent in his fingers. "Why do you ask, Severus? Are you going to divide yours in half and bless the world with the unfettered abundance?" he shouted at the ceiling. "God knows we could all do with yet another shining example of your generosity in that department!"

Parr tried, poorly, to stifle a laugh with her hand.

"You'd have to change your inseam measurement to something a bit more noteworthy, then," Snape shot back.

Whatever Lupin was going to parry with never eventuated. From outside the house came a peculiar, coughing bark. Parr's hand dropped from her mouth.

"Oh, shit." Both she and Lupin looked at each other in alarm. Parr stood up so quickly her chair tipped backwards and hit the floor with a crash. "We have to get out of here. Now!"

"What are you–" Snape began.

"We have to get out of this house, now!" Parr hissed, grabbing Lupin's arm tightly and dragging him to a standing position.

"Severus, just do it!" Lupin snapped, his face pale and his wand clamped tightly in his hand. "Get back to Hogwarts before they find us!"

Parr had her eyes screwed shut, her grip on Lupin's left arm so tight that her knuckles were white.

Snape tried to Apparate. The air in the room turned solid for a fraction of a second, and then went cold as if a torrent of frigid water swirled around them.

"Shit!" Lupin hissed. "Shit, shit, shit!"

Parr's eyes popped open. "What is it?"

"Someone's cast a Nullifier," said Snape, locking gazes with Lupin. "Who the hell–"

"We can't Apparate out?" Parr asked, incredulous.

"We can't do any magic until whoever it is that cast the Nullifier dissipates it," Lupin told her. "We have to get outside of its coverage." He made for the door of the lounge room. Snape grabbed for the werewolf's coat, yanking him back.

"What are you going to do?" he hissed. "Walk out the front door? Use your brain. They'll have the exits covered!"

Parr cast her eyes about the room. The curtains were closed against the night, covering the window that faced the street outside.

Someone turned the handle of the front door.

"Remus, is that boggart still in the wardrobe?" she whispered.

Lupin shook his head, still clutching his now useless wand.

Parr wrenched the wardrobe doors open. "Get in!" she mouthed at him. He stared stupidly at her. She grabbed his arm and forced him into the wardrobe. He began to protest, but she shushed him. Striding across the room, she got a fistful of Snape's coat and steered him in the same direction.

"Are you insane?!" he grated out as she squashed him into the wardrobe, making him press up awkwardly against Lupin. "We have to get out of here, not stuff ourselves into a cupboard!"

"There is no way out!" she pointed out quietly and fervently. "Just get in there and shut up, or we'll all be dead." She elbowed him back further into the wardrobe and got in. Lupin found himself crushed up against the side, his nose pressed against the musty, moisture-warped wood. Parr pulled the doors closed with her fingertips.

Snape tried to flatten himself against the back of the wardrobe, but his head was pushed down by the shelf above him, and Lupin's elbow was managing to push his ear painfully against his skull. Parr had one foot on either side of his left boot, her back pressing into his ribcage, and his knee bent out between both of hers. He didn't think that there was a more ungainly permutation of limbs between three people in a confined space.

Why in Merlin's balls had she got them all in here? There was no way out! He briefly considered shoving her out of the wardrobe so he could be in a better position to confront whomever it was that was closing in on them and... what? Throw a chair at them? Throw Lupin at them? Snape had no idea who he'd be facing, and without magic. Whoever had cast the Nullifier was very adept. It was a difficult spell, prone to destabilising itself, the convolutions of its casting quite extensive. It required a great deal of focus and not a little strength in wielding magic since it required the cooperation of two witches or wizards in casting it. It was occasionally used by certain members of the Death Eaters, and it was a spell jealously guarded. After all, it was a very effective tactic against those who fought with magic. Take away the weapon, and the quarry was at your mercy. He knew. He'd seen it used.

The front door opened.

Parr wedged herself up against Snape, trying to get into a position where she could see out through the crack between the wardrobe doors.

It was strange what came to the forefront of one's mind when stuck in a highly precarious situation. Usually it was the most banal detail that really had no influence on the situation at hand. In this case, Snape's attention was not fully focussed on the sounds made by the cautious intruders of the safe house, or on the potential courses of action they could take if they were discovered. No, his brain decided to fixate his awareness on two things he really could have done without being conscious of at this point in time. One was that there was something decidedly pointed and uncomfortable sticking out of Parr's back and into his chest, and the other was the way in which she had her backside jammed in the hollow of his hip. He let loose a silent vituperation at himself and tried to move his head so that Parr's hair wasn't tickling his nose.

There was a creak as someone went up the stairs in the hallway. The three of them went still and held their breath. Snape felt Parr tense up. He had a slightly oblique view of the lounge room through the crack between the doors due to the position his head was stuck at, but he did see a figure cross that narrow field of vision. It was too brief an appearance for him to see who it was, or even roughly what they looked like. In order to get a better view, he'd have to shift his position noticeably, and he wasn't certain that the movement would escape the hearing of whoever it was in the room.

Slowly, Parr leant forward and brought her right arm up so her hand reached between her shoulder blades. He saw her fingers disappear into the open seam in her jacket that stretched across her back and pull out her knife. With the hilt hooked between her index and middle fingers, she lifted it up and past his nose, missing it by less than a centimetre. The tip of the blade scraped lightly across the underside of the shelf above them as she turned her hand, relaxing her fingers just enough to allow the hilt to slip into her palm.

The intruder moved around the room. The sound of parchments sliding across each other slipped through the narrow gap between the doors, and a gentle hiss of breath escaped from Lupin.

Seconds stretched out into minutes. There was the tinkle of glass in the kitchen, the tread of someone upstairs, and a muffled swearword from the hallway. In no position to see anything of importance, Snape found his eyes locked on the blade of Parr's knife, poised just in front of him, light flickering down the sharp edge as it vibrated with each thud of her heart, desperately trying to ignore the way Lupin's elbow was crushing the cartilage in his ear.

All three of them jumped as a voice sounded a few steps to the left of their hiding place.

"There's no one here. Are you sure this is the place?"

"Positive," came the reply. A cold rage swept through Snape. He recognised that voice. "They were here, and not that long ago. The ink is still slightly damp."

"I can't find anyone," came a third voice from out in the hallway. "We had all the exits covered. They must have gotten out before we got here."

Someone hissed an epithet.

"Then two of you will remain here in case they come back," was the icily calm decision. "Perhaps one of the others will fall into the net."

A shadow passed across the gap, blocking out the light briefly, floorboards creaking as feet pressed down on them through the thin carpet as their owners left the room.

The wardrobe's inhabitants waited a minute. Then another five. Time shifted towards the ten minute mark until Lupin got an agonising cramp in his back and started fidgeting.

"What do we do now?" Parr breathed, turning her head slightly, the faintness of her voice reflecting off the flat surface of the doors.

"They'll hold the Nullifier for as long as they can," Lupin whispered quietly in a strained voice, his body shaking in the effort to stay as still as possible despite the painful spasm his back muscles were contorting into. "We still have to find a way out of the house."

They fell silent again as they wracked their brains to find a solution.

"The upstairs bathroom. It has a window that faces the house next door. There's a slanted roof that we can reach if we climb out the window. It should allow us enough distance from the range of the Nullifier. Then we can Apparate."

The other two considered Snape's suggestion for a few moments.

"I don't know," sighed Parr. "It means we have to get up those stairs unnoticed, and they creak more than a tart's bed." She paused. "Think you can get your fat arse out that little window, Remus?"

"If your monumental rudeness can get through it, anything can," Lupin retorted, trying not to drool down the inside of the wardrobe.

Parr flexed her shoulders and placed her free hand on the doors. "Let's see if I can find someone to sharpen my knife on."

She pushed the doors open.