Chapter 15: "I'd run right into hell and back"

"Modfather to Aunt Bessie. Come in, Aunt Bessie"

*crrrk*

"Professor Smith, this is ridiculous…"

*crrk*

"I didn't catch that, Aunt Bessie. Try again."

*crrk*

Severus rolled his eyes and massaged the space at the very top of the bridge of his nose.

He stirred out his frustration on the Restoration Draft in front of him and dripped a few cautious drops of mandrake sap into the cauldron. He vented a myriad of colorful swearwords into the empty air around him and then picked up the Muggle device Circe had left for him.

"Explain the blasted nicknames to me again." He spoke into the device.

"Codenames, Severus. Not nicknames. Aunt Bessie for you because you're busy cooking away up there. Aunt Bessie's is a muggle food brand that makes roasties and Yorkshire puddings and the like."

"Wonderful, so I'm a made up brand mascot. And yours? Modfather?"

"Paul Weller, the Modfather!"

"Nope. No clue."

"Paul Weller was in The Jam. And I'm 'Going undergrouuuuuund.

Well the brass bands play and feet start to pound

Going undergrouuuuund…'!"

Her singing came over the walkie-talkie static loud and clear.

"What do you want?" He asked sharply, over the top of her song.

Circe laughed to herself, the sound echoing off the barrelled walls of the pipe she was currently traversing.

This was her umpteenth exploration of the sewage networks of Hogwarts and she was tiptoeing through slime and darkness yet again, her wand producing the only light she had before her. Severus had tried accompanying her on her first few exploits down the drainage ditch in the greenhouse. But it very quickly became apparent just how claustrophobic he was. Circe could cope just about with the oppressive smell and the damp blackness of the tunnels but she could see Severus sweating and shakily breathing beside her, at any moment seconds away from a panic attack. He would have simply soldiered on had it not been for Circe's insistence that he stay on the surface. Severus couldn't tell her that his crippling fear of small spaces stemmed from when he was a boy. His father would lock him in the cupboard in the kitchen where the boiler was kept. It was horribly small, completely black, and oppressively hot, and his father would keep him locked in there until he almost fainted with dehydration. Still, it had resulted in Severus being able to monitor the Restoration Draft whilst Circe took to the pipes alone. Severus had approached her with a copy of the plumbing and piping map laid out in 'A Complete and Detailed History of the Plumbing and Piping of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry', which he had spent all of the previous night drawing by hand.

"If you're going by yourself, I can at least guide you from the surface."

He showed her his work and demonstrated the tracing charm he had placed upon the map that showed Circe's location, wherever she was in the labyrinth of Hogwarts's tunnels and pipes.

Circe came to a fork in the tunnels before her.

"Left or right, Aunt Bessie?" She spoke into her walkie-talkie.

They had been Circe's idea, as they were a quick and easy way of staying in contact without the faff of casting a patronus each time they wanted to confer. Severus, of course, had at first looked at them like they were litter she had picked up off the street and handed to him. But even he couldn't deny their usefulness, even if Circe insisted on their silly little codenames…

"Left will take you back to the Jubilee line, right will take you to Charing Cross again."

Their exploration of the tunnels had gone into such detail that they now had nicknames for particular pipes or areas of the school's network, taken directly from places on the London Underground. Long mainline pipes that could span several floors of the castle were "lines" and places where a small opening or exit could be found back to the surface was a "stop".

"Okay, I'm going back to Jubilee. I'm going to try and get into that tunnel that goes past the girls bathroom again."

"Again? You've tried three times this week. It's blocked, Modfather."

"Look, I think that's the tunnel we've been looking for, Aunt Bessie. The one that will take us down to the subterranean floors. I'm gonna have a go at bombarda-ing my way through it."

"You might cause a whole tunnel collapse if you try that!" Severus shouted down the walkie-talkie at her.

Circe shivered and cast a weary eye up to the moss covered stones on the tunnel's ceiling. She certainly didn't want to be buried alive by those things toppling down upon her head.

"You're on hand if anything happens to me. And well… Just assume that if you haven't heard from me in over five minutes then I'm buried under rubble and one thousand years of Hogwarts's dirty bathwater."

"I don't much like this plan, Circe." Snape muttered, feeling as helpless as ever from where he stood.

How he wished he could be beside her in the thick of the danger, to protect her. Not stood on the sidelines like some matron at a football match with the halftime satsumas. It would finish him off to have to drag her lifeless body from a cave-in, but he knew she would never be convinced otherwise and it was useless trying to argue with her or talk her down when she had her sights set on something.

"Didn't catch that, Aunt Bessie… Codename not used." she said teasingly, smiling to herself.

"Oh for fuck-" Snape grumbled, almost ready to throw the walkie-talkie across the room. He took a few deep calming breaths before pressing the intercom again. "You're just coming up to Knightsbridge now, by the way."

Circe saw a small grate to her right, just above her head. Light streamed down into the pipes from the small opening and Circe rushed to it like a moth to a lightbulb, desperate to be in the brightness illuminating the dark. She stood on her tiptoes and peered out of the grate and into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. Once or twice on previous explorations she had seen Gilderoy still seated in his classroom, practising faces and chat up lines in the mirror. But it was completely empty today.

"No one here today, Aunt Bessie."

"Pity." Severus's voice crackled back to her through the device. "I suppose we'll have to look elsewhere for a one-man rendition of 'Summer Nights'."

Circe laughed, remembering that particular night's exploration, catching Lockhart singing the 'Grease' soundtrack to himself. She'd had to take off her jumper and stuff it into her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud and giving her position away. Circe had been crying tears of mirth over her and Severus's firewisky debrief, explaining to him how Lockhart had a blonde bob wig in his desk that he put to good use in his performance.

"Do you think he'd take requests if I wrote them down and stuffed them through th-BAAAAH!"

Circe screamed and dropped the walkie-talkie.

Severus dropped his pipette and felt himself go cold.

"Circe…?! CIRCE?!" He shouted down the intercom.

He went quiet, staring helplessly around the greenhouse, waiting for a noise to come through on the radio.

"I'm alright…" her voice finally came, in between pants. Severus sighed and released the breath he'd only just realized he'd been holding. "It was the incy-wincy's again."

"More spiders?"

"A whole nest of them. Right behind me. Caught me completely off guard when I turned around and shone the lumos straight into them. The horrible things scattered and lurched at me."

Circe, like many people, hated spiders. Normal spiders were things she tried to avoid, but the ones she'd been coming across in the pipes were outright nightmarish. Some being the size of rats. However, at the center of the nest she had just disturbed was a particularly big bugger about the size of a terrier, the biggest she'd seen so far. Circe took a moment to try and calm herself, waiting for the hairs on her arms to lie down flat again and for her heart to stop drumming against her breastbone.

"You're seeing them more and more frequently now." Severus commented.

"Yeah, I've noticed that too. And they're getting more and more agitated."

"Rather nasty infestation. You want to keep going?"

"Yes, of course. I'm fine, Severus. Don't worry."

"Sorry, I didn't hear that last one, Modfather. You didn't use the codenames." He chimed in, smiling to himself.

She scoffed and let a small laugh escape her lips.

Her sound echoed off the walls of the tunnel and synched up almost exactly with the far-off noise of footsteps. Circe almost missed the sound, but she stopped dead and held her breath as her ears peaked. She listened so strenuously and astutely that for a second she thought she may have imagined it. But it came again, loud and clear. Deliberate, hurried footsteps slapping against the wet, dirty floor of the tunnel.

"What is it? Why aren't you moving?" Severus asked over the intercom.

"There's someone else down here, Severus." She whispered back to him.

"What? It can't be."

"Definitely." She broke into a jog, chasing where the footsteps came from. "Follow me, Aunt Bessie. Tell me where they're heading."

Her jog became a run as she fixed her sights on catching up to whoever else she'd heard. Water splashed up around her as her feet pounded against the floor. The maze of pipes, turnings and corners whizzed past her in a blur of grey stone and sickly green damp. Severus radioed to her as she passed each major junction or exit.

"You've just passed the intersection for the Bakerloo line… Now you've just gone past Holborn… That was Tottenham Court on your left just then…."

The footsteps she followed became louder and louder, until she felt that she was almost on top of them. Weeks of exploration had afforded her an almost photographic memory of the plumbing network by now. She mentally tracked her movement according to Severus's announcements, and plotted her line of pursuit in her head.

They're going to the girl's bathroom turnoff too…

Circe rounded a corner and in the thick darkness that filled the tunnels she thought she saw the black swish of a school robe. The shock of it made her almost stop dead.

"It's a student, Severus." She panted down the walkie-talkie.

"Who?"

"I don't know, I can't see-"

Circe's footing slid from under her as she tripped over something. She went sprawling out onto the filthy floor beneath her. The dirt of hundreds of years coated her front from neck to feet and she felt the wind leave her lungs.

"Eurghhh!" She picked herself up and looked back down the pipe at what she had tripped over. It was tiny, and it looked like brick in the half-light of the barrel vault. She walked over to it, internally cursing the thing for making her lose track of the student she'd been chasing, and picked it up. A book… She turned it over in her hands, inspecting it. She cast the lumos spell over it and saw the name engraved in its front.

Tom Marvolo Riddle. No student called that here now. She thought. Wonder how long this has been down here. Or maybe the Scarlet Pimpernel I was just chasing dropped it…

Then, from the darkness behind her, Circe heard a deep, vicious growl. It rattled through her bones and shook the very walls around her. The blood in her veins ran cold and a terror gripped her unlike any other that she'd ever felt. She suddenly felt not like the hunter, but the hunted.

The monster…

From out of the dark came scrabbling a number of spiders, fleeing from the creature in a panic. They didn't even bother to stop and acknowledge Circe, running from the danger as fast as their little legs could carry them.

If they're running away from it, then what kind of awful thing is this creature?

"Circe… what is it?" Snape asked, his voice now seeming ten times louder from the intercom than it had been previously.

The growl deepened, acknowledging that it had heard the voice on the walkie-talkie, and Circe gasped.

"Severus…. it's here." She whispered. "I need to be quiet, I'm sorry…." and with that she smashed the back of the device on her hand and the batteries came flying out into her palm.

Then, she turned and ran…

Her only option now, based on where Severus had told her she was, was to try her luck blasting through to the girl's bathroom. All the other "stops" were too far away now. She felt the presence of something massive and deadly moving in the pipes nearby. She knew that if she didn't make it out of the plumbing network soon, then she'd suffer a similar fate to the other petrified victims… maybe even worse. Panic gripped her as she ran for dear life and she skidded to a stop as she finally came to the blocked passageway she'd been searching for. It was small, perhaps four foot tall, but large enough for her to crawl through and if the thing that chased her was as big as it sounded, there'd be no way it could follow her through the space. She raised her wand, ready to cast the blasting spell. Circe shot one last look to the ceiling above her. The crumbling, misaligned stones made her pause and she remembered Severus's warning to her about a possible cave-in.

What would be worse? Crushed to death by falling masonry, or wait here and see whatever it is that's chasing you?

She closed her eyes and held Tom Riddle's diary over her head as a futile bit of protection.

"Bombarda!"

Stone burst from the tunnel entrance in great jagged plumes and she shielded her eyes from the debris. She coughed and stood stock still as the pipe rattled precariously around her. Dust fell from the ceiling and she gasped… but no collapse came. She fell to her hands and knees and began precariously scrabbling through the hole she had just created. It was a snug fit, but she got through, leaving the growling menace at her back. Complete and utter darkness consumed her and she could see nothing. She wished in that moment that she had Severus's voice to guide her through the pitch black and keep her calm. She crawled onwards, listening to the monster's grumbles get farther and farther away, relinquishing that it had lost her. Circe was just about to laugh for joy when her hand came down upon… nothing.

And she fell.

Down and down.

Her screams were silenced as she hit a great pool of water. A strong current carried her underwater as she thrashed about in the dark. She could not tell how far the waters carried her, but when she emerged, her head bobbed up in a strange low-ceilinged chamber. She gasped for air and gagged, the smell of human excrement hitting her. She looked to the ceiling above her and saw what she expected to see… a series of small, uniformly spaced holes in the space above her. Toilet holes.

The girl's bathroom.

She splashed around, trying desperately not to think about what she was swimming in. Circe grabbed at one of the holes, pulling herself up and almost screamed anew when a cat-like face peered at her from the other side of the toilet hole.

"P-Professor?!" The cat stuttered at her.

Circe was completely lost for words. The situation she found herself in was beyond bizarre.

"Move." She simply said.

The cat obliged and Circe raised her wand to cast another blasting spell. The toilet exploded upwards, creating a hole big enough for Circe to pull herself out of the sewage water through. The cat person extended an arm to help her to the surface but quickly withdrew it when she smelt the odour that rose from the hole with Circe. The cubicle floor was blasted open, and Circe pushed the stall's door open, dripping from head to foot. Again, she had expected to find the second floor girl's bathroom empty, but there on the other side of the stall stood an shocked-beyond-words Harry and Ron. Circe looked from Potter, to Weasley, to the cat person whom she assumed was Hermione, and they looked back at her. None there dared say a word.

Are… are they in Slytherin uniforms? Circe noted, adding to the ever growing list of oddities of the tableau she had just crawled in on.

She sighed heavily, deciding that she didn't have the mental energy right now to deal with the absolute fuckery in front of her.

"You say nothing about me… and I'll look the other way here. Deal?" Circe said monotonously.

"Deal." The trio said.

Circe sighed once more and walked past the boys, her sopping clothes clinging to her body. She caught a whiff of herself and wretched. She realised she still held the diary she'd picked up in the tunnels in her hand, and let it wordlessly slip to the floor with a wet thud. Circe had just left the doorway of the bathroom when she almost collided headlong into a frantic-looking Severus, red faced and panting.

"Circe! Circe! Good God, what happened? Are you alr-" he ground to a halt as he caught her smell. "Oh, Jesus! I saw you fall into the septic tank on the map…" he covered his nose.

"Don't. Severus." She said through gritted teeth, trying not to look at him. She walked off, dumbstruck and mortified. "I'm going to find a shower…. or a hose."

"By yourself? Isn't the monster still about?"

"Then you can stand outside and keep watch."

He blanched and watched her walk away from him. Relieved as he was, the danger now passed, he couldn't help himself when he snorted with laughter…

The first time he's ever permitted himself to laugh in front of me. She thought. Of course it took me caked in shit and embarrassed to my core to make him laugh.

"Circe…" he chuckled.

"What, Severus?" She asked, turning back around to face him, stone faced.

"Aguamenti!"

Water hit her straight in the face, making her choke and splutter. She put her hands out in front of her, trying to stop the relentless stream.

"Oh fuck you! I hate you, Aunt Bessie!"

"Yes yes, now turn around. You have something in your hair…"

-----

Circe sat on the desk, biting her nails and fiddling with her curls, next to where Severus stood. The CD she had on in the background just audible over the softly bubbling cauldron that Snape tended to. They were both in the cramped Potions storage cupboard, just like old times when Circe had worked with him in the department. His face was hidden in the rising smoke emerging from the potion before him and he was, for once, glad that the small space did not lend itself well to ventilation. He could watch her without fear of being caught staring…

It was mid afternoon. Lessons finished for the day. But Circe and Severus were still busy at work with monitoring the Restoration Draft. Her leg twitched nervously as she sat on the spare desk of the storage room. Trying to relax slightly at the end of the teaching day, she had untucked her white blouse from her trousers and her jacket sat discarded on the nearby chair. She looked far away in thought, internally punishing herself for what had recently transposed at Hogwarts.

"It's my fault, Severus." She said finally, swinging off the table.

The Meatloaf CD that played skipped slightly at her sudden jolt of movement. They had only just recently graduated from the Walkman to a small player, now confident enough to listen to albums together and review them as they worked in the storage room. Today Circe was regaling him with the latest of her purchases when she had last gone home: Bat out of Hell: II

"Professor, we've been through this already…"

"The monster let me slip away that night in the tunnels… It was angry it let me go. I pissed it off."

"Yes but that doesn't mean you're responsible for what happened to the Granger girl. Goodness knows she gets herself in enough trouble through associating with the Potter and the Weasley boy." Severus watched Circe bite her lip, not heeding his words at all. "Good God, is this song still going?" he asked, referring to the CD player.

They were now in the fourth minute of " I Would Do Anything For Love."

Hermione had been found petrified that morning. Not only was it a shock to find another victim, but this one close to Circe's heart, and now in broad daylight to boot. The attacker was getting braver, or more angry it seemed.

"Severus, I don't insult you with meaningless platitudes, so don't give them to me." Circe said, a little too shortly for Severus's liking.

Circe closed her eyes and checked her temper. However awful she was feeling, it wasn't fair to take it out on Severus. His shoulders hunched over the cauldron and she could tell that he was a little hurt by what she'd said.

"So you're not enjoying Meatloaf then?" She said quickly, reaching out to him with a quick change in conversation.

"It's… Not really my style. Very dramatic."

Severus had learned from his short time being a music enthusiast that there were some music artists that you admitted to liking, and some you didn't… This one he assumed was the latter. Fast cars, motorbikes, fire, leather, all very American.

Sirius would love it, he thought bitterly.

He was rather surprised that Circe seemed to enjoy it given her more Brit-pop leanings.

"Oh but that's the beauty of it. How needlessly dramatic Jim Steinman can be. All of his songs are like mini operas, taking you on soaring emotional symphonies. None of this "radio edit" shite. If you're going to listen to Meatloaf, listen to all eight minutes of the song or not at all!"

"Hmm. Lyrically they're very good, I'll give him that… but what is that thing that he won't do for love?"

"Forget the way I feel right now. I thought that was obvious."

"Not to me."

She laughed. "Yes it's not been worded particularly well, has it. I have a feeling people will be asking that question about this song for a very long time."

"I think this is another album that we will have to agree to disagree about." Severus concluded with a slight smirk.

Circe scoffed and rolled her eyes. Her face fell as her mind wandered back to the thing Severus had been trying to distract her from. "Minerva says that the governors are frantic now. Talking of closing the school."

"Yes, I have heard the same thing." Severus added, busying himself with stirring the Draft and checking the bottles of other ingredients laying nearby.

Circe had taken a break from tunnel exploring for the time being, especially after the outright terrifying events of her last endeavour underground. She felt like she'd only recently managed to wash the horrid smell from her hair...She instead concentrated her efforts for the time being into helping Severus with the mandrake potion. He had been right; it needed almost constant supervision to make sure it stayed potent, and they'd had to restart it twice already. A vital loss of time and also an incredibly disheartening experience. Circe watched Severus intently focused on the murky-brown, bubbling liquid in the cauldron. He had a look on his face when he was brewing a potion unlike any other time Circe had watched his stern features. It was something akin to when a man sees his lover on the pillow beside him first thing in the morning: soft, loving, attentive. His fingers closed around the pipette delicately and he moved as deftly as a dancer. Circe's stomach danced at the thought of what Severus might look like would it be her he woke up next to, those slender fingers caressing her collarbone. She had to look away from Snape's tender gaze before her slightly open, lustful mouth gave her away.

"I should have pegged something was up." Circe grumbled, pacing about the room, running a finger over the pickled and preserved jars on the shelves. "Especially after that whole cat face… thing. And why the bloody hell did she have a mirror on her? I really didn't think Hermione was the compact-carrying type."

"Oh will you stop whingeing and concentrate on what you can do now." Severus said sharply.

He had always been a pragmatic soul. It alarmed him that the school was on the brink of closure and the monster grew bolder with each day. But he also resolved to simply roll up his sleeves and carry on in whatever capacity he could. That attitude had served him well enough in the war, it would see him through now too. The time for sulking could come later.

"Now come over here and watch how to add the mandrake sap properly."

Circe steeled herself and bunched up her hair into a messy ponytail hastily. She wanted to concentrate on the Draft, and her thick curls out of her face would help with that. If she fluffed up the potion again, Severus might eat her alive, as it had been under her watch that the bubbling liquid had turned sour before. She moved to Severus's side and he handed the pipette over to her, his slender fingers enclosing around hers for the briefest of seconds. Circe's stomach almost dropped out of her.

Oh, is this going to be another… moment?

Their eyes met and the breath caught in her throat. The female voice at the end of the song came floating over them from the CD player.

"Will you raise me up?

Will you help me down?

Will you get me right out of this Godforsaken town?

Will you make it all a little less cold?"

Severus coughed and stepped to the side, letting Circe stand squarely in front of the cauldron.

"You need to add maybe a teaspoon worth at a time." He said in a low, husky voice.

Circe squeezed the drip and a sizable amount of sap fell into the bubbling liquid.

"No, no… that's way too much!" Severus chided her.

He moved to her back and encircled her in his arms, taking her hand that still held the pipette to help guide her.

"Will you hold me sacred?

Will you hold me tight?

Can you colorize my life I'm so sick of black and white?

Can you make it all a little less old?"

"You always either add too much or too little." He spoke softly into her ear.

Circe felt his breath on her neck, hot and thrilling. She prayed that Severus could not see the goosebumps rising on her arms or the shiver that went down her spine. He was close, so close she could feel his warmth, and she relished in his nearness. The touch of his hand on top of hers was galvanizing.

"Let me show you…"

He squeezed the drip, guiding her hand and showing her the correct amount to decant.

"Will you make me some magic with your own two hands?

Can you build an emerald city with these grains of sand?

Can you give me something I can take home?"

Severus cast his eyes down her neck, her soft curls falling beautifully over her shoulders from her hastily made ponytail. Her movements were stiff and she was completely quiet under his touch.

Perhaps she's finally listening to me, he thought sarcastically to himself as his eyes gravitated down to the tops of her breasts, just visible through her slightly unbuttoned white blouse.

"Slowly, one drip at a time…" He purred, her perfume filling his senses once more as he leaned in close to her nape.

"Will you cater to every fantasy I got?

Will you hose me down with holy water, if I get too hot?

Will you take me places I've never known?"

Circe squeezed in a few drops and paused.

"No, too little this time…"

She let a few more drops fall from the instrument.

"There. Perfect."

"Ahemm...Am I interrupting something?"

Severus and Circe both jumped and wheeled around to face the voice at their backs. Standing on the threshold of the storage room was Lucius Malfoy. He raised a presumptuous brow at Snape and then turned his head slowly to Circe too. She felt herself blushing from her forehead to her chest under his withering gaze and she looked to her shoes.

"Lucius." Severus said levelly, recovering before she did.

He reached desperately out towards the CD player, smashing the top with his fist and opening the tray. Silence fell over the room.

"Always nice to see a friend in such… happy circumstances." Lucius said, taking Severus's hand and shaking it firmly.

"To what do I owe this unannounced visit, Malfoy?" Severus asked.

Circe watched the tenderness she had just experienced seconds ago vanish, replaced instantaneously by his trademark hard-as-nails haughtiness. Lucius smirked in a way that turned Circe's stomach.

God, Draco is the absolute spit of him. Circe thought, casting her eye over Malfoy's silvery-blonde hair and the same cold, cruel eyes he had given his son.

"Now, now Severus. It is only polite that I be introduced to your guest first." Lucius purred, placing his hand on Severus's chest and pushing him gently to the side.

"Circe. Smith." She responded, trying to muster her confidence. "I teach Ancient Studies."

"Ah yes, I recall seeing your name on Draco's school reports." He extended a gloved hand, waiting patiently for Circe to place her own within it. When she hesitantly did, he tugged her close with a startling show of force. "I believe you wrote that Draco 'must re-address his attitude to learning if he is to succeed'. Frightfully provocational, Miss Smith."

"Yes," Circe replied confidently, refusing to be intimidated. "I'm afraid there is a cap on what Mr Malfoy can achieve when he bullies Mr Crabbe and Mr Goyle into doing his assessments for him." she replied tartly, yanking her hand from his.

Severus smirked and tried to hide his mouth with a sleeve. Lucius, on the other hand, snarled at her.

"Malfoy, what brings you here?" Severus asked again, stepping in between him and Circe like a boxing referee.

"Some good news. I thought it may interest you to know of the decision the govenors made last night in regards to the … difficult situation Hogwarts currently finds itself in."

"And what decision is that?"

Lucius cast a sideways glance at Circe, who folded her arms resolutely as if to say I'm going nowhere. He raised a brow at Severus and he remained stone-faced and still. Anything you say, you can tell it to us both.

Lucius sighed and rolled his eyes. "Myself and the governors have decided that it is time for Headmaster Dumbledore to step aside, considering his inaction with regard to these attacks on muggle-born students."

"What?" Circe almost screeched. "Dumbledore's done everything he can. I've done everything I can!"

"And what, pray tell, have you achieved since these attacks began, Professor Smith? Have your efforts surmounted to any useful results?"

Circe flinched, Malfoy's words striking home. He was right. She felt like she'd made a breakthrough since Christmas, but had she really? Children were still being attacked. And all she'd done recently was go running about the pipes like some ridiculous real-life Mario game.

"And how soon can we expect this decision to take effect?" Severus asked.

"I meet with the Minister and Dumbledore tonight, hence why you find me here." Lucius stated with his sickly smirk plastered all over his face.

Circe's head was reeling. She turned from Severus and Lucius in a vain attempt to hide her shock and horror. Everybody's days in the castle would be numbered if Dumbledore was gone.

"Oh, and of course me and the Minister are men of action. So we intend to arrest the person apprehended for the attacks that last happened here some fifty years ago."

"What?" Circe said, turning back to Malfoy pointedly. "Who?! They're here?!" She said, utterly flabbergasted.

"Why yes. I would rather have thought Dumbledore would have informed you of that great lolloping oaf Hagrid's previous convictions."

"H-Hagrid?!"

"Oh dear, quite ignorant of the facts aren't you." Lucius quipped.

No record of an arrest in The Prophet because he was too young to stand trial…she thought morosely.

Severus too seemed equally lost for words. He watched Circe, almost close to tears, grappling with Malfoy's revelations.

"Well, I best be going." Malfoy concluded politely. "Business to attend to. I left your most recent letter arrivals at Spinner's End on your desk, Severus."

Snape nodded his thanks to him curtly. "Malfoy."

"Professor Snape. Professor Smith." He nodded to them both, before sweeping elegantly from the room.

Severus and Circe stood in silence for a long while. He didn't quite know what to say, fiddling with the cuff of his doublet. He looked up from his boots when he heard Circe sniffing beside him.

"Circe-"

"It's not him, Severus. It can't be. He couldn't…"

"No, I don't believe so either."

"And that person I saw running around the tunnels… that wasn't him. It was a kid."

"That still doesn't narrow down the suspect list to anything useful."

There's that word again. The one Malfoy used too. 'Useful useful useful". The thing you've failed to be all fucking year, you stupid girl. Circe thought, brutalizing herself.

"Then what do we do?" She asked desperately, turning to him. Frustrated, hot tears were streamed down her face and his heart ached at seeing her cry. "Especially as Dumbledore's on the way out." She muttered, grabbing a fist of her hair.

"What we can." He said firmly, grabbing her wrist. "Continue with the Draft. Carry on exploring the tunnels. We don't lose focus."

He let go over her when he saw that his words had reached her. Circe's green eyes glistened like emeralds, beautiful and shining in their sadness. He delved into one of his many pockets and produced a hankie for her. Something his mother had always taught him to have on him…

She nodded solemnly and took it from Severus, drying her eyes. "I think our time for success is rapidly running out, Severus."

"Then… we work. As hard as if the Vampires of Romania were on our backs!"

And we haven't been already? Circe thought to herself woefully as she stared vacantly into the softly bubbling potion still sat on the workbench.