Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or anything else from the Harry Potter universe. I do not own the TV show F·r·i·e·n·d·s. I do not own Dr. Jones.
by Sarah Black
Alpha read by Mephisto (Thank you!)
Author's IMPORTANT babbling: If Severus seems really out of character at some point, don't worry. It'll be dealt with. A simple spell! Hee hee...
Draco's thoughts were racing like his Nimbus 2001. How could he have been that stupid? To think that The Dark Lord was actually the way to go. His father had said it was so great and so wonderful. Draco dived between the clouds to see if he was anywhere near London yet. He could see the lights. There was probably about half an hour 'till he got there. Anyway, Draco was not very fond of being tortured in front of a lot of other Death Eaters. Maybe they didn't mind being humiliated like that, but he sure did. He'd get them back. He'd turn spy and tell on all of them.
And to do that he had to speak with Professor Snape.
Professor Snape. The only person in the world that he could count on. Draco knew about how Snape had turned spy in the other war, and he was hoping he'd get help from him. He'd found Snape's address in his father's address book. Snape would know how to deal with this. Soon he'd be talking to Dumbledore and he could pay that 'Lord' back for all that torture and humiliation. He'd pay.
Draco was careful in landing. If any Muggles spotted him he'd be dead. It was a bit of a walk to his professor's flat, but Draco didn't mind. He kept his eyes on the goal. To give The Dark Lord a nasty stab in the back. See how he felt about that! Draco ran the last steps up the large building in which Snape's flat was. Then he took a moment to catch his breath before he rang the doorbell. He wondered what time it was.
The door opened.
It wasn't Snape who answered. Draco had to use up most of his self-control so that he wouldn't start gaping at the poor girl. For it was a girl. Or maybe a woman. She looked rather young, though. And she wasn't even trying to stop herself from gaping.
"You're a wizard, aren't you? I could recognize you as one because you're holding a broomstick and wearing robes. Are you a friend of Severus'?" The girl said all that in one breath, looking entirely fascinated by his broomstick. Draco couldn't help an arrogant smirk. He was willing to bet a woman would never gaze admiringly like that at Potter.
"Yes, I am a wizard. And Professor Snape is my teacher. Are you his sister or something?" Draco replied, the last part he hadn't meant to ask, though. It just came out of his mouth suddenly and he couldn't stop it. That woman was obviously a Muggle, so of course she wasn't Snape's sister. She also had reddish brown hair, not black hair. Although her nose was a little crooked, but it wasn't nearly anything like the professor's nose.
"No!" She told him indignantly. "Of course I'm not his sister, are you retarded or something?" The woman looked at him with interest. As if she genuinely thought he was retarded and had never seen one before.
"I am not retarded." Draco said frostily, glaring at her like he'd seen his father glare at some people.
"Well, come in. I suppose you want to talk to Severus." The girl stepped out of the way to allow Draco to step inside. Then she walked into some other room as she called in a loud annoying singsong voice, "Severus!"
Meanwhile, Draco thought up a million reason as to why that woman was there. When he had just finished wondering if she was the maid, both his teacher and the woman returned.
"Draco?" What on earth are you doing here?" Professor Snape asked, and to Draco's relief the man looked more bewildered than angry.
"I sort of did something stupid, and I sort of happen to need your help." Draco's resolve started to slowly melt away under the intense glare his professor was looking at him with. Draco even thought that he might have started to stutter if he hadn't stopped speaking where he had.
Malfoys never stutter.
A change of subject was in order, Draco thought, and glanced at the woman again, wondering yet again why she was in his teacher's flat.
"I didn't know you baby-sat during the summer, Professor." Came out of the boy's mouth. Most unintentionally. He had meant to ask straight out why she was there, but again his tongue wouldn't comply and started asking ridiculous questions that would only get him in trouble.
"I don't. What's your point, Mr. Malfoy?" Snape's voice had taken a poisonous edge, nearly sending Draco into panic. As if his nerves weren't stretched enough tonight already!?!
"What's she doing here?" Draco muttered, feeling that it was a rude thing to ask. But he often felt rude so it didn't bother him a lot.
"She happens to live here, Mr. Malfoy."
The one sentence ate up all of Draco's self control and he allowed himself to gape. And this was a boy who hadn't gaped during the Triwizard Tournament and Potter had defeated that dragon.
"And I happen to be 28 years old." The woman said, she had crossed her arms and pouted when Draco had implied that she was a child that needed to be baby-sat.
"Chris, isn't there something on TV you want to watch or something?" Severus asked her in a slightly irked tone of voice.
"Friends!" She exclaimed and walked into another room.
Draco waited until he was sure she was gone.
"Why do you live with a Muggle?" Draco couldn't help but feel disgusted. This was just too much. His Professor, the head of Slytherin owned a TV. Which Draco knew was some sort of picture-holding Muggle device.
"Because I want to. Now, why are you here?" Snape seemed to think that his answer closed the discussion. Draco was far to upset about his discovery to talk about his backstabbing plan.
"You want to live with a Muggle? You can't want to live with a Muggle!" Draco was aware of the fact that he was getting a bit hysterical, but he'd had a long day, so that was an excuse.
"Be quiet. Chris is my... friend. But that's not what you came here to discuss." Snape let out a frustrated sigh. "Come into my study." Snape led him out of the tiny foyer and into a hallway, then through a door.
"Have a seat." The professor ordered. The two sat down, each in their respective chair.
Draco decided that it would probably be better for his own health to tell Snape about the whole Dark Lord thing before he ventured into the discussion of what sort of friend 'Chris' was. If he didn't tell the Potions Master about everything right that moment, he'd surely have a heart attack or something of the like.
"I want to turn spy. I'm sick of The Dark Lord torturing and humiliating me. This is the only way to get back at him. I refuse to become some sort of brainless lapdog like Crabbe and Goyle." he told his professor after telling him about his becoming a Death Eater a few weeks earlier.
"You want to get back at the Dark Lord for torturing you." Snape said mockingly. The man's voice made him uncomfortable and it made his plan sound stupid. "Is this just some game to you? A bully hits you and you run to big brother to hit the bully back for you? Is that it? What do you think this is Draco? A big playground? You don't think The Dark Lord is serious? Don't you know this is a war?" professor Snape had never been angry with him like that before. Draco wondered if he'd said something wrong.
"Being a spy is not about coming back to the good side and getting to be safe with mum. It's about getting tortured a lot more. It's about danger. It's about death. It's not about who gets the better of whom!" Snape continued to lecture some more but Draco tuned him out and started to think about that 'Chris' woman again. Was she maybe Snape's girlfriend? They were living together after all. But she just didn't seem like his type. Draco had always thought Snape wasn't into relationships. And is he was then it would be a much prettier girl. Maybe with special powers, and black silky hair. Definitely. Not just some ordinary Muggle with hair that couldn't make up its mind about being brown or red, and a crooked nose.
Snape had stopped talking. Draco allowed himself a silent happiness. That meant he could ask questions now! First about if he could become spy or not...
"So, am I a spy now?" That was more blunt than he intended... but it seemed to be working.
Snape rolled his eyes. "That's what I just told you, weren't you listening?" Snape glared.
"Of course I was listening" Draco spat, "I was just making sure." He added and forced himself to smile.
"Anyhow, that woman, is she just your friend?" Draco's curiosity got the best of him, despite a perfectly good plan in his mind that meant finding it out by more subtle means. Well, blunt seemed to be working for him tonight.
"No." Snape answered icily.
"A girlfriend perhaps?" Draco dared, pressing his luck.
He received no answer, merely a raised eyebrow. A yell interrupted Draco's next question before it was asked.
"Can I make cookies?!?"
It was her voice. Snape turned in his chair so he was facing the door.
"No!" He yelled back, he didn't seem angry or annoyed or anything.
"Why not?!?" Was asked after a few seconds, interrupting Draco's questioning again.
"You know you can't make cookies. Your skills in the kitchen only cover sandwiches!" Snape was smirking as he yelled that. There was a pause and Draco decided there was going to be no more yelling. He opened his mouth to ask his question...
"Can I make a sandwich, then?!?" Came her voice again. Draco noticed his professor disguise a laugh as a cough.
"Fine, make a sandwich!" He answered and shook his head in amusement.
"How long have you known her?" Draco finally managed to ask his question.
"Since I was twenty years old."
Draco caught himself before he gaped again.
"That's a pretty long time." He managed after a while. "But, that would have made her thirteen when you first met..." Draco muttered quickly doing the math.
"Yes, it's actually because of her I became a spy. Well, I wasn't sure about what I wanted to do, but then I met her. A crazy thirteen-year-old Muggle I was supposed to kill. Obsessed with dinosaurs and had really weird theories about God and death. Do you know what she said to me? She said I didn't seem mean. She said that I looked mean. But I didn't seem mean. Me! I made the mistake of asking for her reasoning. I've never been that confused before... nor after. Anyway, I went to Albus after that. I'll be taking you to see him now.
"Yes... so I'm guessing you met her again some time later." Draco couldn't remember being so curious. And he was also getting very suspicious, his professor was being far too open about all this.
"I met her again after I had started work here, teaching. She was eighteen, I was twenty-five. She started talking about dinosaurs again. I got so irritated, I was absolutely horrible to her, but she didn't seem to be aware of it at all. It was all just about how wonderful her archeology project was and how experienced Dr. Jones was in the field. Then she asked if I wanted some coffee or something like that... Anyway, I don't think I've ever met anyone that completely eccentric, Albus not included. She knows everything about archeology , but in all other areas she's a complete airhead. I don't think she knows the difference between a rain forest and a Barr tree." Snape seemed to have forgotten Draco was in the room. He was just talking to himself, thinking out loud. He'd even forgotten to leave that icy edge to his voice.
Draco decided he did not like this side of his professor.
There was silence and Draco took the opportunity of his teacher staring into oblivion to look around the room properly. There was a diary-ish looking book on the table, it had gold lettering that read:
Chris S. Thatcher
So that's her full name. Her actual name is Chris. It isn't short for Christine, or Christina... her parents must have been stoned. (Draco didn't really know what being stoned meant, but he'd heard someone use it about Muggles before and he thought it was supposed to be idiotic or something like that.) He wondered what the "S. " stood for.
"Draco, we should go to Hogwarts. Did you bring a broomstick? Well, you won't need it. We'll be using the Floo Network." He paused and a sinister smirk appeared on his features.
Draco did not like that smirk.
"One more thing." Snape said, the smirk firmly in place.
"What?" Draco asked, feeling both a little scared and a little irked.
"Obliviate."
*
Severus knew that if he allowed Draco to walk out with all that information on his personal life, no child at Hogwarts would respect him anymore. And it would put Chris in danger. He doubted she would mind. She wouldn't notice it anyway. And if he were to tell her that there were men out to kill her she'd widen her eyes and then remember that she forgot some file at the office and run out. She was insane but he loved her anyway.
"So, am I a spy now?" Draco asked, his eyes wide and glazed.
"Yes, we are going to see the Headmaster now." He answered his student as formally as he could manage. It had been nice to tell someone about Chris. Albus never asked about the details. None of the others at Hogwarts knew about Chris, although he suspected Minerva knew more than she let on.
"Okay." Draco still looked confused and dazed, but he was slowly coming back to himself. He just hoped Chris was still busy with her sandwich and wouldn't come out and force him to obliviate Draco again.
Luck was on his side, or maybe it was just Chris' weird fear of cucumber... but he managed to bring Draco safely to Albus' office, and get home safely as well. And this time he was almost sure that Fawkes had been giving him the evil eye.
"Chris, I'm back!" He called and glanced at the clock. Loudness after ten PM did not go down well with his neighbor, Mrs. Libbs. Actually, loudness after ten came with a stick being beaten against his living room wall. Muggles... can't live with them, can't live without them.
Chris walked in, wearing a big T-shirt with a large picture of a red blob with hands on it. That T-shirt was not one of his favorites. His favorite was the one with a cat and a yellow bird on it. The cat seemed awfully interesting. But hardly real, with that large tomato instead of a nose. Sad, really.
"I've finished my sandwich. But it was hard to get the ham out of the fridge." She told him and smiled up at him.
"The cucumber again?" He asked and raised an eyebrow.
She nodded grimly.
"Honestly, I don't understand you. It's just cucumber." He knew it was a lost argument. Chris was probably one of the few people in the world he couldn't win arguments with. Her logic was just so weird. And when you don't understand someone's reasoning, it's hard to know how to argue back. Besides, he didn't want to argue with her in the first place. She was far too loud.
"I don't trust green things that are made of water. Water isn't green, how can something that's nearly only made of water be green? There are only two possible reasons. It's fungus infested, or aliens have tampered with it.
He settled for rolling his eyes.
"Severus?" She asked after a while.
"What?"
"Do you believe in ham?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, do you believe ham exists?"
"Of course ham exists."
"Prove it."
"You just ate some, with your sandwich."
"How do we know that's ham? Maybe humans just named something that isn't ham, 'ham' and we all believe it's ham, but it isn't."
"I'm going to bed now."
"Me too."
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