Disclaimer: Harry Potter, the Potterverse, and all that jazz are the property of Jo Rowling. I sincerely wish I was as badss as all that.

A/N: (MH AU) This story is the second part of the Masquerade series -- a group of stories involving Death Eaters who turned against each other, and the repercussions that followed, more than twenty years later. Phaedrus is an OC from the RPG this story originated in -- he's a sentient non human. (A pooka, actually; this AU sees the tall faerie-kin as in the same position as the centaurs, in canon.) Since this meeting takes place in America, and involves things better left unattributed, code names are used: Batty is Severus Snape, Sin is Rodolphus LeStrange, and Rabbit is Phaedrus Entropium.

Vortex :: December 24, 1998, 2pm local/12am GMT

Phaedrus sat at a table with his back to the wall and his eyes to the door, a laptop open before him. He'd had to borrow the laptop to run these tests, but if things went as planned, the rest of the money would buy him his very own – and of better quality than the machine he kept at home. He fiddled with the contacts at the end of the cable that trailed from the serial port. Static danced across the display.

He waited.

When Severus walked into Coffeehell and immediately spotted the man called Rabbit. Pulling out the seat opposite the technomancer, he sat down. "Greetings. Is this the device?" He studied the thing in front of the other man. It seemed to be made of two panels and a pair of wires trailed from it. One joined a point in the wall, and the other terminated in two copper pads that lay on the table. It certainly looked interesting.

It became obvious that the wizard had never seen a computer. Phae stared blankly for a moment, carefully choosing his words. "The device has many functions. The functions can be transferred from it to others of its type – we call them 'programs', and the device is called a 'computer'.

"That's not important, though. What's important is whether the program you wanted works. Do you have a sample for it to read?"

'Computer.' He'd heard of those from the Muggleborn students. Somehow he'd imagined them to be larger. Sev pulled a pensieve and a phial from his pocket. "I have the first phial of memories I need converted. What shall I do with them?"

"Is that the bowl they go in? I don't know how these things work, except in theory. I gathered from the spec sheets you sent that there was some sort of bowl of liquid I would be working with. I have to assume the liquid, then, is in the vial?" Phae looked interested in actually seeing a working pensieve. "Just set it up the way you would if you were going to watch it, and then stick those copper things to opposite sides of the inside of the bowl."

Severus did as he was told, emptying the phial into the bowl of the pensieve and pressing the copper pads against the sides of the bowl, half submerged in the fluid. "Like that?"

Rabbit couldn't possibly understand how important it was to him to have these things recorded. With these memories recorded in a portable format that could be duplicated fairly easily, there would be no question of guilt anywhere when he finally wreaked his vengeance on those three who so richly deserved it. He might be remembered as a murderer, but he'd be a man who repaid his debts.

Phae fiddled with the sliders, clearing up the image as it came in. "I think we've got something. I'm going to have to play with the levels for a bit, just to make sure it all comes in clearly, but it's definitely reading." He turned the laptop to show the screen to Batty. The scene it displayed was not a pleasant one, Sin lay curled into a ball on a concrete doorstep answering questions that Batty, kneeling beside him, asked.

"Who did it, this time?" young video-Batty asked.

"It was Wally MacNair. Avery said he wanted to ask me something, and then when I turned around..." video-Sin miserably coughed and spit blood.

Sev's face tightened and he nodded. "Good. You'll want to turn down the volume. Some of it is... ah... Hearing it once was once more than strictly necessary." He didn't want to watch all of these things again; they'd been bad enough the first time, and far too much, the second.

"If I won't be in the way, I'd like to stay until you're done. I really shouldn't let the pensieve or its contents out of my sight." Severus drew a novel out of a pocket of his robes. "I can keep myself occupied."

Phaedrus raised his eyes sharply at the first comment. "Is it all like this, then?" He held up a hand and shook his head as he turned the screen back toward himself. "Don't tell me. Not my business. I probably won't see most of it, I'll be too busy working out the glitches."

He pulled a pair of headphones from his jacket. "Sure, you can stay. I know how that works. This should only take an hour or two."

Severus nodded to Rabbit and opened his book. He had, in recent years, become fond of the adventures of a character called Brother Cadfael, a pleasant-tempered herbalist who solved mysteries in medieval England. The Rose Rent, this one was called, and he was certain it would be an excellent and entertaining distraction from what was playing across the technomancer's screen.

Phaedrus tried to ignore the content of the incoming video as he adjusted the colour balance and the volume, the framerate and the synchronization. He couldn't help but watch the scene of Batty fighting for his life and possibly that of a young boy. As the scene played out, he realised that the fight was happening inside the boy's mind. ...and that the boy was Sin's son, Orion.

Batty found what he had been looking for, and with enough time for a moment of melodrama. The dark man closed his mind to the incoming probe and rattled off a few lines from a film he'd become fond of in the last decade:

"My will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great. You have no power over me." Batty waved almost cheerfully to his opponent as he pulled out a cork from the wall, disabling the trap and destroying the illusion.

Phae found himself cheering silently as Batty destroyed the illusory attacker and saved the day.

He was again trying to ignore the reels, except for their surface characteristics, when another scene caught his eye. It was Sin, again, with the man from the other reel -- Avery, he thought the man's name was -- this time Avery and his friends had arranged some sort of disgusting parody of a bachelor party.

Phae felt his knuckles start to hurt and realized he was clenching his fists. He had to stop working for a bit. He was down into the finicky adjustments -- things no one else would notice, but that would make him crazy -- and there was no way he could make them until he calmed down. As he watched the one called Avery pour something liquid into the gaping wound that had been Sin's abdomen, Phae vanished without a sound.

His headphones struck the chair with a light clack. Rabbit had vanished without another sound.

Sev leaned over, closed the lid on the laptop and continued reading his book. Whatever had happened, it was probably not his business. Explanations would come later, if there were any.

About forty-five minutes later, Phae faded back into the room standing next to the chair he'd so suddenly left. He appeared freshly washed and was carrying an extramely posh looking box of English Breakfast tea. Severus rubbed his eye and looked up.

"Sorry, I just realised I needed to get someone a Christmas present." He opened the laptop and examined the screen. "I think this is done. Let me just scan it for issues before I give it to you."

He stared at the screen with a strange serenity as the images flashed by. "It's probably as clean as I can get it." He removed the cd from the drive and handed it to Batty. "I can make more copies at any time, as long as you can provide me with either the pensieve or that disc. The disc would, of course, be easier."

Nodding at the explanation, Sev sat through the review of the recording before accepting the disc.

"Thank you," he said quietly, setting a small bag on the table containing the other half of the payment, as well as an extra 10 galleons. "Merry Christmas."

He shook Rabbit's hand, and walked out into the snow.

In unblinking serenity, Phaedrus gathered his equipment and left. An extra ten galleons would make a hefty difference in what he'd be able to buy for himself, this month. He decided that it was time to invest in an obsidian knife, if only for the sheer badassery inherent in owning one. It would make a brilliant display piece, and one with more uses than he'd ever admit in public.