A/N: this chapter took forever to write. The general idea was right there, under my nose, but it refused to move on to the keyboard… it feels a draft still; I'll rewrite it later, probably.

I decided to keep writing it from Snape's POV for now; though I promise there will be McGonagall's in the end.

Chapter 3. Inflection Point

Severus Snape was not cut out for small talk. On most days, it took a weighty matter for him to overcome his own default setting of noli me tangere to approach another teacher, and a weightier one to allow reciprocation. It did not stand out much in Hogwarts, herself made of oddities and quirks; a fact many had used to advantage.

(Albus had once called the school a fluke. How wrong a man can be…)

On the other hand, Snape understood the importance of being a social animal now that he represented the whole school. But to have to nod to Bellatrix's deranged rhapsodies… when his ears still rang with contemptuous whispers and anguished cries of those he left behind answering a summons from the Dark Lord!

(And Potter had disliked Occlumency lessons.)

Bellatrix trailed off and edged sideways to where Narcissa was stonily enduring Greyback's humour. People were right; smiling eased one's way through life... In moderation. Snape surveyed the room from under half-closed eyelids.

The outing would better end quickly, or he'd have to violate the local Etiquette of Staying Put Even in the Face of Certain Death (a.k.a. the Dark Lord). He had a student to decide the fate of, and were he to linger here for another hour, Alecto would take matters into her own hands. She had groused about being left in charge; she might take her spite out on a defenseless boy. He sought out Amicus – well in his cups – which was to be proved.

And back home, Patrick Kent, a Ravenclaw Fourth-year, was awaiting expulsion. Maybe a cell in Azkaban or a ward in St. Mungo's, too, if they'd let him 'accidentally' escape.

or worse…

No; he could count on Flitwick to keep an eye on him. All that remained to be seen was just how pissed-off Alecto was; perhaps sending Kent straight to asylum would have been the best course… she was very fond of blackmail… and Flitwick had been a Dueling Champion in so distant a past… but the Headmaster had had to go and chat up People of Influence.

(At least now he had a ready excuse to skirt the Malfoys.)

He made for the drinks, though he never so much as pretended to partake of them – not that he was alone in that. (Lucius had complained about the waste of wine on 'august occasions'. To this Snape had replied somberly, 'It is known as a fluke.')

Picking up a footed tumbler, he went on meandering around the room, answering as often as not and thinking, thinking all the time about what he would do and say when he came back.

So. A fifteen-year-old, quiet and given to day-dreaming halfblood breaks his wand after casting a Cruciatus curse on his classmate – after actually cursing his classmate.

(He very nearly did something foul himself when Minerva gasped, 'But he's not a Slytherin!' – except that he'd thought that, too.)

Then, after a Detention is appointed and refused – really, this going through the motions was becoming tedious – he runs out of the classroom, out of the castle and is caught in Hogsmeade by a well-meaning Mm Puddifoot.

Snape shuddered, and Pettigrew, who had been mastering whatever passed for courage in his little heart to talk to him the whole evening, whimpered and made himself scarce.

Meanwhile Hogwarts is in uproar; students, teachers, portraits, ghosts and Patronuses scour the place and vicinities. Yield: two Hufflepuffs stumbled upon in a 'secret' passage – he gave them over to Poppy Contraception-is-Your-Master Pomphrey – and a Gryffindor trying to rattle herself free of chains in a public one. The chains 'mysteriously' break and the girl disappears for good, but in her case there is no need to worry: a portrait confirms her acceptance in the Room of Requirement.

Snape sneered, making Rookwood blush and Dolohov scowl. (The impact of the Café Incident on their standing among their peers had not yet worn off.) Both Death Eaters turned away and pretended to ponder Matters of Importance, which made Snape's sneer all the wider, and somewhat amused.

The Room of Requirement, indeed! The Room of Neville Longbottom and his Merry Men! A nest of – of lions – no, that was a bad metaphor; a pit of lions right under his nose, and he had to tolerate it, just because there was no way to smuggle them out of the Castle! (The Carrows had the sense to destroy the Vanishing Cabinet.) Oh how would he like to excise the growth!

'Carve it away… ruthlessly…' he murmured, watching Thicknesse smooth out his beard.

As the child is being brought to the Headmaster's office, Amicus does not promise anything definite in the way of punishment. By the time Snape sees him he's a sobbing mess, ready to beg anyone for protection; to agree to any fault. Nobody can fix his wand or make him a new one. Nobody in school (besides the three servants of the Dark Lord) even knows the whereabouts of Mr. Ollivander.

Nobody stands between Patrick Kent and the 'punitive measures' the likes of which Hogwarts had never permitted.

And Snape's Dark Mark flares to life in the exact moment his eyes land on the boy.

He swore, silently and violently, his hands unpleasantly cold with sweat. There was nothing at all in the meeting's agenda to require his attendance, except groveling at the Dark Lord's feet – figuratively for now. The Carrows had been called, too, but he ordered Alecto to stay, perhaps in the hope to find her six feet under upon return. A risky move, but he played his cards well, and the Lord was not too annoyed…

Still, leaving without leave was a grave insult. He scanned the crowd, noticing suddenly the void in which he was standing by himself.

No, not exactly by himself.

'Ah, friend Severus. You seem so preoccupied tonight.'

'My Lord,' he dropped his eyes in submission.

'Will you share your trouble with your friends?'

'I lost a needle in a bottle of hay,' he blurted out and could have smacked himself.

'So? You are a wizard.' The Dark Lord encouraged. Laughter echoed briefly.

'Finding it is not the difficulty.' Snape made himself look up for a moment, a self-deprecating smirk upon his lips. 'Rather, I wonder if it can be turned into a straw without extraction – and disturbing the whole.'

Voldemort's snake-like features narrowed. The silence turned absolute. Snape continued, smoothly and precisely, though inside his Occlumency shields he was feeling a bit lightheaded: 'A fellow Professor put the question to me, and I could not answer at once. If a nail is turned into a nail, will it be a new nail?'

'And such academic trifles bother you to the point of inattention?' Voldemort conjured up a rusty stud out of thin air, not acknowledging the light applause, and made a show of examining it as if it were a diamond of the first water.

'My lord! We scholars feed upon academic trifles,' Snape protested with an ingratiating smile, humiliating himself further by bringing up his poverty.

His prize was a calculating look. Under the circumstances it could be interpreted as an invitation to speak.

(If only he were sure about that.)

'…And if I turn the whole hay-and-a-needle stack into a pure hay-stack, will all straws be remade?

Will they become sterner? Coarser? More flammable? Other?'

Will the sense of justice be eroded by the wrongness of an Unforgivable Curse being pardoned (and all pettier offences therefore excusable if done by order), or will it be crushed by guilt?

There was a limit beyond which a break could not be repaired with any amount of charms; logically, there had to be a limit beyond which an object refused transfiguration. Long ago, he had read the Alchemist on the topic; the old wizard propounded that magic created the world whenever it occurred: the clock only ran forwards.

The other point he had deciphered from the positively fulsome language was that 'true sorcery' – the kind which still, half a millennium after the note was written, seemed unreachable – would go even beyond that; and Death, the destroyer of men, would be destroyed.

Now Snape was staking his own life, Kent's sanity, and maybe the outcome of the whole war, on the assumption that the Dark Lord had neglected his Flamel studies.

The Dark Lord canted his head to the side.

'Do not concern yourself with elements, Severus. Not all that glitters is gold; though I admit, hay has its shine… for asses.'

'Aye, my Lord.' The warning was clear, and he did not care for the mocking.

'You may go,' Voldemort said in a bored voice. Not trusting his knees to hold him up for much longer, Snape did the rude thing and Disapparated from the spot.

He sat down in a heap some distance away from the gates of the school and breathed out his fear.

The needle could be broken beyond any hope already, but he owed it to the boy to try.