Under the skin

"I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.

― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

She had been out of her wits when she had Called him. Now, Minerva was kneeling with the broken apprentice on the bare floor of her flat with an almost-hysterical house elf in front of her. The small creature was as round as a barrel, her belly straining against her shift, and she was levelling an undeniably suspicious and frightened gaze at the woman.

"How do you be knowing that name?" the house elf demanded. "Crooky was only thinking it to herself, she has not yet told her Master of her elfling's name." The elf was still breathless from popping here, and her grey skin was chalky from the effort.

How could she have made such a grave error? How were her careful preparations so quickly unravelling?

"I'm sorry," Minerva choked out, her sight blurring as bitter tears welled thick and fast. "I cannot - I cannot tell you right now, but I was requiring someone I could completely trust to help me."

"And you is Calling for an elfling not yet out of his dam's belly?" The tone was bordering on incredulous, which was a sure sign of how very close to her limits the small creature was. No pureblooded wizard would ever permit his house elf to speak in that way.

Severus shifted a little in his unconscious state, and anguish rose sharp and sour in Minerva's chest. She had needed a Witness. Someone she could trust. The only one she could think of, in that moment of panic, had been Renly, her companion and friend of fifty years, but his dry humour had already been established when she had bought him after the war. She had never been quite certain of his age, and now she knew. His dam was surely due to give birth any day now, and her Call had forced a heavily pregnant elf to pop to her.

To wonder, however bitterly, if anything more could go wrong would be tempting fate, she knew. Minerva took a breath and attempted to think, rather than react. That was all she had done for the past six minutes and thirty-two seconds, since she had apparated (quite rudely, but with reason) from the apocathery to her flat, and if she didn't stop her foolish dashing about this instant Severus Snape was going to die.

"What has happened to the young wizard?" came the abrupt question. Minerva's anger flared to life again.

"A bad Master with an elevated opinion of himself," she seethed in response, but grief throbbed thick and raw behind the retort. Crooky's lips thinned in a manner Minerva was all too familiar with. Renly's lips twisted just so in disapproval, and to see it echoed in his mother was disorienting.

"Crooky is knowing something of those," she replied, and then seemed to recollect herself, alarm crossing her stubby features. She directed a look of resignation at the heavy doorframe and started towards it.

"Don't," Minerva blurted, but Crooky returned a blank expression.

"You is not Crooky's Master, Madam," she said with dignity, and rammed her fingers in the door with barely a wince.

Minerva winced for her. "I apologise for Calling you," the woman said. "I should not have bothered you." Her voice grew tight. "I need a Witness to help me save this man. I cannot order you, but I must ask: will you consent to Witness?"

Crooky's expression made it very clear that no self-respecting Wizard-born had ever apologised to her nor asked her to do something. Certainly not in the very same breath. Pity and reluctance warred clearly on her face.

"He will be dying, if Crooky does not do this?" she asked.

"Yes," Minerva's voice cracked at the finality of the answer. "Yes, he will die."

"Then Crooky will be Witnessing," the house elf replied simply.

Hope flickered, but Minerva wasted no time in rejoicing. This was not guaranteed to work, and the proud young man might very well hate her for it.

"Crooky, I call on you as Witness," she began. The air hummed, listening, and she felt a foreign magic, an alien magic which tasted ancient and wild and cramped all at once, rear its head. She vaguely registered that this was the magic of the house elves.

"Severus Snape, I wish to Teach you. I wish to initiate you in the magicks of my Craft, to share with you the secrets of my Trade." Her core reached towards his, but recoiled at the jagged holes torn through his being. Minerva flexed, nudging it closer with a firmness tempered by desperation.

"I take you as my Apprentice and my Ward." Still her magic, proud and unrelenting, resisted. Take this broken child as Ward, when he had been found Unteachable? It thought not. It could not reckon with her determination, however. Love and regret surged within her and the resistance swiftly buckled. Power poured into the lad with very little finesse, and Minerva gasped as lead entered her limbs with its departure.

"You shall enter the Guild under my Sponsorship," she wheezed, and the vow caught on the edges of his soul wounds and gathered them together, bridging them with membranes which smelled of heather and whiskey, of runes and books and arrogance.

"All that I have, I share with you." The promise rang forth like a bell, with a chime that wasn't quite heard so much as felt, and the young man's back arched. His eyes flew open, and he caught the last line as his old Transfiguration professor spoke them.

"You are mine to me."

The burn of the bond raced through them, then, and Severus Snape screamed. He heard a creature cry out, and thin fingers trace a rune on his forehead. He struggled for a moment, but the magic, oddly familiar and yet utterly new, insisted. Darkness claimed him.

Minerva had scarcely coaxed her stubborn new Apprentice to sleep when she heard Crooky moan. The elf was pale and trembling, and her large ears were lying flat against her head. Numbly, as strong tremors shook the tiny body, Minerva realised that she was going to have to turn midwife to a magical creature.

"Crooky?" Pain-glazed eyes turned her way, and the witch forced the fear from her voice, making it low and soothing. She was no Poppy Pomfrey, but she'd be damned if she let another suffer for her arrogance today. "Let's get you onto the bed."

—

Human babies and elflings were not so very different shortly after birth, Minerva considered. Both resembled potatoes.

The witch was not stupid, though, and would certainly not be sharing that observation with the exhausted new mother on her bed. Her large eyes were brimming with something soft and awed as she held her new baby, and her ears were quivering with pride.

"His name is being K'val," came the words, and Minerva jerked, confusion welling. Crooky's lips twisted with something close to humour, although it was tired and bitter. "His true name. His House name is being Renly." The witch was stunned.

"I had no idea that there was a difference," she heard herself say, and the snort that the house elf made was not a sound she was used to hearing.

"You is being a witch," Crooky said, as though that were all the explanation that was required. Something inside Minerva ached at the thought that perhaps it was.

"What is your true name?" she found herself asking, before she could stop herself. The elf's ears went flat and her brow furrowed.

"That is not something you is asking elves," she said, and the offended dignity was all the more humbling for its lack of volume.

"I beg your pardon." Minerva was unsure of how she had insulted Crooky, but she was aware she had transgressed deeply. Embarrassment coloured her tone and rendered the words stiff, but the regret was clear.

The tension in the elf's shoulders lessened slightly, and she met the witch's eyes squarely. "Crooky was telling you of her elfling's name because you is helping her. We elves are not used to birthing alone, and Crooky was not having time to return to her House." She blew out a breath. "True names are ours. They is belonging to us and us only, and they is not for wizards to use."

A pause. "I understand."

"Wizards is not understanding," Crooky countered sadly. "But wizards can be learning." She gained a look of resolve, and clutched the bundle in her arms closer to her thin chest. "Crooky will teach you," she said decidedly. "But you must be buying Crooky. And Renly."

"I do not have enough funds to purchase a house elf." It was true. They were magical retainers, and families guarded them jealously. She had only been able to purchase Renly in the wake of the war, when so many Dark families had been dissolved and disgraced. There had been auctions, and no one had been willing to bid against a war heroine when she signalled her interest in the elf.

She blinked. That must mean that Crooky belonged to a Death Eater family. The realisation, of who she had just involved in her schemes with her foolhardy moment of weakness, nearly felled her. A mere word from her current Master and Crooky would have to tell all that had occurred. It was not damning, not just yet, but it would certainly raise suspicions, and that would be disastrous. For her plans to work, Minerva needed to be utterly forgettable.

So, Minerva would indeed need to buy Crooky, and soon. She would simply have to find a way.

"Who is your Master?" she asked, urgency turning the words hard. Dread flared with the reply.

"We is belonging to House Fudge."

—

Severus could smell tea.

The bitter, earthy notes lingered in the air and roused him all the more quickly. He winced as he stirred, but couldn't help sniffing appreciatively. His large nose had always been more sensitive than most.

"My mother had the most beautiful kitchen garden." Professor - no, Master - McGonagall was standing next to an empty bed by the room's only window. The rich brogue had him remembering the last words he'd heard it say, and he reeled, trying to reconcile the confusing flurry of images, and the awful, awful agony of being ripped apart and put back together. You are mine to me. What could that possibly mean? He blinked, and his former professor continued.

"It was alive with rosemary, sage, lavender, marjoram, thyme… On summer evenings the setting sun would warm the leaves and the most delicious aromas would bloom, well into the evening." Her thin lips tugged into a small smile. "The tea is almost ready."

A glance was all it took for Minerva to realise afresh that this Severus Snape was not the companion of her later years, but rather still a youth who had not considered that professors did not simply spawn in a lost classroom of the castle and make their way, fully formed, to the professors' table in the Great Hall. The young man's jaw was ever so slightly slack, although that passed rapidly, making way for a dull and unattractive flush to creep across his cheeks.

"What did you do to me?" The ragged, raw words didn't seem to belong to him. Nothing made sense. Everything hurt. His sensitive skin dragged slightly against the rough fabric of the couch he was lying on, and he hissed.

The older witch was by his side rather more quickly than he expected, staring at him. "I saved you."

He snorted, the sound harsh and derisive and unforgiving. Magic thrummed between them, and all of a sudden he was aware of the Guild mark on his wrist. His lips turned numb.

"What did you do?" he repeated.

She coughed a little, and he realised she was embarrassed and angry.

"My actions at the apocathery very near cost you your life, lad," she said, and that uncharacteristic softness, the one he hadn't been able to untangle at the store, was back, lacing her words. "It was only just that I make amends."

"You made me your Apprentice." He was no fool. He could sense the brand, and it sickened him. Master Jiggers had relished in his charge over the brilliant young mind, and had taken every opportunity to remind him of who he belonged to. He couldn't help admitting, reluctantly: "I have never heard the pledge said in that way."

Minerva seemed to rouse to the disgust in his voice. Her throat tightened, and the silence stretched as she studied him. Loathing and terror warred on his face, and he looked like a trapped wolf. Be careful, Minerva, she told herself.

"You have had many masters squabbling over you," she said, and the regret was clear and naked in her voice. Severus started, and fear bubbled in his belly. How could she possibly know? "I gave you new robes, Apprentice Snape. I saw the brand on your arm." She paused. "And I know that another has had an equal hold over you, though he did not mark your flesh."

Nausea welled up in him at the thought of his slavery - at the thought of her knowing - but the vomit which erupted fell into the bowl which had quickly appeared in front of him. He gagged at the sour taste, but could only be thankful that the Head of Gryffindor said nothing. She handed him a cup, and he wasn't so far gone as to drink it without smelling it first. His nose told him that it was earl grey, and the fragrant and bitter flavour did much to rinse his mouth.

"The pledge sounded different because I made you my Ward, not just my Apprentice," the witch continued, and Severus looked at her blankly. "You have a claim not only to my Sponsorship and my teaching, but also to my House, lad."

What she did not need to say was what was most surprising in the offer. Protection. Belonging. A pureblood claiming a halfblood as Ward? It was unheard of.

"I suppose you want me to thank you," he rasped, even as the bond tightened slightly in disapproval. He cursed his sharp tongue. Pride had no place in a beaten cur.

"No, lad, I do not expect you to thank me. It was my arrogance which so pricked Jiggers' pride. If I hadn't -"

"Don't flatter yourself," he found himself snapping, with a recklessness that surprised him. "Ma- Jiggers has never needed an excuse. My blood status has always been a point of distaste for him."

"It is not so for me." The reply was firm.

Severus choked back his disbelief. All purebloods were equally prejudiced. Some might be more mealy-mouthed about it, as Dumbledore had been, but blood mattered in the wizarding world, and even more so in the Guilds. It made him rage. What could she possibly be up to?

"What will your precious Guild think of a High Master taking on a Snape of no House?" he needled, mortification running deep. Why must he be rescued by a Gryffindor?

She considered him for a second. The harsh rejoinder he had been expecting from the hot-tempered witch did not come. Instead, all she said was:

"You forget that I have had years of experience with adolescents' attempts to bate me, Apprentice Snape. You will simply have to do better than that." She paused, and he realised that she was looking grey and tired as well. "Drink your tea," she said suddenly. "We will speak again later."

"Where are you going?" he was startled into asking. He was immediately mortified. Surely his voice could never sound so needy?

The warmth was back as she rose, and was that slightly mad humour edging her words?

"Well, Apprentice Snape, I'm off to buy a house elf."

Hello Fanfiction!

I hope this latest instalment is welcome. A reviewer has mentioned that this montage of scenes is disorienting, and I hear you! It does have a purpose, however, and I promise that the story will become more linear from here on.

Let me know what you think? Everything is useful!

Cheers,

Cassop