BAD MISSY
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.
A/N: Thanks to my previewers Bellegeste and Lady Memory.
(For those who don't remember, you know who in this story is not Voldemort...)
It never got any easier. She laid in a stock of hard alcohol for the nights she had to do the deed, but it was a fine line between drunk enough to do it and not drunk enough to foul it up. The night she'd had to ask Snape for a second sample, the vein in his temple had bulged so darkly she almost thought his brain would explode.
Strange, he'd been in the bath then too. Clearly, they'd all been mistaken about his hygiene at Hogwarts. He always seemed to be in the bath. It was odd that his hair never got any less greasy. He might as well be bathing in oil for all the difference it made. What on earth could he be putting on it, and why?
What did he do all day and night, anyway, holed up in his bedroom? When he wasn't abandoning his latest wet little present into her custody, she barely saw him at all. Iggle must have put an alarm on the floor, because every time she put a foot nearer his side of the landing than halfway, Iggle would wink in and glare at her.
"Bad Missy. Leaves Master alone."
It wasn't that she wanted to spend time with Snape, but being treated as if she was the one with the plague got right up her nose.
...
'Enough complaining,' thought Hermione. It was time for action. She might not be able to topple the Ministry (singlehanded) or appoint a new Wizengamot, but she wasn't going to be anybody's doormat.
"I'm going to free that horrible house-elf," she told Ron. "Then we'll see."
He blinked at his glass as he straightened it with both hands. "You can't. He made it a condition."
"Much I care for his conditions. I didn't agree to them." (Not in words, anyway.) "And since when do you care about promises and conditions, anyway?"
"I didn't say you shouldn't. I said you can't. He made it a condition. The moment you try to free the elf, you lose the authority. You can give it your whole wardrobe, and it won't matter."
It shouldn't surprise her when he knew something she didn't. He'd grown up in this world, after all, in a Ministry family that talked (and yelled) around the table. She shook off the feeling of vertigo his moments of sapience always gave her, and clenched her hand around her glass.
"Then how did you-know-who free Dobby? He's not a Malfoy. It wasn't even a Malfoy sock."
"Yeah, but he tricked Malfoy into offering it. House-elf bonds are consensual. They can only be broken when one or other side wants to. The Malfoys couldn't hand Dobby even a hanky because they knew he wanted out, but how d'you think Hogwarts got the laundry done if they couldn't get the elves to take it?"
She scowled, remembering all that useless knitting she'd done in fourth year. Why hadn't he been this articulate back then, instead of telling her "But they like serving!" She might even have listened.
...
If she couldn't free Iggle, she'd just have to recruit him, and she thought she knew how. When Iggle delivered her dinner the next night, she was ready.
"Why doesn't Snape eat? Is he ill?" she asked.
Iggle scowled at her. "Why does bad Missy wants to know?"
"It's my job to keep him alive."
"Isn't. Is Iggle's." And he winked out before she could ask again.
If it wasn't her job, it was certainly her need. If Snape died in the first year of their marriage, the vile ring on her finger would Portkey her to Azkaban to await the results of his autopsy. Even if she was cleared, she wouldn't be freed till they matched her again, and it would probably be someone worse than Snape.
(Was that even possible?)
She flattened her bashed neeps, and poked eye-holes with her fork. Put one and a half green peas for its beady eyes, and give it a burnt-sausage moustache, and it would almost look like Macnair, she thought, and shuddered. Was he due for release in the next year? She thought he might be. Hadn't his department entered a mitigation plea on the grounds of his "long years of faithful service"? (Did they think the "dangerous" creatures he'd executed for the Ministry cancelled out the victims he'd executed for Voldemort, who was arguably the most dangerous creature Britain had ever seen? Other dark wizards might have killed more people, but only Voldemort used murder as coin to ward off the Reaper.)
The Prophet had gone all out in ridiculing that travesty of a defence, but the Ministry had won (again), and Macnair's sentence had been halved. She smashed her fork on the peas so hard they flew off her plate and onto the floor, then she got up and ground the nearest in with her heel, for good measure. (Let the elf clean it up, if it liked servitude so much.) Macnair would be a vicious husband. At least Snape never laid a finger on her.
Or it could be Goyle, perhaps. He was cooling his heels in Azkaban for an extra month after his abortive release, when he'd shouldered aside the waiting reporters a little too vigorously. Ugh, he'd been a brainless brute before he went in. Seven years of being Dementor fodder wouldn't have improved his brains or his brutishness. She pushed the mash into an uneven pile as tall as it would go without falling apart. Azkaban had reduced Goyle's brawn substantially, without adding any value back. She'd bet he'd as soon eat a book as read it. Snape had that lovely library - even if, as he'd pointed out, the top shelf liked to bite.
(As if that would scare her. She'd learned a thing or two from the Monster Book of Monsters Hagrid had assigned them in third year. Books were easier to tame than people.)
Not that Snape would be easy to tame, even if she wanted to. If people grew to be like their pets - as her next-door neighbour used to say, eyeing Crookshanks askance - who'd make a pet of Snape? You might as well cuddle an asp. She choked on a sudden vision of a gold-clad personage with a long silver Dumbledorean beard and a black-eyed snake winding up her (his?) cradled arm. She wanted to laugh, but the rightness of it stabbed her, and all the niggling doubts she'd harboured shrivelled away, perhaps never to return. Dumbledore had owned Snape, and owning, placed him at his breast, like Cleopatra, and bade him bite. And Snape had obeyed.
(Like the snake he was. Never forget that.)
...
No elf was going to outlast her. If Iggle kept fobbing her off, she'd just keep asking till she wore down his resistance.
"He is ill, isn't he?" Hermione said, as Iggle dumped a plate of shepherd's pie in front of her. "He never eats, and he's just getting thinner and thinner."
Iggle thumped down a knife and fork with unnecessary vigour. "None of you's business. Why does bad Missy wants to know? You hates him."
Hate was a very strong word. But maybe not too strong in this case.
"I used to respect him, but he betrayed us."
The elf slammed down the jug with a crash and a splash. "You's betrayed him," he said, glaring the table dry. "And you's never respected him. You's set him on fire. You's knocked him out. And you's left him to die."
Hermione paused in the act of picking up her knife. "How do you know all that? Were you a Hogwarts elf?"
"None of you's business. You is big snoop. I's telling Master."
Hermione poked doubtfully at her meal.
"Good, maybe he'll talk to me for once," she said. "I've been here three weeks and haven't exchanged three words yet."
It was not for lack of effort. Snape could try all he liked to avoid her, but his wet little deposits had to be handed over in person. That one swift encounter was enough to fool their rings each time, but so far it hadn't been long enough for her to get a word out of him.
She tried again the next day. "Why are you always hiding? What have you got to be afraid of?" she asked.
"Being bored to death by your whining," he said, and closed the door in her face.
...
Lunch that Saturday was rissoles and onion gravy, served with a snarl. Snape, as usual, was nowhere to be seen. lggle was all too visible.
"You might as well answer," Hermione said, sending Dripley's Deceive It or Not back to the top shelf for later. (A fascinating tome, but not one she wanted to share her gravy with. Greedy thing tried to steal her plate last time.) "How long has he been ill? What's causing it?"
Iggle pulled at his left ear-lobe with one leathery hand.
"Why bad Missy cares?" he said.
Hermione's hand hovered over her fork.
"Because of the stupid law," she said, at last. "I'd rather live with you two for a year than be passed along like a badly wrapped parcel."
The fork rattled, and stood suddenly on its end, barely missing her fingers.
"Bad, selfish Missy," said Iggle.
...
She couldn't help it. Now that she'd let herself notice, she couldn't unsee it. Snape was getting sicker, and all the signs pointed to it having started with their marriage. He'd looked greasy when she sought him out, ring-finger newly-circled; now he was gaunt. She never saw him eating, but that was hardly surprising. She barely saw him at all. What was he doing all the time? He never seemed to be in his downstairs room, with all its books, and there never seemed to be any gaps on the shelves but what she put there by her own borrowings. He was never in the kitchen either, or on the landing - not when she was home, at any rate. In fact, he seemed to have retreated to his bedroom ever since she arrived, the prison of his house made even smaller by her presence.
But that had to be nonsense, didn't it? He wouldn't have given up three-quarters of his house to her, not when he could have Fideliused the place before she arrived, and kept it all. It was a dingy little hole of a den for a wounded animal to die in - and that was another image she didn't want in her head - but dying animals didn't invent successful businesses, and run them. They didn't become rich. They certainly didn't become famous as the Pensivision Prince of Entertainment.
Wizard space was expandable. If he was running his business, single-handed, from his bedroom, it must be vastly larger on the inside than it seemed on the outside. There could be whole rooms crammed with books and props and Pensivision vials; he must keep his back-catalogue of PVVs somewhere. Of course, it might be just a portal to another, even more secret, Safe-Kept house, but she thought it would take him longer to answer the door in that case. And why bother with two Safe-Kept houses when one would do?
"Focus, Hermione," she told herself. "Worry about that after you've figured out how to keep him (ugh) alive."