The Ministry employees escorted him quite a ways down well-patrolled hallways. Severus had been all around the administration building by virtue of his double-agent status. Voldemort's army was constantly worming their way into the many secret passageways that had been carved out over the centuries. Unity had never been a strong point among the Wizarding world, so that nobody had ever been willing to do without their own personal escape hatch. As soon as a portal was discovered and found to be compromised, a new one would spring up.
Except for his brief imprisonments in Azkaban, the former spy had managed to avoid the Ministry's official interrogation rooms like the one they led him into. In his former incarnation, nobody wanted to publicly admit that they needed something from him, though more than one high-ranking official had found Severus' knowledge about potions and other subjects instrumental at times.
"Have some tea and scones," a Ministry official offered.
"I'd rather have my Veritaserum neat, if you don't mind." Severus smiled at the reaction that remark elicited. He had no idea if the food was drugged, but had heard of it happening before. The phial was placed in front of him by a potions officer while Reynolds whispered with the interrogator. "Do you wish to test me for antidotes? Slippery Beech? Ethereal Cypress Bark? Midnight Borage Extract?"
He listed nearly a half dozen more known ways of cheating Veritaserum before he hit upon one they didn't know about. "You've never heard of Devilweed Sap Tincture? I'll show you how to concoct it sometime," Severus said politely to the ministry employee in charge of dispensing potions. The thin little man with sandy hair and a goatee was in his early forties, and thus, Severus addressed him as a peer. The man resented this familiarity from a young stranger and willed his initial look of interest into displeasure at being caught not knowing the latest in counter-truth technology.
The center of interest waited calmly for them to take a blood sample and cast a number of revealing charms on it.
"He's clean," the potions person said with some disappointment.
Of course he was. Fear of Veritaserum had possessed Severus night and day when he first became a spy. Relying upon any of the known methods for controverting the serum was too dangerous, as the ministry always got wise to them eventually.
No, Severus Snape had developed an immunity to the stuff over the years. It was an extremely rare ability, or rather, people who were smart enough to have done it didn't advertise the fact. His method was a combination of his body becoming accustomed to a regular exposure to the drug, and him learning cognitive tricks for when he had been dosed. The first was simple for any potions adept.
For the second, some people had trained themselves to recognize a sensory cue, such as a particular color green they only saw when dosed. For Severus, Veritaserum caused an almost imperceptible lag in people's movements, meaning that their mouths got slightly out of sync with their voices. It was impossible to mistake once you got over the panicky feeling of wanting to divulge your worst secrets. Severus had learned that when he suspected he was under the influence, he could talk himself out of the urge to spill his guts. Practice with Dumbledore in the role of interrogator had him feeling completely poised. For a moment he was distracted by missing his old friend and their many schemes they'd cooked up together in the quiet of Hogwarts nights.
"Please state your name." The order pulled him back into the present.
"Severus Snape," he said truthfully. That was about the only truth he uttered for the next hour and a half. The fact that the ministry had been unable to find any antecedents for this newcomer had them on high alert. But then, it was far from the first time Severus was thought to be a spy.
The only thing that could truly hurt Severus would be to claim someone like Dumbledore knew him when they'd forgotten about him. Instead, the part of his brain that was used to remembering elaborate lies constructed a minimal past for him, complete with a family (all dead, that much was also true) and private tutoring (with instructors who were sadly also dead or out of the country).
Since he was no longer hiding an allegiance to a Dark Lord, it was a rather amusing exercise. He ended up having the scones (excellent) and the tea (a bit weak).
"Could you warm the pot if we're going to be here awhile?" he asked in a pause between questions.
"What do you want here, Mr. Snape?" the interrogator asked in frustration.
"I'd like to be with Harry, and to dedicate my potions ability to the Ministry if possible."
"Why should we let someone walk in off the street, not even claiming an interest in our cause, to brew our remedies?" the man scoffed.
"A person with no politics can be trusted not to fall sway to political extremes," Severus said in something like his superior professor voice. "When you're able to see that, let me know that you have a space for me in your laboratory. In the meantime, it will grieve me to have to tell Harry that his chosen side is making his lover feel unwelcome. Getting back to the fight was the foremost thing in his mind all these months. Just as I'm sure you never stopped looking for him during that time."
The interrogator raised his eyebrow. "I'm sure that Mr. Potter's outlook is a concern to everyone in this room."
"Good, I'm glad we're on the same page then," Severus said brightly. "When do you estimate we'll get our permanent quarters? I'd like to measure for curtains."
The interrogation had helped Severus to divine which direction Ministry was expecting sedition to come from. In short, everywhere. It was the most floundering interrogation Severus had ever witnessed. Two opposing fronts and they didn't seem to have a clue. He felt rather sorry for the state of their intelligence, and vowed to look more closely for the inevitable leaks within the management.
A lackey took him around to the wing that had been set up for officers with partners and/or families, while the rank and file men and women lived in barracks or housed in town when need be. Severus made a show of taking measurements of the different varieties of windows, all the while making it a point to use some of the catch phrases Voldemort's side had "wired in" to the nooks and corners. Occasionally he got a hit, and the windowsill or a flagstone would glow or move slightly, indicating that it was still under the control of one of hundreds of spells he knew of.
"Is there anything else Mr. Snape would like to measure for?" the soldier asked drily. "Cushions? A loveseat?"
"I would very much like a laboratory space, but until that can be arranged I have my own provisional equipment," he said. Another true statement. Severus had to keep making batches of Harry's potion to keep his recovery going, and he'd also like to start producing some samples of his own remedies to submit for analysis by the Ministry hospital.
Severus was more excited than he expected at the chance to circulate some of the recipes he'd made in his years of solitary work before the cauldron. At last, he was no longer in a dungeon challenging himself to find a better remedy for pox-related curses or memory charms. He'd caught the look in the eye of the potions officer this morning while he was showing off—"If this fellow's for real, I'd kill for his formulary." Maybe Dumbledore was right, and people had been more open to him all along, or would have been without the negative associations to his name.
It probably didn't hurt that he was now an eminently screwable 22-year old. The couple of wives he'd met in the officer's quarters had given him calculating looks as if marking their territory.
"May I go out for awhile?" he finally asked when the soldier was hovering around the door to his and Harry's temporary room.
"Out? Out where? There's a war on, you know," the young man said as if he weren't standing before someone with more than enough notches in his hide to deserve some respect. "No one's free to follow you about while you do your shopping. Harry means a lot—a lot of different things—to different people, and you'll be in the spotlight."
"I think you'll find I can take care of myself," Severus returned evenly. "What's the transit to Diagon Alley like today?"
"The Conservatives mucked up most of the ways in but we've corrected the wall from the tavern," the soldier sighed. "I'll have the door keyed with a temporary recognition spell allowing you back. You're still under probation until decided otherwise, mind you."
Severus was delighted to get away from the Ministry building, which held so many memories that no one else remembered it was almost suffocating.
The moment he stepped out of the administration building and above ground his memories were brought up short, however.
"There he is!" The blond woman with garish lipstick came running over to him, photographers in tow. "Severus Snape! Hello! You're even more fetching than your reputation. What do you do for such healthy hair? Me, myself and I want to know."
"It's—er—genetic," Severus said, which was strictly true about his own transformative fluids, and that of Harry, he supposed.
"I love that color blue on you. Rita Skeeter," she pumped his hand. "So dramatic against a pale complexion. Mr. Snape, can I get the background story on you and Harry Potter? How did you bag a military hero and a hunk like that? I hear he benefited from what must be very capable ministrations all this time."
"I'll give you a hint, Ms. Skeeter, it rhymes with 'hex,'" he drawled.
"Oh, dishy." It was so odd, talking with this woman whom Severus had dreaded finding out about him and Harry, and she was only titillated by the "whirlwind romance." Now that he was up close with the Prophet's star muckraker, he was able to see her as a much more salacious interrogator. He thought of Azkaban all the while and managed to keep his nerves under control, even with the constant snap of the cameras.
When Harry came back from maneuvers, he was exhausted. "Let's not go to dinner," he begged.
"It's best to face the other families sooner rather than later. Think of first days at school," Severus said gently while Harry lay back for his extraction and then swallowed the long line of potions before dinner.
They slipped into the officer's dining hall right before the second gong. The room went quiet. "You're right, this is shades of school," Harry whispered. He scanned the faces as they found a seat across from each other. "What did you do, Severus?"
"Why do you assume I did something?" the unwilling center of attention asked testily while fearing the worst. They've concocted some proof that I'm a spy, they're banishing me from Harry's sight—
A stray copy of the Prophet had been left nearby, and Harry snatched it. "'Harry's Healing Sex-capade,'" he guffawed and then noticed some of the families with children glaring at him. He lowered his voice. "'Beauty Secrets from the Sultry Severus Snape.' This sounds promising. 'Harry Potter's come out with a delectable bon-bon of a beau who goes by the seductive name of Severus Snape. It's easy to see why our favorite hero fell for the raven-tressed coquette. Read on to learn how to achieve the same porcelain complexion and fashion-forward style as the Captain's concubine.'"
It was so absurd that Severus was laughing along with Harry for some minutes before they noticed that much of the rest of the room had joined in. It felt so good to have that worry about the public exposé he'd obsessed over for months out of the way, and perhaps laughter was the best way to make the rest of the officers feel at ease about their star soldier's new facet.
"If I had a mind to I could have plugged my potions as hair tonics and skin treatments," Severus remarked, accepting a roll that someone passed him. "That Skeeter woman needs a tonic of some sort."
"She needs something," a man muttered, and Severus thought he recognized him from some "Me, Myself and I" column, though he couldn't remember the subject. He shot a sympathetic look to the man.
"You make your own products?" a woman next to him asked. "I'm Brianna, by the way."
"No, I've never given a thought to cosmetics," Severus answered. "With good reason. What one consumes contributes a great deal to one's exterior, I'm afraid."
He'd been talking of vitamins and tonics, but Harry kicked him under the table at the inadvertent double entendre. "But he could bend your ear for hours about joint-mending potions," he said, having listened to Severus thinking aloud about Harry's own treatment over many meals.
The dinner wore on and it was actually somewhat enjoyable, to Severus' surprise. People were curious about Harry's match but not invasively so. The main thing he learned from socializing in polite society was that the top brass was plainly relieved to have Harry back—as both a symbol and a leader, judging from the deference with which people listened to the young officer.
It only took a few minutes for the practiced spy to pick up on the ground rules: no one talks of maneuvers or other specific intelligence in front of the spouses and children. Maintain the official upbeat attitude at all costs. But still, people naturally were drawn to current events. They spent a long time talking about the psychology of the two rebel groups.
"Which side do you think are the ones to watch?" a woman who had been admiring his clothes asked him, a little too candidly, Severus thought.
"Both groups are guilty of vastly oversimplifying their rewritten history of the magical society, and I tend to think any utopia can be dangerous," he answered, aware that the listening device that had been planted in the candelabra floating directly overhead was transmitting his words to all interested parties. Severus had long been in the habit of spelling one of his shirt buttons into a revealing charm for common surveillance devices. He'd felt a little connecting current leading upwards as soon as he'd sat down.
"Some might say a person who believes in nothing is even more dangerous," said a man who had been less than pleased by the interest his wife had taken in the attractive newcomer. Everyone would have him sorted soon enough, he supposed.
"I have certain values that I am prepared to defend," Severus said, stroking Harry's hand with the very tip of his finger as he reached for a slice of lemon for his tea.
The smoldering look he was exchanging with Harry was cut short by an unwelcome question. "So you're schooled in warfare, then?" a bulky young officer asked with a glance that seemed a shade too evaluating to Severus' eye.
"You wouldn't want to meet this one in a dark alley," Harry interjected, evidently feeling the same way about the boy's interest.
"I prefer to make my contributions from the laboratory," Severus said with a calming smile around the table. It was true. All that he hoped was to use his genius that had been moldering away in a provincial school.
"If everyone opted to spend this conflict behind a cauldron, then where would we be?" the young officer pursued with a demeaning note to his voice.
"If push comes to shove, I my laboratory experience might come in useful, including my special interest in compounds that can be used for counter-espionage efforts," Severus said in a clipped voice, and regretted it immediately. He hated it when people dismissed potions science as anything other than the deadly knowledge that it was, and it made him forget himself.
"I'm smart enough to be afraid of you, love," Harry said.
Severus sent him a grateful look and then saw the exhaustion on the other man's face. "Thank you for the lovely meal," Severus said to no one in particular. He moved to be next to Harry when he stood with some effort, and they walked, arm-in-arm, away from the table.
"Can you make it to the doorway?" Severus whispered.
A small grunt was Harry's only reply. As soon as they left the room Severus performed the charm that he'd used when Harry was convalescing and needed to float without holding up his own weight.
"You shouldn't have done that," Harry panted when they got back to their room. "People don't want to see their heroes unable to stand."
"The couple of guards in the hallways would have been more shocked to see you fall over," Severus retorted. He didn't like to see how precarious his lover's wellbeing was. "You mustn't strain yourself tomorrow like you evidently did today. Either you sit for all of tomorrow, or I bring the chair out from where Lawrence is holding it."
Harry swore. He thought for sure the hated wheelchair had gone away for good. "You know how to drive a hard bargain," he said, and then swallowed the battery of potions he was assigned to take before bed. "But so do I," he resumed, moving the other man's hand to the only part of him that was, thankfully, completely recovered.
They made love while sniggering like teenagers about various interested parties from dinner imagining their activities. Then Harry fell asleep while in the middle of their private pastimes.
All in all it had been a good day, Severus thought as he stroked Harry's hair. He'd forgotten that someone in their early twenties with no diploma wouldn't seem to be very knowledgeable about potions, or particularly intelligent in general. He was already Marked and miserable by his early twenties the first time around, but a young Severus who was well-dressed and well-serviced must now look more like a dandy than a deadly adversary. A useful confusion, he mused.
The only person who really took his potions ability seriously was the potions officer who'd endured his grandstanding this morning. And that man, seated at another table, had said little during the meal. Severus had never suffered fools easily, and he didn't expect he'd suddenly learned how to leave the impression that he played well with others.
One useful thing that came out of dinner was the idea that women might buy his potions. It was sort of degrading to be reduced to making wrinkle creams, but this might be just the way to demonstrate his skills without starting to create weapons-grade compounds with no imprimatur from the Ministry.
"Are you going to laze about all day like a kept piece?" Harry was asking fondly the next morning.
"I was making potions in my head all night, I'll have you know," Severus replied. "What do you suppose they'll do if I take over a broom cupboard for a provisional laboratory?"
"They'll give you everything you want or they'll hear from me," Harry said, adjusting his uniform before the mirror in Lawrence's interior.
"That uniform does thigns to me," Severus admitted,. "But if you don't swallow your morning potions and then swear to sit for the rest of the day, you'll be the one weak in the knees. Don't cross me, Potter, I have my own ways to put you in line. I haven't an ounce of shame in front of any Ministry personnel, start with that concept."
Harry slugged down the requisite liquids and gave Severus an appraising look before whirling towards the door.
"Take the cane!" Severus called and Lawrence waylaid the soldier at the door so he would obey.
Dressing in a dove-gray collarless jacket and dark gray trousers, Severus wove his ribbon into his hair and decided to have breakfast out.
The ministry-appointed tail did a decent job of being subtle. It took Severus over a minute to pick her out from the throng of people on the street. He considered offering to buy the woman a coffee and then decided against it. He had his meal while rehearsing the potions he'd made in his head the night before. Then he dealt with the routine annoyance of trying to get to Diagon Alley. Damn these rebels.
"She could make herself useful," he thought of the woman talking on her cellular while watching him. Eventually he tried a long-disused charm to get through the wall and got to the Alley. "These Conservatives need to keep relying on the classics and I'll get through every time," he observed, having been around for 40 years' worth of codes.
While the ministry woman was coming through, he quickly moved to the apothecary. "Hello, Bill," he called before he caught himself.
"Er, hello," the shopkeeper with whom he'd had many a cup of tea, and whom he'd sold many marginally legal compounds, said with a quizzical air. "Looking for anything in—"
Severus recited the long ingredients list without drawing a breath.
"Oh, well, I'm not sure if I have all of those," Bill said, obviously torn between cultivating a new professional customer and selling Raw Berylwood and Dragonbone Marrow, for starters, to a stranger.
"You may not know me, but we have a certain friend in common. Someone whom I shall not name because he has sadly fallen into disrepute," Severus said with a certain nostalgia for his old reputation. "I can be a very good friend to you, as anyone who knows true discretion can be useful to know."
Then Severus did start talking with the ministry surveillance to distract her from watching his order be packed.
"What's all that for?" the woman, whose name was Niamh, asked suspiciously. They walked out together after the package had been shrunk to pocket size.
"If I don't have at least one potion on the hob, I get twitchy," he answered truthfully, indicating his hands.
"We'll find out who you really are," she said conversationally in her Irish accent. "No one spends 22 years in the Outer Hebrides, leaves no trace of an education anywhere and knows a still-working code to get on the Alley," Niamh said as he considered a shop window full of cellular telephones. "You must have a muggle education, as well. I bet you're one of those wizards from an Old Family whose decided to bring back the Golden Age for our civilization."
He decided against the phone for now. Now that he had Harry to care about, he was abruptly terrified about everything he didn't know about the current conflict, and internet access was more convenient through a telephone. "Yes those are the worst," he said quietly, thinking of how successfully Draco Malfoy had created that mold of revolutionary. "But I assure you, Niamh, neither breed of upstart would have much of a use for me. I'm not a natural joiner, you see."
"Yet you want to join our cause," she said and then they were interrupted by a layer of cobblestones rising up out of the street and forming the outline of Draco Malfoy.
"Rise up and claim what is within your reach!" the figure said before the stones drove themselves into one of the border walls, pushing it a foot or so farther into muggle territory.
Severus watched the other magical folk go back to their shopping. They were used to these gestures, as they were accustomed to the transportation obstacles placed by the Conservatives. He, for one, didn't think the Traditionalists' discontented youths would keep up these small-scale hoodlum antics for long. Diagon Alley was already larger than it used to be by a whole street, which were more empty than ever because people were less inclined to linger in their business.
He nodded at one of the restaurants run by a witch he'd known for 20 years, Serena. Then the potions adept realized the ministry woman was still waiting for an answer.
He laughed. "I want to work, that's all. I have a skill, I wish to apply it to something I like to call real life. The Ministry is real life, nothing more, nothing less. You may join the army or prefer to complain about the whole lot over your morning tea, but at least that gives you an advantage over the other two sets of dreamers, who aren't even aware they're in a cage. Me, I'm quite aware that the real enemy is, or should be, sickness, old age, death. You may think that our magical medicine is invincible, Niamh, but it is far from it. A diagnosis of pancreatic cancer can still kill you dead almost as quickly as a letter bomb, wizard or no wizard."
A small knot of Conservatives began handing out leaflets, hawking the green buttons that indicated you've taken the pledge to only buy from Wizarding merchants. "Support your kind; Money to Magic!" "In these tough times, we have to be self-sufficient!" The second argument meant a lot more to people than the first, he noticed. A few women, children in tow, stopped to buy a button. He saw the concern with which they tracked their children's movements and felt a stab of sympathy for anyone raising children in uncertain times.
Severus was aware all of his reactions were being meticulously tracked. Luckily he'd not been forced to tell an outright lie yet today. He pressed in to the shop and forced himself not to send some cutting remark to the old acquaintance who'd never stopped her bitchy rejoinders to him. Serena had never stopped serving him no matter what kind of complaints she'd gotten over the presumed spy through the years. He saw a man using a prosthetic leg limp across the restaurant.
"If they push Harry too hard again today I have my methods of making my feelings on the subject known," he said off-handedly as they picked up their menus. Severus had the offerings memorized, and chose the daily curry with a side of Sorrelseed Juice, the only way to comfortably eat something so hot. The waitress scanned his face but he wasn't any regular she'd ever met.
"Harry obviously thinks highly of you," Niamh said over lunch. "And I don't mean just that he can't take his eyes off you."
Severus felt what must be a blush and then scowled at himself. He was really becoming a silly thing. "He knows me," he said seriously. "I don't allow that. Ever."
He took her glance for what it was—a hope that she could place him at last. "Give Harry Veritaserum if you like. He'll tell you I'm Severus Snape," he challenged her. "But in the meantime, I'd love to offer you some of my hair tonic." Actually he would. Her hair was a mass of flame-colored split ends and unruly curls. "You're not afraid, are you?"
"Of the kept boy of the Boy Who Lived? Not a chance," she said with bravado.
If his first day as a cosmetician were anything to go by, Severus would earn his own keep quite nicely. The stay-at-home wives, and one of the two stay-at-home husbands, were very curious about what Severus was cooking up in the broom cupboard he'd emptied without a by-your-leave.
He'd not thought about how his science smelled before, but he had to make a last-minute adjustment before anyone would go near the closet, much less consider using his pomade. But the dramatic success in taming Niamh's locks spoke for itself.
"This is better than anything on the magical market," one women marveled after trying it for herself.
Severus thought it was extremely amusing. Ugly little Severus, being pressed for beauty advice. He only knew how to dress like himself, and he'd never bought women's clothes, so could be no help that department. He was used to making potions to save lives or end them, to twist minds to his will or desperately protect himself from such an eventuality.
What would Dumbledore say? The idea had him in stitches until he realized he was wondering what was going on at school and this kind of weakness angered him. Since when did he think fondly of anything?
That evening's Daily Prophet had a magical photograph of him making an effeminate gesture with his wrists. "What in Merlin's name were you doing?" Harry asked.
"I was illustrating my hands' eagerness to work," Severus said drily. "Evidently my desire to perfect the existing anti-Confundus technology is something deeply effeminate."
It turned out he didn't like the persona the Skeeter-creature was crafting for him after all. Severus Snape was anything but a toy. He was intelligent and mean and had stepped over enough corpses to live this long that no one cared one whit what got him hot.
Or they didn't before. Mentally concocting several potions Rita Skeeter would find anything but cute, he flipped through a ministry newsletter being handed around, reading between the lines for potions needs.
"Severus, don't take it seriously. Really love, if I listened to all the lies that have been written about me through the years" Harry tried the gentle approach for over half an hour but Severus merely scowled. Finally, he got tired of hoping for his evening off of work to start. After all, he was exhausted from putting a brave face on things all day long, and he had come to expect his time with Severus to be a rare chance to be himself.
His body might be weak, but his captain's voice rang out clearly, laying out how their evening would progress. Under his leadership, things went without a hitch.
"At ease, Snape, you can speak now," Harry said after they lay in a tangle on the uncomfortable bed.
Severus nuzzled closer but remained in silent post-coital bliss.
"Who knew a spy would have a thing for a uniform," Harry mused.
"Don't psychoanalyze me; they're already busy doing that in the papers," Severus finally said. "You already know me to be a paragon of mental unhealth."
The officers' mess did not disappoint. One of the unfailingly friendly table-mates leaked Severus' comment about anti-Confundus potions to the papers. He was then reminded that there are worse columns to end up in than Rita Skeeter's.
Severus noted that he now had three people following him on his next jaunt to the apothecary. "Hi, Bill," he said.
"Er. Hello," Bill replied, though he knew quite well who Severus was by now. He simply disliked the showiness with which this undeniable potions talent was being paraded in women's magazines. A true professional doesn't swan about, was what the shopkeeper's eyes said. That only made Severus like the man more.
"I need more Topsy-worms. Nice fat ones now, the anemic ones you have in that cabinet aren't worth a damn," Severus admonished playfully. Few things made him feel so happy as being in the potions shop, becoming the person he used to be.
This time his shopping list included ingredients for a real potion, rather than a beauty treatment. He was going to see if that potions officer, whose name was Lenox, could be enticed to analyze his proprietary anti-Polyjuice revealing potion. Anyone under Polyjuice who came in contact with the stuff, either by ingesting it, or from a handshake or a mist, would revert momentarily back to their true form. Severus had had it for years but had been too terrified to tell people about it, lest its use become so widespread as to prevent his ever having another romantic liaison.
Now he didn't have to skulk about. He had a lover, one who wasn't afraid to assert his ownership in public or private. A smile around his lips, Severus retrieved his packages and went out onto the street.
When he was assailed by butterflies.
The large, iridescent wings harmonized with his dark-red shirt and ribbon of the day. There was no mistaking it, they were meant for him.
All of Severus' romantic daydreams shattered with the movement of wings surrounding him. Everyone took the spectacle for exactly what it was and shrank away.
His war-hardened heart sank. The last few attempts had been general enough but this one was unmistakable.
Unmistakably directed at him.