A/N: I decided to make it an AU, after all. The last chapters will be somewhat gory – there will be a battle, and a victory, and a tragedy. I don't know how exactly Harry will go after finishing Voldemort for good yet, but I know the when and the why; though it might take me some time to plot the next chapter to make the ends meet.

Meanwhile – here's more witching madness for you!

Tom Marvolo Riddle was a wizard, wasn't he?

There were so many ways to subdue a wizard. Why was Potter the one destined to take on this particular one? Any art and science taught in Hogwarts – literally any – could be used to that effect. You only had to do it just right.

(Which was why hiring a professional murderer to govern a school where so many people disliked each other was actually a smart thing to do.)

'Peeves!'

Poltergeists, too, could come in handy. They were hard to manage, but unpredictability itself often was a force to tip the scales... The Dark Lord would waste a whole fraction of a second to pulverize Peeves – he did cartwheels and went through walls and threw things around and shouted obscenities at authority figures.

'Get down!'

(Oh my, Alecto was calling dibs on the poor thing. Sorry, Dark Lord.)

'PEEVES!'

Was it Minerva? Couldn't be. She didn't holler like that.

Severus Snape shook himself out of his favourite daydream ("How to end the most powerful Evil currently alive with what you can find in your kitchen") and sprinted towards the disturbance.

'Set. It. Down. Gently,' said Minerva.

Peeves cackled. Somebody squealed. There was a very loud noise, and then quiet, and then he almost ran into the back of the Transfiguration Professor.

Before them Peeves was floating in midair, looking dazed, and on the floor some small sniffing Griffindor boy collected his inkpot and books. Nothing out of ordinary, except that Alecto was there, too, and she was saying nothing and giving Minerva a strange look – like she was scared.

But if Carrows felt threatened (by someone other than the chosen few), they lashed out at once. Silence was odd, and therefore bad.

'There,' McGonagall said crisply. 'If you have it all, you may go.' The boy went away.

Snape democratically waved a wand, cleaning the hallway of debris and stains of ink, but the witches didn't see it as an invitation to talk. Alecto coughed, glared and stalked away. Minerva marched off.

(She was always marching lately, spine erect and chin up. She was holding up, and it shouldn't have been noticeable, but it was.)

Snape shook his head. He didn't like the feeling of 'stagedness', as old Regulus would have said. Things were brewing up in Hogwarts that he had no idea about, and it was his duty to know.

But there was nothing for it now, and he continued on to the Astronomy Tower (the best place for solitude and meditation).

Solitude was rare lately. Not because anybody dared to pester him – mostly he had to find whomever he needed to talk to, – but because there were so many plots going on that the very air seemed to be humming.

The day before, for example, in the Teachers' conference room, Filius turned to Slughorn with a pleasant smile.

'You reminded me of something I did in my youth.'

'Did I?' Slughorn asked politely.

'Yes… I fancied myself a poet once, capable of creating new and novel things.'

Snape couldn't guess why, but that made Slughorn's mood sour.

'Then you must have created something,' Pomona supposed, looking between them. 'Filius, do tell!'

The Charms Professor bowed slightly and said, 'I had wanted to write a ballad about a Priest and the Devil, who came to him and asked to be the one officiating at the nearest wedding.'

There were laughs about the room. There was the familiar feeling of sickly excitement.

'Recite, recite!' said several voices at once.

'The Devil came to me today,' Filius began, throwing a flirty look at the old Potions Master, 'and offered me a Price.

'He said, 'You don't have to accept, but think it over, twice.'

'The Price was highly flattering and flatteringly high.

Two hundred reasons to accept, one reason to deny…'

'I don't remember the rest,' he said apologetically. 'Perhaps it hasn't been finished.' Slughorn nodded, thinking hard.

They clapped, and spoke of teaching, and Snape was left wondering what had just happened.

On the bright side, he'd been able to think of a way to send Potter his memories – and not lose them in the same time. A vial had found its way into the hands of a mutual acquaintance, who had a better chance of giving it to the boy. Snape had had the audacity to Confound him into thinking it was Albus's thoughts really, to be perused by Potter alone.

(Imperio was out of question here. Mere coming near the man had been a suicidal move on his part; he could never prevail over that will.)

He had also recorded his memory of viewing the memories – a "personal copy", as the saying went.

A personal copy, for personal use…

There was something about it that he had to think about, something important, and he was missing it (again). Events – small, insignificant trifles – kept happening and accumulating rapidly. They would snowball and bury him if he didn't dance his way out.

Sometimes, he felt already buried.

(Like when Albus let it slip that he had held the Stick of Death.

'The…'

'Elder wand.'

'I know how it's called! Albus!'

'I couldn't refuse taking it, and I didn't take it to own it.'

Snape closed his eyes. Dumbledore, wielding the Whoring Wand.

'You are a mage out of myth,' he said. 'Your stronghold belonged to a myth, and your war, and your prophet, and your Saviour.'

'Perhaps.'

'But I am different, and I am the Headmaster now. I live in the real world.'

Albus took in a breath and slowly let it out.

'Let him be,' a witch to his right said. (Portraits in the Headmaster's Office weren't signed.) 'He's doing well.'

'Not well enough,' said Phineas Nigellus, suddenly stern.

'We cannot wait, Melinda,' said Albus. 'Why do you think you have only one Dark Lord?' he asked Snape without preamble.

'What?'

'One! Not two, or three, or a dozen?'

He stared into the lined face, not knowing what to answer to its dead truth.

'Because a myth requires it,' said Albus, smiling bitterly. 'Hogwarts is built of history as well as stone, Severus. Tom recognizes it.'

'Thank you,' he said with irony. 'It's been a while since I treasured history so highly as to let it dictate my life.'

The portraits exchanged looks. He lost some of their respect. Did it matter? Not to him.)

…After all, the castle was full of people who fared much more poorly, like… yes. He sniffed and turned the corner. It was indeed she.

'Hello, Headmaster,' said Mary Susan O'Rig of Hufllepuff. She used to be a good-looking, outgoing girl (until October, when the Stinking Club was founded).

'I know of a werewolf who finds garlic attractive,' he said blandly.

'Oh,' she said, looking down. 'Thank you, sir.'

Snape whirled and stalked away, afraid he would do something careless if he stayed a moment longer.

...Young witches dream about demonic passions and conquering the hearts of dark wizards. Of course, once the Beast has been tamed, the villain grows so fond of the heroine that he vows to never ever leave her, etc. Cue in another DP session. Sometimes the wizard dies protecting his true love, in her arms, and miraculously comes back to life under her wild kisses.

So the young witches dream.

And then -

wake up.

The Hufflepuff student woke up when Amicus Carrow, half-sober, passed her in the hallway and squinted at her in just that particular way. Even then she didn't quite understand what he meant. She had some virtue still, after all that outgoing.

Snape and McGonagall were nearby, bickering about some insignificant timetable glitch. They were both keeping an eye on the man, and when he paused, they fell silent.

Amicus smirked at the girl. They lunged forward.

Luckily, he went on without noticing their advent (they stomped like elephants, but he lived in a world of his own). The girl did, and her eyes grew large.

'Miss O'Rig!' Minerva thrilled, still running. She was going to say something fatal, something he as a Death Eater could not ignore.

She also had this blasted high voice that carried so.

But he had the longer legs –

'Do you h-know what hap'ned to Moaning Myrtle?'

– and a tendency to out-Griffindore the best of 'em.

'Sh-she died, sir,' said the child, stepping back.

'Exactly.'

'Um...'

'It was a murder, a Basilisk was the weapon,' said Minerva McGonagall valorously.

'Er.'

Snape glanced to where Amicus had gone off to.

And little Mary-Sue paled, swayed and ran away, a hand over her mouth. Since then, her appearance changed almost unrecognizably. She became an example for many others, unfortunately pretty, wealthy or smart.

Just keep your head down, and Professor Carrow won't notice you.

Wear a muddy robe, don't brush your hair, and he will not look at you. No, no, he won't look at you.

(The portraits had voted Amicus the worst D.A.D.A. Professor in the last century, though Headmaster Dippet argued that the honour still belonged to a William Wolf, responsible for The Pantaloon Day. Professor Wolf, on the last day of the school year, reversed the curse on Hogwarts, making it invisible to wizards and glaringly visible to Muggles. The sheer amount of work that went into undoing his little mistake, as well as what some students had glimpsed in the meanwhile – 'Pantaloon" was a euphemism here – made him the laughing stock of his generation.

Although sic transit gloria mundi, and William Wolf had found his rest.)

…but Snape's attention couldn't be held by anecdotes for long when Life (not History) twisted her knife in his heart.

It pained him – gnawed at him to see students fall into sloth and dullness. They went out like candles. And he understood them, at last! He shouldn't have been able to understand!

But war made sense to a spy, not to a civilian; and he forced himself to be the spy, to watch.

It was his duty to know.

How Pomona sometimes stopped in the middle of a sentence and stared off into distance, and then came out of it with a start and a strained smile.

How Filius shouted at his own Ravens for the smallest mis-charms, white to the lips, and then couldn't stop apologizing.

How Slughorn kept himself apart, grim and venomously correct in speech.

How Minerva grew old.

He had told Albus how they changed, and Albus closed his eyes and said, 'Turn me around.'

Because before Severus Snape became Headmaster, it didn't occur to him to look over the Hall with a silent, crippled prayer, 'Not him! Not her!'

Oh, he had cared about his Slytherins. And sometimes he had imagined The Coming War and feared it, and treasured his foreknowledge of the horrors to be. These young fools don't pay any mind to danger, they won't be ready whatever I tell them, cannot follow the simplest rules, was what he'd thought.

Now these young fools knew everything. He even told O'Rig about the garlic, in case she met Fenrir.

The long stairs finally climbed, Snape sat on the hard and cold stone top of the Astronomy Tower and turned his face to the rain. He still had about an hour.

Sacrificing oneself for others was really easy when the others belonged to the school. He knew he would have stepped into Albus's shoes easily, but why? Out of love? Anger, more like; plain human decency. Was this certainty strong enough to defy Voldemort? Brave men broke under pain just as cowards did. He didn't want to be one of them – he couldn't... or he could...

Madly, he cried out in his heart, Come and get me, Death; I am the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and you won't take anybody here before me.