That rude word mentioned again

Chapter 9: clearly defined regions of doubt and uncertainty

It was Neville Longbottom who followed Krait out almost immediately. She was leaning against the wall in the corridor shaking and fighting against sobbing with anger.

"Are-are you all right?" he was almost crying and his face was pale. Krait nodded. Compared to him she was; that had really upset poor Neville.

"Stupid thing to do, I guess, to interfere with another wizard's spell" she said "But that poor spider… it wasn't right."

Neville nodded gravely.

"I – I thought I liked Professor Moody" he said "He – he talked to me about my parents. But – Day, he held that curse on you for six seconds after you took it, you went white, anyone could see, but he just watched you quizzically! Why?"

Krait pursed her lips.

"Why would anyone who did not use the leeway the Ministry granted all the aurors to use the curses suddenly start using them gleefully? He enjoyed having power over that first spider, I swear it. Longbottom, you're a friend of Potter's, aren't you?"

Neville hesitated and nodded.

"You think he's not really Moody? He's someone in disguise?" he suggested.

"It's a pretty drastic disguise" said Krait. Neville shook his head.

"N-not with Polyjuice Potion!" he said excitedly. "I know Hermione brewed some once for Harry and Ron! If- if he's here to kill Harry…"

Krait nodded.

"If it's a potion, he's always swigging at that hip flask of his. We need a council of war. I'll talk to Professor Snape and see if he has missed any ingredients for this Polyjuice Potion." She smiled. "Thanks, Longbottom. It was well gutsy to follow me out."

"I – I said I needed the lavatory" he said apologetically. "I – I don't think I'd like to learn Defence from Snape. He doesn't like me and – and I'm scared of him." He added in a rush.

"Clever excuse about the loo!" said Krait. "Better go and make it true. Well, Uncle Severus doesn't go out of his way to win friends and influence people of course" she pulled a comical face "But then, he's scared of people I think – like I am. We hide it in aggressive."

"OH!" said Neville.

-/-

Snape was alone in his Potions Dungeon when she came in, it being a free period for him. He took one look at her face and pushed aside the book he was studying by a pile of ingredients.

"Krait?"

"Domine – I might just have got myself expelled" she said "But with Neville Longbottom's help I might also have a clue for you about who's trying to kill Potter. I feel terrible." She slumped down beside him and buried her face against his legs.

"You are not making any sense" he said irritably. "Has someone given you a babbling potion?"

She shook her head.

"He – Moody, or the man who looks like Moody – was showing me the Curses" she said. "I'll come to what I mean, don't interrupt please, my thoughts are all shook up right now anyway." He nodded as she looked up for reassurance and she went on, "After doing the Imperius curse on a spider he did the Cruciatus. You know how I feel about hurting animals; even if it were called for to show it, I felt he held it sadistically long. So I went to knock the spell like I did your transfiguration….and it diverted to me." Snape scowled. She added "Neville counted six seconds that he held it after he noticed…..either he has phenomenally bad reactions or he didn't care. And Neville said he was watching me quizzically; which tells it's own story, doesn't it? I screamed then, I think, and he stopped it. I – I told him that he could keep his class, that I'd learn from you. It was an arrogant assumption, I'm sorry. Then he put a spell to make me come back – I think it was the Imperius curse – and I told him to go to Hell and I said 'fuck you' to him too. So I guess I might get expelled."

Snape scowled.

"Not if he used the Imperius curse like that for discipline" he growled. "HE's more likely to get sacked. It doesn't sound like Moody at all. Is that what you meant?"

Krait nodded.

"He – it all sounds just a bit wrong. Neville suggested something called Polyjuice Potion, I've not read about it yet, but I thought if you were missing any ingredients…he has that hip flask."

Snape's eyes glittered. He reached into his buttonhole for the flower Krait had made for him.

"What you say makes sense…here, smell this…it will help you feel better" he said. Krait breathed in the perfume thankfully.

"Ah….that is better. ARE you missing ingredients?"

"Boomslang skin" he murmured. "And to think I was blaming Potter! Not that such is an unreasonable assumption, mind you; he and his cronies have stolen from my dungeon before now if I could but prove it. So! What do we do about it?"

"We could hit him over the head and you legilimens him?" Krait suggested hopefully. Snape gave a wolfish grin.

"Tempting, but not entirely practical…it would involve a lot of apologising if we're wrong." He said.

"In the spirit of constant vigilance?" suggested Krait.

He actually gave that half-laugh of his.

"It might work; the Headmaster might not be happy about it though" he said. Krait frowned in thought.

"How about…we make a replica flask, fill it with some kind of truth drug and use a switching spell to exchange them?" she suggested; having written a nine inch essay for Madam McGonagall she felt she understood switching spells, in principle at least.

Snape nodded.

"That's more like it" he said. "Are you any good with switching spells? Longbottom isn't, quite notoriously so….Minerva had to retrieve his ears from a cactus for him."

"Not brilliant yet….but Hermione Granger is. You're going to have to work with Harry, you know, and a joint effort might be handy."

He compressed his lips and looked mutinous.

"I do not like it."

Krait shrugged.

"Sometimes we have to do things we do not like. I will definitely NOT like you testing me with the Cruciatus curse, for you'll be holding it a deal longer than six seconds…. You'll just have to be unspeakably brave and be civil to Harry."

He shot her a look, which she returned gravely.

"Hardly in the same category" he said. She raised a thin shoulder in a shrug of impatience.

"Depends how much past there is with his father that so gets under your skin" she said. "Mental hurts are much worse than physical. That's only pain."

He pulled a face. The wretched girl had a habit of seeing too much.

"Maybe I'll tell you one day" he said.

That was an improvement, even if the maybe had sounded distinctly uncertain.

"Can you tell me why you ride Neville?" she asked. He snorted.

"I know fine well he has a brain in there! If I could only shock him out of his apathy…."

Krait touched his arm.

"By making him angry enough to react? It doesn't work with everyone. He's a scared little boy, scared of everything, and you just frighten him into a froth, so that he can't think and does worse than he ought to. I know – I know what it's like to have that knot of fear in your bowels, to be concentrating so hard on not soiling yourself that you just can't think of anything else. You can read it from my head if you like, if you've never been there yourself."

He looked at her.

"Oh I've been there myself" he said softly. "I see. Well, if riding him does nothing but that there's no point continuing with it. He can't be goaded."

"Not all people are as cussed, awkward, stubborn and plain downright bloody minded as thee and me" said Krait. "We refuse to lose. Neville…. I think something started him in the habit of losing at an early age."

"His parents – this is in confidence, Krait – were aurors. They were both broken by the cruciatus curse. They are insane; he probably was there as a baby, hearing their screams." Snape told her. "He has been apathetic ever since by the accounts of his grandmother. He has to have something to drag him out of it!"

"Different people, different methods. Revenge against Fishface might just do it, you know" she said. "If he has a cause…the rest of his class treat him like an embarrassment. I guess I'll try to get to know him better. He showed me a kindness, after all." She leaned against him. "I still feel a bit odd."

Snape unwound himself and rose from the stool he was sitting on.

"I'll see Professor Dumbledore about what happened between you and Moody" he said. "As your housemaster I shall set you a hundred lines 'I must not swear in class' to complete; punishment is then set, the affair over." He stooped and picked her up.

"I'm not an invalid, Domine" she protested half heartedly.

He deposited her on the settee in his office.

"You can be getting on with those lines" he told her. "I'll put your flower in a vase beside you."

-/-

Whatever passed between Snape and Dumbledore, Snape did not reveal to her; but she did overhear Snape challenge Moody to explain himself.

"Using the Cruciatus curse, just because the girl is my ward and a Slytherin and a natural rival to your precious pet, Potter!" Snape yelled.

"How was I to know she'd pulled the curse onto herself?" Moody growled in return. "I didn't realise until she screamed. Silly girl should have yelled earlier. Shouldn't even be possible for a chit that young."

Severus Snape's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. He had made no mention that Moody had held the spell. It was proof that he HAD noticed before she screamed.

"She hates cruelty to animals. Prefers cruelty to Gryffindors" he said. "I consider you negligent in this, Moody. I shall continue her education myself. I am more than qualified."

"Make sure that's education in Defence against the Dark Arts – not the Dark Arts themselves, Severus" grunted Moody.

"After that last class of yours, it looks as though YOU are starting to lose your grip on the difference" said Snape silkily. "Just because so many Deatheaters are drawn from Slytherin House your paranoia is starting to cross the line in seeing Deatheaters in anyone with Slytherin green in their uniform!"

-/-

Krait was lurking, waiting for him as he made an exit.

"Nice" she commented. "That should lull any suspicions he has of being suspected as we suspect him."

"It was the general idea" he smiled thinly. "I rather liked it myself. Did you notice his slip?"

She nodded emphatically.

"Unless any of the class pointed out how long he held it. Which I doubt. I'll go tell Harry and co what's happening. Do you have a truth drug to hand?"

He nodded.

"Veritaserum. Its use is normally proscribed without permission….so we shan't tell anyone."

Krait chuckled.

"NOW who's ignoring the rules that don't suit him?"

He snorted.

"Never mind that…we had better give you a grounding on such Defence against the Dark Arts as you have missed…do you know what distinguishes a Dark Creature from a dangerous creature?"

"Intent" she said. "At a guess. Dark implies an awareness of evil, does it not?"

He nodded, pleased that she had divined the heart of it.

"Yes. A tiger will eat you because it is hungry; a female of any species will attack to protect her young and so on. Dark Creatures enjoy fear and or pain. Most you can read about. The one thing you need to learn to counter is a boggart. Boggarts can read your innermost fears and take the form of them, feeding on your terror and distress. The counter spell is the spell 'Ridikulus' that requires you to force the form you fear to do something that makes you laugh. Boggarts are inclined to turn up spontaneously. For muggles the only way to deal with a boggart infested house is to move; and they don't even know why they have nightmares and feel uneasy in the dark. Boggarts prefer the dark, and confined spaces."

"Are they at all like poltergeists? Like Peeves?"

"Poltergeists are attracted to adolescents…. I suppose it suits their puerile sense of humour. Poltergeists are not dark creatures, just annoying ones. I use the spell Langlock on Peeves, to stick his tongue to the roof of his mouth….it seems to deter him from haranguing me too much."

"Oh, thank you! I'll remember that. And Ridikulus for Boggarts."

"Are you ready to try to defeat a Boggart?" he asked.

Krait nodded and got her wand out.

Snape opened a cupboard and out hurled a nun, sister Agatha, Krait's greatest fear; and beyond her a poky cupboard that smelled of fear. Krait gulped.

"RIDIKULUS!" she shouted, pointing her wand. Sister Agatha began to dance, a wild can-can, revealing fishnet stockings and scarlet bloomers. She flapped her arms which became feathered like wings and her long nose became a beak from which she emitted raucous caws.

"Good." Said Snape. "Force her back into the cupboard."

It was the illusory cupboard to which Krait started to drive her, not the one that she had come from.

"MY cupboard" said Snape testily.

"Sorry…" Krait corrected her error. Snape shut the door on the boggart.

"A fair effort…if you see something you fear, a nun, where there should not be one, it is probably a boggart. You must learn not to panic so that you can act quickly and decisively."

Krait nodded.

"Fear is the little death of reason…it is good to learn to control it anyway, even if the reason to fear is valid. Thank you. Do you see what I do, or your greatest fear?"

"There is a spell that allows me to see what you see…. It makes teaching easier to discuss strategies of dealing with your fear. My greatest fear is superimposed, but I can ignore it….We will proceed when you have read more…I suggest you write me a brief essay on werewolves and one on redcaps. They are the two creatures you are more likely to meet than any other." She nodded and left as he waved dismissal.