[This might be the shortest chapter in the entire book, but tacking it on to one of the others made them unreasonably long... sorry?]

Saturday, 4 September 1993

Hogwarts

Mary slept late on Saturday morning, repeatedly poking the alarm built into her headboard and demanding another five minutes. She finally hauled herself out of bed just before nine, when Lilian knocked on her door and demanded she come flying. Mary, who had not been on her broom since her accident with the tree, almost a full month before, could not think of a better way to spend the morning.

Draco caught the girls on their way out of the Common Room with their brooms and invited himself along, apparently willing to forego his fake injury if it meant getting in a bit of extra practice. Mary found this very irritating at first, because Draco was always vaguely irritating, on top of which she was rather anxious about the Conspirators' looming detention. She quickly learned, however, that he had somehow bullied his father into buying him an International Quidditch League Regulation Practice Snitch, and she was willing to forgive a great deal of ponciness if it meant she could use it as well.

The pitch was swarming with underclassmen from all houses, practicing before their teams' Quidditch trials. Mary spotted both Wood and Diggory, who was rumored to be the new Hufflepuff Captain, scoping out the talent. Seamus Finnegan and Ernie Macmillan were taking turns shooting against Ron Weasley in one of the nearer goals, and a posse of younger Slytherins and Ravenclaws were playing follow-the-leader, weaving in and out of the stand supports just above ground level. Morag MacDougal and Cho Chang of Ravenclaw were leading Ginny Weasley through a series of ever-more-complex Seeker drills, and a mixed crowd of second and possibly first-years (tentatively identified by the fits and starts of the wretched school brooms) had taken over the far end for what looked like a half-field version of Quaftan... using a muggle football instead of a Quaffle.

"Bloody hell, Moon," Draco drawled. "Couldn't have picked a day when half the school wasn't out here?"

Lilian stuck her tongue out at the aristocrat. "You didn't have to come."

He heaved a dramatic sigh. "I'm already here, now, though."

Mary ignored their little by-play, already on her broom and too happy to be back in the air to mind. "Are you guys coming?" she shouted into the wind, hovering several feet above their heads.

Lilian laughed, and Draco mounted his own broom with a competitive gleam in his eye. "Race you to the lake," he offered, shooting away before either of them could answer.

Mary could just hear Lilian yelling, "No fair!" as she followed suit.

Racing, first to and then around the lake, turned into diving practice, and then seeing who had learned the most impressive trick flying over the summer. Lilian won that game by demonstrating (very slowly, and only a few feet above the water) her newly accomplished Surfer's Glide. Draco bet Mary five galleons that he would master that particular trick before she did, and they spent a very enjoyable hour trying to replicate it (an endeavor which ended with both of them thoroughly soaked from repeated tumbles into the lake). Lilian laughed so hard at the two of them that Mary thought she might make herself sick.

Before Mary knew it, the lunch-bells were ringing across the grounds. The trio of Slytherins made their way back up to the castle, where Mary figuratively inhaled her food (a product of having missed breakfast and nearly three hours of relatively strenuous flying) before running off to wash the smell of lakewater from her hair and change into proper robes for detention.

Potions Lab 3

The ten Veritaserum Conspirators gathered obediently in Lab 3, just before one in the afternoon. The room was slightly hazy, as though there had been a recent explosion, but there was no sign of any mess for them to work on cleaning up – no pile of dirty cauldrons to scrub or barrel of insects to render into ingredients.

Snape was nowhere to be seen, but the front table was laid out with books and supplies, as though they were truly expected to make some sort of potion, despite the fact that Mary was almost certain the 'tutoring sessions' had been an excuse, and not their actual detention. Apparently she wasn't the only one thinking along those lines, because Adrian whispered, "We're not really here for Remedial Potions, are we?"

Perry and Morgana gave him a 'don't be a moron' look.

"Maybe we're making potions for the hospital wing?" Aerin suggested. Mary thought she sounded slightly too pleased at that prospect.

As the one o'clock bell rang, the door to the lab closed with a bang, and their instructions for the detention, if they could be called that, appeared on the slate, as though it were any other Potions lesson. Mary felt her very blood go cold as Lilian read the words aloud:

"'Three among you have been exposed to improperly brewed Veritaserum. Your detention consists of diagnosing and reversing the effects before their time runs out.' What the bloody fuck?!"

There was a moment of stunned silence, then an uproar as every one of the students objected to this punishment. Mary could make out Hermione's offended, "He can't do that to students!" Luna's "This seems very irresponsible…" and Adrian's "He's not even here?" even as she herself stuttered in shock. The idea that Snape would put her, or any of her friends, in a dangerous and compromising situation, after he had spent so much time protecting her over the past two years, was simply incomprehensible. "He wouldn't!" she finally managed to choke out.

"He… might," Morgana said slowly. All eyes turned to her. There was a dark look on her face. "You lot have never really pissed him off before," she explained. "Remember what he did to Damian Stryke when we were firsties?" she asked Perry and Adrian. The Slytherins blanched, and the twins' eyes grew wide.

"That was," "Snape's doing?"

"What did he do?" Aerin asked.

"But Stryke almost killed that Hufflepuff!" Adrian objected, ignoring her.

"Charlie told us," "He wouldn't go to class, or even eat," the Weasleys explained.

"Yeah, by dosing her with a home-made love potion," the prefect said. "Do you think he'd think it was any less careless of us to dose three-quarters of the school with Veritaserum?"

("But we tested it on ourselves! It was safe!" Hermione objected.)

("It wasn't really Veritaserum, though, was it?" Lilian asked.)

("I don't think that matters, Hermione Jean," Luna replied, her voice rather clipped. Hermione gave an angry huff.)

"Took his mirror with him to the loo." "They had to stun him to get him to Pomfrey."

("That just makes it worse!" Morgana snapped at Lilian. "We didn't even know what potion we were forcing on everyone!")

("Of course it was Veritaserum, you moron!" Aerin's distracted rebuke overlapped with Morgana's. "Faking the test would have been harder than making the potion in the first place!")

"Well, he's never actually admitted it," Perry muttered to the Gryffindors, "but Stryke spent two weeks mooning after his own reflection. All the upper years were saying it had to be Narcissus' Cordial."

("Well then why did Dumbledore call Professor Snape off? Why did he let it go?" Lilian asked her sister, clearly equally angry.)

"And then," Adrian added, "when Stryke finally 'recovered,' and it got out what he'd done, the professor had the lot of us in the Commons for a two hour lecture on potions safety and consequences and it was pretty damn clear he was giving Stryke a look in the mirror."

"Literally?" The twins spoke as one, looking truly worried.

("Maybe because he didn't want us sent to Azkaban?" Aerin said sarcastically, as Morgana asked rhetorically, pointing at the slate, "Does it look like he's letting it go?")

"But we didn't hurt anyone! And we got the Heir!"

The Slytherin prefect abandoned Aerin and Lilian then, to fix Hermione with a penetrating stare. The irate Ravenclaw seemed to wilt before her. "Contrary to popular belief, Granger, the ends do not always justify the means. Knowing how to judge whether they do is one of the most important things you won't find in a book," she said scathingly.

Mary's head had been swiveling madly between speakers as she tried to follow all of the (rather loud) conversations happening around her at once, a headache settling behind her eyes as she listened to the yelling and her disbelief grew. In the relative silence that followed Morgana's pronouncement, she finally spoke up. "I still don't believe it. Professor Snape wouldn't… he wouldn't put us in danger, just to make a point."

The looks she received from the rest of the group were almost pitying. It was Lilian who spoke. "He wouldn't kill us, or do anything he couldn't fix, I don't think," she said hesitantly, "but…"

"Once a Death Eater," "always a Death Eater," the twins broke in. "And he might not kill you," "but we're not Slytherins."

"I don't really want to think he would do anything like that," Aerin waffled. "I mean, he is a professor… but what else could 'before their time runs out' mean?"

"I for one," Adrian announced, "believe it."

Perry nodded. "You have to admit, Potter, he has a history of being a cruel bastard, but he's not a liar."

Mary shook her head violently, which only made her headache worse.

"He was the spy," Luna piped up. "That means he's the best liar. There's an easy way to say for sure, though, isn't there?" she continued. "Is anyone feeling ill?"

All five of the fifth-years shrugged and shook their heads. Hermione raised a trembling hand. "I've been getting chills, and my hands are shaking. That's one of the possible side-effects with Conculi's Error. It progresses to full-body tremors within eight hours, then intermittent seizures over several days, leading to catatonia within a week if it's not reversed."

"Okay," Morgana said grimly. "Granger's one. What are the other common side effects?"

"Nausea," "Headaches," "Compulsive lying," "Babbling," "Acute mistrust and paranoia," "Lack of external awareness," "Mental regression," "Sudden shift in personality," "Hysteria," "Mood swings, like" "Sudden and irrational bouts of fear, "Or anger," the twins rattled off. "And then there's less common ones," "But they're more obvious," "Or more immediately fatal."

"Or both," Hermione added.

"That was awfully cynical for you, Jeanie," Lilian commented, concern written over her face.

"She has just been poisoned by a professor," Aerin pointed out. "I think she has a right to be a bit cynical at the moment."

"Mary Elizabeth, you've been rubbing at your temples for over a minute now," Luna noted. Mary looked up. She hadn't realized.

"I'm not poisoned!" she snapped at the concerned faces of her fellow conspirators. "Snape wouldn't do that." He wouldn't. Maybe he would to the Weasley twins. She could almost believe he would slip Hermione something non-fatal, since she was pretty sure he knew she was the driving force behind the Conspiracy. But he wouldn't do it to her. Not after their talk about Lily, and the whole, 'I might have been your godfather' thing!

"Lizzie," Hermione said, laying a shaking hand on her shoulder.

"No!" Mary shouted. "I have a headache from all your yelling! Snape didn't poison anyone!"

The twins exchanged a look. "Denial." "Hysteria?"

"I'm not hysteric!" she shouted, admittedly somewhat hysterically… but that was because the rest of them were trying to convince her she had been drugged, when she knew she hadn't. Anyone would be a little upset if it were them, wouldn't they? Powers, her head was pounding.

"What about the rest of us?" Lilian asked suddenly. "Even if Liz is one of the victims," ("I'm NOT!" Mary shouted,) "that still leaves one more. Aerin? Luna?"

"I… think I'm okay," Aerin said hesitantly.

"I feel fine," Luna concurred.

There was a long, tense moment as the ten of them eyed the eight who had not yet been accused of being drugged. Then Aerin said, "Luna… you've been rather… lucid, since lunch."

The little blonde blinked at the oldest Ravenclaw. "I'm always lucid," she claimed, cocking her head slightly to the left.

"No, she's right," Hermione jumped in. "You haven't been acting like your usual self, Luna."

The second-year frowned slightly. "Who have I been acting like, then?"

The others ignored her as Perry asked, "How bad is that?"

"Bad," Hermione frowned. "Depending on when her true personality begins to reassert itself, it can be six to ten hours until true multiple personalities begin to develop."

"And Potter?"

("I'm not poisoned," Mary objected.)

("Sorry, darling, but," "we think," "you are.")

"Headaches could be anything, and hysteria only narrows it down a little," Hermione shrugged.

"Snape's saved my life loads of times! He wouldn't poison me!"

Mary, like Luna, found herself ignored, as Morgana tried to marshal them into a semblance of order. "So it's Granger, Potter, and Lovegood," she said firmly.

"Granger, Weasleys, you've obviously done a bit of background reading on these side-effects."

"Well, of course we did! We wouldn't –" Hermione cut herself off before she actually admitted they had used Veritaserum after all with a firm, "Yes." Mary rolled her eyes, which was, she realized belatedly, a very bad idea, as her headache seemed to double in magnitude.

"Okay, then, you three make a list of possible errors that can result in each of the effects we're seeing. Take the books, Snape wouldn't have left them for us if we weren't meant to use them. Perry, Adrian, inventory the ingredients and supplies. Moon, you're with me. We're going to figure out what we think Snape would and wouldn't do. Little Moon, keep an eye on Lovegood and Potter. Let us know if they get any worse."

The older students nodded their agreement and split up to their tasks.

Lilian gave Mary and Luna a worried look before patting Mary's back gingerly. "It'll be okay, Liz, I'm sure it will," she said in her most soothing voice.

"I'm not – oh, for the love of – you're not even listening to me!" Mary exclaimed, stomping off to the furthest desk in her irritation. Lilian and Luna followed her, whispering. She lay her head down on her arms and closed her eyes, hoping desperately that the migraine would go away if she could just find some peace and quiet.

Severus

Severus Snape sat in a dimly-lit corner of Lab 3, thoroughly hidden behind his strongest notice-me-not spell, bubble-head charm firmly in place, watching with interest as his ten trouble-makers succumbed to the power of his aerosolized Suggestibility Solution. He smirked as Miss Yaxley convinced the others that he would, actually, be fully capable of dosing them to make a point. She was on thinner ice than the rest of the Slytherins, and she knew it. He had been most put out to discover that one of his prefects-in-training was involved in the Plot, and had threatened her prefecture over it. He had ultimately refrained from removing her from the roster because there was no suitable replacement among the fifth-year girls (certainly not one who had undergone the appropriate prefect training), and because she claimed to have participated only to protect the school and verified the identities of her co-conspirators, but she was well aware that she would have to work harder than the rest of them to find her way back into his good graces.

Explaining to Miss Granger that the end did not always justify the means was, he would admit, a good start, though he suspected he would still have to step in and curb the girl's thoughtlessness more directly. The Ravenclaw third of Mary Elizabeth's little trio was, he thought, the most dangerous element, to the girls themselves as well as to their potential enemies. At this rate, he would lay even odds on whether the machinations of the Dark Lord's remaining loyal servants or some half-baked, overly complex plan of Miss Granger's devising was more likely to result in Mary's untimely demise.

He rolled his eyes, and returned to his analysis of the conversation before him. Miss Yaxley's tenuous position was, he was certain, part of the reason she so readily believed he would give them a taste of their own potion like this. The other part, of course, was that the story of Damian Stryke's punishment was true, albeit incomplete. Dumbledore had refused to expel the attempted rapist, claiming a desire not to ruin the boy's life over one small mistake. (Snape suspected that the perpetrator's house affiliation – Gryffindor – and blood status relative to his victim – a pureblood assaulting a muggleborn – had something to do with that.)

Sinistra, feeling this ruling did not do justice to Miss Prentice, had petitioned Severus to brew the Death of Narcissus. Though neither Stryke nor Miss Prentice was his responsibility (and although Severus had himself committed far worse crimes at that age), Severus had done so, with the justification that the headmaster's decision did not adequately address the fact that Stryke had been messing about with dangerous potions unsupervised. He had taken his sweet time brewing the antidote, too, when Stryke's roommates finally brought him into the hospital wing. It was Sinistra, though, who had gone out of her way to leak the boy's transgressions to the Prophet. (Though he would never admit it, Severus did love a woman with a vengeful streak. He blamed this on growing up with Lily.) Skeeter had had a field day, and Severus had enjoyed seeing Dumbledore's biased protectiveness spoiled.

Severus had gotten the credit (or the blame) for the entire ordeal, which fact both he and Sinistra had used to their respective advantages – he in building his fearsome reputation, and she in maintaining her carefully harmless (albeit snarky) façade. He rather suspected that this day's detention would be the next major rumor added to his notorious account. Even under injunction not to speak of their punishment or the felony behaviors which prompted it, he was reasonably certain it would come out eventually. Secrets lasted longer in Slytherin than in the other houses, but it was still a school, full of chattermouthed schoolchildren.

Miss Granger's reaction was fully anticipated – not the exact psychosomatic symptoms she would manifest, of course, but the fact that she, undoubtedly knowing the list of possible symptoms better than the others and more susceptible to the influence of authority, even if that influence was communicated impersonally, through the medium of the slate, would be the first to manifest symptoms at all, and thus convince the others that there was something to worry about… that he had foreseen.

The others… the others he had not expected. Had he had to guess, beforehand, who among the other nine would fall to the fumes, he would have chosen, he thought, the younger Moon girl, who was shamefully credulous for a third-year Slytherin, and perhaps one of the Weasley twins, though only after Miss Granger began her involuntary performance, and only because they would perceive themselves, more than any of the others, as his usual sort of target. It was, after all, Gryffindors, who received the brunt of his ire in classes, and they specifically who had put his student in harm's way, dragging her into the Chamber of Secrets to face the basilisk.

He had not anticipated – would not have, in truth, considered in his wildest dreams – that Mary Elizabeth had developed such a stubborn degree of trust in him that she would resist the implications pressed forward by the Suggestibility Solution. Even if he had saved her life on multiple occasions, he shouldn't have thought it would make such an impression. She was, after all, his student, and his responsibility. Certainly none of the other young snakes trusted him to the same degree.

It was, of course, the mental dissonance between Mary Elizabeth's own firmly held belief in him and the potion's sway which was responsible for her headache, though the others immediately credited it to corrupted Veritaserum. He wondered with slight amusement whether they thought he had truly spent all summer intentionally brewing that potion incorrectly, just for their detentions, and what they would think of their illogical conclusions once the Solution wore off. The elder Miss Moon and Miss Granger, he expected, would be terribly embarrassed.

He had also not anticipated that, in the presence of Suggestibility Solution, Miss Lovegood would be not only no more suggestible than usual, but, as Miss Moon had observed, slightly more lucid. Though the older Ravenclaw had not detailed it, the youngest of the conspirators was focusing more clearly on her surroundings and companions than she ever did in his classes, and had contributed the most logical and straightforward observations on their predicament.

This shift in behavior, misinterpreted by the students, much like Mary Elizabeth's sudden headache, was, he thought, far more disturbing than they knew. The only potion the young witch should be under the influence of – for he had checked with Poppy beforehand for contraindications, and none of the ten were on any regular potions regimes – was the Suggestibility Solution. And the only case in which exposure to Suggestibility Solution, in any form, would result in an increase in lucidity, was when one had previously been exposed to its antidote over a minimum of six months.

Like most non-household potions, the antidote to Suggestibility Solution was itself quite dangerous, if taken outside of the specific conditions for which it was devised. With no Suggestibility Solution present to neutralize, it lingered in the body, building up slowly over time. Over a course of years, continued exposure could lead to a wide range of symptoms, from chronic confusion, to paranoia, delusions, obsession and even hallucinations.

Based on the girl's classroom behavior, which had been slightly air-headed compared even to the average first-year Ravenclaw, he would estimate between six months and one and a half years' exposure. She had probably started taking it when she came to Hogwarts. Why, he could not possibly guess. Severus sighed quietly and pinched the bridge of his nose, warding off a tension headache.

Potions abuse was a serious problem, and as the Potions Master of Hogwarts, it was his duty to report suspected abuses which other professors and staff were unlikely to recognize. It was one of his least-favorite duties, right up there with not undermining Dumbledore in public and fixing whatever messes the students with time turners managed to create over the course of the year (the fact that Minerva and Filius had seen fit to allow Miss Granger to use one of the accursed devices was something that truly didn't bear thinking about). He was going to have to have a talk with Miss Lovegood, and probably also with Poppy and Filius, and possibly also Xeno Lovegood, if the hippy journalist wouldn't take Filius' word regarding his daughter's health, which seemed unfortunately probable.

Brooding over the unpleasant conversations ahead rather ruined the fun of watching Miss Granger, the reprehensible Weasleys, the elder Moon sister, and his fifth-year Slytherins frantically debating which corrupted versions of Veritaserum he might have given his three 'victims,' and, once they finally decided on the three most likely (and they did choose well, he could acknowledge that much), their growing frustration and fear as they attempted to brew antidotes using the false ingredients he had given them – all of them transfigured from water.

By the time the eight-hour mark arrived, even Miss Lovegood and Mary Elizabeth seemed half-convinced that they were dying due to the others' concern, and Miss Granger's twitching and shivering had progressed with, dare he say it, textbook precision, to the point that she could no longer speak, let alone hold a stirring rod. Aerin Moon was nearly in tears due to frustration, and her sister, who was channeling her fear into anger, had been trying to escape the lab to go for help for over an hour. Miss Yaxley, Mr. Lestrange and Mr. Wilkes were arguing vehemently with the Weasley twins about whether there was time to try another batch of anything, or even if it was worth it, given the fact that nothing they had tried had worked out.

Miss Lovegood, still the most level-headed, the effects of the Suggestivity Solution persisting, though the air had cleared hours before, cocked her head to one side and said, "It's like a nightmare, running and running, and never getting anywhere…"

"Shut up, Luna," Mary Elizabeth whined, pressing her hands to her face as though if she tried hard enough she could fix her headache through physical force. Severus was impressed that she was still fighting to trust him, and found he did feel a bit bad that they had not even been able to brew her a decent Willowbark Tea. He truly didn't deserve that degree of faith from any student, even Lily's daughter.

He dispelled his concealment charm and cleared his throat.

Every student turned to face him. Miss Granger twitched. There was a tinkle of glass shattering as one of the twins dropped a stirring rod in shock.

"Five points from Gryffindor, Mr. Weasley."

"Have you been here the whole time?!" the offending Weasley sputtered.

Severus smirked, and pulled a flask from his pocket, conjuring glasses and pouring careful measures for each of the nine who required it.

"Of course I have, Mr. Weasley. Do you truly believe I would be so irresponsible as to allow the ten of you free and unsupervised access to a potions laboratory, given the nature of the crimes for which you are currently meant to be atoning?"

He directed the glasses to every student but Miss Lovegood with a few well-aimed swishes and jabs.

"What is this, sir?" Miss Yaxley asked, peering suspiciously at the purple liquid.

"The antidote to Suggestivity Solution," he answered.

"Oh, that makes sense," Miss Lovegood grinned. "Daddy will be pleased!" Severus suppressed an exasperated sigh. Dark Powers preserve him against well-meaning, poorly-educated parents.

The other students ignored the girl, watching instead as Miss Yaxley threw the draught back, grimacing at the taste, before grumbling, "There was never any Veritaserum, was there?"

The head of Slytherin smirked at his prefect. "No."

The others followed her lead with varying expressions of disgust and irritation, but wisely kept their complaints about having been tricked to themselves. Mary Elizabeth whimpered as her headache finally eased, and Miss Granger gave him a glare which, if looks could kill, might have equated to a half-decent Bludgeoning Curse as her twitching slowly subsided. The Gryffindors and young Miss Moon, too, looked as though they would not be opposed to his finding a messy, painful death, but they wisely refrained from speaking their minds.

"And the failed potions, sir?" the elder Miss Moon asked tentatively.

"Ingredients transfigured from water."

The five pranksters groaned, though the Ravenclaw looked slightly relieved that their failure was due to no fault of their own.

Severus' smirk was back in full force. "Same time next week," he announced, dropping the pallings on the door and allowing them to file out, muttering sullen variations on 'Yes, sir," and, "Another detention like this one might actually kill us."

The smirk broadened. Next week, he planned to have them copy out every law pertaining to their activities over the previous term. He gave it four hours before they were wishing they were doing something as exciting as thinking they were going to die.