As always thanks to Whitehound for BritPicking and beta skills as well as sage advice.
"…eat, stay out of trouble and be patient." These words became my mantra over the next few weeks. Peaches and Angel were pleasantly surprised, if a little confused, by my changed demeanor. I won't lie and say I was suddenly chipper but I had this shiny new and fragile thing called hope that I held tightly to my chest. I mean physically. I actually found myself walking around with my hands cradled to my heart. So I ate, did my best to not get in trouble and tried to be patient.
The last was of course the hardest. Every time the door opened I looked up to see who was coming into the lounge on Ma's arm, waited to feel eyes staring a hole through my soul from a disguised face. He hadn't returned since, but he would. He had taken a vow. I passed my days and my nights in flights of fancy. I made up many scenarios in my head. The most common was he came and swept me off my feet and whirled us away to some far off place with a beach and drinks with paper umbrellas in them. Other times he slipped me a portkey to be activated at a certain time, or a certain phase of the moon. In my fantasies he was better looking. He had somehow fixed his teeth and trimmed his hair, not too much, I kind of liked the gypsy look, and he had gotten some sun, or had his liver fixed, whatever was the cause of his ghastly pallor. He would take me out into the world and people would look upon me with envy to see me on his arm. Fantasizing about having sex with him while being with other men wasn't a good idea though. I found that out the next day. It just made the mechanics of the act all the more irritating. Besides, it just felt wrong. What he and I had done had been so different from all the other acts that to bring it into this other place was somehow demeaning or blasphemous. So I saved that for when I showered. I spent a lot of time in the shower. I didn't even bother to scrub myself raw anymore.
Things were as close to happy as I got if not for this one niggling cloud that always hung over even my brightest thoughts. What if he failed? I was so far out on an emotional limb that failure would destroy me utterly. I knew this as I knew my own name. If he failed in his vow I would be trapped here forever; a few months ago I was reconciled to that but not anymore. It would kill what was left of my soul. But what was worse, what I couldn't face down, was the idea that if he failed it was because he was dead. And if he died, it was because I killed him. Something I did made that man latch onto me as his cause and I was responsible for his life now.
Powerless to do a thing toward my own salvation that would help, I struggled, instead, to be worthy of him. However, besides the ordinary biographical data one knows about one's teacher, and the small added information that comes from fellow soldiers in a war, I really didn't know a damned thing about him. So I put my considerable mind towards coming up with behavioral plans for whatever type of woman he preferred. Basically it worked like this: If on Monday it occurred to me he might like his woman to be meek, I spent the rest of the day being meek just so I could work any potential kinks out. Tuesdays I would be take charge and assertive. Wednesdays I would be bookish and proper, which was admittedly difficult without a book and wearing little more than a corset and a thong, but so it went. I can tell you that I drove Peaches especially batty on Saturdays when I would practice being a jolly sort.
It goes without saying that while I had my head up my arse trying to prepare for my savior's oh-so-very-Gryffindor-ish rescue, I was completely oblivious to the utterly Slytherin maneuvers that had already been put in motion.
I am embarrassed to say that it was several more weeks before I started to get wind of patterns in the events being gossiped about in the kitchen at the end of a night. I do know that when I did put the pieces together my little fantasies and games blew apart and never returned. There was no more childish foolishness, only fear and sick worry because if my growing suspicions were correct, then my savior was not going to rush in here and free me by scooping me up and whisking me away. Oh no, nothing as utilitarian and relatively easy as that. Severus Snape was going to ensure my freedom and safety by destroying the Death Eaters and their Dark Lord with them. And that stupid, stupid, git of a man was trying to do it alone. And I didn't know if he even knew about the Horcruxes.
I had no proof of my suspicions. Of course I didn't, he was Slytherin to the core. The gossip about him was rather mundane and not at all interesting to anyone other than myself. He had enjoyed a brief bit of attention when he had first resurfaced. Macnair felt the Dark Lord's displeasure at his less than welcoming behavior towards Snape that first night. But interesting news faded when it became apparent that he really was nothing more than an old trusted friend of the Dark Lord, with no interest in power. In fact his utter neutrality in the various disputes and factions within the government structure and disinterest in such made him seem quite boring. The Dark Lord let him return to his more than humble home, by all accounts, but called on him from time to time, happy to have a bit of advice from someone with no agenda. He even asked him to oversee some new trade possibilities with the wizarding population in the Andes, and Snape dutifully went, but returned after each trip to report his findings and then quietly slipped back into research, grumbling politely about having to leave his labs at important moments in his never ending research into the Dark Arts. All this was relayed in dribs and drabs by the younger men, many of whom seemed to be frustrated that their revered former head of house wasn't swooping in to raise them up to glory. Especially Theo Nott who thought his impression of Snape was spot on. It wasn't.
It was a singularly spectacular event that galvanized my attention and caused me to reexamine everything I had heard but not paid attention to: The deaths of Rudolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange.
The younger men were all abuzz with the news and their excitement bled over into openly bragging about the facts and suppositions they knew even to us girls. They tripped over each other in their need to have the best tidbit, the juiciest detail. Apparently no one else had the type of access or influence with the Dark Lord that Bellatrix did and the open lack of sympathy for her demise spoke volumes. It helped that the story was incredibly sordid as well.
It seemed that Rudolphus, a fairly regular patron of our fine establishment, had a sad little secret. He apparently was rather fond of a young half-blood man from Indonesia. Gossip had it he had set him up in some splendor and thought him rather well hidden. Absenting himself away to tryst with his young lover on his lunch hour, he found said boy dead. Poisoned. Returning to the Ministry in terrible grief he was confronted by a cackling Bellatrix. Witnesses said the confrontation was loud, swift and quickly over. He made a fool of himself demanding to know how she had found out about him and she screamed back in a sing-song voice about little birdies telling her. Rudolphus was described as foaming at the mouth as he accused his wife of destroying his secret young lover and while she screamed her derision on his pathetic nature and blurted out his secrets to all and sundry he aimed a killing curse at her from behind, killing her dead in front of the entire department of Magical Imports and Exports. Then, by all accounts completely raving, he threw himself out of the window of the fifth floor of the Ministry. Apparently he thought he could fly. He couldn't.
The next few days were even more frantic as we heard how the Dark Lord had called Snape back from La Paz to examine the bodies. All were astir as the potions master confirmed that Rudolphus had been poisoned as well. The Dark Lord was very angry indeed.
The deaths of the Lestranges left two vacuums to be filled. One, the incredibly lucrative department that Rudolphus had been in charge of and even more important the job of top advisor to the Dark Lord himself. Those who were too eager to step into those positions were under suspicion of having orchestrated their demise. Those who shied away from the positions risked having someone else gain greater power and influence over policy. One thing was clear: the Death Eaters were in a panic.
I set my mind to how to best exploit this.
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