"And what do you think you know?" Severus parried, buying time. Could it be that the Chinese Anthracite Dumbledore had obtained for him had some limitations, and his old student was the first to remember all four glorious decades of the real Severus Snape?
Draco intoned one of those unclassifiable charms and the contours of the room changed. There was now a library, complete with desks and wall-sconces, and floor-to-ceiling with books Severus didn't need to examine to know they were old. They smelled old. A few sections of the walls lagged behind the others in transforming, giving Severus a moment to appreciate how seamlessly the rest of the space had morphed.
"Come," Draco gestured. "I try to protect my collection from the elements and the overly curious whenever I'm not using it."
Severus walked a step behind, forcing himself to look at this young man as if he weren't the sulky boy who'd watched his potions professor through those flaxen lashes.
Draco was taller than Harry but not as tall as Severus. He was paler than ever, in contrast to Potter's sun-browned features, and had none of Harry's musculature, probably having seen no point in developing his body when his wand could do so much. His clothing was self-consciously simple, but in the rejection of the formal garb his family wore, a canny eye could see the same impeccable taste. Someone, either Draco himself or a lackey, knew exactly how to spell his clothing into tailor-made proportions, and nothing was ugly in a muggle way. It wouldn't be, Severus told himself; the Traditionalists might steal their food or supplies, but they'd draw the line at resembling the inferior race they were bound to conquer.
Meanwhile, the revolutionary was scanning his bookshelves, occasionally sending a volume to one of the tables. "I think this should be sufficient."
The two men sat down and Severus slipped into the neutral posture that was a groove he'd hewn into his personal works over years of stress—his body was relaxed, his mind calm except for the one corner that was telling him very reasonably that he wasn't going to like what came next.
Draco was opening the books and stacking them on top of one another, so that it was hard to tell what was on the pages, other than an assortment of languages.
"This is the best one, but you'll see the same thing in the others," Draco smiled, handing over a dusty volume with a photo plate depicting an Egyptian hieroglyph.
One after the other, Malfoy set the other books in front of his guest.
Severus slowly withdrew his own wand and uttered a language-revealing spell to make it seem as though he hadn't seen dozens upon dozens of these drawings in his year under his father's tutelage. "Horus," he read from all the photographs. "I'm sorry, but unless you can put it in a cauldron and stew it, my knowledge doesn't extend very far into the beaux arts."
"Don't you see?" Draco took the first book from him and pointed excitedly. "I looked it up, and it's so rare as to not have a name."
The potions master looked down at the drawings, his eyes lingering on the first. In all of them, the Egyptian god Horus was depicted with his parents, Osiris and Isis, in each instance with his index finger to his lips.
Severus was about to object that even he had heard of the child Horus' association with silence, when the fingers of the temple drawing finally jumped out at him. He'd only been a child, he was telling himself. He couldn't have made the connection then…
The adult Severus clenched his own fingers protectively, drawing them to his chest. Then he scoffed, "The art of perspective was unknown to European artists until around the 14th century, and Byzantine icons and other cultural traditions persisted in producing all sorts of foreshortened and otherwise distorted figures. How much more so, then, for these images produced thousands of years ago?"
But that rational part of his mind was telling him coolly, "It was your hands they were interested in. If not for this physical peculiarity he would have left you alone entirely. Father, that's why Father—"
"No one has all four of their fingers, except the thumb, of equal lengths," Draco smiled. "It's an unheard-of mutation."
"If that's the only thing abnormal about my genetic heritage, I feel fortunate," Snape remarked. "Having a very long pinky finger is only useful for getting beat up for a sissy on the playground or taking high tea."
"That photograph they printed of you in the Prophet, the one where you were doing something with your hands," Draco turned to face him, "Do you remember?"
Of course, he'd been telling that little Ministry bitch Niamh that his hands needed to be making potions. He'd looked like an effeminate dunce in that picture.
"That's when I saw your hands. And I knew," Draco sat back triumphantly.
"That my shovel-shaped paws were proof of some underlying chromosomal fragility? Perhaps."
"I think they're very long and slender, very much a piece of you, quite graceful, in fact," Malfoy affirmed. Then he transitioned to a more businesslike tone. "I hope you don't take me for a dictator looking for a populace."
Severus' eyebrow tilted at the apt statement.
"I'm merely an administrator, a placeholder, as it were." He directed one of those eyelash-mediated glances to the man next to him.
"If you're saying I have some sort of predestination to act as an embodiment of Horus because my fingers are unnaturally long, I'd say you're cracked," Severus said bluntly. "And furthermore, if you're offering for me to be the figurehead of your movement, I must respectfully decline. If you know me as well as you say you do, Malfoy, you'll have discovered I am completely lacking in ambition."
"And I have enough for the two of us, so we'd get along well, I'd wager. But as you learned, following your will has practical benefits." The phrase that had been the open sesame for getting out of that house had been something to the effect of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," Severus gathered. "No one is in the business of forcing anyone to do anything, on our side at least."
"And the other sides? I'd say your father would be far less likely to hold someone hostage for almost two months while they picked up the rudiments of a language." Draco looked up sharply. "I've investigated you as well," Severus lied.
"My father thinks small," the young man said dismissively. He got up and motioned for them to leave the library, which he then made disappear. Next to their original chairs he summoned a brazier and cups. The resulting tea tasted dusty, in keeping with the poor rations he'd experienced himself. No wonder Draco looked so thin.
"I can prescribe a few vitamin potions for you; that pallor denotes some kind of deficiency," Severus offered without thinking. "Medical treatment is not considered intervention," he heard in Dumbledore's voice.
"If you like," Draco said, his eyes suddenly on fire with that unwholesome gleam common among all these radicals, and which had such an unpleasant whiff of Severus' past. "I know what I want—power, mystical knowledge, real estate," (Severus snorted: a true Malfoy after all) "but I also know what you want, Severus." His voice crooned the name. "Our Wills are intertwined."
"And what is my Will, according to you?" Severus sipped the dirty-tasting tea.
"You want to protect your Harry, of course."
Was that all this was about? "I make no decisions for my beau, so if this is a recruitment pitch, you'll have to deliver it personally. He's always been more of an optimist than I, so Harry has been able to see a good side to the Ministry otherwise hidden from me."
"Indeed." Draco looked at him for a long while over tented fingers.
It took Severus only a moment to readjust and grasp what was really going on. "Thank you for making me aware of a complot, but I am fully capable of sussing out the particulars on my own," he finally said. The ministry's slow response time in following his "date" with Harry was much too slow even for the incompetence he would expect from them. It must mean that the ministry, or some faction thereof, was trying to hang back and let some evil befall their figurehead.
His imagination started creating the meetings that must have taken place in which the officials decided to turn Harry into the Francis Ferdinand of this confusing conflict so that they could marshal the populace into a war avenging his assassination. But in the pit of his stomach, Severus was stung that his family-ministry had found a new way to disappoint him that he hadn't thought them capable of.
"I wouldn't put anything past you," Draco was saying admiringly. "But this is something that will be very difficult for you to stop on your own, even someone endowed with so many gifts. As far as I have been able to determine, my father and all his old fuddy-duddies have been convinced to stop arguing about old treaties putting one or another of them in charge, and they'll be given the opportunity to take him out, your Harry. My father, specifically."
Draco scanned the face before him as if looking for some specific reaction and seemed to find it in Severus' outrage that Harry's demise had been so coldly arranged, and that he'd placed Lucius much too far down on his personal threat hierarchy. "My father is too much of a cold-hearted bastard to think of anything except this opportunity for the Conservatives to be gradually absorbed into the ministry's side, so he won't make your lover suffer unduly."
At that, the two men did share a knowing glance. Severus had quite the gooey center, and he'd gone through his sordid life protecting this underbelly as the only thing keeping him going, most times. Now that Harry had proved so adept at reaching his passions and pains, the once-again-spy was irate that this miraculous young man would be taken out in a surgical hit. "Makes me nostalgic for the sadism of the old Death Eater clan, of which Lucius led the pack," he muttered, and then caught himself, "My research on your old man could take him down a few pegs."
Draco was smiling at the progress of some poison he'd introduced into his listener some moments ago, evidently finding the toxin winding its way along predicted paths. "I don't doubt," he said, his eyes following tracing over his new recruit in roughly the same path as his circulatory system.
"What are you proposing?" Severus said flatly.
"I'm proposing to teach you what I know of this new magical science—fully aware that you'll be teaching me shortly—and that with this superior firepower you will be able to deflect the growing alliance between the Ministry and the Conservatives, who are deciding how they will take out your beloved as we speak." Draco appeared delighted to share the news. "You must agree that the administration taking on a less scrupulous, more extreme group as their hitmen can't spell anything good for the Boy Who Lived, or anyone they set their sights on." Again, the revolutionary's eyes raked down Severus' body.
"They may be surprised that the army has a mind of its own," Severus observed idly while trying to master the confusion this flirtation was causing him. When Harry had tumbled into his grate all soldierly and injured, it had forced Severus to see his former student as a new man. But perhaps because he'd seen Draco at points during his childhood, listened to Lucius bragging about the boy in between Death Eater conventions, it was impossible to reconcile himself to being gazed at like a cut of mutton by those cold eyes.
"I am very much hoping that some members of the armed forces will join their brethren who have already defected to my side," Draco grinned. "Well-trained, familiar enough with the power structure to know it's totally corrupt, the young witches and wizards have a standing invitation. Please understand that I don't feel the need to engineer the mass desertions that would occur in the event of Harry's death."
Severus nodded. It sounded so reasonable, Draco's quiet assurance that his revolutionary cause would triumph without needing to resort to the scheming his father did so well. He sat there quietly, wondering how he would convince Harry that he was being set up for assassination, aware that this knowledge would take away that last of the actually-young Harry's idealism, whereas Severus had stopped believing in the ministry long ago in his childhood. He had to tell him, some part of his mind was saying, while another Severus was mourning the loss of their sexual idyll back in his dungeon. Politics were inevitably going to change their relationship with their inevitable baggage of suspicion and disagreements.
He had no idea how long he sat in that chair, weighing his new situation, but Draco let him stay there without speaking for what must have been a long time.
Or maybe not, because that must have been when it happened.
Finally, Severus looked over at the young man who was paging elegantly through some book in the chair beside him. "Don't let me interrupt your silence," Draco quipped. "Horus in the first phase is known to be reticent, but I predict you will be entering the next phase very soon."
At that, Draco sprang to his feet and grabbed a few volumes from a stack on the floor. "These should be a good place for you to start," he said, shrinking the books and slipping them in Severus' pocket with his own hand. He chose to interpret Severus' discomfort at the gesture as confusion. "Don't worry—there's more where that came from. You'll be seeing a lot of me. As much as you like."
And then Severus found himself wandering in the street that he had learned would lead him to his revolutionary residence, though, like many other things in his new life, the outward appearance and the inner reality did not match.
No one from the house did much more than look up when he returned, but someone's experimentations had produced a very inconvenient rain of poison frogs that had to be dealt with, so it was some time before Severus could shut himself in his room and inspect the books. They were Egyptian mythology and archaeology, all four of them. He took Lawrence out of his pocket and resized the cabinet so that he could access some of his own library, when he saw it.
His anti-Obliviating ribbon. It had changed colors.
Severus felt his friend the cabinet watch him as he ransacked the contents for some revealing potion that would help him retrieve the memory Draco must have extracted from him with surgical precision during their talk. This new science must be more powerful than anything the old potions adept was familiar with, because in his experience Obliviation charms could not be used to cut out only a small portion of a conversation, and Severus was sure that he had enough memories of this visit to Draco to correspond to roughly the entire time he spent there.
The spy used his considerable training to turn "What was this small portion of the day that Draco wanted me to forget?" into "I'd better get busy trying to beat these people at their own game, for Harry's sake."
He read and read. For dinner, he had what appeared as official rations for the day, some soft potatoes and tinned beef stew. He didn't taste what he was eating, for that meal or many more to follow. The only thing that induced him to stop reading was the tonic dropped in his lap by Lawrence, who watched over him as he slept.
Harry also did not taste anything when he sat down to dinner amidst a sea of Ministry eyes that were studiously looking every which way but at him.
He felt something was wrong the minute he closed the door to his room, but forced himself to walk the long passageway to the dining hall with dignity because that's what the uniform demanded of him.
The owls delivering the evening Prophet usually delivered only fluff—human-interest stories to lull a nervous wizarding populace into a more restful evening. Now that Severus wasn't plastered all over the "Style" section, there was no news that could possibly upset him, so Harry read the comics and other puff pieces as a way to have something to talk about with his peers from whom he felt increasingly distant.
"Hullo." "'Evening, sir." "How's the boys, today, Mrs. Edgewood?" Harry distributed his politeness around the table like always. Someone had kindly placed a copy of the paper at his usual spot. Harry filled his plate full of something and he read.
Or rather, his eyes couldn't focus on the especially salacious prose from that Skeeter woman (what had Severus said about her? "She's like a cow bound to keep chewing her cud, except for her only other people's will do) because Harry only had eyes for the photos.
Severus, leaning forward to speak intently to Draco Malfoy. Severus, sharing one of his clever, slightly evil grins with Draco Malfoy. Severus, staring off into space while Draco sends a dissecting gaze in the direction of his clothes. Draco's lips silently mouthing the words, "You'll be seeing a lot of me," while Severus takes in this news with his dark, impenetrable eyes.
The pictures were strange—not precisely like the animated wizard-photos usually produced by the Prophet. This disclaimer did manage to fit into Harry's brain: "We apologize for the uneven quality of the images in this article; the Prophet believed that journalistic considerations demanded using the photos exactly as provided from our anonymous source."
How easy is it to fake these photos? Harry's mind tried to comfort him with the question. Everyone has always taken the stories in the paper with several grains of salt, but the photos, though often taken out of context, are assumed to be genuine. He realized he was turning the paper this way and that, and people were staring, so he put it down to chew on whatever he was eating and try to have a normal conversation or two.
During that long meal, Harry felt closer to Severus than ever. The Ministry's Golden Boy was floating in a cloud of unpleasant uncertainties, such as he imagined Severus Snape had breathed for years. Harry had no way of knowing whether those photos were real, or what context they might have been taken in. It could be merely a Rita Skeeter stunt, or it could be the Ministry trying to make Severus' undercover work look more realistic. Perhaps it was something they and Severus had cooked up together, and Severus had provided the camera that would capture him in mid-espionage.
There was no one to ask in the Ministry building Harry escaped shortly after dinner for his nightly walk. And Severus would be offended if Harry doubted him, especially by accusing him of being overly chummy with the revolutionary leader the spy disliked more than anyone in this multi-faceted conflict.
Harry may be somewhat romantically inexperienced, but he'd learned a thing or two about waging war. He decided to assume a position of strength and wait and see what coded messages came to him through Lawrence.
The message that he got from that Skeeter article titled "The Boy Who Loved and Lost?—Sexpot Severus Sidles up to a Manly Mate in Malfoy?" was all too clear. It didn't matter if the photos were real or staged, if they'd been taken with Severus' knowledge or not. They were exactly like the stunts the Malfeasants pulled on the streets: the flickering images were startlingly clear at points, and then fading out into an off-tempo blur at others. The new technology only partly mastered said to anyone that looked: "This is what Draco Malfoy means to have next, by any means necessary."
Severus opened Lawrence one morning and saw the box of empties Harry must have placed in his cupboard the night before. The potions master felt a twinge. Despite the poor diet he had kept during the last two weeks of frenetic research, his own production of the secret ingredient to his tonic had continued unabated. Severus kept extracting, preparing and consuming without thinking much about it, but the presence of Harry's potion phials and additive gave him pause for the first time since he'd set himself the task of understanding what this new science could do to help protect his partner.
"If I tell him about the problem at the same time as I present a solution, it won't be such a bitter pill for Harry," Severus had started out telling himself. But now, after all this frenetic study, all Severus could see in the mirror Lawrence swung open to him every morning was that he didn't want to tell Harry at all. "Every scrap of intelligence I've filtered the ministry in the last two weeks has been disinformation," would he say?