Time Interned
Chapter 11: Promises
Severus Snape followed the Fat Friar's path, obstinately ignoring the ghost's attempts at pleasant conversation. His shoulders were slumped, far more than his usual curvature. James recognised the posture as defeat and probably a little fear. Snivellus had to know that he was in for a long lecture, possibly suspension or even expulsion for what he had done. The boy stepped onto the rotating stairs; James followed. He was nervous about entering the Headmaster's office invisibly, but so far the only thing capable of piercing the invisibility cloak's illusion was the Marauder's Map, which was stored safely in Gryffindor Tower.
"Come, Severus," Dumbledore called, no hint of anger in his voice.
Snape took a deep breath and opened the door. Dumbledore was standing away from his desk, stroking the feathers of his pet bird. It closed its eyes and crooned softly. "Music for the soul, wouldn't you say, Severus?" Dumbledore sighed.
Snape only pinched his lips closed tighter. If he was soothed by the music, he wasn't about to admit it. James felt a calmness and contentment he certainly had not felt before he came through the door. Dumbledore should sell recordings of his pet's song. He would make a fortune.
"Severus, I am very disappointed," the Headmaster spoke. "The prank you pulled last night was reckless and could have gone very wrong. Had you locked a lesser witch in that room we would certainly be sending Remus off to face murder charges."
Snape's head was down and his lank hair veiled his expression from Dumbledore's view, but James saw the tug at Snape's mouth. He was actually smiling at the thought of Remus killing someone and going to Azkaban for it. James gripped his wand beneath the cloak and fought the hex back into his throat.
"Had that happened, I'm sorry to say, I would have been forced to insist you share in the boy's fate," Dumbledore informed him sadly.
Snape's head snapped up, shocked and angry. "If it had gone wrong, I would not have been the one who killed her."
"Had his watch not been magically altered, he would have known the moon rise was coming. Had the door not been locked, he could have left without fuss," Dumbledore shook his head. "But that was not enough. It wasn't enough to let her see the transformation. You warded the door, Severus. Do you know the level of skill and power necessary to break through such a ward with one spell?"
"More than she should have had," Snape said, his eyes narrowing. "It was a test, Professor, not a prank."
"A test of Miss Garnier?"
"She's not what she seems. She pretends not to know anything, to be completely inept, but I've seen her practice spells and she knows them perfectly. She can tell Professor Slughorn all the answers, but pretends not to be able to brew anything completely right. She is lying and I don't know why," Snape insisted, as if his quest for answers was reason to endanger lives.
"I know why," Dumbledore said assuredly. "I have allowed her to remain here because she will be safe here. Let that be enough."
"Yes, Headmaster," Snape said.
"For your test which could have ended in her death, seventy points from Slytherin and detention until the end of term."
"Yes, Headmaster."
"Remember your promise, Severus. You are not to expose Remus's condition to anyone, in any way, at any time without his express permission," Dumbledore's voice was hard with warning. James, for all the times he had spent before the Headmaster, had never heard the old man sound so serious or so dangerous.
"Yes, Headmaster."
"Miss Garnier is not to be tested again, do you understand, Severus?"
"Yes, Headmaster."
"You may go."
Snape rose from his chair and left. The old man turned back to his bird and petted it until the song came. James wanted to stay and listen, but he followed Snape out before the door closed. He followed the boy down the stairs and through the corridors. James intended to go back to the library and was surprised that Snape was heading the same way. The git had promised the headmaster to leave the girl alone, but he walked through the library to her table, pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her.
He said nothing, just stared at her.
Mione glanced up briefly and then returned to her research, ignoring him. James checked his watch every few minutes, wondering when the stalemate would end, but they continued to sit, neither one speaking. An hour passed before she closed her book. James waited for her to yell at the greasy Slytherin, but she set the book aside and took the next one from her pile. Snape reached across the table and took the discarded book. He flipped through it, frowning at the complexity of it, but kept reading.
"I can't quite sort out what you're trying to do," Snape said finally.
"Oh, well you see, by ignoring you I'm hoping you will go away," she smiled. James bit his lip to keep from laughing.
"Not what I meant," Snape replied in a clipped tone. "I can't figure out what you are researching."
"I'm allowed my secrets, Severus."
"You have nothing but secrets."
"And that is something you will just have to accept," she sighed. "I take it you've not been expelled, then?"
"No, but I've been assured that had things gone badly, I would have been tried for murder," he shrugged a rounded shoulder.
"It would be no less than you deserved," she sighed again, somehow coming off as bored by the idea of her own death.
"Who are you?" he asked bluntly. "You're smarter than you let on, more powerful, too. No one would hide that without a damn good reason."
"I am who I claim to be. If I choose to deny my intelligence, the reasons are mine alone. And if you continue to make yourself a nuisance, I will forget that I'm trying to be nice to you."
"Dumbledore has commanded that I leave you alone," he said.
"Yet here you are." She raised an eyebrow. "Is there any particular reason you can't leave me alone? I can't imagine you are jealous. You're a far better potioneer that I."
"I hate secrets and lies."
Hermione found this rather amusing given Professor Snape's job as a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. He was a man who made the Order stronger by keeping secrets, made himself and his comrades safer with every lie. She had assumed that since his personality and habits were so like those of his adult self that his attitude toward secrecy would be the same. So much for that theory. He was as different from his later self as were James and Sirius. Remus, thankfully, was just the same, a steady rock in the turbulent river of time.
Snape shifted uncomfortably under her prolonged gaze. "What?"
"Nothing," she assured him. "I like that you hate my lying, but trust me, Severus, I would prefer not to have to. Now, please respect Dumbledore's wishes and leave me be."
He leaned in, his prominent nose inches from hers. He glared at her for a moment and, when he spoke, his voice was low and threatening with his promise, "I will find out your secret." He pushed away from the table and left her alone with the invisible James Potter.
The girl shook her head sadly and ran a hand absentmindedly over her hair, muttering to herself, "Which one?"
James slid into the chair Snape had vacated and settled in for the long haul. The girl might write in French but she talked to herself in English. As she read, she would consult her notes and think aloud. What she said seemed nonsense to him – gyroscopic vibrations and tumble-effect, crystalline moments and silicafication. James decided she was either brilliant or mad as a box of frogs. Given the discussions he had witness between Snape and both the Headmaster and Mione, and Mione's rather frightening magical skill, he was leaning toward brilliant. The trouble was he couldn't sort out what she was putting her brilliant mind toward, and whether it ought to worry him.
The girl put a new meaning into Hufflepuff's fame of being 'unafraid of toil.' It was well past dinner before she showed signs of fatigue; it took Madam Pince coming over and telling her off for the girl to finally leave. She borrowed the two books she had not gotten through and left for the Hufflepuff dorms. James planned to follow her long enough to find out the password, but he stopped in his tracks when he felt a heat against his thigh. After waiting long enough to let Mione walk out of hearing distance, he took the mirror from his pocket.
The mirror shined in the candlelight and reflected a face, pale with black hair. It was not his own face, though, but Sirius's. James knew just by the sight of him that something was wrong.
"Padfoot?" James whispered.
"Get to the Shack, Prongs," Sirius commanded, his breathing hard and erratic. "Moony is… Just come. Now."
James nodded, shoved the mirror into his bag and ran across the lawn, not caring if his feet showed beneath the cloak. He picked up a stick and hit the knot, diving into the secret tunnel before the whomping willow had completely frozen. He ripped the cloak away and ran full speed through the secret passage all the way to Hogsmeade and the Shrieking Shack.
The boy hit the door at the end of the tunnel and fell backwards, tumbling to a stop some feet away. The door had been warded magically to keep intruders breaking in and meeting their death, but it also kept James from helping his friends. He pounded on the door with his fist and shouted to Sirius, fearful of what might be happening inside. The noises he heard coming from the other side of the door were terrifying. He hadn't heard Remus howl like that in years and it was worse than what he remembered. If Sirius was with him, he should be at least partially himself. Somehow, they hadn't quite sorted out how, having his Animagi friends with him helped Remus keep a grip on his human mind. It didn't sound as if that were the case tonight.
There was a great snarl close to the door and a series of crashes and breaking noises, each at a greater distance. The door flew open; Sirius grabbed James by his shirt and pulled him inside. The larger boy warded the door and returned to his Animagus form instantly and without a word to the other. James took the hint and changed into a stag just as the werewolf rounded the corner into the devastated sitting room.
