It's Severus's turn to be freaked out, karma courtesy of the Black sisters. For once, Bella isn't doing it on purpose. She's just in over her head, but no one else has noticed. If she's very, very lucky, he won't mortally offend all his allies before he can explain.


Warnings: enough body language to make anybody's eyes cross.


Savorin & Baske's, Diagon Alley

"What the hell is the matter with your sister?!" Severus hissed, stepping over the café's velvet rope to join them at their table, under the spread of a lacy white parasol that suited only one of the three of them. Narcissa raised a chilly eyebrow. Irritably, he clarified, "No, I mean today."

"Set business first, Spike, then new business," Evan said, reaching out to pull him down by the wrist. Enough people had called him names that meant he was disgusting over the course of his life to make skin contact a powerful way to tell him he was with friends. Sometimes it could settle him as quickly as a potion. Which was just as well, because he was awfully chary about dependence, for someone working towards his mastery. "Sit and have some tea before absolutely everyone notices you bristling."

"I'm not bristling," Spike protested (he was wrong), but he let himself be drawn next to Evan. In fact, he let himself be drawn so close that, since it was him and they were in public, Ev was inclined to interpret it as spooked huddling.

"Your shoulders are up by your ears, darling," Narcissa pointed out with sympathetic firmness, "and your scalp is so prickly your hair almost looks like it has some body for once. I'd recommend you keep it up, but it must be so hard on your nerves."

Spike glared at her while Evan tried to bury his snort in his napkin. He didn't quite make it in time, so the glare turned, betrayed, to him. As sympathetic as his cousin but amused where she was stern, he squeezed Spike's wrist before letting go and said, "Tell me what's wrong with the tea."

As far as he could tell, there was nothing wrong with the tea.

"Unsubtle," Severus sulked, but he finally accepted a cup and breathed in the steam before rolling a sip around in his mouth. "Water didn't boil," he mused, "the leaves were fresh… didn't steep too long… porcelain pot, fine… ah. Too mature when picked."

"Freak," Evan observed, smiling. Spike grinned at him, just with his eyes.

Narcissa said briskly, "Now, unless Bella's hurt…"

"No. But she's acting extremely strangely, and Rus agrees with me."

"Is he terribly upset?"

With an expression both ironic and disturbed, Spike murmured, "'Upset' isn't the word I would have chosen. Unless you're asking how I felt after watching him ogle."

"Then it'll keep. Pick a target, lamb."

"Order something first," Evan said. Between days at the lab and evenings with their Lord (which seemed to be going well enough, but were unrelenting), Spike had been living almost exclusively on eggs, fruit, and sandwiches for the last week or so. Evan had started resorting to take-away and bothering his mother's elf. "We'll be here a while, and we don't want the waiter bustling around trying to make us free up the table."

"Then we should wait till he starts to bustle before ordering anything," Severus said practically. Evan couldn't argue with that. Severus scanned the street, and shrugged. "You choose."

Narcissa started to protest, but Evan lifted a hand. "Who most caught your eye?"

"Them," Severus said instantly, pointing to a ginger couple with a pram.

"Why?"

"Well, I suppose it's natural I'm noticing infants more," he said slowly. "Having been thrown up on twice this week."

"Spat up on, and you had a shoulder-cloth and a wand; don't whine. And how many other babies are there out today?" Narcissa asked archly.

"Five in view," Spike said, after only a moment's thought.

"Freak," Evan repeated, hiding a smile but not putting much effort into it.

"Predated," Spike said darkly, but at least it was dark humor.

"If that's a word it means preceded. You mean preyed-on."

Expecting a cross I was not, Evan clenched up all over when Severus went white-eyed and tight-throated, just like he'd used to all through their sixth year. He'd thought they were done with that, but Severus's hand when he grabbed it was cold and shaky.

"It wasn't just the baby, then, Severus," Narcissa said, a bit loudly, her eyes worried on their friend, "so what else?"

He turned to her slowly, as though his neck was rusted almost solid. Evan half expected to hear a squeal. Their fingers were grinding painfully together, they were both clutching so hard. Severus pushed out, almost without volume, "What?"

She repeated the question, this time doing a perfect job of sounding like nothing had happened. Severus's hand relaxed slightly in Evan's, but he didn't object when Evan, all casual geniality, scooted his chair closer and let go to wrap an arm around the wiry chainmail tension of his shoulders.

"Well," he said, slow again, leaning minutely into Evan, "they're standing still, and most people are moving. And they are awfully bright. I mean her robes, not just the hair."

"You're good at ignoring Lockhart," Evan pointed out.

"Lockhart's all bounce and no purpose—oh." He looked again. "They're waiting for something."

"Such as?"

"How should I know?"

"Excellent question, darling," Narcissa dimpled with just a hint of exasperation. "How should you know?"

"Do you know?" he asked curiously. His hand crept around Evan's back. At this display, made in public, Evan nearly cried.

He and Narcissa had tried everything they could think of to find out what had happened to him the April before their OWLs, up to and including their best efforts at manipulating Slughorn. They had the sinking feeling that asking Reg to snoop had been part of the munitions pile that had blown up his home and left him with almost more on his shoulders than he could bear. Reg said not, but he would never have said anything else. All that, and they still didn't know what had happened to skin their cobra scaleless.

"I'm not going to try to find out until you do," Narcissa said firmly. "Neither is Evan. Go on, darling."

"You're an iniquitous, teasing wench," Spike said, his voice sniffy but with an affectionate quirk at the corner of his mouth. When Narcissa looked pleased, the quirk turned into nearly an eighth of a smile and he turned back to look at the little family. He frowned, still leaning into Evan, and said, "They're outside the bookshop, but they're looking at the broom shop. Anxious, but not actively worried. Ev, how old would you say they are?"

"Not I, Naj."

Spike made a hmph noise, and narrowed his eyes. "Am I allowed omnioculars?"

"What do you think?"

"Too conspicuous," he conceded, and improved his vision by casting, "Acue oculis."

"Indicators and interpretations," Evan told him.

"All right… I said anxious because their gaze is fixed on the broom shop, but it's not so fixed that I'd call them frightened. Their posture is reasonably relaxed, but attentive. And, yes, there's that glabellar contraction you mentioned, Narcissa."

"Are you practicing?" she asked sweetly.

Spike looked guiltily at her, and then his forehead smoothed out. He blinked surprise, saying, "That's mood-affecting."*

"Good. Keep at it. Go on," she nodded at the couple.

"Well… the contraction's deep on the woman, as though the muscles are well-developed, but it hasn't turned to a permanent crease yet. And she does have definite smile lines; I'd put her at ten or fifteen years older than us. Er… closer to ten."

"Why?"

"I wouldn't put money on it," he said, "but her husband only looks five or ten years older than we are—"

"Are they married?" Evan asked. "Could be relatives, with the matching hair."

"No: matching rings, too. And I had the idea that reproducing-marriages were most usually of an age or with a younger witch?" He looked at Narcissa questioningly.

"Naja siamensis," she told him severely, "that is one of the ugliest, most tactless phrases I have ever heard, and I've known you for nearly ten years."

"Oh, Merlin, don't say that," Evan winced. "I'm too young to feel old, coz."

"I might have said 'breeding-couples,'" Severus pointed out with a smirk, not in the least put out at being reminded why they'd called him the spitting cobra. She shuddered delicately, and retreated behind her teacup. "Well?"

"More common, not de rigueur," she said shortly. "My father's the younger. So is Reggie's."

"What else?" Evan asked, pulling them gently back on track. "Are they purebloods?"

"Yes," Severus answered at once, although he didn't stop sneaking wary little glances at Narcissa and her tight mouth. "They're completely at home in the Alley, and he doesn't have trouser-cuffs below his robes."

"Independent means?"

"No. Not now, anyway. The clothes fit perfectly, and there are seams to say that's through tailoring, not transfiguration—or at least it was when they bought them. But they've seen a deal of wear."

"Source of income, then?"

This question was met with a long silence. Finally, Spike told Evan, "Blowed if I know. " This, sadly, was his version of civilizing his language for mixed company. Evan would have explained that it was a failed and cut-rate version if Narcissa hadn't already been radiating frost. "They're not hand-workers like we are. I think the witch stays—oh, it's multiple children," he realized. "Those robes have taken regular stains and cleaning spells for longer than a few months; they're getting threadbare and not just at the joint areas. She's been at home for some time. The man could be office, could be a wand-centric job."

"He works at the Ministry," Evan told him.

"You know him?"

"Don't have to," Evan said. This was true, although he had often seen the fellow bustling about in the halls. "Look how dull and respectable he is."

"He's bouncing on his feet a bit," Severus said critically.

"Evan means the robes," Narcissa said coldly. Evidently Spike was not forgiven yet. "What's the connection he made?"

"I said I don't know," he said, matching her curt tone, his shoulders hardening.

Ev shot her a warning look and took over again, his hand slow on his friend's back. "Put it this way, Spike," he said. "Is he dressed look-at-me or camouflage?"

"She's dressed look-at-me," he said, not relaxing. "Is that really camouflage?"

"It's don't-bother-to-notice-me," Evan said. "We'll work on tailoring tells later. But what I saw is that he's dressed like someone who has to maintain an unexceptionable reputation, not like someone who's trying to sell himself."

"Like you?"

"Mum does think we get more clients by inviting the eyes, yes."

Severus paused, then asked curiously, "How do I dress?"

Evan looked at Spike's slate-blue waistcoat, his shirtsleeves the color of shadows on bare wood, his long, long cuffs that had never been a fashion, ever, the fountain pen clipped to the left sleeve-garter. "Like someone who likes to disappear, but doesn't give a damn who thinks what when he's willing to be seen," he smiled.

Severus looked away, all over edgy and abashed. He never did know what to do when he felt seen, poor kid. It had probably been very wrong of Evan to keep looking at him until he broke. But Spike really ought to get it through his head at some point that he hated the people he hated for very good reasons, and their opinions about him weren't worth listening to. So actually Evan had been doing him a favor and not torturing him at all. Or, better yet, he'd been both torturing Spike for Narcissa and doing him a favor, because pain builds character! There it was: the perfect spin.

The couple and their baby were bustling towards the broom shop now. They had a four-or-five year old boy in tow, and another about the right size for Hogwarts, but carrying a parcel too small to be his set-books .

Narcissa had probably decided to take her revenge by confronting Severus with more food than he usually ate in a week and watching him twitch over conspicuous consumption and waste, because the waiter was moving back into the café proper and she was smiling at them with innocent evil. Spike's shoulders settled at her expression, tensing in an entirely different way at the same time.

Pleased at being properly terrifying, she said chattily, "That should give you a sense for the sorts of questions to ask yourself when you're practicing, Severus. Let's look at walking-posture until the food gets here, shall we? And then you can tell us about Bella. Twillfit and Tatting's after we eat, I think, for a practical course in clothing tells, and then back to the Manor so you can practice walking styles without a public audience. I'm sure one of the elves can find that special Slippery Head Book from my summer finishing school."

Severus groaned softly, but didn't protest.

They talked weight-distribution, arm-swing, hand-tension, and head position until the waiter came back. His tray wasn't filled to the point of needing magical expansion, as Evan had expected, but was loaded up with the sort of coma-inducing comfort food that might have come off a Hogwarts table.

Narcissa looked as though she wasn't sure whether to be disappointed, or appalled at the implications, or to laugh when Spike zoomed at the roast, sparking parsnips, and boomberry-horseradish sauce almost before the waiter had put them down, exclaiming, "Wait, I recognize that; that's food!"

"Evan," Narcissa uttered, the word encompassing a world of horrified question.

"We've been on eggs, cold food, and take-away for weeks," he said, resigned to it.

"I'm busy," Spike retorted, nabbing a square of pud with singleminded intensity, fast as snakebite. "You could learn."

"Could I? I should try again?" There was a pause and shudder next to him. "I rest my case."

Evan and Narcissa talked about Evan's clients until Severus had slowed down, on the premise that it was the topic he was least likely to have anything to add to. Or possibly just because Narcissa thought the way the Tunisian ambassador's cousin had been hitting on Evan during the sittings for her fifth-anniversary portrait was unendingly hilarious. Evan was more amused by the way the woman's husband had dropped Hogwarts-sized hints that if Ev kept her out of the man's hair during this process, he'd buy the most elaborate frame to go with with the portrait that the firm had. And how about a convex rock crystal front for it, did they do those? Evan suspected he'd stopped just short of of offering to cast contraceptive charms for them himself.

Evan had an excellent sense of self-preservation, thank you, Narcissa. He was fully capable of squiring a diplomat's wife around town in a ceaselessly flattering and uninterruptedly chaperoned sort of way. And keeping meticulous journals and pensieve records, too, and submitting all his receipts to his grandfather, as head of the firm, for approval and reimbursement.

Narcissa wouldn't have been less amused if she'd known about the poor woman's gingivitis, but it would have been a more sympathetic sort of amusement. Still, you didn't tell Narcissa about things like that. Not about other witches, not if they were pretty. Unkind.

Severus rejoined the conversation much sooner than Evan was pleased about, though, having stopped attacking his roast and started picking fitfully at the parsnips after only a few bites. Evan took his own turn to make some inroads on his lunch while Spike grilled Narcissa on how the baby was doing, now that some Dark artifacts had been taken away from where they had been influencing the house protections.

Since the short form of the answer appeared to be just fine although rather leaky, Evan said, "Speaking of relatives."

"What do you think is wrong with Bella?" Narcissa asked, frowning a little as she lifted a spoonful of firecrab soup.

Spike put his fork down and stared through the teapot. "You know," he said, "I've had that question in the back of my mind for the last two hours, and I still don't know quite how to describe how she struck me."

"Yes, you do," Evan contradicted fondly, because he knew that reluctant tone. "Out with it, Spike. Narcissa knows you wanted to be diplomatic."

But Severus shook his head. "I really don't, Ev. That is…" he hesitated. "All right, I can do it like that," he decided, nodding at where the ginger couple had stood. "You'll have to draw your own conclusions; I'm stumped. I'd say draw them after seeing her for yourselves, but actually I'd avoid her even if I were you, Narcissa."

A fleeting look of worry shadowed Narcissa's face before she smoothed it away. "Are you overreacting, Severus? Because you do sometimes, you know. One might go so far as to say often. Or even usually. Constantly might be stretching it, but not too terribly far, darling."

"I hope I am," Spike said. "You know her better, of course."

Narcissa smiled wanly at Evan, and said with false frivolity, "Severus Snape admitting someone else might know better; now I am worried!"

"Don't make me give you the expertise-assessment-via-peer-review-piranha-tank lecture," Spike threatened.

Narcissa started to ask what that was. Evan plastered an urgent, urgent hand over her lovely mouth, shaking his head vehemently with wide, warning eyes. Her eyes widened, too, and she made a graceful all-right gesture.

Evan removed his hand carefully, and said, "Go on, then."

Spike nodded, and said, "She isn't using her hips like she usually does, or aiming her chest at people."

"Oh, Severus, she does not!" Narcissa protested.

"Oh, yes she does," the wizards chorused. "It's not overdone," Evan added, "perfectly tasteful, but she absolutely does it. Baby-bird hypnotism. Leads with her breasts and lips, walks with a sway, keeps her eyes half-lidded and looks at people from under her lashes…"

"She's still doing that," Severus put in, "but it's… I don't know, it's different. And she's holding her hands, er…" he trailed off again, frowning. He made a few experimental, curling gestures in the air and moved his hand and arm about. "The focus is changed," he decided. "And the flexibility. Look, here's how the two of you normally move," he said to Narcissa, and made a very graceful, feminine swishing gesture. Evan recognized the wand-work for a sinking spell, done open-handed, and not just because the slice of lemon in Narcissa's water glass dropped to the bottom.

"Wrist very loose," Spike catalogued, "but well controlled, base knuckle stiff, middle knuckle the driving force of most movements, top knuckle more or less irrelevant; the top bone neither leads nor fights gestures."

Narcissa examined her hands curiously.

"What's she doing now?" Evan asked.

"Leading with her fingertips," Severus said. He thought about it and elaborated, "The pads of the fingertips, not the nails. Everything stiff like supple wood, not jerky. Steady tension all the time."

"Show me." Spike made a curling motion, and something unpleasant started curling in Evan's stomach. He didn't think it was the fire-crab. "Reach for my arm." Spike did, and it didn't help. Starting to feel jittery, he said, "What do you mean about her eyes?"

"Well, you know how she usually looks at me…"

"Let's see it on your face, so we can compare," Narcissa said.

Severus looked from one of them to the other, and then wisely aimed his face at the teapot. He gave it such a heavy-lidded look of icy-hot, savouring, aggressively sensual detestation that its ever-warm charm failed and ice crept up its sides.

"All right," Narcissa admitted, "that's Bella. Stop it at once, Severus, her face on your face looks like Rasputin."

"Ha! The one person on earth whose nose dwarfed mine!"

"Or a satyr."

"Close; Capricorn."

"You're not helping your case, darling—Stop grinning like that!"

"You've got to be able to make the faces without the feeling, Spike," Evan said bringing them back on task. Because he had kept his focus. Because he could do that. "It takes you too long to come down when no one distracts you, and things like that happen." He gestured at the poor, broken teapot.

"Well, anyway," Spike shrugged, fixing it with a tap of his wand.

"All right," Evan agreed, but in a we're-not-done-with-this tone. "And how's she looking at you now?

Severus turned to him, and suddenly Evan felt like an ant. An ant whose leash the cobra was holding. Which probably had a lightning-spell on it, to be activated the moment Evan made one wrong move. Maybe even a spell that would unlimb him. But he didn't want to make a wrong move, didn't want to disappoint the cobra, and he knew the cobra understood how much he wanted to please. The cobra was coolly pleased that all and Evan were as they should be, and Evan was so grateful he could hardly breathe…

His voice strangled, he said, "Hold that," and reached to turn his partner's face and gaze back to the teapot. Shaking, he said, "Coz, tell me when I have his expression matched."

When her small voice said there, he turned to Severus, saying, "You can drop it now. Pay attention. Who is this?"

Without changing his expression, he reached for Severus's face, careful to hold his hands in that stiff-supple way that had just been described. He let his fingers wash up the long throat, cup the narrow face.

Severus had told him about that. He'd nearly had a fit, thinking, what if the man pulled that on Reggie? It was foul enough thinking of anyone's hands going all claimy on someone who disliked that sort of thing as much as Spike, but at least Spike had no qualms about coming home to throw things around and scream I HATED THAT, and would let Evan take him out to the Quidditch pitch for the nastiest pickup games they could manage until he was worn-out enough that a rubdown could get the last of it out. Reggie would tell himself he had to be a big boy and accept that sort of thing if that's what Bella wanted from him, and just swallow it until he woke up curled around a wet pillow, hollow and miserable and too proud to come knocking on anyone's door for comfort.

One couldn't say it aloud about one's father's schoolfriends, of course, especially after agreeing to be in their stupid mugglephobic secret societies (well, he'd had to; Dad would only have pretended not to have been crushed. Besides, half his own schoolmates would never have gotten off his and Spike's backs about it ever, to say nothing of Bella), but the 'Dark Lord' was really exceptionally creepy sometimes.

Severus whispered, "Oh, Christ. You're right."

The three of them looked at each other for a long, long time, just breathing carefully and sipping their tea to keep the world from reading what was beneath their pale but placid, unconcerned faces.

Eventually, Severus ventured, "Do you think he knows?"

Narcissa closed her eyes. She might have been praying. "He can't," she said, faint but fierce. "If he does… no," she said decisively, her face's natural, delicate color coming back. "She started being smug and talking about how much he trusts her right after I told him we couldn't house his wretched keepsakes with a baby in the manor. And he didn't know what effect they'd have on Draco."

"Then we have to tell him," Evan said, although he wasn't at all sure that his cousin was right. After all, if it was a lie he'd told her, it was one she wanted to believe. Almost had to.

Spike tapped uneasily on the tablecloth. "I don't think you ought to be the one to tell him he might have to change his arrangements again," he told Narcissa. "And if he has to hear anything about Bellatrix, it shouldn't be from me. And I would much prefer you," he looked at Evan, "to stay largely off his radar. His disinterested reliance is a precious resource, and besides, I like to be able to sleep when there's time for it. So how do we do this like Slytherins?"

And just like that, Evan relaxed. Leaning easily back in his chair, he said, "Start a rumor, of course."

"Of course!" Narcissa exclaimed, brightening in relief as well.

"How do we do that?" Spike asked dubiously.

"You don't!" the cousins snarled in unison, turning on their sledgehammer with matching steel-blue eyes. Evan's were on the greener side of blue, Narcissa's closer to the silvery grey common in the Black family, but when they glared together there was no noticeable difference.

"It's all right if he sees you've noticed odd things about her," Evan added, drilling him, "but you don't let him, or anyone, know you've come to anything like a conclusion, and you don't bring it up with anyone but us. Especially not Reggie. You know how he is about her."

Spike put his hands up in a really quite good mockery of cowed. He meant his acquiescence, but his mouth was twitching. "Shall I go and let you get on with it, then?" he asked, all meekness.

"Severus, darling." Narcissa looked at him pityingly. She held out a hand for him to help her from the chair with, and then tucked it into his arm, leading them away from the tables and into the weekend-crowded street.

Evan, taking this as his signal to box up and shrink the leftovers, wasn't convinced any of the Blacks had ever heard of paying on the spot. His mum certainly hadn't. He only wondered whether Narcissa had made the arrangements while ordering or just had an account with every shop and eatery in the Alley she'd be seen dead in.

With Severus safely trapped, Narcissa finished, "You didn't really think you were getting out of the tailor's, did you?"

"I did not," he admitted with a mix of gloomy resignation and gallantry, "in truth, imagine my accomplices so flighty. But a man may dream, and a serpent must strive."

Since there weren't going to be any changing rooms, Ev deflated their daft lexophile with a poke below the ribs, and then had to make a break for it.

Always the better runner, especially through affronted crowds, Spike had him collared well before he made it to Twillfit and Tatting's. This was a tactical error. Evan had three inches and eighty pounds on him. And, after ten years of living together, eight and a half of them amiably, knew every one of his ticklish spots.

Of course, the only person better at getting out of a tight spot than a Severus who wasn't too blind, spitting mad to think straight was Luke Malfoy. By the time Mrs. Malfoy got to the shop, Spike was safely inside, explaining what she wanted to the shop assistant. It took Evan a little longer to unstick himself from lamp-post outside, since Narcissa had decided to point and laugh instead of help.

Spike, he thought fondly, wand-prying one last cobblestone off his boot, was such a mongoose. Fortunately he had friends more artistic than he was to keep him on the right side of the beautiful-to-tragic irony spectrum.


* It is. Relaxing the muscles between one's eyebrows is a known calming technique, and is probably the important part of the 'half-smile' some therapies practice. Holding it in place is not required.

(Citation probably provided on request, but as I have moved three times and lost a hard drive since I wrote that paper, this is not an absolute guarantee and it might come with some name-cursing.)