One Day at a Time
Of Poker and Treason
With a sigh, I flipped another page of the fourth years' textbook. "You know, I thought it was the students who were supposed to be insanely busy during finals week," I stated in a matter-of-fact tone to the only other person in the teacher's lounge.
Sev, sitting directly next to me, smirked in response and intertwined his fingers with mine. "You could give them a straightforward, easy, final, but what fun would that be?"
"For them or for me? Unlike you, I don't enjoy having to buy a new bottle of red ink for each student," I teased, a grin forming on my face just from the fact that I was sitting next to him, holding his hand.
"That reminds me, I still have to throw the first years' finals down a flight of stairs," he disinterestedly drawled.
"Is that the newest terminology for grading? So which test gets the highest grade? The one that travels the farthest?" I gave him a teasing smirk in response.
"Well, as I have yet to find a carnivorous flight of stairs, I follow the papers with bottles of red ink, and whichever one emerges unscathed receives the O," he painted the ridiculous situation with a perfectly serious face.
" 'The' O? You only hand out one O per exam?" I accompanied my words with a slightly incredulous look, trying to decipher the extent of his seriousness.
"And you don't? Tsk tsk, you spoil the students, Lee," he replied with a disbelieving, scolding air before the slightly upturned corners of his lips gave him away.
I shot him a sardonic look before saying in a more light-hearted tone, "Want to take a break from work? I still need pay back for you beating me in chess yesterday." I took a deck of cards out of my pocket and held them up.
"Cards are not equal to chess," he scoffed. "Chess is a game of skill, wit, strategy."
"Well, a chess board is a bit heavy to carry around in my pockets for spontaneous five minute breaks." Without waiting for a further response, I started dealing a five-card hand to each of us. "Poker?"
Sev made a generic acquiescing sound before condescendingly stating, "Poker is one of those card games based almost entirely on luck. Being victorious in poker is near meaningless."
"You're just saying that because you know I'll win," I grinned. "Not that it matters, because I already beat you in chess the day before yesterday."
"And I defeated you the day before that. And the day before that," he smugly drawled.
"Well I—" With a frown, I paused and started counting back the days of the week. Unfortunately, we had been too busy with finals to see each other for anything longer than a short break in the evenings, so more elaborate dates were on hold in favor of quick chess games. "Well, I beat you the day before that. So once I beat you in this game of poker, that means we're tied," I gave him a playful grin, knowing his low opinion of poker.
The moving images on the cards started protesting in their miniscule voices that they were being ignored in favor of a debate, until we finally devoted a fraction of our attention to the cards in our hands; two of the adjacent cards in my hand seemed to be engaged in a fierce argument with each other. "Get rid of him," Merlin, the Ace, pointed towards the adjacent Two.
"What? No! Don't get rid of me," the Two's drawing of a Squib retorted. "I might be useful. What if you draw another two? Then you'll regret it!"
"Have you ever read Nacht's 'The Philosophy of Dark Magic'?" Severus started a new topic of conversation, while leisurely ignoring the protesting cries of the cards he was exchanging.
"No, I haven't," I replied, only half-paying attention as I continued to debate which cards to exchange.
"I think you'd like it. One of the few existing books on Dark Magic which is actually rational," he continued the conversation while spreading his hand to reveal a pair of threes.
"Pair of sixes," I shuffled my hand back into the deck before replying, "That certainly seems like a rare species of book. What's its argument?"
"The media seems to find it quite the controversial book." His acidic tone implied his opinion of the media, before he switched to a more respectful tone for his next sentences, "Nacht's argument is essentially that there is no 'Dark' aspect of Dark Magic that is a fundamental aspect of the spells themselves. Any such judgments of its nature are entirely dependent both on the societal standards of the era and the circumstances of their use."
I tilted my head in a questioning manner. "How is that controversial? That's just fact."
"That's what I think, but we seem to be in a precious minority." The corners of his lips turned up the slightest amount with a hint of a truly genuine smile before he whispered, half to himself, "It's nice to find a kindred spirit."
I was distracted by the sound of the door to the teacher's lounge opening, and reflexively checked myself: was I doing anything to show that Sev and I had recently become more than friends? No, starting the game of poker had necessitated us to stop holding hands and to sit further apart than our normal non-existent separation, where I would sometimes rest my head on his shoulder.
Flitwick casually entered the lounge and squeaked out a greeting to the both of us, to which Sev responded only by raising an eyebrow. We continued our game of poker and the charms professor, thankfully, seemed to be unaware that anything had changed between Severus and I as of last week. Our tacit agreement to not let anyone know that we were—well, whatever we were—seemed to be working successfully.
It was the next day and I was sitting in my quarters, expectantly waiting for Sev to become bored of emptying bottles of red ink on his students' tests and visit for a game of chess. I heard a sudden knocking on my door, only he was not standing there in a casual, almost bored manner with the small tweed bags of chess pieces in his hand.
As soon as I swung the door open he quickly embraced me, almost as though he had reached the end of a time limit in which he would be allowed to hold me such. "I don't know what's going to happen. Be careful," he said in a worried, almost fearful voice. Fearful? Sev didn't do fear, and the fact that there could even be a hint of that emotion in his voice was enough to terrify me. With a final squeeze of my hand, the normally emotionless Potions Master had gone sprinting down the hall.
"Sev--?" I called out after him quietly. He was gone and, feeling rather lost, I returned to my quarters. Mere moments, later, though, I heard yells and the sound of running feet coming from the Slytherin common room down the hall. My senses already sharpened, I immediately ran towards the entrance to the common room frantically wondering What's happening?
Some of the younger Slytherins were crying, while some of the older students were whiter than sheets of paper and looked downright terrified. Yet others were excitedly gossiping with their friends, and a few looked unperturbed by all of the chaos and were lazily stretched out in the high-backed chairs. "What's going on here?!" I yelled over the commotion, determined to get an answer and hoping nobody had noticed the fearful quaver in my voice.
"Death Eaters are attacking the castle," Theo Nott calmly replied.
I think if I had opened my eyes any wider they would have popped right out of my head. "Order! There will be order!" I yelled, knowing that Severus would not be returning any time soon to deal with the students of his house. The din dimmed only slightly and I still had to yell my next sentence, "Everybody, stay in the Common Room! Remain calm, no Death Eaters are going to attack Slytherins as long as you stay here and you stay together. Do not let anybody in or out of the common room until further orders are given to you by Hogwarts faculty."
With that, I spun on my heel and left the students. Thankfully, being foolishly brave was a Gryffindor trait, not a Slytherin one, so I doubted that any of my Slytherin students would be idiotic enough to run into battle and get themselves killed. Now I had my own problems to deal with, though. Judging by my Dark Mark, my regiment had not been called to this battle. I couldn't exactly fight on the side of the Hogwarts Professors, though, because if a Death Eater did recognize me, I would be reported and executed at the next available opportunity. Just the thought of attacking other professors—or defenseless students—made me sick to my stomach, though. I couldn't stand by and let my students be harmed, tortured, even killed.
I started sprinting towards the upper stories of the castle, desperately hoping that I would not meet any Death Eaters. I would not fight on either side, I decided, but would instead surreptitiously usher any students I found to safety. My careful plan was immediately blown to smithereens, for the first person who crossed my path was not only a Death Eater, but the commander of my regiment. I froze, as though that would somehow keep him from noticing me, but it was too late. He immediately pointed his wand at me in a threatening gesture, before hesitating.
"Colburn!" he snapped, lowering his wand. "What are you doing here? Only commanders were summoned." I felt like a deer caught in the headlights of the Knight Bus. He gave me another scrutinizing glance before angrily adding, "Why aren't you wearing your Death Eater robes and mask?"
"I—uh—don't have them anymore," I lamely stated, desperate to get any words out before he decided it would be a good idea to hex me.
"What?" He glanced up and down the hall. "Look, I don't have time to find out all the contorted details about how you got here." He suddenly jerked his wand in my direction and I jumped, terrified that he had taken back his decision to not hex me. He only transfigured my robes and conjured me a Death Eater mask, though, before stating "The main battle is this way, follow me."
I grudgingly ran after him, glad for the mask if only because it hid my emotions. We appeared in the Great Hall, where Death Eaters outnumbered Aurors two to one. I noticed with a sinking feeling in my heart that some of those fighting the Death Eaters were only students. Older students, admittedly, but still students, students who I had been instructing for the past year. The head of my regiment stalked off towards one side of the Great Hall, immediately joining a duel that another Death Eater had already started.
Once I was convinced my commander was no longer paying attention to me, I immediately fled in the opposite direction, desperate to separate myself from both sides of the battle. On one hand, I felt physically sick of the Death Eaters, as though I was soon going to be at a breaking point, but on the other hand, my innate survival instinct would not allow me do something as suicidal as directly oppose them. I had only gone a short distance from the Great Hall when I heard a voice come from the door of an open classroom. My feet suddenly felt glued to the floor.
"The Dark Lord wants him alive," I heard Severus state.
"You were doing more than trying to hand him to the Dark Lord alive!" a vaguely familiar authoritative voice bellowed.
"Are you doubting my loyalty, when I am of a higher rank than you? Give me back my wand!" Sev hissed.
"You cannot convince me otherwise; I heard your treasonous words with my own ears, I heard you trying to help Potter!"
My jaw dropped in horror. Treason was punishable by death. Without a thought I immediately ran into the classroom, determined to somehow convince the other Death Eater that he was wrong. Harry was incapacitated but alive on the floor. Severus was in his Death Eater robes, sans mask and magically bound to the wall. The last Death Eater in the room had also lost his mask and I realized with a jolt why his voice had sounded vaguely familiar: it was my brother Seginus.
"What's going on here?" I attempted to say in as confident and authoritative of a voice as I could.
"This treasonous slimebag was helping the Half-blood," Seginus snarled, gesturing with his wand.
"If by 'helping' you mean 'not killing', the Dark Lord specifically requested Ha—Potter alive. Unless you're disobeying orders?" I said the last sentence as coldly and threateningly as I could. In reality, I had no clue what state the Dark Lord wanted Harry in.
"He led the Boy-Who-Deserves-To-Die away from the Battle Field before giving him advice on how to avoid capture," my brother spat. "He's probably working for the Aurors. He deserves to be killed, as does the boy. I'm not risking him worming through my fingers," he lifted his wand.
"No!" I yelled out. "I mean, let him plead his case before the Dark Lord himself. The Dark Lord will punish him as he sees fit. As far as the boy, he must be delivered unharmed." Severus and Harry were watching our argument carefully without saying a word.
"Commanders have the right to execute those committing acts of treason on the spot in a battle situation," Seginus seemed to be reciting a written rule. "Who are you, giving me orders?" he suddenly turned towards me. "You're not a commander, and you're a woman no less!"
I felt a surge of anger and blurted out. "Damn it, Seginus! Listen to me!"
His face only became more twisted with rage. "How dare you refer to me by my first name! That's Commander Colburn, to you! Disrespect to your superiors is also a punishable offence, need I remind you?"
"I'm sorry, Commander Colburn," I said silkily. I decided to take another approach, and had to keep myself from gagging on the sugary sweet words I said next, "It's only that such a gross miscarriage of justice is not befitting of a man of your stature."
"Not giving this man a death sentence is what would be a gross miscarriage of justice. You do not even know what has transpired here, yet you are defending this traitor? You are also very far from the main battle. It seems to me that perhaps you are also a traitor," he dangerously stated. My eyes went wide and I felt every drop of blood drain from my face at his suggestion. "For now, I will deal with one traitor at a time," he snarled, suddenly pointing his wand at Severus. "Avada—"
"NO!" I shrieked. "This man is no traitor!" I desperately pleaded, my voice about an octave higher than normal.
Seginus had stopped his incantation and turned on me. "Why should I listen to you?!" his rage-filled bellow seemed to fill the entire room.
With a combination of anger at my brother and terror for Sev's life, I ripped off my mask and threw it to the ground. Seginus's eyes opened ever so slightly wider and Harry gasped "Professor Colburn!" in a horrified tone.
Seginus quickly recovered from the shock at seeing me and said in only a slightly more civil tone, "Look, Liseli, I don't know what you're doing here, but I will not tolerate your disobedience. There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that his man was committing treason." He raised an eyebrow and said in a cold, calculating tone, "Perhaps if you execute him for me I will fail to investigate your potentially traitorous behavior." I thought that every speck of blood had already drained from my face, but I was proved wrong as my face became even paler. Seginus suddenly pointed his wand at me and, before I could react, stated the word "Imperio."
It was a very odd sensation. It felt as though I was floating above myself, disinterestedly watching some chestnut-haired woman named Liseli. At the same time, my frantic worry for Sev was keeping my feet firmly grounded in my body, and the resulting feeling was one of being torn between two places. That chestnut-haired woman was holding my wand up, obediently aiming it at Sev, before I turned away from him with a burst of energy. A nagging voice in my head told me to point it at Sev again.
NO! I silently screamed, and now the urge to turn towards him and the urge to turn away from him resulted in me jerkily pointing my wand towards different spots in the room, as though I was on some sort of demented carousal.
Sev…wall…Harry…wall…Seginus…Sev…Seginus…"Crucio," the word awkwardly left my mouth and suddenly the disconnecting haze was gone, my curse having interrupted my brother's concentration.
"How dare you attack me!" he snarled, ignoring that it was him who had just put me under the Imperius curse. "Just as you attacked Matar."
"Matar attacked me," I spat back, remembering the duel in my apartment many weeks back.
"Yeah. Sure. Which reminds me. You'll probably be overjoyed to hear this. Matar's dead. He was killed by an Auror. About fifteen minutes ago," I had never heard Seginus's voice so full of hatred, and I had never seen anything resembling the endless grief now settling in his eyes.
I stared at my oldest brother, stunned. The words bounced off of my ears as oil does to water, simply because I couldn't believe it was true. I had never been close to Matar, but Seginus and him had been the best of friends since birth, utterly inseparable, and suddenly the reason for Seginus's rather demented behavior in the past few minutes seemed clear. "I—I would never be overjoyed at the death of one of my brothers," I feebly defended myself, shocked.
Seginus looked near to tears. "Are you going to execute this treasonous scumbag, or not?" he hatefully gestured towards Sev, his face twisted in a pained look.
"I—I—" I looked between my brother and the love of my life. I couldn't think of anything to say, any method to defend Sev. The phrase "Matar's dead" was ringing distractedly in my ear and crowding out any other thoughts.
"Either you execute him, or I do, and then I report your treasonous behavior to your commander," his voice was shaking with rage. I gaped at him. Report my treasonous behavior? That would be a death sentence. "Don't push me, Liseli. I'll do it," he breathed and there was something almost animal-like in the crazed emotions swirling in his light blue eyes.
Surely this was simply a surreal nightmare, one far too horrible to even be confused with reality. The two choices Seginus offered stood before me: I could—I could kill Severus, in which case my life would be spared. Or, I could not kill Severus, in which case Seginus would execute him anyways and my execution for treason would follow shortly afterwards. My brother seemed to have decided that I had been allotted enough time to make a decision, for he focused all of his attention on Severeus and slowly started the incantation, clearly savoring the moment, "Av—"
Something inside me broke. With lightning speed, I finished my words before he could so much as look at me. "Avada Kedavra!"
…
A/N: So I'm afraid that I've either made it too obvious what happens next, or in my attempt to keep it a surprise, I've skewed perception far too far in the other direction. I guess that's my way of saying opinions and feedback on this chapter are greatly appreciated!
I was planning to put this chapter up a bit earlier in the day, but I was drafting it with the advice of all you lovely people who reviewed last chapter. You know who you are (: Mark Darcy, gothicflower, tibys, angelofire and Leslie.