Lies, damned lies, and occlumency. When his lab's funding is threatened, Severus shows what he's made of, discomfiting everyone but his closest friends. They? Are rightly terrified.

Or: It's easier to pull wool over a wolf's eyes when it's in sheep's clothing, and snakes eat toads for breakfast.

Warnings: Long. Slytherin. Ministry toadies (ahahaha sorry). Lies, Damn Lies, and Occlumency. Do not give Severus red ink if you value your SOOOOUUUUL. (((O.O)))

St. Mungo's

Evan bounced off someone ridiculously tall. Not at all sure he had time for normal civility, he tried to just shoulder past with a curt word of apology, but the mild voice of his former fellow-prefect made him stop with a sigh. "Rosier, isn't it? Everything all right?"

"Oh, Lupin, I do not have time for you," he groaned. Later he would realize it had been perfect iambic pentameter, tell Spike he was taking over the choice of their bedtime reading, and be more or less patted on the head. At the moment, he was barely noticing large, moving objects directly in front of him.

"What's the matter?" Lupin asked in (still-mild, the skunk) alarm.

He had, Rosier recalled, been relatively free of House prejudice, for a Gryff, and had done all his prefectural work of the sort one could check off a list responsibly. One could only blame him so much for having the cowardly good sense not to challenge his bullying bastards of mates.

Evan wasn't guiltless of delegating his duties himself. No, he was guiltless. When work was done willingly, by the best person to do it, better than it had been done in institutional memory, the person in charge got to feel, rather than guilty, proud. Evans hadn't been nearly as effective at what Lupin avoided as Spike and Narcissa had been at what Evan had left for them, though.

Besides, in Evan's case, it hadn't really been so much him avoiding his job, as, well, Slytherin prefects traditionally didn't do very much and the lower years knew better than to make them. And Severus wasn't actually half Muggle, he was half wizard and hlaf mother hen. He hadn't been able to help being the most active prefect they'd had at least since Malfoy, with or without a badge. He fussed about Evan being lazy and leaving work undone for him to do, but really? That was just Spike.

And it was a little bit the same with Evans, Ev had observed. She was just as much of a busybody, found it just as impossible to hold back from taking care of people, and would probably have done twice as much work as Lupin even if he'd been doing everything he was supposed to.

But he hadn't been. Unlike Spike, who scolded indiscriminately, in a knee-jerk sort of way and as a matter of personal style, she'd been actually angry about it, had emphatically not volunteered. Evan didn't like her; she'd made Severus miserable for years; but he'd been on her side on that front. In spades.

Even ordinary prefect work was tedious and a distraction from OWL and NEWT revision, but she hadn't had ordinary prefect work. She and Lupin had been the only real shot Hogwarts had had, in their fifth year, at keeping Lupin's friends off Severus's neck. And she'd still been Severus's friend that year, or thought she was. Was still trying to be, at least, in her stiff-necked, demanding, infantile way. And Lupin had sat on his hands and stared at his feet while his friends got worse and worse until the sky cracked open, left Severus skinned and shaking for seasons, left Sirius out in the cold.

Lupin clearly didn't understand that it was mostly Evan, rather than Slytherin as a whole, who'd been responsible for most of his thuggish group's inability to land a job. The whole House had helped make sure all of Wizarding Britain and much of Europe knew what they were like, yes. It had been Ev's intention, though: a two-year plan formed whole and cold and set into motion before Spike had even woken up after the horror under the beech tree, while Evan's vision was still so clouded by scarlet and Black he wasn't having anything that could have been called an actual thought.

Lupin didn't have any way to know that, as far as Evan was aware. And Evan had so-very-kindly given him a nudge towards self-employment, because, unfortunately, the least guilty of the bunch (although they were all guilty) had been the only one who couldn't have stayed alive after school without an income. It was working out well enough for them. Apparently Marauders' Moon products were almost as popular with the Magical Law Enforcement office as they were at Zonko's.

Evan had nothing to feel either ashamed or smug about. He'd been after justice and oh Salazar, keep these people and their mostly-excellent CVs out of my government, not revenge.

Maybe a little smug. It had been a delicate line to walk, cutting them out of future power without stirring up a new War of the (Black) Roses.

Besides, if the 'Marauders' had grown up and cut it out, people would have noticed and passed that along, too. In justice. They mostly hadn't. They'd just gotten more discreet, (only barely, by serpentine standards), more selective. He'd told Slytherin to tell the truth.

Lupin might not have held a grudge even if he'd known what Evan's role had been: he was more self-aware than his friends and knew perfectly well he'd been a cringing, useless, hypocritical coward unworthy of his House. There was something pleasant, though, in knowing he had enough wool over his eyes to think Ev was, for a Slytherin, a decent chap who didn't actively hate him. Possibly true, actually, depending on your definitions of 'decent chap' and 'hate,' so there you were.

"I just found out they're doing a surprise inspection of Belby's lab," he said hurriedly, because Lupin was showing no inclination to get out of his way and making a scene would probably take longer, "and their grant's up for renewal soon, and—"

His jaw dropped, because Lupin had seized his arm with unexpected strength and was toting him along just where he wanted to go.

Evan had been Slytherin's only game-day Seeker until midway through his sixth year. By that point he'd gotten too tall for it, too well-developed, too NEWT-class-frazzled, and too busy with the prefect duties Spike couldn't do better. So he'd started training Reg up to replace him, as he'd always known he would unless some young genius popped up. They'd had a Seeker on the reserve team already and Reg had been playing Chaser for years, but Lockhart had in fact been incapable of spotting any glints that hadn't come from his teeth. Also of letting anyone younger try out. Even when Reg had more or less taken over for him on the pitch, Ev hadn't officially given up his spot or forfeited his captaincy, he'd just switched out of the roster for most of the games. He knew who all the other players had been, even their reserves. After all, even if no one else had used the reserve players quite like Slytherin had, that didn't mean no one ever would.

That was how Ev could be sure Lupin had never been even a Gryffindor reserve. The man had a Beater's arm somehow anyway. He didn't look it; he looked like… like a lupin, actually, if less purple and fluttery. That tall, anyway, and as slim, though sleeker than Spike.

He had to get Severus invested in food again. The way he forgot it existed when he was wrapped up in a project and lost his appetite under stress was nothing new, but these days thestrals were sleeker than Spike.

Outright expressions of worry or disapproval would only get Severus all worked up about Not Being Right For Evan Like A (whole) Normal Person But How Dare Anyone Tell Him How (who) To Be. Ev had watched Narcissa try that and he was absolutely not going there, never never never. Hints, though, had only gotten him a faceful of relevant quotes from the stories about that barely civilized Victorian detective with the terrible hat that Spike was so starry-eyed about. These had been delivered with a happy, carefree pleasure in the thought of any commonality that had been made Spike look about twelve and been, for him, blackmail-worthy levels of adorable, but also made Evan want to hit something.

If this kept up, Ev was not going to be able to look Mrs. Snape in the eye. Which would probably make her less afraid of him. It simply wouldn't do.

"How did you find out?" Lupin asked. His voice, at odds with the urgency in his pace that matched Evan's own, was merely curious. Interesting, but maybe not surprising. If he was ashamed of what he'd done (and he'd seemed ashamed even at the time) he hadn't liked doing it, or hadn't liked liking it. He would have had to hide that distaste from his friends—or hid how much he didn't like it, at least. That, or the shame had been a lie Slytherin had believed. And, of course, that lot were all accomplished sneaks, well-practiced in lying credibly to teachers and fellow-students both.

"Amos Diggory, he works Beast Division, says his son's just done his first accidental magic, although frankly it sounded like the work of a stiff breeze, but proud papas, far be it from me. Asked me to lunch to talk about a family portrait—" He nearly stumbled. Evan wasn't a short wizard; he could meet Luke eye to eye and had a few inches on Spike. Lupin was a good half-head taller, though, and he was absolutely eating the floor up with the stretch of his legs. "What's it to you?"

"I know the family of a girl who's gone missing," Lupin said, with a hurried note that made alarm bells ring false! in Evan's ears. "I've been stopping by recently, checking if she's turned up. The family's muggle; they can't get into the Alley without help. I like Ranjit, and Ming Lovegood's all right."

"Good cook, too," Evan said absently while his mind churned. "Although I wish she hadn't introduced Severus to green tea; I mean, it's nice he's found a flavor of ice cream he doesn't think is cloying, but really…"

Lupin chuckled. They fell silent, though, as they hastened down a multi-flight of sliding stairs and through the corridor leading to the lab.

They stopped just outside its door at the sound of loud voices, and Evan cursed under his breath. They were too late.

"Why, yes," a breathy little-girl's voice was saying, very sweetly. "That's why it's called a surprise inspection, Mr. Patil."

"Well, I don't know how you mean to inspect us properly if you stop all our deliveries!" Patil's voice didn't usually have much of an accent, but it got distinctly musical when he was angry. This had won him a few dates and bed-friends before his marriage, but never any arguments. "And where's your auth—"

"Pat!" Evan heard his favorite irate bellow come from the depths of the lab, rapidly nearing. "Where the hell are my—" It stopped.

Evan gave a huge, silent sigh of relief and levitated himself a foot off the ground, waving intently. He saw Spike, his usual work-hours wreck, lift narrowed, assessing eyes to meet his, without any change of expression. He pointed down at the petite little witch and her, ugh, awful alice-band and and flippy teased hair and wrote Authorized! in the air with his made a chopping motion, too. Seeing understanding in his partner's eyes, and a sudden half-lidded explosion of furious thought, he let himself down.

"Well," he heard Spike say, sounding put-upon but resigned, "and why does the Ministry feel it necessary to interfere with my guinea pigs?"

Guinea pigs. Evan very discretely air-punched. Lupin shot him the fish-eye. Ev grinned, with every single tooth. Lupin took a casual sideways step in the away direction. Ev's grin widened. Lupin visibly decided to be put-upon and tolerantly annoyed, and Evan made no bones about trying not to laugh. It was such a this-is-how-I-deal-with-Sirius-maybe-it-will-work-on-his-cousin-please-oh-please-oh-please reaction.

"Are you in charge here, Mr…?"

Evan could just about taste the lightning calculation of emphasize attractiveness or power? in the instant's pause before Spike replied, "Severus Snape, ma'am, I'm lead apprentice. Master Belby is out negotiating with suppliers."

"Are you really?" the light little voice asked dubiously. "And is it Master Belby's practice to allow his apprentices to come to work in such a state?"

Spike laughed. Pleasantly. Next to Evan, Lupin's jaw dropped. Evan had to fight the impulse himself. "Certainly not, Madam…?"

"Dolores Umbridge." She was on a holding pattern of slightly poisonous sweetness, like one of Mulciber's cocktails, until she knew what to make of Spike.

"Delighted," Spike said, extending a hand. "No, indeed, Madam Umbridge, none of us would think of coming to work in the same condition we usually seem to get in before leaving. There are cauldrons going all the time, you see; one gets a bit… well. Do forgive my appearance; I prefer to take the morning brewing shift. Since our replenishing coffee-pot failed…" He shrugged helplessly. "I'm afraid we haven't any space in the budget for frivolities, and I'm usually the one most awake before lunch."

Thus explaining why he was the only one looking seethed and oiled, and at the same time telling her none of the present grant's gold was unused or being misapplied. Evan wondered whether any of those implications were true; he knew the coffee-pot had been fixed without any money being spent on it—it had been an ordinary coffee-pot when they'd gotten it, in fact.

Preferring to take the morning shift at the cauldrons was definitely true; Spike would take brewing over Necessary Paperwork at any time of day, if the alternative was delegation rather than procrastination. Early on, Patil had complained about not getting as much practical experience as he'd expected, so Spike had Generously Stepped Aside and sat down with a pot of red ink to proofread his reports. Since Spike had had extra time on his hands and all.

It was amazing how much like blood even the pinkest red ink looked after Spike had been correcting your work with it for a while. It went brownish. The parchment turned irregularly pus-yellow around the worst passages. Girls had asked him to use their sparkly ink in an attempt to make it more cheerful, make an essay look written-on rather than a victim of the Death of a Thousand Cuts. A mistake: glitter clotted, shimmeriness just got… sickly.

Patil's spelling was all right, but he had not, previously to this experience, seen the need to use proper English grammar in a lab report.

It wasn't his fault he'd been unprepared. He'd been ahead of them, so he'd never gotten any Sodding Snape Commentary™ himself. He hadn't been in their House, so he'd never seen anyone stand staring at their poor mutilated work in the common room, struggling to maintain their public face. He couldn't have known.

Except that he had by that point met Spike, so never mind.

"Lovegood," Severus went on, "get yourself fume-proofed, will you, and take over for me in the stillroom while I take care of our inspectors. And you, Patil, we need those requisition forms in by three, and all the charts done by the end of the week."

Evan grinned again, and Lupin gave him a mystified look. He made a kissing-up face. Since Lupin didn't look enlightened, he leaned in and subvocalized, "Brainless paperwork. Punishing the one who was rude to her. Any office-rat understands. Those are things Pat always does."

"I daresay we could manage some tea for you, though, if you'd prefer to wait a moment while I tidy up," Spike offered.

"Oh, well," the inspector replied, her sweetness still sounding a bit as though she were covering distaste, but more civil than before. "If it would make you more comfortable."

"Speaking of comfort, you're welcome to sit anywhere you like. I recommend the chair by the microscope; Lovegood put a cushioning charm on it before she'd used it five minutes and it's, well, it's tolerable now."

Judging by how much he complained about that chair, she'd quickly understand what she was meant to about the luxury their lab enjoyed and what their standards of tolerable were. Or she might just be comfortable and not-offended; Lovegood was a curvy little bit of a thing and Spike was a long drink of wit-sharpening potion without any cushioning of his own. Their chairs would not be comfortable for each other. Proportions, ergonomics, vanilla and chocolate…

There were tea-making noises. Evan sighed a little, and under-whispered to Lupin, "We'd better clear out before anyone turns around."

Lupin shook his head with a little smirk, and then twirled his wand around himself, as though wrapping himself in a rope. His body faded into the walls. Evan felt a tap on his head, and then a cold and runny sensation as though someone had cracked an egg on his skull.

He looked at—or, rather, through—his hands, and waved one. There was a very faint shimmer of movement in the air, but that was all. When he waved it more slowly, there wasn't even that. "Nice," he said under his breath, storing up all the information he had about the charm for later research. There were distinct advantages to looking indolently harmless: people spoke freely, and sometimes even tried to impress you. If you were possible but not easy to impress, sometimes they'd show you their good tricks more than once.

They (or, at least, he) followed the inspector inside the lab, careful not to move quickly or abruptly. Evan also followed Spike into the WC when he left the inspector alone under Pat's resentfully silenced eye. He glanced behind him, and was surprised to see what she looked like from the front: trim enough, but stocky and quite top-heavy. Her mouth looked like it might have taken a size-altering hex at some point and not quite come back to normal; her lips were slit too long to look quite natural. It made them look almost frog-like, although he could see that at a normal length they would merely have been on the thin side of ordinary.

He wondered, too, if she had some non-European ancestry, or if the way her face was broad had been an effect of the same curse. The broadness didn't look quite Irish, Scots, or Germanic, and her eyes bulged more than Mingyue's, whose other features harmonized them.

He couldn't remember having more fun with any painting than the one he'd done for the Lovegoods' wedding. The two of them were good-looking in such different ways that he'd been unable to resist hiding yin-yangs everywhere. They were both interesting conversationalists, too, provided you didn't take Xeno seriously and let his insanity drive you up a wall.

Evan watched Severus (who was of course also insane, and regularly drove everyone up the wall. It was one of Ev's favorite spectator sports) freshen his clothes, cleaning his face, hands, and hair with all the grim efficiency of someone who'd grown up washing under a pump. He rolled his eyes when Spike of course used the same bar of fume-protectant laced soap for all three. When he turned towards the door, Evan turned the water back on, whispered, "Lance, Naj," and touched his arm.

Severus's hand came up in surprise, looking for him. "Came to warn me?" he whispered back, warm. "When'd you learn a chameleon spell?"

"Haven't learned it yet, tell you later. Hold still," Evan told him, and pulled the currently-invisible ribbon out of his own hair. He wrapped Spike's back into a short, stubby mariner's club, the ribbon extending it long enough to be pulled back. That would only last until it was taken out, which was a pity; it might be more manageable longer, but Severus did insist on his hidey-curtains, alas. Once Evan took his hands off it, the ribbon turned black again.

"Neater," Evan allowed. Not just neater: he looked better with it back. Not even just because denying him his favorite hiding place showed off his cheekbones and jaw and suddenly his nose was balanced and he looked Italian instead of villainous. Or because revealing his neck made the fun-with-pastels costume-design sketcher in Ev think more of black swans (who had swallowed whole plums) than vampires. Which was probably the wrong way around, but it was quite a long neck.

Rather because even clean and without his fume-repellant, his hair looked, when it was down, as though he just wasn't making an effort. Which was true, because the amount of effort it took before anyone could see an effect was unreasonable for everyday. Even Narcissa had given up. It was just stubbornly listless, when it wasn't frazzled. Ev spent about two minutes longer on his hair in the morning than Spike did, because of detangling and clubbing it back, and he'd caught Lockhart sneaking into their bathroom and failing to get into his trunk about eight times at school, looking for his nonexistent hair potions. He knew he was lucky.

"More dashing," he smiled, and patted his flatmate on the shoulder. "Your serpent eats toads, I believe? Leave no bones, Naj."

"Ass," Spike whispered back with a smile, shaking his head. "Are there any greater than worms that don't?" Then he squared his shoulders, turned the water off, and strode for the door.

He stopped himself before he reached it, after only three steps, and finished leaving at a still efficient but much more relaxed clip. Evan followed him much more slowly and carefully. He looked forward to telling Narcissa that their long afternoons of posture practice, so horrible and grueling they'd had to make it a regular practice to go for gallops on Salisbury Plain afterwards to siphon off some of everyone's violently frustrated hysteria, hadn't gone to waste.

"My apologies for the delay," Severus said, sounding, incredibly, a little embarrassed. "The particles do rather stick."

"It seems a most unpleasant place to work, Mr. Snape," said the breathy little voice, curious.

"R&D brewing is often like that, Madam Umbridge," Severus assured her in a shrugging tone. "There isn't much to be done about it, with most potions projects. Once a recipe is perfected one can often use a bubble-head charm, but while it's still in development it's essential to be able to smell what one's doing."

"How irksome. Now, let me see…" there was a shuffle of paper. "My records show that all three of Belby's apprentices have at least seven NEWT passes. And you have… yes, indeed." She looked at him: mildly impressed, rather suspicious, and deeply censorious. "Surely you could have found some other work, Mr. Snape?" she asked with sweet reproach.

"Well, yes," Spike said, sounding surprised, leaning on the counter as he reheated the teapot in his hands.

Evan took a moment to gloat about that, because anyone else would have been doing it to show off his wandless magic, or out of thoughtless habit, but not his partner. Severus, Evan knew for a certainty, was just too much of a control freak to leave the kettle's temperature to a heat source he couldn't monitor by feel and control without even thinking about it. And he would have considered that it would have looked like showing off, too, and gotten embarrassed about it, and then gone ahead anyway because of seeing that this desk-despot would like him showing off for her and would react badly to bad tea (even though nobody else noticed half the 'faults' that made tea 'bad' to Severus).

That was Ev's Spike, too busy absently knocking everyone's socks off while fretting to notice he had something to boast about. That was Severus, who'd decided all on his own that Evan was useful and not-awful, before they were even speaking, who Evan had drawn in from the cold and kept.

"Of course," Severus went on regretfully, "all the other offers that would have given me work this challenging would have meant leaving Britain. It's a pity my Head of House didn't tell me he was sending my CV out; I could have saved him a few owls."

Evan raised an eyebrow, his lips pursing: he hadn't heard of any such offers. If Spike had turned down the chance to get the hell out of British politics on the assumption that Ev wouldn't have jumped at the excuse to move with him, they were going to have a prolonged conversation.

If Spike had turned down the chance to get out of 'politics,' period, they were going to have a prolonged conversation.

He wondered where Lupin had got to.

"Still," the witch persisted with a distasteful little twitter, "coming to work for werewolves…"

"For them?" Spike shrugged, also distasteful. "Hardly, Madam Umbridge. I'll grant you that they'll likely feel a benefit if we're successful, but that's hardly the point, is it?"

There was a tiny flicker of movement in the air near the door, and Evan's eyes fixed on it. He didn't want to lose Lupin's location again unless he had to; the man was clearly a very effective sneak, for an oversized Gryffindor. There had definitely been something off about the way he'd explained his interest in the lab, too.

"And what would you say the point is?" she asked, taking up the quill stuck to her clipboard.

"Got to control the beasts one way or another, don't we," Spike said.

There was a head-jerky motion in that same patch of empty air. As unlike Lupin's usual easy amble as that was, Evan was surprised himself. He'd never heard Spike sound so bored and callous at the same time before. At his desk in the corner, Patil half-rose. He only sank down again when Severus turned, in the process of fetching himself a teabag, to glare steaming death at him.

"The Werewolf Registry—"

"Does well, considering its current, limited resources," Spike finished for her smoothly, with a regretful grimace (it was clearly not what she'd been going to say), "but we have every hope that our product will help to expand its function."

For the first time, the little witch looked uncertain. "I understood you were attempting to alleviate the discomfort of their transformations?" she asked sweetly.

Spike chuckled. Since it was the kind of warm chuckle that even his friends didn't usually get, sounding rather like one of Lucius's, all the hair on the back of Evan's neck stood straight up. Given how wavy his hair was, this was something of an accomplishment. "Again, Madam Umbridge, if that's a side effect of the perfected potion, fine, but it's not really the point, is it?"

"Well, then?"

"The violence," Spike explained. "As matters stand, the creatures become wholly monstrous in both body and mind every month." There was a split-second's hesitation. Evan thought probably no one else even noticed it; he recognized it as calculation. "They can be put down like the mad dogs they are, of course, but they can't be held morally accountable for what they do in that state. What we're trying to create is a potion that will allow them to keep, well," he gave an unpleasant breath of laughter, "what minds they have, whatever their shape. It might reduce the number of attacks and even if it doesn't, it would allow them to remember what they've done when transformed. As no doubt you're aware, Madam Umbridge, in many cases, it's only a criminal's attempts to cover up a crime after the fact that leads to their being caught."

He'd started to say something else and then closed his mouth on it. Evan put a hand over his own mouth and bit down hard. He knew exactly what Spike had wanted to say there, and he was not going to laugh while invisible. It would have been: I have references.

Fortunately, Umbridge had been looking down at the notes she was writing. "I see," she said slowly, counterpoint to the rapid scribbling of her quill. "And, as regards the Registry?"

"Well, ma'am, it's always been Professor Slughorn's belief that it's a good idea to have carrots to offer as well as sticks. If we can get it to work, even if it doesn't make the change any more comfortable for them, the potion should be attractive to any wolves who would prefer not to hurt anyone. And if there's some incentive for the beasts to come and be registered, the Ministry might have a much easier time tagging the ones who were never wizards. We don't track or trace muggles, after all. And if it does end up reducing the discomfort after all, Madam Umbridge, we can use that. Even the ones who don't care about controlling themselves might come take it of their own accord, in that case."

"Why, that's an interesting point, Mr. Snape," she said in an almost friendly tone, very nearly devoid of artificial sweeteners. "You seem to have given this a great deal of thought, or is this Damocles Belby's position?"

"I couldn't say what his position is," Spike said, with an uninterested truthfulness that was entirely dishonest: he certainly couldn't tell her Belby had a granddaughter who'd managed to stay unregistered.

(Lydia had very little patience with Evan's lack of skill with a kite. He could get her to sit quietly and color while Belby and Spike talked shop over tea—if he promised to help her turn her picture into a kite when she was done. Not the most inexplicable obsession in someone who had to be locked into a cage of pain every month, so Evan tried not to find it wearing. He did wish someone with the right to put her at a risk of skinned knees would buy the wretched girl a kiddie broom.)

Severus went on, "I can tell you that often a research brewer will fix on a potion to invent purely because it seems impossible; I can't tell you how many people have tried to re-create Mithridates' Shield, for example."

"What on earth..?" she began

This, of course, was a mistake, as Evan could have told her. Severus's eyes lit up, and he began, "There was a king, reigned in the East: there, where kings will sit to feast—" Pat looked up and chimed in, and Mingyue's dreamy voice curled around theirs from under the stillroom door. They chorused,

"They get their fill before they think,
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth:
First a little, then to more
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate—"

"Sat," Pat insisted.

"SATE," Severus scowled. "Sate the king when healths went round. As in was satiated."

"It is, you know, Ranjit," Mingyue's smiling voice came through the stillroom door.

"Bah," opined Pat, but he started them up again. They made a mesmerizingly polyrhythmic Greek chorus, with Mingyue sometimes emphasizing every syllable equally and sometimes going iambic, Pat coming down hard on at least one in nearly every word, and Severus weaving around them, reeling out long, low, silky and vaguely sinister ribbons of sound that stressed exactly what he wanted to.

"They put arsenic in his meat
And stared, aghast, to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt!
I tell the tale that I heard told:
Mithridates, he died old."

"Seventy-one," Severus added meticulously but also very (swottishly) happily, when they'd all sighed and given the Holy Grail a moment of respectful silence. "Lost a war to Pompey Magnus. After surviving Sulla. Surviving a war with him and outliving him proper, I mean. Not small beer. Had to kill himself, of course; Pompey clearly did not get enough hugs as a child, complete glory and popularity addict; he would unquestionably have been centerpiece in a triumph. Most humiliating."

The woman was staring at him with her froggy eyes.

He coughed, reddening, and explained, "Mithridates' Shield is a universal antitoxin that may or may not ever have existed. R&D brewers have been trying to piece it together from Pontic and Roman scrolls for centuries. It's the sort of impossible challenge that's irresistible. And I know Master Belby's castle-in-the-air hope is to cure lycanthropy. He hopes a palliative will be merely a step in the process. We all do, of course."

"And your own interest in werewolves is?"

There was a long, long pause: the first time since he'd stopped shouting that Spike hadn't seemed completely at his ease.

"Mr. Snape?"

Evan looked at him. His hands were trembling. "I… had a… a very near escape once," he said, low, the words nearly swallowed. Evan could barely hear him; he was sure Patil couldn't. His face was turned so that no one could see it, even Evan. That was just as well, if he was lying. If he wasn't…

Without showing his face, which was more of a trick than usual with his hair back, he went on, "It was—please don't ask me to—I'd be happy to take the silver test or any you like, just… I can't t-talk about it."

The woman handed him a teacup herself, reaching up to pat his hand sympathetically. Evan was abruptly positive that at least one of her ugly rings was pure silver. "I quite understand," she said quietly, once she'd snuck a quick peek at his unblistered skin. "I knew someone myself."

Spike looked at her, raw and open as even Even rarely saw him. He pressed at her, fiercely, "Help me make it stop."

She gave him what couldn't, with a mouth that wide, really be called a little smile, and held out her arm for him to take. "Let's go on with the inspection, Mr. Snape," she said. Her voice was sweet and breathy again, but it didn't sound so ear-wringingly fake anymore. "Do show me your facilities."

When he'd explained everything in the lab to her and taken her down to view the cages, Lupin and Evan broke Lupin's chameleon spell.

Patil, who had been staring after Spike with his jaw on the floor, jumped when he turned back and saw them. "How long have you two been here?" he demanded.

"Oh, come on, Pat, you don't think Severus could have gotten his hair that neat himself?" Evan winked.

"Hullo, Raj," Lupin said, more sheepishly. Then, evidently getting over it, he commented with a sort of lowering, unsurprised disappointment, "I didn't know he felt like that."

"Neither did I," Patil said, looking back after them, round-eyed.

"Are you two completely blind?" Evan asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow at them. "Unless I'm very much mistaken, he's just convinced one of the most stringently anti-werewolf voices on the review board that your grant should be renewed."

"How do you know Miss Umbridge?" Lupin asked, pronouncing the name as if it tasted of dungbomb.

Evan looked at him, bemused. "I don't know her. I was listening. Weren't you?"

"Yes, I was," Lupin said staunchly, scowling, "and he was saying the most awful things—"

"Yes," Evan crooned dreamily. "Severus is good at saying awful things. I've never known anyone like him for saying just the right wrong things to the right person at the right time. Very distracting. I've never seen him fake courtesy like that, though, certainly not at the same time. That'd pull an eighty-year-old Harpies coach right out of the girls' shower panting, don't you think?"

"…Um," said Patil, giving Evan the fish-eye.

Which was thoroughly deserved. He'd been to lunch with Ev and Spike loads of times, and he and his wife were a very reliable double-dating partner-couple when Evan needed a less intimidating one than the Malfoys. Or they had been before the twins were born, anyway. He'd seen both Evan's courting behavior and his eating-out-with-Spike behavior. Ev tended to hog the check in both cases, but did not, as a rule, distract dates from snatching it first by poking them under the ribs and stomping on their feet and then bopping them victoriously over the head with a spoon while they glowered and tried to grab it back.

"Mm," Lupin twitched perturbed agreement.

Bwahaha, got him. Really his whole face had twitched, in pieces, it was beautiful. And go. "Just as well he had his face turned away for that little faux-breakdown, though," Evan went on, still dreamily, watching Lupin carefully out of the corner of his eye. Now that he had the man's mask off, had him reacting visibly… "He never has been any good at the outright lie."

A real handicap for a Slytherin. Were they going to ask whether anyone else, in the room, say, was any good at those? No? Of course not, because they were Gryffs, and had their fluffy little heads all wrapped up in things that mattered to them personally so much more, and had never learned to think about more than one thing at a time.

And for proof, there it was: not just a flash but a spasm of guilt, barely contained. Lupin got control of himself quickly (not quickly enough), and asked slowly, "So you think he was…"

"Oh, I know he was," Evan said, smiling and dispensing with the faraway expression, not too fast. "'If that's a side effect oh well fine,' my eye. He frets over those side effects the lab hasn't stripped out of the potion yet like all the little werelets were his fuzzy, fuzzy babies."

"That's what I thought," Patil said, sounding hugely relieved. "He really sounded like he meant it, though."

"Yes, he did," Evan agreed thoughtfully. It was very, very interesting, and he had a whole list of things to grill Spike about now. "I expect I shall have to get him drunk later on to get the taste out of his mouth."

Patil looked as though the world had stopped being upside-down for him, although Lupin still looked like he was turning things over in his mind, very slowly. "What brings you two, here, anyway?"

"Oh, I hoped I could get in ahead of her," Evan sighed. "Found out too late, though."

"I just wanted to ask if there'd been any news about the Cooper girl," Lupin said with suspicious meekness.

Patil shook his head. "Sorry, old man. Still no joy. We'll send you an owl if we hear anything, promise."

So, Evan thought, Lupin had been withholding a second purpose, not lying about his stated one. Might not be important, but it was a small puzzle partly solved. And right next to it was the enormous, gapingly blank one of '76. Evan had in his hand now the first pieces that had ever, ever looked like they might fit.

Lupin went off like a man pretending not to be thwarted, and Patil looked inquiringly at Evan. "I'll wait for Severus," Evan said. "Since I'm here, I may as well see he has lunch."

"Well, if you do get him drunk, make sure he takes a sobering potion before he comes back," Patil warned. "This stage of the potion's been volatile before, and we're not sure we're right about how it'll react to what Ming wants to try."

"Can I go say hello to her," Evan asked, "or is it a Stay Out Of The Stillroom day?"

Patil gave a considering smile that bloomed suddenly. "SOOTS," he said. "I shall make a sign. Yes, I'd keep away if I were wearing clothes like yours. I'll tell her for you, though."

Evan nodded, and asked, "May I use your memo pad? I need to apologize profusely to poor old Diggory."

"By the door."

"Thanks," Evan said, and they both bent to their writing. Evan had only just wand-tapped his second note into a paper airplane and sent it zooming off to find Diggory when Spike and the Ministry witch came back. "Oh, there you are, Snape," he said pleasantly, every inch the bored young pureblood only working to please the old pater's notions of character building. True enough, financially, although anyone who tried to take his paintbox would have been rapidly distracted by the search for their hands.

Umbridge would have no difficulty learning he and Spike were flatmates, if she bothered to look them up. Flatmates weren't always friends, but she still might be able to learn on her own that they were known partners, even known bedmates (Mulciber hadn't understood that, but hadn't misunderstood it, either. Avery had misunderstood, and people did come up to visit, or study, or have a tumble, and saw their beds tied together. Evan thought some of them had sort of believed the very true fact that Ev was invested in his friend, Chaser, study-partner, and tied-for-best ally in House control not being murdered or even maliciously pranked in his sleep, but it didn't do any good to argue. Besides, 'Snape's still too hung up on the Mudblood bitch to be jealous' was slightly better for both of their reputations than 'a Slytherin prefect can't sleep without a teddy Snape.'.

He wasn't giving a poison pill like her the knowledge that they were close and cared about each other beyond alliance, though, not without a good reason. Knowledge like that could be powerful. Besides, the mere thought of being known like that by a stranger would have made Severus queasy. In the case of this curdled-treacle witch, Evan could quite see his point.

He gave the inspector only his fifth-best social smile, so when he 'learned who she was' he could upgrade it and make her think him favorably impressed with her position. "And—I don't know you; new apprentice?"

"No indeed," Spike said, giving him a what are you up to look, and introduced them.

"And what is your association with the project, Mr. Rosier?"

"It's Master Rosier, actually, but do call me Evan," he said, smiling benignly down at her. A portraitist's mastery didn't have as many formal requirements as a brewer's or healer's. You just had to prove you were a competent representational painter and that your work could be relied on to come to life when its subjects died. That wasn't easy, though; even a talented painter who knew what to do with a wand might go through hundreds of rats, toads, and bugs before catching all the tricks of that suite of spells. The title carried at least as much weight as it did in other professions.

Portraitists, after all, were the best hope wizards had of securing an immortal legacy for themselves or their ideas. Descendents were notoriously unreliable that way, while books and letters could be misunderstood, read out of historical context, or otherwise interpreted in ways one hadn't intended. And an afterlife in ectoplasm looked attractive to very few.

"No association whatever, Miss Umbridge," he went on. No painter was well-advised to call any witch 'ma'am,' as Spike had, unless she'd chosen to wear a muggle-style wedding ring or not fight going grey. Or was clearly less than two years past graduation and on her dignity. "I'm a portraitist. And, you know, if you'll forgive my cheek, you have the most interesting face. You must owl me if ever you want a work done." He produced a card and folded it into her hand.

He kept warm eye contact with her as they talked, but he could see Spike's face in his periphery, and enjoyed it thoroughly. It was a rueful, impressed look that he easily translated into dammit, I thought I'd been doing well. Evan would have to disabuse him of this self-depreciating nonsense, and added that task to the list.

By the time he was ready to let Umbridge go, he had a commission which was going to make him brush up on feline anatomy, and she had the firm impression that she might make the acquaintance of the Black Malfoy bride in the process of getting it filled. Which she absolutely would, although Ev would warn Narcissa about her comprehensively first.

Having gotten all he wanted, he gave Spike the signal. Spike said, "I beg your pardon, Madam Umbridge, but I really ought to get back to work if—actually, Rosier, what did you want?"

"I'm taking you out to lunch," Evan told him, in a don't argue with me voice.

"Er, no, you're not, because I'm having a sandwich from upstairs and going back to work."

"Oh, I'm sure that's what you think you're doing," he said pleasantly, "but you'll find that you have, in fact, been totally misinformed.* You can't possibly imagine that you're going to get away with wasting being presentable in the middle of the day. Besides, you wouldn't let an old schoolfellow run out of brush-cleaner, would you? Shocking bad form, old man."

Severus started to argue again, very sensibly showing the inspector nothing but dedication. Before he'd said anything, though, he caught Evan's eyes, and his own flickered message-received. "Blacks," he said crossly to the little witch in a giving-up sort of voice. It was the most efficient piece of name-dropping Evan had ever seen. "Is there anything else you need, Madam Umbridge?"

"Oh, I should just like a tiny little word with these other two before I go," she said with what still couldn't quite be called a little smile.

"Of course," Severus said. "Rosier, will you die of hyperventilation if you have to wait half a minute while I check Patil's work before you drag me out by the hair?"

"Tick-tock," Evan said placidly, yawning for good measure and netting himself a dirty look. He amused himself by imagining what Severus was hissing in Pat's ear. Variations on follow my lead or die colorfully, no doubt.

Severus stopped just before they left the building, and pulled out his fountain pen and the piece of memo paper he'd deftly snagged from the pad by the door. "That should be enough time; wait a moment. I need to tell Lovegood," he started.

Evan wordlessly handed him the other memo, written before Severus and Umbridge had gotten back, and basked in Severus's face when he realized how thoroughly anticipated he'd been.

"We're not really eating out, are we?" he was asked cautiously as they stepped into the soggy, grayish sunshine, the memo zooming downstairs behind them, behind the dingy false front of an abandoned department store. "I'm not particularly hungry."

"Don't be ridiculous," Evan said, and, taking his arm, apparated them home. A scant instant after arriving, he heard the secondary crack that almost certainly meant an invisible Potter was stalking Spike again. Although, given today, it might have been Lupin. There'd be a new entry in the log-book in Evan's vault, so he could find out if he decided he needed to know.

Either way, he made a point of elbowing Spike against the door. Blocking the lock, he murmured, "Since when can you play a fish like that? Oh, we are going to have words, mockingbird."

"New thing we're working on," Spike eyed him and the street warily.

"Tell Uncle all about it."

"Given the bipolarized lottery your aunt-and-cousin pool is and the way my luck runs comparatively to yours, I'm just as pleased not to have uncles, thank you. If you don't let me open the door I'm turning it insubstantial," Spike scowled.

"No fun whatsoever," Evan sighed, shaking his head mournfully.

"How much of a discount are you going to have to give Diggory?" Spike asked as they went upstairs.

"Ha," Evan smiled ruefully. "For that tip, I'm almost tempted to charge him at-cost. Mum would make me pay the balance, though."

"She might anyway, risking a commission just to give me a warning."

"Oh, would you stop that; she does not hate you."

"Not personally," Spike allowed, letting them into the flat. "My blood, though, that she hates."

"Convince her you're rising above it," Evan advised, instead of reminding him that Ev's parents had once, as far as Evan could make out, tried to pay him to make sure he'd stick around (Evan knew he was lucky Spike had been more offended on Evan's behalf than on his own for that piece of overprotective parental genius), and shot him an amused look. "You were awfully convincing back at your lab."

Severus rolled his eyes at him. "Nice, Ev."

"Ta. Now, this 'new thing we're trying.'"

"Demanding," Severus noted long-sufferingly. "Do you want answers or food?"

Evan huffed. "I suppose we'd better get you fed, while you're on your lunch break. Bare bones do dreadful things when they fall into cauldrons, as I recall."

The wicked look Spike shot him was holding about at least four evil comments, but aloud he just allowed, "I could eat."

"You're not having another damned sandwich!" Evan called after him (Spike was so bad for one's vocabulary).

"Yes, Mam!" Spike called derisively back.

"This isn't much of an improvement," Evan sighed when he got to the kitchen. "You really want breakfast twice?"

"Not having it twice."

"Severus…"

"Shut up and eat," Severus said, putting a plate of toast, perfectly sliced plums, and herbed, fluffy, cheesy eggs in front of him.

"I think I'm going to tell Mum she's finally right about my eating like a helpless muggle bachelor," Evan reflected. "She'll come and be sadly reproachful at you, Spike. Or tell the elf he has to come every day."

"You'd burn down the kitchen trying to make eggs like these," Severus told him, sitting down with his own plate. It had about a third as much food as Evan's. Ev considered cramming a piece of toast down the cook's throat, like a goose destined for foie gras. "And muggle bachelors are on their own, as a rule, these days, no elflike help. As you would be implying. So I would still be able to tell her, with perfect truth, that you were lying to get me in trouble."

"Speaking of trouble."

Spike sighed. "Yes, all right." He poked at his eggs and took a wedge of plum instead, stalling.

"Tell me what you did," Evan said quietly, reaching over to pin his wrist to the table.

Severus's eyes flickered at him, then dropped. As quietly, he said, "I made myself that person."

"I don't understand."

Spike shivered all over his skin—not in fear, but like an irritated horse. "I took facts and decided to feel a different way about them. And that was how I felt about them in that moment, so… I said what I felt."

Evan thought about that for a while as the eggs vanished. Finally he said, "I don't understand."

"Look, have you ever felt like you had a choice about how to react?"

"Do I look like a Gryffindor?"

"Well, actually, Red…"

"Spike…"

"Yes, all right. I… went back in time, in my head, to when I had to choose how to feel about… to when I decided to aim how I felt at the curse instead of the cursed. And turned myself into someone who'd made the other choice, the one she'd obviously made. Or who didn't see there was a choice, a difference."

"Still not following."

He sighed, getting annoyed. "I lied to me, not her. About myself, not facts."

"How can you do that?"

"By… I suppose, by changing the story you've told yourself about something."

"Still don't understand."

Now vexed, the cobra eyed him ill-temperedly and asked through gritted teeth, "What, exactly, do you not understand?"

"I don't understand," Evan said, just as distinctly, meeting the hood-flaring look with his own flat snake eyes, "how, if you weren't lying about the facts, I didn't know you were nearly EATEN BY A WEREWOLF, SEVERUS."

"Oh." Severus sat back and made a face, but did not look in the least ashamed or guilty. Angry, definitely that, though an old anger he was too used to to feel sharply anymore. "Because I was telling the truth there, too: I can't talk about it. Can not. Not physically possible."

"Not magically possible, you mean," Evan posited, eying him narrowly.

"Can not discuss."

"But you could tell her."

"I could tell the bare bones to a person who had no information with which to wire them together. She doesn't know who, where, or when."

"I think I could take a stab at the when, and more or less the where. Might even have a guess about the who."

"It seems you think you can," Severus said levelly. "I can neither confirm nor deny any supposition you might make."

"With no exceptions?"

"Only a true belief that lives are at imminent risk and only knowledge could protect them."

"And how did you get roped into that?" he demanded, appalled. Breaking even the more innocuous forms of wizarding oaths had consequences one did not want to invite.

"Lack of perceived options. I was in several kinds of shock at the time, you realize."

"I don't suppose," and now his teeth were gritted, "you're able to tell me who made you commit to something like that when you couldn't think straight."

"I am not able," Severus agreed carefully, and bit into his toast. He looked thoughtful and said, very experimentally, with pauses between every few words to gauge their effect on himself, "I think I can tell you that it wasn't the werewolf him-or-herself. Ah. I can."

"Which means," he said, in a white, cold fury, "that it must have been Dumbledore."

"That's not a totally illogical conclusion, but only if you're right about absolutely everything," Spike said mildly. "Only if you have your facts and reasoning nailed. Maybe you do. It's also possible that someone will work out Mithridates' Shield this century. And I couldn't tell you right or wrong if you said you were sure it was you."

That short-circuited the anger. Evan regarded him with a quizzical caution. "…Why would I be sure it was me?"

Severus shrugged. "Only example I could give without making you wonder about whoever I named. I know perfectly well that you know I like the double-or-triple-bluff confusion tactic."

Evan stabbed at his toast, which broke. After a moment, he said, "I don't like this other thing, either, Spike." It came out threatening.

"Ah," Spike said, making another little face and spearing some fruit. "Not my idea."

"His."

Spike nodded. "At least, he wants me to get better at dishonesty. I'm much better at spinning the truth than making up lies, so we've been working with that."

"I could have told him that. Avery could have told him that."

"Do you think so?"

"…Maybe. Probably. He's not Lockhart." Evan mulled unhappily for a few bites. "I still don't like it," he decided. "What happened to those scrolls and chapters about will-based magic disorganizing brains?"

"It's not magic," Severus said. Evan was slightly relieved until he added, less certainly, "I don't think."

"Anything more likely to drive you completely crazy at terminal velocity would be harder to imagine, Spike," he said, grim. "Magic or not."

Severus looked as though he were struggling with something, and finally sighed. "I don't like it, either," he admitted. "The thing is, Ev—it's easy. Very easy. It's the only really Slytherin thing that's ever come easily."

"You took to hexing people like a fish to water," Evan said, trying for a light tone.

Spike shook his head. "I think I had to do this to do that, Ev. Just… just turn off everything but the angry. All the yes-but-if-you-do thoughts, all the take-it-or-hide habits."

"When you do it," Evan asked, drumming his fingers on the table, "is it like… like telling bits of yourself to shut up, or what?"

"No, it's… maybe, for you, a visual," he said doubtfully, and aimed his wand at Evan.

Evan's vision swam white, and after a moment the words data and what-if, repeated a thousand times in dozens of colors, started ambling and zipping over the white everything. Then one blue data flashed bright red, loomed large, and was suddenly reading THREAT.

Evan's vision tunneled until that red word was all he could see, just that, and everything else black. Then the red word's text changed again, so that it read SHRED, made up of thousands and millions of tiny little bursts of shred HERE and aim HERE and shred LOTS, and loomed until it took over Evan's whole world.

This bit he understood perfectly. Narcissa (who'd thoroughly enjoyed Divination) said the way his vision had filled with a bloody haze once or twice (in extremis. Completely justified.) was because he was a Taurus. That although he had Sorted respectably and usually did act like it, bulls were liable to single-mindedly charge at things.

Ev thought it had more to do with being half-Black and a bit codependent with someone who was quite good at self-defense but mind-blowingly bad at not needing to be. It wasn't as though she'd never gone Blackishly histrionic herself. Which, while perfectly understandable since all the times Evan knew about had been at Spike or about her sisters or one of the babies she'd been trying to have, was hardly a Cancer trait.

The illusion dissolved, and he was back in the kitchen. "That's the best I think I can explain it," said Spike. "Only, when I do it, I'm deciding to. —In the sense of doing that instead of nothing, I mean," he added, in a tone that told Evan he thought he was explaining something vital rather than tripping haplessly all over himself, "doing that instead of just… curling up and enduring it, letting it happen. I don't mean doing it instead of something else. It's what there is to do. I have to decide there is something I can do. I have to decide that even though there will be consequences, put them aside, they don't exist, either they don't exist or you don't exist, not as a person you can stand—I can stand, I can stand to be—so do something. And that's what there is."

Evan pinched the dip of his nose. "And you've been doing this how long?" he asked wearily.

"Oh, I was getting bullied long before Hogwarts," Spike sighed. "Started fighting back the second it occurred to me the other kids couldn't take it out on Mam if I did. Not even if I won." He smiled. It showed no teeth, but was in every other way a cold, dead-eyed, shark smile. "So I won until they stopped. Worked less well at Hogwarts, but by then, instinctive."

"And it's easy?"

"Oh, yes," Severus said in a hard, faraway voice. "A little more complicated to do it in a sophisticated way, like in the lab. But taking myself out of myself, letting whatever's left do the moving… yes. That's easy."

Well, Evan thought to himself, still pinching between his eyes, we always knew he was a bit crazy. "All right," he said finally. "You don't know for sure whether you're using a dark magic to do it. And you said it's the only Slytherin thing that's come easily. Will you do something for my peace of mind, Naj?"

"Such as…?"

"Find out whether it really is a Slytherin thing. If it's a known thing that's been done, it'll have a history and you can find out whether it's dangerous."

Spike tilted his head at him curiously. "And how do you mean for me to find that out?"

Credit: *Five points to the house of those who can explain why I could not resist that Ptribute even though these guys are platonic. (g)

A Shropshire Lad is by A.E. Housman.

Notes: In the last draft but one (ie: last night), the Evan-muse decided he had decided in first-year Potions to play a little game with his Gryffie cauldron partner, wherein he what-whatted and doncherknowed and so on, to see how long it would take before Lupin made him admit he was being silly. He noted that realizing Lupin had been genuinely gullible about this explained a lot to him about Lupin's relationship with Sirius, and that while this was a sad realization for him, being thought mutton-headed was always very useful.

However, today he was already bored with it and admitted he in no way had the discipline for a long con like that which required actual, y'know, effort. Also, he was too d/e/p/r/e/s/s/e/d full of pureblood ennui to make friends by being silly in first year. So I took it out.