Chapter 38: Hidden Things Hidden

The following day Dumbledore summoned Severus to his office at tea-time—a sure sign, in the potions master's mind, that something unpleasant was brewing. Whenever possible, Dumbledore liked to lull people into a false sense of safety via comfort just before asking (or, more often, commanding) something especially unpleasant, and tea was one of the headmaster's favorite methods for it.

He arrived five minutes early, having set his affairs in order and made sure that he had a fifth of fire whiskey easily accessible in his rooms—just in case. Dumbledore gave him a twinkly-eyed welcome, offered him a chair, and poured him a cup of tea, all with a convincing innocent face, as if he actually enjoyed Severus' company. The potions master knew better, so as soon as Dumbledore stopped simpering over the teapot and the mountains of scones and muffins, he set down his cup and gave the headmaster a pointed look.

"I think we both know you're building up to something, Albus, so let's have it out in the open, shall we? I have a fifth-year curriculum to revise and a position-transfer application to re-file yet again; I can't be at tea all day."

It was a blunter comment than he would usually have made, and the only defense that came to mind was that Neshdiana was probably rubbing off on him. Not that he could say that, of course.

The headmaster gave him a dark, disapproving look, but he didn't challenge or criticize him. Instead, he set down his own tea and went with it.

"You know about the Dementors attacking Harry, of course," he said.

Severus felt his lip curl into a sneer. "Yes."

Dumbledore sighed. "The more I think it through, the more I am convinced that either Fudge or someone loyal to him ordered this. I truly believe that this was an attempt either to kill Harry or to neutralize him, but it simply does not seem the sort of thing Voldemort would do."

Severus clenched his teeth to keep from saying something really stupid. Of course Voldemort wasn't behind this—he had himself confirmed that to Dumbledore within two days of the incident. The Dark Lord was every bit as interested as Dumbledore was in finding out who had given the order, albeit for completely different reasons. They had been over this, in explicit terms. Apparently the intelligence only had merit if Dumbledore could work it out for himself, apart from Snape's own reporting of the facts.

And he had the nerve to chat about it over tea. It made the slap in the face twice as stinging and five times as lasting.

"Harry survived, but he's still not safe," Dumbledore continued, plunging ahead with his analysis of the obvious. "There is the trial to think of, of course, but I have other concerns, as well. You are familiar with the peculiar properties of his scar?"

Severus let out an impatient hiss between his teeth. "I know that it burns from time to time, and that you assign some importance to this."

Dumbledore narrowed his eyes in a chilling glare. He appeared not to care for Severus' attitude, and Severus frankly didn't care. "I believe," the headmaster said coldly, "that the scar functions as a link between Voldemort and Harry—a mental link, to be precise. At times Harry has been aware of Voldemort's emotional state, and sometimes even his actions."

Against his inclination, Severus' breath froze in his lungs. Dumbledore had wanted to shock him and had succeeded, had turned a table on him again, dammit, and he was as tired of that as he was suddenly terrified of possible exposure. "Does the Dark Lord know—?"

"I don't know." Dumbledore smiled grimly, savoring the success. "But if there's a chance of it, you can see that I could be easily compromised. All it would take is Voldemort assuming control of Harry, and I could be killed, or—worse—information in my possession could pass to Voldemort. It would be disastrous for our cause."

But not for Potter, apparently, Severus noted. "I understand your concerns, of course."

"I shall do my best to prevent a breach by keeping my distance from Harry; it goes without saying that I can't speak to him or even meet his eyes." Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "But if that should prove insufficient, Severus, I may call on you to teach him Occlumency."

Severus stared at him as his entire stomach seemed to burst into flames. "Me?!"

Dumbledore looked disdainfully back at him. "By all accounts, you are a brilliant occlumence. Add to that the fact that you're a member of the Order, and"—the twinkle in his eye took on a definite malicious glint—"you took an oath to protect Lily's son… I think you'll do fine for the job."

"Even if the boy weren't an unteachable dunderhead," Severus hissed, "he will never willingly learn anything from me. There are others in the Order who are qualified. Alastor Moody—"

"Knows far too much of value that could be compromised as a natural part of teaching Occlumency to someone with a mental link to Voldemort."

"And I don't?" Severus was on his feet, pacing to try and sort his thoughts and feelings. "I could be exposed as a double agent, and the first anyone would know about it would be when I disappeared. The boy could compromise any or all of us, Albus! Why am I the logical sacrifice?"

"Because I am ordering you to do it." Dumbledore's tone was one of absolute command. "I have my reasons for doing so."

He stopped his pacing to look squarely at the headmaster, not even bothering to hide what he was feeling. "Reasons which you feel no need to explain?"

"Reasons pertaining to the greater good," Dumbledore stated firmly. "And that is all you need to know."

Severus took a deep breath to steady his voice as he turned towards the door. "Very well, Headmaster. As it appears you offer me neither choice nor consideration in the matter, I am forced to agree to your plan—which I do under protest." He glanced back over his shoulder. "Do you have anything further to say to me?"

Dumbledore had the temerity to seem surprised at the other's abruptness. "Not at the moment, no."

"Then I'll take my leave." Severus had the door open before he looked back once more. "Let us both hope, for the sake of the greater good, that Potter does not require training in Occlumency."

ooo

Meli, meanwhile, was back to her German industrial music as a trailblazer for clear thought. With three and a half weeks to go before the students returned to Hogwarts, she felt the contradictory weight of both too much time and too little of it. The coalition had spent their entire last meeting on Zarekael, which had been necessary, but there were other things they had to plan. Something on the scale of the Gringotts mission alone demanded meticulous consideration in advance, and while it would be two years yet before Potter went looking for the cup, the timetable felt terribly tight. They had everyone they needed for the job; Pierce had already applied for a position at Gringotts, and if he got it, everyone would be moving into place. They needed to get down to the business of planning.

The Umbridge operation was more recognizably underway. At Andrea's suggestion, Meli had written up a false application letter for the teaching post of Care of Magical Creatures and given it to Dumbledore. The thing was an absolute work of art, with nothing outright alarming in it, but embedded with dozens of subtle hints that it would be unwise to consider the applicant for employment. Everything about it ensured, first, that the applicant would never be considered for an interview, much less the post itself, and secondly, that the person who had sent it was in all likelihood unstable and prone to overreact to a rejection. Dumbledore had looked it over with raised eyebrows.

"I assume you consider this necessary for some reason?" he'd said.

And Meli had offered a humble smile to match her explanation. "If you recall, sir, most of the sabotage is to do with various creatures turning up at inopportune times. In the event that the incoming teacher suspects an intelligent cause, or that I'm caught setting something in motion, you'll have this letter on file to point to a suspect—someone who's neither student nor teacher, and who certainly can't be connected with you, since you clearly saw this and rejected her as someone to be avoided. You'll have all the cover necessary to say that you're just as unhappy about her having come to do mischief as everyone else is. As for her choice of targets, naturally she'd choose the newest teacher—the one who's least proven and perhaps most likely to be upset by the mishaps."

And Dumbledore had more or less patted her on the head, told her she was a good girl, and sent her off to play.

She hated not being taken seriously, even though it gave her more latitude. Dumbledore's apparent assumption was that he was the only smart one in the room, and the only way to prove her own intelligence was to agree with whatever he said and fall in line with whatever he ordered. It rankled. She wasn't a child, and if he wasn't careful, she'd prove it to him in no uncertain terms, greater good be damned.

This irritation was window-dressing, though, and she knew it. She was stressed about the Gringotts planning that needed to be done, straining the limits of her creativity for ways to harass Umbridge that would last out at least the first semester, and in the background she had the infuriating question pounding away at her skull—

What in the hell had happened yesterday?

That pounding not only refused to be drowned out by the music, it fell perfectly into rhythm with Megaherz's beat. In a fit of vindictive exhaustion, she switched it over to Enya.

Why was it, whenever she needed most to focus on planning, that she always ended up thinking about David Kalimac?

He'd be insufferable if he knew about it, so of course she would never breathe a hint, but in the meantime she had to put up with the facts. She needed to think straight just now, and that meant he needed to get the hell out of her head.

He was, of course, rather difficult to dislodge, and had the poor grace to insist on being heard.

She finally gave up with a sigh and dropped into the desk chair to stare at the opposite wall while she tried to collect her thoughts. Enya was no help with that, so she switched to Beethoven.

Right. So. They'd had a talk about names—that part was clear as crystal. He had some opinions about names, in fact—his name and all of hers, to be precise. So far, so good. And then he'd said he wished he'd had to earn her second name, and that was where it all went a little blurry.

She'd already told him she'd made a botch of it, made it up as she went, and hoped no one would notice. Bad luck that he had noticed, but why get so worked up over it? Her name was her problem, not his, and until three months ago, names hadn't been of much importance whatever; she'd put them on and taken them off as circumstances needed, along with her various accompanying glamouries. This was also her problem, if in fact it was a problem at all. It meant that she was of two minds about what a name might or might not mean, and again, it was her problem, certainly not David Kalimac's.

So why did Kalimac caring about such a stupid little thing bother her? And why had his saying so thrown her into that ridiculous internal chaos? She'd never read a trashy romance, never had the inclination, but she was pretty sure this qualified as the stuff of one. Hero says something that gives heroine the whim-whams, throws her into emotional chaos, eventually bodices get ripped and hero turns out to look like Fabio. Probably he wasn't wearing a wizard's robes, or a shirt for that matter, but the essence of it boiled down to that, right?

There was no reason she should have reacted as she did. She wasn't a heroine, whether of that sort or any other, and there was no logical reason why she should have lapsed into the useless behavior of one. She wasn't the sentimental type—she could sit through Steel Magnolias without shedding a tear, and while at university, she'd been banned from her dorm floor's weekly chick-flick night over her sensible comments on the absurd situations characters got themselves into when they decided to be run away with their romantic notions. Kalimac's appeal to sentiment should have been so much water off a former Acromantula's back; it most certainly oughtn't to have affected her emotional state in the least, unless it was to spark a hint of contempt.

The fact that the effect had been other than expected indicated that something was wrong with her, and she'd better get that sorted, rapidly. Her summer holiday was coming to a close, and odds were good that she wouldn't have another rest until Voldemort was well and truly dispatched three years hence. She couldn't go to a shrink, of course, but she had better figure it out all the same.

Right, then. So. What exactly had been in that tangled mess that spouted out in a non sequitor and sent her running for the door? She took a mental step back and started examining the threads.

The answer was painted there so clearly that she saw it while still stepping back, and it sent her to her physical feet to summon Kwippy for the strongest black tea the house elf could find then pounding her fists into a cushion while she waited for the tea. Kwippy, who was probably getting used to being alarmed around "Miss Neshdiana" brought paper tea service with the brew in a thermos, obviously fearing for the safety of china, and left again without a word.

The tea was scalding. Meli emptied the first cup in a single draught anyway, shuddering as the lava river in her throat spread into a sea of fire in her stomach.

"Bloody hell!" she spat, punching the cushion again and throwing it with something approaching lethal force at the far wall. "Not that! Not fucking that!"

She tossed back another cup of tea and sent a low roundhouse into the side of her desk. She had just presence of mind to silent-cast sound proofing then threw her wand on the desk and let out a scream in the general direction of the sky.

"Damn You, why?" She put her fist through the desk chair, which splintered nicely. "I never asked it, I never wanted it, and I can't fucking afford this right now! Why would You let this happen?"

She and God had never been close; it was safe to say that they had a cordial understanding that allowed for infrequent communication and periodic visits. When filling out a census, she listed her religion as Christian because her adoptive parents had taken her to church, her general concept of God was at least generally compatible with theirs, and it was one more middle finger to her grandfather. At one time, she'd even made an effort to live more like she imagined a Christian ought—but that had ended the day she came out as the last Skulker standing. Something had died in her when she saw Dirk Pierce bleed to death at her hand, and the brutal two years that followed had only served to inter it.

But one thing that had never really left her was the idea that God was in control of what happened, whether directly or by allowance. Her coming here instead of Zarekael at first—that was somehow His doing. And her meeting David Kalimac, and everything that followed it, including her present wretched state—that was His doing, too.

He had let the bane happen, had allowed all of the deaths that followed it, had made sure she understood, loud and clear, what her lot in life was. She'd never once complained, either—not once. She'd wept over her friends, over her goddaughter, and over her parents, but she had never cursed God for their deaths.

Now, though, with the bane removed, she hasn't asked for much beyond what she had. Her brother—that was the most. She'd been content..

Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair…

"Contented with little, and happy with more," she translated aloud. "But I don't want more—I don't need more."

Especially this particular more, which could undo her. It would weaken and distract her, and as things stood now, that could put lives at risk. She couldn't afford this more.

The third cup of tea was cooler than the others had been, but it was warm enough to flare over the burns they'd left. Her eyes watered at the pain of it, but that was all. There were no tears, and there was nothing that could cause them. She had her anchor now.

She could not afford for anything to have happened at the pub; too much depended upon it. Therefore, nothing had happened. She had to make that true, and if it took the whole thermos of tea to sear the fact into her, she'd go that distance. Kalimac… was infuriating. That was all. She'd become overly frustrated with him and stormed out of the pub.

One tiny twinge poked at her, and that did draw a brief tear, but after a moment's indulgence, she pushed it away.

It's what Severus and Zarekael would have done; it's what they would expect of her. They were all the family each of the others had needed. She had her brother in this world with her; she needed no one else.

Raven would have argued otherwise, but her little sister wasn't here and couldn't help her anymore.

She did cry then, sinking down on the floor with her head in her hands… but once the tears had spent themselves, she was herself again.

And the only thing that had happened at the Thistle and Rose was a meeting of the coalition, at which Andrea and the others had raked Zarekael over the coals. Nothing at all had happened after.