A/N. Hey, I'm still alive!
My semester is keeping me busy, and writing is harder away from home (I'm twelve hours away from my husband, home, and kitties finishing my degree), so have a little pity on my poor, homesick self.
Okay, enough whining from me! Thank you for reading and to those of you who review, I hope you enjoy your update!
Chapter 53
Friday Evening, Early April
Arya sat still and silent on a hard wooden seat in Snape's small dungeon office, eyes closed and breathing evenly; in her mind, however, she was racing through the air on her broom during Quiditch practice, mid-way through adding her last week into her Liar's Palace. The movements were recreated truthfully from her memories, the cool spring air on her face, the sound of Wood barking directions at his team. It was the recollection of her emotions and feelings, her motivations, that she altered in her mind; a perfect blending of truth and lies built to mislead an invading mind. A false memory that wouldn't hold up to scrutiny would have been useless.
Arya let the Quiditch memory fade, and moved on to her last day of classes.
In the present moment, Professor Snape sat behind his desk in front of her in a matching uncomfortable seat, paying her little heed as he worked through a large pile of papers in front of him. The messy scrawl of first years made him rub his temples as a slight headache threatened to distract him, and his quill of red ink moved steadily down the parchment, marking mistakes and writing corrections. Malfoy's paper was decent, if not particularly inspired, but his friends Crab and Goyle gave every indication of having troll heritage in their ancestry. Could they not even be bothered to read the material before attempting to do their homework? He marked them with passing grades anyway; it would not do to embarrass Slytherin in public, he'd meet with them privately and force them to redo the abysmal work.
He flipped through the parchment, and eventually made it to the Gryffindor essays. Granger's was technically perfect, as always, her neat small writing packing the entire sheet with information, making Snape squint in the torchlight. He did so wish that the girl wouldn't pack three parchment rolls worth of extra information into each assignment, as the last thing he wanted to do was spend more of his time grading essays on the properties of coughing solutions. He considered down-grading it out of annoyance, but glanced up as Arya shifted in her seat. The girl settled back down into her meditation, and Snape drew his attention back to the task at hand. Had he not packed all the knowledge he could into his favorite assignments as a student, just as Granger did? He grimaced and gave it the mark it deserved.
The next one was Weasley's. It was decent, about at the level of Malfoy's work, but the boy's handwriting truly was atrocious. He marked it and moved on the Longbottom boys work. He felt the customary ball of emotions well up in his gut at the sight of the name in the corner of the paper; anger, guilt, pity. He forced it down, because he knew it was not entirely rational to dislike the boy as he did. Why couldn't the Dark Lord have chosen that cowering child instead of Arya? He bit down on the inside of his cheek, keeping his face expressionless out of force of habit, and marked the paper as it deserved. The boy had been as good as orphaned anyway. Could he have done more to have stopped that, if he had not let his grief consume him?
The last paper in the stack was Arya's, containing exactly the information required, laid out in precise detail in her neat hand. Snape raised an eyebrow. She had not gone into depth with the theory behind the workings of the potion's ingredients, though Snape knew her to be capable of doing more than she had. He gave it an E, but wrote in the margins that he expected more from her in the future. Just because he wouldn't let her test into advance grades didn't mean he didn't expect more from her than her classmates.
He finished with the first years' work and set it aside, pulling a stack of third year parchments toward him instead. He looked up before he could begin, however, and could tell that the girl was beginning to come out of her trance-like state.
He quickly affixed another tracking spell to her trainers; he must have cast that spell a thousand times over the last few months.
She sighed and opened her eyes, squinting at the glare of the torches and craning her neck to the sides as she stretched.
"I'm done, Professor." she said through a yawn.
Snape set down his quill and stood up, rounding the desk the stand in front of her. "I expect you to not let yourself get so far behind again. I care not how tired your little flying lessons make you, this is of far greater importance, understand?"
Arya nodded, looking down at the ground, shame faced. She was likely not as remorseful as she seemed.
"I understand, Professor."
"Good. Let me review your work. I'll require you to show me the trail you've placed."
Arya nodded, though she rubbed at the back of her neck, obviously worn out. Perhaps he should not push her so hard, but… no, it was necessary. She didn't have the luxury of being coddled.
Arya had long been capable of laying the foundations of her liar's palace without his aid, but that was not the real reason their lessons continued. They met because he was trying something new; his conversation with Dumbledore months before had begun the process, and he had finally hashed out a method that he hoped would prevent the girl from getting lost in her own mind.
He was helping her to build a ladder, a way out of her own deceptions, a breadcrumb trail hidden amid her blend of truth and lies, leading the way back to her center. The idea had been his invention, never tried before because it had never before been necessary. He was an adult, with a clear certainty of who he was; he'd never before fallen into believing his own lies. But Arya was a child, creating in her mind an extensive world of lies, and the danger that presented was unprecedented. And so he had set her to building reminders into her false memories. Unknown and insignificant to anyone other than herself, she should be able to follow them out of the palace if she ever lost herself in it completely.
Snape felt slightly sick, like the taste of stomach bile just barely threatening to bubble into his throat. He was far from certain that this would work, if the worst should happen; He wasn't certain that the girl grasped the true danger implicate in what he taught her.
She let him delve her mind, and he withdrew after mere moments, satisfied with what she showed him.
"Good. You're dismissed for the evening."
She nodded with relief, and bid him goodnight with a tired smile, making her way out of the office. She was the only person he knew that ever smiled at him.
He gave her a few moments head start, staring idly at the empty doorway through which she'd left, and then left his office as well, using his tracking spell to follow the girl to her dorm.
Arya walked quickly from the dungeons, almost breaking into a jog as she rounded the torch lit corridors, pulling the Marauder's Map from within the pockets of her cloak. She had spent much of her time since discovering the tracking spells trying to locate their source. It had taken her longer than she'd assumed it would, considering the usefulness of the map in locating those around her.
There were just so many people at Hogwarts! But she had begun to suspect her potions and occlemency teacher. Snape showed up on the map near her almost as much as her closest friends did, and everytime she turned around she passed him in the corridors. And yet he always seemed to have a reason for crossing her path again and again, never sneaking or even seeming to pay her any attention. If she was studying in the Library, then he was just an aisle over, pouring over one book or another. If she snuck out at night, invisible, he was patrolling every corridor near whichever one she was in, but never the same one. When she returned to her dorm, he returned to his living quarters in the dungeons.
There were plenty of times when he wasn't near her, - when he was teaching, when she was in other classes, when quidditch practice stretched into the evenings. Often, when he wasn't inconspicuously near her, he was in the company of Professor Quirrel, walking the corridors together, or meeting up whenever the defense teacher left his office after hours.
Arya was far from certain; there were plenty of other people that showed up around her frequently. Students in her classes, teachers holding study sessions in the library at the same time as her.
Arya prodded the map to life, and saw Snape's dot right where she had left him in his office. Perhaps she had been wrong after all… She jumped as his dot began to move suddenly, steadily making its way toward her. Her heart pounded in her chest, but she forced herself to walk normally down her usual route. It could still be a coincidence. Time for phase two.
She tucked the map away for the moment, and began to mutter under her breath, wishing that she had mastered non-verbal spill work already. Her muttering sounded loud in the empty stone hallways. Her trainers began to glow a bright red, and she nearly whooped with joy. The only tracking spell on her after she'd checked that afternoon had been on her hair tie.
She quickly pulled off the shoes, the stones cold beneath her socked feet, and then she tucked the hair tie with the fading charm on it into the right shoe, just in case. She flicked her wand again, feeling almost giddy with her success, and her trainers continued walking up the stairs at the end of the corridor without her.
That was a little spell she'd learned off the twins, after they'd used it on her shoes when her feet had still been in them. She still hadn't gotten over the embarrassment of walking into the boys lavatory after her charms class, squawking in protest as her feet betrayed her. She would think of something equally horrific for them, just they wait…
She shook herself, and hurried around a nearby corner, pulling her cloak out of her bag as she went. She waited there, invisible, for several moments, almost pulling out the map again before Snape finally appeared, walking casually along the same route she had taken. She could almost believe that he just happened to be walking that same way, not following her at all… She took off after him anyway, keeping well back, her shoeless feet making no sound at all as she moved.
Near the corridor where the entrance to Gryffindor tower was located, the trainers veered down a side hallway, two turns ahead of Snape, and he paused for a moment, seemingly confused, before turning after them, away from the dorms.
That was confirmation in Arya's eyes, and she smiled grimly as she quickened her pace, getting to the Gryffindor portrait well ahead of her shoes and potions master. She took off her cloak and studied the map as she waited for her shoes to catch up with her from the detour she'd sent them on, watching Snape's dot following their exact path, always a few turns behind.
The empty trainers finally appeared, walking body-less toward her, and she scooped them up hurriedly, gave the password to the confused looking Fat Lady, and scrambled inside the common room before Snape rounded the last bend. Perhaps Snape would chalk her detour up to exhaustion, and assume she'd taken a wrong turn by accident.
She plopped down tiredly next to where Ron, Hermione, and Neville were sitting, Hermione with a book in her lap, and the boys playing exploding snap. It was a mark of how odd her friends thought her that no one questioned her about why she had walked from the dungeons in her socks.
Ron pulled out his chess set hopefully as the game of snap exploded in Neville's face, and Arya scooted over to sit across from him, digging her players out of her bag along with a small vial of hair growing potion for Neville to dab onto his face where his singed off eyebrows were supposed to be.
She had found the identity of her silent watcher. Now she just had to find out why her professor was stalking her every move.
