"For once in your damned life, could you not have just shut your mouth and thought?" Snape would have been yelling if he had not been concerned about attracting attention. The alley he was walking down was abandoned, but he wanted it to remain so, until he managed to stash the body that he was levitating in front of him.
He was followed closely by Anezka, who likewise had a burly, unconscious man floating along in front of her. "I did think! I thought I was getting robbed."
"What an utterly sophomoric way of looking at a vastly more complicated situation."
"I think you just want to overly complicate a very straightforward situation. Two thugs come into my shop, ask for a potion, and then try to walk out without paying. See how simple that was?"
"When they told you they required it for the Dark Lord, did you not think that perhaps you should not continue on in your attempted assault of them?"
"I'll tell you what I told them. . . I'm not running a charity shop. I am strictly a for-profit business."
"You are strictly war profiteering."
"Eh, potayto, potahto." She shrugged then shifted her grip on her wand that was pointed at the levitating man in front of her. "Besides, I didn't start getting real stroppy with them until they started smashing up my shop and calling me names."
"How very Gryffindor of you." It was said as if it was the world's nastiest insult – he certainly felt that it was and she certainly seemed to fit the description at the moment he first found her that day.
An hour previous to this, he had opened the door to her shop, seeking her out for some more supplementary potions for the School's infirmary which he had had no time to brew on his own, and found her in disarray, clearly the scene of some violence. Two men occupied the space, one restraining her in a choke hold, a large hand clamped over her mouth, while the other ominously pointing a wand at her, any number of malicious deeds on his mind.
A million thoughts rushed through him, his instincts instantly on point. "Vesey, Hindley," Snape greeted the men by name with a customary cold politeness. They were new recruits to the Death Eaters – and new death eaters were certainly a new breed. Not to say that Malfoy and LeStrange and Avery didn't have their share of violence and torture in their day, but they had the common sense to move with subtlety, and not attack a useful shop keeper in broad daylight. "Dare I ask what you are doing?"
"This mouthy bitch thinks she's too good to give to the Dark Lord's cause." Vesey sneered, not taking his eyes from the small, dark haired woman.
"While I entirely agree with your assessment that she is impertinently voluble, I fail to understand why coarse manners and a poor attitude require use of excessive force."
Both looked at him blankly. "She wouldn't give us the poison. We need it. She wouldn't give it to us. I am sure Lord Voldemort would be interested in knowing that she is obstructing our cause."
Snape let his shoulders sag ever so slightly, so that his waning hope and aspiration for the future of humanity's intelligence was physically visible. "If you had bothered consulting any one more experienced or trusted in these matters you would have been told that the Dark Lord knows of this woman's shop, knows that she will willingly provide our needs for correct compensation and that he has not required any kind of further allegiance from her at this time."
"You mean to tell me that He allows this filthy mudblood to live and she can't be bothered to contribute . . .. "
"You keep using that word when clearly you have no fucking clue who you are dealing with." Anezka had managed to pull her face away from the beefy hand that had covered her mouth. As much as he recognized the voice, it was as if a different one spoke, using her vocal chords. In place of the lazy, crude drawling tones, a woman of pride and menace formed words using the flat accent full of misappropriated vowels. Hindley went to adjust his grip but Snape motioned to him, bidding him to allow her to speak. "I am just going to go ahead and assume you twits can't read, that's why you didn't catch the name over the shop door. It says SOVA. You might have heard of them? Oldest Wizarding family in Romania, largest exporter of Dragon products in the entire wizarding world? There is more magic in their blood then can be found in all of this god-forsaken city! And my mother's family - I am sure you have fucking heard of them, even if their name isn't onver the door. For 1,000 years the Myrridan's can trace our linage all the way back to Merlin himself. The best you could claim is that your ancestor maybe once gave Merlin a blowy, you idiotic fuck-tard nobody." Well, the crude child's vocabulary was still used as well as her voice. "Your insults are meaningless, you waste of air." This last comment was said with a sneer that would put all the Malfoys' to shame.
It was all information Snape knew, it was only a surprise to the other two, but despite having known her heritage for as long as he had known her, it was the first time he had heard it said in that fashion – full of pride in her heritage, powerfully. His long held impressions of her finally fell away – the last vestiges of a bratty, careless gutter snipe flaked and before him stood a proud young woman, confident in her authority, assured of her place, and haughty in her self-confident determination that none should tell her what her worth was or what she was required to do. It was still her, as she had always been, tattoos, messy hair, colourful vocabulary, but with a poise he felt was so far removed from what he knew of her. If he could have had a year to think on it, he still wouldn't have been able to fathom how such dignity could reside in the same person as such a customary lack of self.
"Well, then, you won't mind contributing to the cause of blood purity. And then, once our Lord is successful, he will contribute you to my cause" Hindley suggested with a suggestive sneer.
"Ew. Just Ew."
It was as if her rebuffing of his non-to-subtle come on was far more insulting then any of the actual slights she had thrown at him moments before, and the sharp sound of his palm quickly crossing her cheek snapped loudly in the relative silence of the room.
And then the next few actions taken flew past so quickly, in the way that all altercations do. She took a swing at one of the men and lunged for her wand which was far from her reach, over on the sales counter.
It was no surprise when she was quickly subdued again, each man holding one of her arms, though she still struggled. "Let's teach this bitch a lesson!" Vicious intent was obvious in Vesey's eyes and tone.
Snape wanted to shake her for being so stupid as to engage in a physical altercation with two men, twice her size, when she could have clearly thought her way out, and tapping into that emotion he was able to utter his next statement with a conviction that was entirely believable. "Allow me, gentlemen." He said, producing his wand with a quick snap. "You have bungled your whole expedition thus far that I don't put it past you to likewise incompetently botch a simple dose of corporal punishment. I think a few rounds of a . . .flagellum jinx should serve the purpose."
Flagellum . . . as he said the word he dared not make eye contact with her, but silently willed her to understand his queue. He realized that it was a gamble that she would understand what he meant to do, but she was quick at making connections, understanding subtext and had a terrifying knack of aptly reading his own motives, so he played his odds. If she did not react as he needed her to, she could easily wind up dead, as could he. She was not the person he was supposed to give his life to protect – he had no time to ponder, even the tantalizing thought that his life would be so much easier if this meddlesome witch was dead. He whispered the enchantment that caused vicious, burning red tendrils of light to emanate from the end of his wand. And with no more than a glance to the thug on her right, he raised his hand and struck down hard . . .
The man on her right howled in pain as the curse wrapped its way around his neck, jerking him back roughly, causing him to lose his grip on Anezka's arm. She took the split second opportunity to swing around and land her small, booted foot squarely into her other captor's groin, likewise toppling him to the ground.
For a split second she had believed that Snape had meant her harm, but she quickly reasoned that she was more useful to him alive then not, and that cruciatus would be his go-to curse, not flagellum. Flagellum was his way of telling her that he was going to help her, as she once had helped him, the night in the lower levels of Hogwarts when she recognized the effects of the curse upon his own back.
Years of wrestling with cousins put her in good standing to break free from the bully that held her. Though, the stakes were much higher than avoiding a wet-willy or a swirly. She could get either herself or Snape killed, and that did not settle well with her. She was supposed to be cleverer then that. Her nose tingled pink, a touch of embarrassment that she hoped she could pass off as exertion, if he took note – who was she kidding, the man's hawk-eyes noticed everything.
"Stupify." Both she and Snape cast the hex at the same time, her alto echoing his baritone.
He inspected Vesey and then, as if not trusting her, he checked Hindley to make sure they were both well and truly sedated, and after assuring himself they were, he strode to the door in three long strides. Nezza couldn't help but admire the way the man worked the cape he wore. God forbid if the man ever had to wear muggle clothes – it just wouldn't do the way he swooped around a room any justice.
Without explanation he warded the door and changed the shop sign to read "closed", then began to mutter incantations, running his wand around the door jam. All this was done without a word, or even a single glance towards her to confirm that she was unhurt.
"I'm fine, thanks so much for asking. No, no, those meat-heads didn't do any real damage to my person, but thanks for caring. I feel so special and safe." She snarked at him as she started to aimlessly rummage through broken shards of glass and spilled canisters of ingredients.
"You are lucky I didn't let those men kill you, you short-sighted woman. Now stop whatever useless activity you are engaging in and try to be useful."
"What's more to do? Shouldn't it just be a simple matter of calling the appropriate people and turning them over?"
He stopped stone-still and stared at her. "Which authorities would you like to call? The Aurors? Half of them are corrupt, half are incompetent."
"Turn them into Dumbledore?"
"What would a school headmaster have to do with a simple armed theft?" He implied that the idea was childish nonsense but for the first time he looked at her, telling her there was something accurate in what she had suggested.
"I can only assume he is leading some kind of resistance against the Dark Lord. He's a daft old do-gooder like that, and let's face it, the Ministry is all but useless."
He wanted to dig further, find out what she knew, find out who told her what, but there was no time and there was no reason. While he hated to admit it, he knew she had just sniffed it out on her own, no treason needed. "Simply turning them over to their enemies would be beyond foolish. While it would solidify your standing amongst such a group, should they exist, you would be quickly beset by Death Eaters of greater strength and power then these two buffoons."
"Turn them over to their own lot then." Just as Snape was trying to find out just what she knew, Nezza was attempting to learn more from him and they continued to tug back and forth verbally. "Isn't there some kind of honour amongst thieves and all that."
"We are well past that being an option, due to your own rash and idiotic decisions. Now, stop providing useless suggestions and do exactly as I say. Give me the poison."
"What for?" She asked suspiciously, grabbing the vial off the counter, but clutched it closely to her, as if it was precious to her.
His lip curled. "I need it to silence the barrage of asinine questions of former students."
"Ha, ha, ha." She underhanded the vial to him, and watched as he uncorked it and without hesitation, quickly poured three drops into each man's mouth. Anezka's stomach knotted as he did this, but not in sadness; her cheek still throbbed too much to mourn them, and she firmly believed in the theory of thug or be thugged. But they died because of her. Snape had just killed . . .. for her.
"We will leave their bodies in the alley. When people come to investigate in the next day or so you will tell them that you sold them a potion that you have since realized had turned bad, with possibly lethal ramifications."
"So you want me to go out of business?"
"I question how you have even stayed in business in the first place, but your continued success or failure holds no interest to me."
"Well, bloody well does for me." She reach under the counter and pulled out a vial that was identical to the one that he held, and then stormed over to her worktop and ladled some similarly clear potion into it. She then scribbled something on a carbon copy receipt pad, and ripped the top layer off. Without asking, she snatched the potion he still clutched and placed it, her bottle and the paper into Hindley's pocket.
"I sold them two potions – receipt proving it, marked with date and time of sale. One potions was Liquid Death, one was a potion to increase sexual prowess – they mentioned going to Madame Bathsheba's Den of Iniquity and Big Bosoms after leaving here. Both potions were colourless, and without smell. They were told specifically to not mix the two up and they obviously didn't listen. That or they meant to take it as part of some lover's suicide pact, I don't judge. Either way, the blame is entirely on them."
And that was how they ended up in the alley, two unconscious Death Eaters floating before them.
"Now, go back to the safety of your shop and remain there. Leave the doors warded." He commanded once both comatose bodies were lowered to the ground, and he began to cast a charm to make their own steps steps untraceable.
"Nope." She said stubbornly, crossing her arms and leaning back against a wall, like the rebellious child she was a few short years ago.
"I do not believe that I gave you the option." His casting did not even hesitate as he snapped this statement at her.
"Not that I ever listened much when you did, but I don't believe you have the right to order me around anymore."
"I gained the right to order you around the moment I risked my own life to save yours." He drove the knife of embarrassment home. He could tell she was feeling very ashamed of herself - she always acted far more brash when she wished to cover her own insecurities. She hated that he had to help her out of a pinch and he was going to use whatever leverage he could to push her away from him before he did something incredibly foolish like shake her . . . or worse. "It still is appalling to me that you could not think circles around these two. If you had two ounces of sense you would have given them the poison, and then notified me and I could have dealt with this quietly and you would have had your recompense and these two would have been correctly reprimanded."
"Why the fuck would you help me?" It was a challenge and they both knew it.
The past few months Snape had become a regular at her shop, but much was always left unsaid. He would sit and refuse to drink the tea she made him while she puttered around putting his order together. They never spoke of the Janitors closet incident, or the night that she took care of him. She complained about the rising cost of flobberworms and the decreasing market for diet potions, while he would occasionally share the more amusing failures of his current class, always sure to outline how she had always been a much worse student.
He didn't know the answer to the question she asked. Why would he help her? He wasn't known for the goodness of his heart, so that would hardly constitute a reasonable response. She had very little value to either master, so while he had been commanded to keep an eye on her, he could not convince her that he was only following orders, she was not so gullible, especially now as he was clearly taking action against people he supposedly stood with.
How could he explain to her how his stomach had knotted painfully the moment he saw her being held at wand point. How could he explain to her that the moment she had called the men to task for looking down on her bloodlines he felt something akin to pride in her. How could he explain that the moment she understood his silent queues exactly as he had intended, he knew beyond any doubt that this strange, damaged, mouthy brat of a woman understood him.
He finally turned to face her and their eyes locked for three breaths, grey and black staring, unblinking, at each other. There were no words that could explain.
Before he could second guess his own decision, he crossed the few feet to where she stood, and tightly clamped his hands around her arms. "Because I would." He growled, a non-answer to her loaded question, and quickly his head dipped down, his mouth demanding hers.
