Eleanor last saw Snape sitting in his usual spot amid a haphazard jumble of parchment – the makings of his lesson plans for the coming year for an entirely new – and obviously enjoyable - subject. He barely regarded her, instead pouring all of his attention into each painfully tiny scribble, brows crashing together as his eyes furiously skimmed the pages held a little too tightly in his fingers. She didn't bother trying to strike up conversation. She let him be, all the while trying to watch him inconspicuously from over the top of her own book.
Now, the clock ticked loudly in the empty house. She had long since packed, as instructed briefly during a messy breakfast of toast and thin coffee, and gave up pacing the upstairs hall to plop down onto Severus's chair and attempt to read yet again. A pathetic attempt that was abandoned very quickly, followed by a solid hour of sampling Bertie Bott's many flavors and finding a devastatingly large portion of disgusting flavors in friendly-looking colours. After biting into a "dog breath" one, she tossed the box at the wall, ran for the kitchen, and took a swig of whisky straight from the bottle right out of Severus's not-so-hidden yet modest stash - the only thing within reach that was strong enough to overpower the moist and very stubborn aftertaste. She regarded the remaining bottle of elf-made wine as though it had grown thorns.
It was too bloody quiet.
Ella had half a mind to dig out the wireless buried in her bag and blast whatever happened to be playing; badly singing and dancing along would be a given (and so would the pulled muscles and small pangs of regret the next day). But really, she had no intention of Severus returning to find her doing that. Just as she began to slide further into the well-worn armchair, breathing in the familiar scent she was growing far too accustomed to, something grew very warm in her pocket. She clumsily dug for the coin, still insistently hot, which bore a new number – 8. Glancing at the clock on the mantle, she realized this was ten minutes away.
"Bugger," she hissed.
Snape was not there to ferry her to the safe house, and she detested the idea of trying to apparate herself. Flying there wouldn't be discreet enough, as much as she wanted to. Ella was terrified of crossing paths with another wizard in the dark. It set her heart into a worried frenzy as the smell of red wine and blood returned for a harrowing moment.
No. She would not dig out her broom and fly to the meeting. Absolutely not.
In the end, the tiny amount of Floo powder nestled in an equally tiny metal jar on the mantle proved to be the only real means of her getting to Grimmauld Place. Pinching a bit carefully in her fingers, she called out the name of a café she remembered being within walking distance, its perpetually swinging red sign a beacon in the dark.
With a burst of green flame and the smell of burnt hair and dust, she left Spinner's End. She was supposed to have arrived in the fireplace of the sleepy café that served extremely large portions in equally large mugs and snacks that tended to walk away from your plate when you looked away. She had said the name firmly, clearly, and focused on it with all her might. Instead, Eleanor was sent along a very messy chain of Floo sites that left her with a scraped knee (which had just healed) and enough soot in her hair to turn her into a very sour-looking brunette.
"Buggering fuck," she growled as she ungracefully tumbled out of the fireplace in the café she had intended to greet a good while ago. A wizard clutching an oversized blue mug raised his eyebrows and stared unabashedly as she attempted to dust herself off. She forgot to apologize as she realized she was now running very late.
Ella arrived at the safe house a right nasty mess. She had run several blocks, still covered in soot, and stumbled through some bushes that snagged on her shirt. Tonks opened the door for her when she couldn't get the knob to budge and the knocker began to shoot nasty looks.
"Wotcher, Ella," she said with undisguised surprise. "You look…uhm…"
"I know," Ella sighed and hurried into the dank hallway. Tonks picked a couple of leaves from Eleanor's hair and bit back a laugh.
"You've missed a bit."
"Sorry," she breathed and felt her cheeks alight with embarrassment when she realized Dumbledore himself was in attendance. His calm smile and courteous nod was unique at the table. Everyone else regarded her with wide eyes and a deep, horribly awkward silence. It reminded her of the time she had mentioned Babbity Rabbity in her second Muggle primary school. Sliding into a seat, Ella tried to melt out of view as conversation resumed and discreetly pulled the remaining bits of the bush that clung to her wild-looking hair.
Eleanor became enthralled with studying Dumbledore's hand, the one tucked neatly behind the other. It was as dark as charcoal, gnarled and garish against the powder blue sleeve it disappeared behind as though it had been burnt to a very well done cinder. Something was wrong. It was not a burn, or soot (which she was still covered in) and it was certainly new to her. Or had she not noticed it when he visited Snape's home some time ago?
An acrid taste rose in her throat and made her grimace as the memory of that visit flashed in her mind. She was embarrassed by how she behaved, yet she was still mad at Dumbledore. Her bitterness was tucked away then, neatly like a book on a shelf, as Snape had taught her to do. Put it away, let it go, forget it.
"-and with the Department for Magical Transportation now under questionable supervision, most methods of transportation are now rather unsafe for fleeing elsewhere. In light of this, I would like to form an expanded Advance Guard to assist in relocating these individuals and their families from among our community. We cannot continue to rely on the Auror office or Magical Law Enforcement escorts," Dumbledore said evenly, his glittering eyes darting to each of the table's occupants before settling upon Ella.
She sat up a little straighter in her seat.
"Eleanor, you will head the first Guard. You are now partnered with Remus – he will accompany you on all of your runs. Next will be Hestia and Dedalus-"
Eleanor did not hear the rest. A lump formed in her throat. Lupin gave her a nervous half-smile from across the table. Tonks, however, looked practically livid. Her eyes kept darting from Lupin to Ella as she chewed on her lip and scraped her gnawed nails against the table. The tips of her mousy brown hair began to turn beet red. Eleanor swallowed and tried to avoid her gaze as Dumbledore handed something to Hestia, Remus, and Dedalus. Then, he turned to Eleanor with an expectant gaze and an outstretched, normal-looking hand.
A thin gold chain slid into her palm like water, already warmed from Dumbledore's grip. She studied the tiny locket attached and found she couldn't open it with her nail. A faint engraving appeared and watched her with tiny, recessed eyes that blinked once while she watched – a fox.
"You will relay the details of each run through these," Dumbledore began, raising his own necklace from under the neck of his robes with the side of his thumb. "They are charmed for each of you and will be quite difficult to breech, but should you find yourself in a situation where our secrets may be compromised –" his expression grew very dark, and very unlike himself then "– you should destroy it."
There was a murmur of understanding. Remus was visibly fascinated by the layers of charms, discussing them quietly for the subject was quickly changed. Ella slipped the chain around her neck and slid back into her chair once more. Hiding her disappointment wasn't an easy feat. Ella was deeply bothered by losing Snape as a partner, even though she knew he had every right to complain about her. In the end, it was Dumbledore's decision though, and it was difficult to understand how he could have changed his mind so completely from earlier that summer. Unless Snape had told him what she did, the thought of which send her stomach crashing to the floor. She had been a right bloody mess. Fuck.
Wallowing in her complete and utter failure as a partner, Eleanor missed practically all of what Dumbledore had to say from that point on. The scraping of chairs alerted her to stand mechanically. Hestia Jones, unlooping her finger from her dark hair, clapped Ella on the shoulder with a wink, "Looking forward to it!"
Eleanor had no bloody clue what she was talking about.
Lupin awkwardly tried to say goodbye, hovering very close but seemingly unable to decide if he wanted to give her a hug or a handshake – odd for him – and ultimately decided on a stumbling parting phrase and a pat on the shoulder. It was then, as she followed the group as they trudged towards the door, that Ella realized she hadn't thought about how she was going to get back to Spinner's End.
The door shut tightly behind her, snapping her out of her stupor with a rough snap. The street was eerily quiet after Tonks disapparated, who was still wearing an extremely sour look beneath a tangled mop of auburn hair. There was no way Ella could summon the energy or will to march back across town to the silly café with the narrow fireplace and judgmental old wizards with their stupid mugs. The feeling of failure was crushing.
In the end, she struggled to find a proper spot to attempt to apparate herself in one piece. This place was too close to that prickly bush, that place was far too damp. Swearing a nearly nonstop string of sailor-worthy remarks, Eleanor finally plopped right in the middle of the street, glanced around half-heartedly, and turned on the spot.
"FUCK," she groaned when she realized absolutely nothing happened. Her remark had startled a pigeon nearby, who, in turn, mocked her with his swift flight up to a new perch atop number 10 Grimmauld Place. The bird watched her spin around in place several times before cooing at her.
"Bugger off, you stupid bird!"
Ella managed to walk several blocks, stopping here and there to try and apparate again. Each time the damnable pigeon would call at her and each time she would swear in return. Now, she was beginning to chuck bits of gravel at it, which surely looked normal to any passersby.
At last, when she spun in place at a dark corner as the pigeon was letting loose a tirade of infuriating coos, Eleanor felt the ground leave her and she swirled into a dizzying new street that greeted her unceremoniously with a mud puddle to break her fall. This was the first of seven stops along the way to Cokeworth, the last landing her in someone's yard who owned a very distraught terrier.
By the time Ella reached the door to Snape's home, she was ready to fall to pieces on the empty place where a welcome mat would normally go. She wrenched the knob open after going through the series of charms to allow her in and tracked a trail of muddy prints all the way up to the bathroom. She paid no mind to anything but the notion of a hot bath, practically tearing off her soaked, sooty clothes and depositing them in a heap.
After soaking long enough to curse half of London – the bathwater by then nearly black - Ella dragged herself up and threw on a t-shirt that floated in from her room with a mercifully decent summoning charm. Her soiled clothing was scoured the best she could manage with incantations muttered through clenched teeth, along with the trail of mud she had tracked in. As she pushed open the bathroom door, letting the air still heavy with steam rush out around her, Ella realized how quiet the house was… and how dark.
Severus is still gone, then, she reasoned. The moaning of the floorboards beneath her feet unnerved her, and the blinding darkness chilled her temper in an instant. When Severus wasn't home, his house wasn't particularly comforting.
The moonlight filtered in through her window as she adjusted it, filling in the void of her room in comforting blue-white ribbons of light. The bed creaked welcomingly as she slid under the covers, but once she settled it grew eerily quiet once more. She left her door open, as she had taken to doing the last few days with only Severus in the house, and tucked her wand neatly under her pillow. She was exhausted. Despite the uneasiness at the quiet house and Severus's lingering absence, Eleanor drifted off into a light sleep.
At first, Eleanor wasn't sure if she had been dreaming or really did hear something downstairs. She stayed frozen under the covers straining to hear any hint of familiarity in the quiet rustling echoing up the stairwell. Her fingers coiled around her wand when her feet touched the cold ground.
Severus would turn the light on in the kitchen after locking and warding the door. Then, he would remove his cloak and gloves before making his way upstairs. He always skipped the seventh step, which creaked horribly, and always paused at the top before quietly gliding to his room, soundlessly dropping the wards, and disappearing behind the door with the tiniest click.
But there was no ribbon of light beneath the door at the foot of the stairs.
It was then that Eleanor began to tell herself that she was asleep and imagining this, any moment something frightening would happen and she would wake, tangled up in borrowed sheets, and find Severus had already returned and was sound asleep in his own room – or irate from being woken by her shouting yet again. Or perhaps she really was awake and she was merely imagining the noise. It could be that sour crow she bribed into taking her response card to Thomas with a bit of meat. He could be back for more of a reward, pecking at a downstairs window insistently as he had earlier that evening. Persistent little bugger.
Then, Ella realized the house had become completely silent again. Her own breath was thunderous and she tried to hold it so she could listen. Whatever it was that had gotten her attention before, it was surely gone now. It was silly to be so worked up over a bit of nighttime noise. Wormtail was not coming back. Neither were the two witches who had blown up Snape's kitchen, therefore she had nothing to fear.
Peering in the doorway, Eleanor could make out the bed in Snape's room with difficulty. There was no moonlight to illuminate the occupant she desperately hoped to find there, so in she went, creeping along at a terribly slow pace on the balls of her feet. Her eyes began to adjust just as she felt the rough blanket greet her fingers – he wasn't there.
The absurdity of the moment hit her like a brick wall. She was panicking over nothing. It was probably still early in the night, he was still out, and she had been dreaming the sounds from downstairs. Uncaring if she made a racket on her way back to her own bed, Ella trudged along as the evening's events surged back into her thoughts.
She was Lupin's partner now. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. She liked Lupin – he was nice and intelligent and very capable with a wand. He treated her like an old friend and she didn't deny feeling excited when he grinned at her. The issue of his condition would be something to work around every month, but Dumbledore was fully aware so she was sure they wouldn't be assigned to anything near that sensitive time. In fact, she probably wouldn't be doing much once she resumed her duties at Hogwarts either – just as it had been for a while now. It might even offer a bit of a respite, which wasn't an unwelcome thing after meeting Bellatrix Lestrange.
She sighed, feeling a little lighter as she closed Severus's door to where he had left it – not quite closed, with about three fingers of space from the doorjamb. It wouldn't be so bad, and this new task would involve broomflight – no apparition, no Floo powder, no Portkeys. It would be better. Better than just a blundering secret keeper.
The floor groaned quietly behind her, sending a chill up her spine. Had she not heard him come in?
Slowly, Eleanor peered over her shoulder, fully expecting a snide remark regarding his privacy or a quizzical, raised eyebrow silently tut-tutting her disapprovingly. But the figure she found watching her silently from the top of the steps cloaked all in black was unrecognizable to her in the instant she saw it. Before she could speak or fully raise her wand, a gloved hand seized her wrist and pinned it sharply against the wall. A gasp rattled out of her throat as she was pushed back roughly and the tip of a wand grazed her chin.
It wasn't a face she was staring up at, but a metal mask with an unreadable expression, its open mouth hewn shut with thin bars and its eyes deep-set. The rest was enfolded in a black cloak and hood, dissolving into the darkness of the hallway. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think, she couldn't move except for her trembling.
It was Wormtail, back to torment her as he had promised to do in that quiet, hissing whisper before he left. Or perhaps it was Bellatrix Lestrange, wanting to try another Unforgivable on her. Or another Death Eater she had yet to meet, here to get rid of a loose end…
Her wand fell to the ground with a tiny clatter as the hand tightened painfully on her wrist, leaving her feeling overwhelmingly vulnerable. Then, she felt it. The insistent pulling at her mind, her present thoughts, starting hesitantly before quickly growing into an oppressive weight that half-blinded her as events from that evening spilled out unbidden. Sitting in Snape's chair, taking a shot of whisky after that nasty candy slid down her throat, trying to open the little red book from Obscura that refused to yield to all of her spells, trying to make her way through the Floo network around Islington, that dreadful feeling upon finding Severus's bed empty.
Summoning all of her will, she tried to redirect the thoughts and block anything that happened with the Order, conjuring images of her reading, writing her answers on the response card she had sent earlier, even snooping through some of Severus's Dark Arts books from the top shelf. But staring into the immutable mask and realizing this was a Death Eater with a wand to her throat in an empty house possibly miles from real help violently wretched up new thoughts and an overwhelming panic. She could remember the horrible, relentless sting of the Cruciatus curse, and suddenly a chain of thoughts began racing, unhinged by that single memory of fear: the terror of falling from her broom at the League Cup, running from the werewolf in the Forbidden Forest, and fleeing from the crowd of Death Eaters spreading chaos amongst the masses camping beside the World Cup stadium, seeing someone get trampled beneath the panicking crowd as the tents were set alight.
The screams echoed so loudly in her ears along with the pounding of her heart that she was barely aware the wand had left her throat.
"Do you understand now?" The voice was deep, familiar, and tired, heralding the end of the assault on her thoughts which lifted like vapor, leaving her at last able to look into the deep set eyes and see the glittering black irises staring back at her. "Do you understand how weak you are? How pathetic your vaunted familiarity with the Dark Arts is?"
He pushed the mask up over his chin with the side of his thumb and it broke away from his touch like a thick smoke and vanished. His brows were set low and his forehead creased harshly, an enigmatic scowl on his lips. The bitter scent of smoke clung to his robes and a small smudge of soot lined his pale jaw.
"You cannot drop your guard even for a moment," he continued, "or you die."
Eleanor felt a tear that had been perched precariously at the top of her cheek finally slide free. Her heart was beating erratically, still gripped in abject terror. Her newly freed hand hovered in the air beside her, stinging with the feeling of a phantom hand still pressed upon it. There was no way for her to process what had just happened and tamp down the awful memories now running rampant in her thoughts. She couldn't understand the mixed emotions toiling in his eyes, not even being close enough to feel his breath on her face and see the small wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, the tip of his hooked nose nearly touching her own. And suddenly, it was absolutely infuriating.
Her hand cut through the air and smacked him in the cheek with a sharp pop that broke the horrid silence. It wasn't a particularly hard slap, but it was enough to visibly stun him. His eyes grew a little wider with the ghost of uncommon emotion. He looked wounded, regretful.
"You bastard," she hissed, keeping her hand raised threateningly. "What in the bloody fucking hell is wrong with you?"
Ella smacked him in the shoulder for emphasis, and noted that Snape did not flinch away at the half-hearted swipe. He merely let his body absorb the blow, the ends of his long hair shifting slightly. He was remarkably solid for having such a slender frame.
"You can't defend yourself if you seize up when you get scared," he said sharply, a strange form of anger newly flickering in his eyes. "That's how fools die. You need to discipline your mind – have you learned nothing all this time?"
"I am not a fool," she yelled, shoving him away as hard as she could. His chest gave lightly under her fingers, the raised scar from the year prior gently meeting them. "And I wouldn't have been so scared if you hadn't been sneaking up on me in the fucking dark in the middle of the bloody night in that getup, mulling through my head as if it were your own!"
"People aren't going to make it convenient for you! They're not going to ask if you're prepared or announce themselves so you have time to greet them before they kill you, you insolent twit!"
Anger was the only thing keeping her from fainting dead away onto the hallway floor. She took one look at his snappish expression and shoved past him to stomp down the stairs, now determined to empty that bottle of Campbell's right in front of him for spite.
And she was sure to stomp on the seventh stair from the bottom.
He found her sitting at the kitchen table clutching a glass of his whisky as though her life depended on it. She made no effort to show she noticed him appear in the doorway, the only sound being the obnoxiously loud ticking of the clock on the mantle behind him.
It had been hours since he returned, and he had been upstairs trying to calm his racing mind after a harrowing evening. He was still sick to his stomach from the acrid smell of smoke, blood, and singed skin. Scrubbing himself raw and a change of clothes did nothing to help. Before, he could turn himself off, mentally tucking his emotions away neatly like books on a shelf when nights like this happened, when people were killed before his eyes and tortured without the mercy of a whispered curse. But he couldn't. Not anymore.
Guilt boiled in his stomach for so many things.
Severus didn't think what he did earlier that evening had been so severe; it was a way to teach her what she refused to acknowledge. She was too comfortable, far too comfortable near the edge, in the Order, undercover. Even after the ordeal in the kitchen, Eleanor was too careless, too trusting. She was going to get killed.
Snape felt violently sick at that moment. Perhaps it was something else that had planted that stupid idea into his head the moment he saw her from the top of the stairs.
Still, Eleanor had not acknowledged him, nor had she moved. Her fingers were still tightly laced around the barely touched drink that he desperately wanted to finish. He watched her jaw twitch as she ground her teeth and stared across the dimly lit table with vacant eyes as the clock tick tick ticked on insistently. Severus then realized in his anger, his disgust, his fear that he had unhinged her. Her memories were fresh in his mind, some familiar yet more vivid, others not discovered through their infrequent occlumency practices and so were wholly foreign. The fear in them, lingering and insistent, only made his current state worse. It clung to him, heavy as lead. The sound of her voice in pain echoed in each click of the clock's hand. His cloak still smelled of smoke, making his stomach turn with each breath, and his cheek stung and he felt as though any moment he might just crumble to pieces if he couldn't tuck everything away neatly like a book and embrace brief oblivion.
"You should get some rest," his voice came out far too quiet and choppy. "We leave tomorrow."
It wasn't in him to apologize, despite his better judgment. Instead he waited patiently with baited breath for her to move, to speak, anything, as his mind was unable to guess just what she was thinking, and not daring to look. Not now.
Ella stiffened, and then finally relinquished her grasp on the smudged glass. She seemed to glare at her right hand for a moment.
"Sorry," she said in a strained, heated whisper. "I'm… sorry."
Her tone softened only in the last word, yet her hard look at the empty chair in front of her told him that she was indeed still incensed about earlier.
The tick tick tick of the clock took over for several uncomfortable minutes until the rushing of blood in Severus's ears grew too loud. He said nothing and stood very still, trying to wrestle through the evening and make sense of it all. Disgusted by his lapse in control, he let his frustration wind up tighter in the pit of his stomach. The chair scraped against the floor and Ella brushed past – did she whisper a goodnight? – and Snape was left alone, staring at the glass still full of the amber liquid as the room spun and the air felt as heavy as lead.
The morning greeted Severus like a ton of bricks. His head swam with hazy memories of the night before, punctuated with the sharp pangs of a severely broken sleep. Eleanor had kept him up when his body finally allowed him rest. He didn't remember much of what occurred after he returned home, except the sounds of Ella pacing frantically in the hallway, the tap running endlessly, and the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
He had resorted to some absurd cocktail of sleeping potion and alcohol in his frustration to finally get some sleep, which did not prove to be a smart mix. He barely paid attention as he readied himself for the day, leaving a stubborn cowlick in the back of his hair where it was, not having the energy to battle it into something manageable. Severus stumbled his way downstairs to the smell of bacon and toast.
It had been quite apparent to Severus that Wormtail had spent the better part of a decade living in a student's pocket when he had tried to get the man to cook for him. Toast was baffling. At least, Severus reasoned as he slid into his seat, Eleanor can manage to fix an egg without incident.
The silent breakfast went on without incident until Severus was jarred from his toast by the clatter of Eleanor's fork hitting her plate and the Prophet in her pale fingers crinkling into a spiderweb of wrinkles. Her gold eyes were wide and locked onto the paper, lips parted, and he knew before her accusing, shocked gaze turned upon him what she had found.
His fingers tightened on his knee as he froze, waiting for her to ask what he had been dreading all night. But she didn't. The suspense was keeping him from the rest of his food, which was already getting cold and soggy, and he was suddenly very impatient and ready to be on their way, so he raised one eyebrow to dare her to respond. After their row the night before, it wouldn't take much to set her off, he was sure.
Eleanor's eyes darted from him to the paper over and over as the line between her brows darkened. She didn't take the bait. Lack of sleep certainly never held her tongue before. Impatiently, Snape took a loud, slow bite of his toast – it was thunderous, really, in that quiet kitchen – without looking away. That, at least, earned him the sharpest look he'd seen her give.
"I suggest you finish up," he said tersely. "I'm not going to delay our leaving for you to finish. And I will ask you to stop crumpling my paper."
Eleanor's lips formed a thin, hard line as she smoothed out the paper and took up her forgotten fork. It was not like her to neglect pressing him for answers, especially on matters involved so heavily with violence. How she was able to keep herself from flinging her plate of eggs at him and spitting for reasons was beyond him, but his throat grew very dry and his half-chewed bit of toast seemed to stop halfway down. He validated his personal belief that Granger was better suited for Ravenclaw by mirroring Eleanor's unending – and often blatantly intrusive – need for answers with the bushy haired student's ceaseless need to recite textbook definitions, all vividly alive in his memory.
"Have you ever killed anyone, Severus?" Eleanor asked plainly.
Severus nearly choked on his lukewarm coffee, hastily gulping it down as best he could. She was staring at him blankly, toast frozen halfway to her mouth, looking as though she had asked him about the weather in Hogsmeade. The expectant way she looked at him made Snape abruptly cross.
"I beg your pardon?" he asked in a low voice as he set the chipped white mug a little too forcefully on the table. Her expression weakened at the noise and she folded back into her chair.
"I don't know why I asked-…" she whispered to her plate, suddenly looking as drained as he felt from the night before. The dark circles under her eyes seemed more apparent now.
"You shouldn't ask questions if you are too frightened to hear the answers."
Severus raised his mug, refusing to break eye contact. Do you still care about me, you foolish girl? Or were you lying like all the others?
Her eyes flicked back up to him fearfully and, after a few deep breaths, she admitted, "I know you were there last night."
"And what evidence do you have to support that conclusion," he asked after taking another sip of coffee to soothe his frayed nerves. A futile effort.
"I seriously doubt you would be absent for most of the day, miss an Order meeting, then show up in the middle of the night to scare the ever-loving shit out of me in your… outfit without good reason."
"You best watch your tongue," he replied coolly. "Slughorn won't tolerate a foul-mouthed potions assistant."
"You're avoiding the subject."
Snape narrowed his eyes at her. He hadn't known about the Order meeting, but now that she had mentioned it, he did wonder why she had memories of poorly navigating around Islington with Floo Powder last night. A pang of resentment flickered through him. He had been left out again.
Eleanor yanked a purple leaflet that had been shaken loose from the paper and let her gaze fall upon it, obviously shrinking from her challenge. What a question.
"Slughorn won't like your taste in conversation, either."
Looking down at the purple page in her hand, Eleanor's eyes picked out a few bits of the document besides the glittering words "The Ministry of Magic", which overpowered them all.
5. Should you feel that a family member, colleague, friend, or neighbor is acting in a strange manner, contact the Magical Law Enforcement Squad at once. They may have been put under the Imperious Curse.
She snorted. Perhaps Severus would report her, especially after asking such a ridiculous question. Why had she? She couldn't fully shoulder the blame on her lack of sleep – though she couldn't remember what kept her up all night very clearly after the encounter in the kitchen. Perhaps it was just the fear that boiled deep down in her stomach, ignited the night she took an Unbreakable Vow with a man she barely knew. He was simply an indescribably fascinating person, someone who continually stood out in the crowd to her and she couldn't put her finger on why. Dumbledore trusted him. The way he spoke to him, about him, exuded confidence in his character, despite his position. But he was a spy for their side…right?
Of course, she told herself, of course he is.
Eleanor couldn't fathom putting herself through such a hell without good reason, but she didn't understand his. It wasn't the "good versus evil" motive most wizards in the Order had. Severus wasn't so polarized, which was why he could seamlessly drift between the two camps. He was gray, like the clouds that covered the sky behind the dirty window.
She made her way up the stairs, pausing for a moment to study a hole on the bookshelf where something was missing before climbing to the landing with lead-filled legs. Her chances of discovering Snape's motives and secrets had waned to nothing. He was rid of her the moment they apparated away from Spinner's End. She was more than unhappy about their leaving, having enjoyed her time spent alone with him, disregarding the mayhem of the other visitors the house had recently and the incident the night before. But she was leaving for a far safer place, and this was reason enough to gather up her bag and snap her short traveling cloak about her shoulders. People were disappearing, bridges collapsing, homes burning…
Her throat grew dry.
He had not been himself the night before. That either meant he had participated and felt guilty or was angered by her finding out. She preferred to assume the former. No, she preferred to think he had not been there at all. Just at a meeting far, far away from the scene of people burning alive in their homes where his hands remained clean. But the heavy, acrid smell of smoke in his clothes and the alcohol on his breath had made her worry. Logic was not kind when such apparent evidence lingered right in front of her face. The scents still stung her nostrils, clouding the familiar dustiness of the home she was drifting through.
Ella paused on the landing, peering back at her room, at his, and her heart skipped a beat. She was leaving. The seventh step creaked loudly under her and it didn't matter because she was going. The hole on the shelf was still there, unsolved, because it didn't matter – she was going. The kitchen was already tidied, the candles all snuffed, and the curtains drawn. The house had become a sorry place, indeed. It was mourning the departure of its owner, who was already standing in the doorway, still fumbling with the fastening of his long, black cloak.
The gravel crunched loudly underfoot in the alley across from Snape's house. He had warded and locked the doors before leading her away briskly to hide in their familiar place. Florence Jones made no appearance. In fact, her home was shut up and dark behind the frilly curtains. They could be asleep, Eleanor figured, since it was still early in the morning and the sky overhead was very gray. Carefully stepping around a puddle, she looked up to Snape expectantly as he tucked his wand away in his robes.
"If you've left anything behind, consider the chances you had to retrieve it," he said.
"I didn't."
Her reply had been too eager, too loud. He arched an eyebrow at her.
"How many stops before we get there?" she asked, this time much more softly.
"Two before Hogsmeade," he replied. "There are new restrictions for travel in place surrounding Hogwarts which you will no doubt hear from Minerva."
"Only two?" she gaped.
"Were you hoping for more?" he questioned impatiently, holding up his arms.
She shook her head and grabbed his thin wrists, remembering her apparition classes so many years ago. For long distance journeys, prepare for the rapid transitions from place to place by holding your partner by the wrists or forearms firmly.
Eleanor glanced at Snape's face the instant before they turned and left the damp gravel in Cokeworth. It was unreadable, cold, the mask he wore at school. The sinking feeling in her stomach wasn't just from the brief touch-over they did in an overgrown field.
Hogsmeade came too soon.
They landed near the Hog's Head, and Snape was very quick to drop her arms and tuck his own away beneath his cloak. It was foggy here, with few people out and about. A pair of Law Enforcement officers strode past in step with one another, wands out. It was then the bright purple leaflets with the glittering gold letters dotted Eleanor's eyes, and the overwhelming anxiety exuding from each of the inhabitants darting from doorway to doorway felt as though someone had dropped a bell jar overtop them – it was so quiet, so tense, so different.
Snape had begun to walk the path to the castle without her, leaving Eleanor to jog to catch up. She fell into step just behind him, knowing he would not be too keen in being seen strolling alongside a girl in such a public place. Back to keeping a distance, she thought miserably. No thanks to your own damn temper. She missed that visit to Diagon Alley where she could tease him about books and walk close beside him, close enough to see the edges of his mouth curl into a reluctant smirk and brush elbows. Close enough to let that shy, gentle side of him show through, the one she believed was his true self that rarely got to come out anymore.
"Do you think the Auror team arrived yet?"
Snape gave her a sidelong glance, "They have been there all summer, preparing. Scrimgeour wasted no time."
"Do you think it will help?" Rufus Scrimgeour was still a stranger to Ella, only appearing in her mind as a subordinate of the late Amelia Bones, whom she knew through an old family friend. Her death was still a shock to her. Eleanor remembered the witch being very sharp, not someone to be caught unawares in her own home.
"No." Stones crunched loudly beneath his boot as he uttered that single word, which hovered in the air like a frozen fog.
Ella swallowed hard. Her notions of safety evaporated in an instant, and suddenly she was not grateful to return to the castle dutifully waiting for her from beyond the trees. She wished she were nobody, hidden away from the world until this whole thing blew over – if it did this time.
Ella looked guiltily at her bed where, perched upon the very top of the stack, sat a black book with a thick spine and peeling cover. She knew she shouldn't have, but she did. She took it, right from the shelf in Snape's home. But she needed it. Asking for it would have come with a very nasty, very direct response she knew for certain and could imagine it very clearly in her head.
So she took it.
From Snape.
She hadn't braved a peek at its innards yet, simply turning it over thousands of times until she had memorized every crease and crack in the ancient cover. But she wanted it with every bit of her to satisfy the most horrible need to know how to do it, because there was no way in bloody fucking hell he would ever consent to her learning otherwise. Or at all.
It sat proudly atop the other books, buzzing with residual magic from possibly centuries of use. She was dying to crack it open and see what it was hiding – what he was hiding – but the stab of guilt made her wary to touch it, lest he had placed a charm to alert him of someone else's prying eyes. So there it sat, openly challenging her each time she turned to her bed and hiding her other books from view beneath its weight.
Ella had all but abandoned her commissioned research from Dumbledore. Her muggle books had been returned to Charity (with no explanation for the wear and tear the little one had suffered from the wrath of her well-aimed kick), and her healer guides were shoved back onto her shelf. The Healer's Helpmate pleadingly glinted from its dusty corner, its once pristine white cover now darkened to an unappealing taupe from the grime of her shelf's most unused space. It was stupid, really, for her to have even attempted anything in them. She could barely knit a wound together, let alone heal a bruise or use diagnostic charms to find broken bones. She just couldn't do it, and it frustrated her to no end. She would stick with potions, and that was that.
Eleanor was not her father. She did not bear his gift for comforting charms or bone repairing spells or his passion for the healing arts. Memories of St. Mungo's, with its sharp, sterile smell and the continual swishing of the mediwizards' robes as they came and went like bees in their hive, were bittersweet for Eleanor. She could recall hugging her father before he left for his shift each day, the rough uniform with the crossed bone and wand symbol itching at her cheek as he placed a kiss upon her head – the same place each time – and gave her his love. She remembered the way his face always looked tired and sad, even when he smiled, after her mother died. He barely did things for himself, she knew, and would stare at the empty side of the bed before going to sleep. Sometimes, he would come home and cry because his patient had irreversible damage, or died, and Ella would sit with him – despite how much he protested – and listen when he spoke and brought him a cup of tea or a mug of coffee with the biscuits he liked that were continually stashed on the third shelf.
Eleanor had no wish to be a healer, as helpful as that would be.
She did not want to look at ghastly wounds or spell damage. She couldn't imagine how her father had done it for so long. He was a specialist, very gifted at curses and other bouts of Dark magic. It was how he met her mother; she would appear at his hospital with new patients from her patrols – sometimes the perpetrator, sometimes the victim – and he would go out of his way to talk to her. He used to laugh when he told Ella how he would fill out extra piles of paperwork just to keep Susan talking.
But Galen Bristow wasn't careful that one day when they brought in a man who had been cursed so severely that three mediwizards also perished within minutes of touching him. The poor fellow hadn't lasted long either, she had learned. But her father, dutiful in the face of such a deadly affliction, had done his best they told her, until his fingers accidentally brushed against the patient's skin when he turned to retrieve another stasis potion. He was dead within a few minutes. The entire left side of his body turned black and crumbled inward, and his face was not peaceful. He had died in terrible pain on the hospital floor. His colleagues were scarred from witnessing it – one witch retiring from healing at the age of 32 and choosing to work in an office instead, the other was addicted to numbing potions for a long time. They were both at his funeral and gave Ella the same praise for him, and the same advice to her. Her relatives managed to argue and cause a scene even there.
Eleanor was by no means alone in her predicament, with the remnants of You-Know-Who's followers still causing mayhem as the cause faded away. There were many orphans, and widows, and families broken into pieces with members missing without a trace. Her aunts and uncles – not as tolerant as her parents and far too busy with their own children – offered her some help, but the distance and the discord between them and their deceased sibling remained, so Eleanor only looked to them in need and visited during holidays. She was of age, so she inherited the flat in London and her parents' savings and began to chase her opportunity with the Harpies as an alternate chaser for two years. The games encouraged her, her friends comforted her, and the practices numbed her. But, she never got used to people recognizing her in the street, to the boys who would look her up and down with hungry eyes and ill intentions, to the fans who would berate her with awful, nasty words if they lost or slipped up in a game, or the ones who followed her - chased her - around towns late at night and sent chilling letters anonymously through the post.
She wanted to disappear sometimes. Walk off into the wood one day and leave no trace behind.
Ella heaved a great sigh and ignored her shelves, instead turning to her bed where she took up the dark book with its creaky cover and worn out pages and shut out any lasting qualms with delving into such dark arts. She carefully turned to the first page of copy and began with the title: The Art of Legilimency – Entering the Mind.
Halfway into spreading a thick layer of jam on her toast, an owl swooped overhead and dropped a letter into Eleanor's cider. The creature dropped onto the table, nonplussed by the woman flinging her breakfast halfway across the room in fright. The unhappy thing hooted for a treat as she shrieked and scooted backwards in her seat, seeing it come dangerously close to her hand as she reached for the brown envelope now soaking up her drink.
"Just… just take what you want," she said through clenched teeth, shoving her plate towards the owl.
He looked down and selected the entire link of sausage she had yet to cut, taking it in his beak and hopping away to munch on it loudly. Eleanor did not move until he had downed the entire morsel, hooted a "thank you", and flew off.
"Hmm… blackberry," hummed someone near her. "Quite unexpected."
Eleanor was aghast upon seeing her toast had lodged itself in Sybil Trelawney's hair. Her many-ringed finger pulled another chunk of the sticky jam from her unruly curls and she licked it up, bangles on her wrists jangling loudly as she did.
"I'm so, so sorry! Let me help –…"
"Oh no," Sybil held up a hand in protest, sending her bracelets into a chorus of clinking. "I quite like it. Thank you. I never thought to try the blackberry today, but – mmm – yes, it tastes right."
A muscle twitched in the side of Ella's mouth as she watched the witch continue to take bits of jam with her fingers from her hair and sample them. It was quite a while – on Eleanor's third piece of meticulously jammed toast – before Sybil took out her wand and wiped the remaining mess free. She was glad to see Minerva, sitting several seats down with a neatly folded Prophet and steaming cup of tea, wrinkling her nose in disapproval.
The brown paper envelope tied up neatly in purple ribbon was christened by a careful, looping script.
Miss Eleanor V. Bristow, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Her fingers tore the corner open and fished out the precisely folded and very crisp bit of stationery within. The overly detailed and shiny monogram at the top took up nearly a third of the page: H. E. F. Slughorn. She had forgotten Snape was no longer her mentor. Her cider grew bitter in her mouth as she read on:
Dear Miss Bristow,
I hope this letter reaches you in good spirits and good health. I look forward to mentoring you into your true potential and reconnecting with a favorite student of mine. It is with great joy I return to Hogwarts, and I simply cannot wait to see the shining faces of young pupils eager to learn. In anticipation of the start of term, I request that you help begin my preparations for the start of term lessons I have already written. I shall arrive on the Hogwarts Express, alongside my dear pupils - which is a tradition I shall not be rid of even now – and look forward to meeting you in person at the start of term feast. By that time I will need the subsequent potions completed and ready for the first day of classes:
Draught of Living Death, Swelling Solution, Amortentia, Girding Potion, Strengthening Solution, Veritaserum (I have sent the permit papers already), Polyjuice Potion (for this I have sent ahead one I have begun already, you may start at the second part), Draught of Peace & Felix Felicis
I have faith in your work – Dumbledore spoke very highly of you!
Best,
H. E. F. Slughorn
The letter fell on top of her soggy, and now very cold, eggs. Her mind was reeling – all of those before the first day of class. There was no way. NO. WAY. She would be up for days keeping up with all of those steeping and brewing times, not to mention the countless hours of scraping, chopping and smashing ingredients just in preparation. Eleanor ignored the startled look she received from McGonagall as she banged her head against the table. It was going to be a long day.
Minerva had resettled herself beside Sybil and Eleanor, neatly folding her skirts under her knees and sipping her teacup elegantly.
"I heard you had quite the summer, Eleanor," she said. "Albus told me about the fire. I hope everything wasn't lost."
"Oh, no," Ella straightened hastily. "I managed to grab quite a bit. I wasn't too attached to the place either, and my plants can always be regrown."
Minerva nodded and Sybil dislodged a stubborn crumb from her locks, sneaking it into her mouth like a child.
"Most of my neighbors made it out fine, except…" her voice died in her throat as a chill slid down her spine. Unwanted memories threatened to bubble up in her mind and she fought them back down. "Well… it could have been worse."
"Dreadful," McGonagall clucked and shook her head – though not a single hair wavered or fell out of place. "Just dreadful. All this nasty business happening all at once. The air hasn't been this tense for years."
"Have you healed, then?"
"Oh, my, yes. I couldn't stand being ordered to rest for another minute," she said over the top of her cup, before finishing with a chuckle, "it left me to my thoughts a great deal too much."
"One can never be alone with their thoughts too much," Sybil chimed in.
"Yes, dear," McGonagall offered with a twist in her lips. "Except me."
A tall man in a dark coat emerged from the corridor, slipping by the tables quietly as his dark eyes darted about the room. His scraggly salt and pepper beard, sunken eyes and errant hair gave him the look of someone who woke up on the wrong side of the bed three days in a row. He met Eleanor's gaze sourly.
"Morning, ladies," he grumbled.
McGonagall, stiff-backed and thin lipped, tipped her head to him, "Savage."
"Good morning!" Sybil trilled, fitting in a limp-wristed wave before he passed by.
Eleanor said nothing until he had reached the other side and began a new sweep of the empty hall. "Is he…?"
"An auror," Minerva finished. "One sent by the Ministry. It would have killed them to send someone who could smile to a school. Our only compensation is their post being officially in Hogsmeade."
"Isn't Tonks here, too?"
The corner of McGonagall's mouth twitched into a smile, "She is. I daresay she'll be the life of the party."
Eleanor dropped the last cauldron onto the table with a loud clunk. The iron cauldrons were always the worst, and the heaviest, to prep for brewing. Her eyes surveyed the classroom, now filled to bursting with raw ingredients, to make sure nothing had been forgotten. She refused to make yet another trip to collect something. If it was missing now, well, Merlin's balls, she wasn't going to get it.
With a flick of her wand, every burner jumped to life with a hiss. The familiar smell lit up the room and Eleanor felt truly at home. It felt good to be able to work in plainclothes. Her apron was neatly tied and her hair wrestled into some sort of bun-like catastrophe on the top of her head. Ready to begin.
With no students, the full expanse of the classroom was hers to use freely. She left no surface untouched, having neatly arranged everything in clockwise order of attention, brew time and difficulty. She could work fluidly, slowly rotating around the room without volatile moments being out of sight – much. She set to work, silver knife in hand, chopping a veritable mountain of ruta graveolens as fast as she could. She began to fidget not long after, then making a tincture of thyme and struggling to keep Murtlap tentacles from writhing their way off the table. The Polyjuice potion - what Slughorn had sent ahead, anyway – bubbled angrily. He had skimped on the fluxweed. It would take mending to make it properly effective.
By the time Eleanor had bits of dragonflies and preservation juice coated all over her apron, she was jittery beyond reason. She flicked her wrist and the burners all readjusted in temperature while she dug the hidden wireless from her old workroom behind Snape's office. She paused on her return, noticing that the office she had come to grow very familiar with was missing all of the pickled critters and aging poisons that had dotted the walls. The room had been stripped bare of its former occupant's things – it even smelled differently. A chill rose in Ella's skin.
"That's right," she mumbled to herself. "He'll have Umbridge's old office now."
Her disappointment didn't last after the notion of Snape battling the pink-stained walls Umbridge had left behind snuck into her thoughts. She dissolved into a fit of giggles and she fiddled with the dials on the wireless.
Perhaps he'll have to keep the kitten plates, they were stuck on pretty good.
Ella snorted, plopping the wireless on an empty stool as it blasted indie rock loud enough to rattle her assortment of vials. She didn't care, Severus wasn't here to nag at her to turn it down. Flinging an Ashwinder egg into the nearest cauldron, she let her thoughts dwindle to her work.
Snape had left his new office to air out for the rest of the evening, taking the time to return to his rooms and eat his dinner in private. As he descended down the steps to the dungeons, Snape discovered his quiet meal was not to be.
Music blared from the potions classroom, the door wide open to the dark hallway. To his great surprise, the room was alight with dozens of lit burners, bubbling cauldrons, and freshly prepared ingredients. The aromas were telltale and he leaned his head past the threshold to see if his former teacher was bumbling about, getting reacquainted with his old haunt. The wizard on the wireless broke into a loud chorus, his lyrics being echoed by a louder female voice.
Eleanor suddenly danced across the classroom, her red hair fighting its way from its updo with the tenacity of a starving animal. She was shaking a jar of quartz chips into a powder – a very monotonous task – all over the place. Over her head, to the right, to the left, in a circle; she was jamming to the music, completely oblivious that Severus was witnessing some of the worst dancing he had ever seen while she turned her jar of quartz into an oversized and off-key maraca.
Snape had to bite his lip as a chuckle fought its way up his throat while Ella shook her hips to the second chorus, wandlessly flinging pre-measured moondew into a cauldron across the room. Her back was still to him, not counting when she spun in place, and for the most part it seemed she kept her eyes closed while she threw another batch of ingredients into a half-full pewter cauldron and conjured a glass stirring rod with an elegant twirl of her wrist.
Even standing in place to stir, Eleanor couldn't keep still. She looked absolutely ridiculous, rocking back and forth on her heels as she continued to sing along to the fast-paced song. Severus had to swallow hard to prevent the laugh sneaking its way back up his throat. The edges of his mouth were beginning to betray him. He took several deep breaths through his nose – the noise was hardly a concern to him with the racket still going on – and felt his ribs twinge in relief.
Eleanor, finished with her stirring, threw the rod gently up into the air. It hovered over her head, slowly ascending to the stone ceiling on a lazy, predestined course like a leaf caught in a stream. Severus glanced up in alarm – there, hovering above the room, was a constellation of items floating smoothly in an orbit around the pirouetting redhead. The air was consumed with coloured vapors, punctuated by the languid bubbles emerging from a cauldron on the far side of the room. It was a very surreal scene. The effort to float several dozen items into the air without having them collide with one another or the walls would take a massive amount of magic. The girl jetéing across the classroom hardly seemed connected to what was occurring around her, let alone putting effort into it. It was the same odd, wandless combination of levitation and hover charms he had seen her use before.
For all her blunders, Eleanor could command a formidable amount of magic, Severus reasoned. It was clear why Dumbledore had singled her out for private lessons. She possessed explosive raw magic, as evidenced in her memories of her mother's demise. She had managed to hold her own with Bellatrix for a while, though she had been severely lacking and hesitant in offensive wandwork. Her curses were fairly limited – she seemed to have a propensity for a timid reductor curse – and the feeling behind them wasn't strong enough to draw blood.
That could be changed.
Snape wondered if Eleanor's magic might be a bit too well-suited for Dark magic. It didn't seem to a clash in natures, but a clash of personality that held her back. Like Dumbledore.
A chill arrested his thoughts and Severus made for his private quarters without a word. He was exhausted, but glad for the lull in recruiting efforts the Dark Lord had been pushing for over the summer. He was grateful most had been heated discussions rather than hands-on demonstrations – like the most recent, out of control event – but Severus was bone-tired all the same.
He warded the door behind him, all muscle memory by now, and settled into the worn burgundy couch with a sigh. The walls buzzed with Eleanor's music still, preventing him from forgetting that she was still – regrettably - nearby.
Severus sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes focused on a small stone lodged in the wall. Dumbledore was out, traveling for Merlin-knows-what reason. He had become very disconnected as of late, not unlike the previous year when he was making himself scarce to the tune of keeping Potter safe with the inane theory that the Dark Lord would somehow lose interest with the two apart. In the end, the old man had caved and reaped a disastrously disjointed staff from his stubborn absence. They were still gossiping about Umbridge's influence.
Snape was beginning to see traces of change in that unwavering façade Dumbledore wore. He had been his genial, nosy self over the summer, yes, but his growing fixation on protection – whether it be attaching his colleague to him in a hapless effort to evoke some archaic and weak protection, or his new focus on smuggling key members of wizarding society to safety should the need arise – led Severus to believe the curse trapped in his hand was spreading tendrils of paranoia already. He was sharing less and less with Severus, too, which was frustrating to no end. Having to summon up useable pieces of intelligence to occupy his thoughts when around the Dark Lord was becoming more than a chore for Severus. It was bloody exhausting.
He frowned at the small tremor in his hands. He had been jittery since that night, and the smell of smoke never really washed out of his cloak, no matter how many house elves he had set at it. Things were escalating again. The Dark Lord wasn't bothering with the cordial, charming approach that had led so many to his cause all those years ago. His form, born of that vile resurrection potion, had intentionally been left resembling his pet, Nagini, instead of rekindling his former self. He was all about setting himself apart now, no longer content to dwell amongst his wizarding peers. He was above them, above caution, remorse, or mercy. It was wholly foreign to the person he had known when he had joined after leaving school…
Snape's walls lit up with the sound of folk rock, and while Severus couldn't hear Eleanor adding to the racket, he knew she was screeching out the lyrics just down the hall. He slumped into the cushions until the plush fabric drowned out all they could and he waited to go numb.
A/N: Hi all! Sorry for the long delay - lots of big things happened (got engaged - wow!) and I've been agonizing over the details for everything in the coming chapters. Thanks for your kind words and patience!
