Chapter 34
Severus hands the witch at the Ministry front desk his wand. Well, not his wand, but a wand.
She hands it back. "Here you are, Mr. Mullins."
"Thank you," he replies in the voice of Martin Mullins, a potioneer who died years earlier, unbeknownst to the Ministry, since Severus took possession of his wand and disposed of the body. A reclusive wizard who detested Tom Riddle since they were in school together, Mullins took a liking to Severus when they met at the Potions conference Severus attended after attaining his mastery, and the last Mullins attended before retiring to the Orkneys. The two maintained a correspondence, with Severus visiting occasionally, until Mullins died, bequeathing Severus his wand and a prodigious quantity of hair, cut and collected over the preceding years.
He walks to the directory, more slowly than usual on Mullins's shorter legs. He locates Umbridge's office, then walks to the nearest toilet. He goes into a stall and locks it, waiting for the Polyjuice to wear off. When the potion wears off and he is himself again, long limbs protruding from the smaller man's robes, he pulls a vial from his pocket and drinks. His face and body rearrange themselves again, now taking the appearance of Corban Yaxley. He Transfigures his robes to the style Yaxley favors, and leaves the stall. In the mirror, his fellow Death Eater's face looks back at him before he turns and walks out into the corridor.
"Corban!"
Fuck, fuck, and fuckity fuck. Of course he'd run into Macnair first thing. "Walden."
"Weren't you wearing different robes when I saw you just a few minutes ago?"
Severus freezes, but before he decides how to respond, someone calls to Macnair from farther down the corridor, and Macnair rolls his eyes as if to say, Can't these arseholes leave me alone for five minutes? and heads down the corridor toward the other wizard.
Severus walks quickly towards the lift, which fortunately is occupied only by two witches deep in conversation and uninterested in him. He gets off on Umbridge's floor and finds the office with her name on the outside. He knocks.
"Come in," Umbridge's too-high voice calls through the door. Severus opens it, steps inside, and closes it behind him. Behind the desk, Umbridge—in one of her numberless pink suits, this one with a froth of white lace at the collar—beams at him. "Corban, what a lovely surprise!" Then she giggles, as though she's a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl rather than a middle-aged bureaucrat.
"Hello, Dolores." When he sees that she isn't wearing the locket, his heart sinks. He'd hoped he could just snatch it, Obliviate her, and then lurk somewhere until the Polyjuice wore off and he could become the late Martin Mullins and check out of the building, but no such luck. He forces himself to smile and say, "I wondered if you might like to have dinner with me this evening?"
Umbridge giggles again. "I would love to, Corban."
"I shall pick you up at seven, if you'll give me the Floo address?"
"Oh, Corban, you know a lady can't let a gentleman inside her flat before the first date. Shame on you, you naughty man! I'll meet you at the restaurant."
Severus bites back a growl. As though he'd want to be anywhere near the inside of her flat if not for that bloody locket. "Dolores, I promise I shall be a perfect gentleman." All the gold in Gringott's couldn't persuade him to be otherwise with this toad. "But the restaurant I'd like to take you to can only be reached by Apparition, and as you have never been there, I will have to take you side-along."
'How do you know I've never been there? What's the name of it?"
For fuck's sake. Could this bint make something as simple as a dinner date any more complicated? "I'd rather it be a surprise, if you don't mind, Dolores."
She looks at him as though trying to make up her mind, and then bats her lashes and says, "Oh, very well. You are a very persuasive man, Corban."
He may be ill. But he schools his features and waits as she writes her Floo address on a scrap of parchment and hands it to him. "The restaurant is very elegant," he says as he takes the parchment, trying unsuccessfully to avoid touching her hand. "That lovely gold locket I saw you wearing once would be the perfect piece to wear there."
When Severus arrives in Umbridge's flat, his eyes are assaulted by more pink than he has ever seen in one place, and that includes the Great Hall when Albus has it decorated for Valentine's Day. At least Albus throws in a bit of red and white to mix things up a bit. Far worse than the decor, however, is the fact that the infernal woman is not wearing the locket.
The idea of going through some elaborate deception to persuade her to get it is, quite frankly, beyond him at this point. He is absolutely, positively done playing nice with Dolores Umbridge. "Imperius," he says, and her eyes get that slightly glassy look that a ham-fisted Imperius produces. When he's being careful about it, Severus can Imperius a person without any telltale signs, but now, when there's no one to see Umbridge, so he doesn't bother being careful. "Go get the locket," he orders, and she walks out of the room, returning a moment later holding it in her hand. He takes it from her, and immediately feels the same sense of oppressive pessimism he felt when he first touched the diadem.
When he ends the spell, Umbridge's eyes fill with tears. "Oh, Corban, how could you?" Her lip trembles and the tears spill over. "I thought you liked me, but you don't. You were only after my locket."
For a moment, Severus almost—almost—feels sorry for her, then reminds himself about the Blood Quill and the bullying and all the rest. Though really, does someone become horrid because they're disliked and thus unhappy, or are they disliked and unhappy because they're horrid? As she looks at him with tears running down her toad-like face, he raises his wand and says, "Obliviate."
Lucius looks at the blackened remains of the locket lying on Severus's desk. "I assume you Obliviated her afterward?"
"If only someone could have Obliviated me as well," Severus says. Lucius chuckles, assuming it's simply a joke at Umbridge's expense. If he didn't tell Hermione about his momentary flash of sympathy for the toad, he certainly isn't going to tell Lucius. "Now the cup and the snake."
"We shouldn't retrieve the cup until we've figured out how to get to Nagini," Lucius says. "The Dark Lord will go spare when he finds out Bella is dead."
"What about Imperius?" Hermione suggests.
"Imperius?" Severus repeats.
"Yes. Couldn't you Imperius someone to kill the snake? We'd have to take the potion when you try it, to see if it works, but you said it was your best Unforgivable. It might work."
"I am much better at the Imperius curse than Severus is," Lucius says.
"Well, excuse me for not knowing all about your prodigious talents with the Unforgivables, Mr. Malfoy," Hemione says tartly.
"My dear, when are you going to start calling me Lucius? You're my best friend's wife. Such formality really isn't called for."
"And when are you going to stop calling me my dear? Your excessive familiarity is unwelcome and, quite frankly, a little creepy."
"Creepy?" Lucius gasps. He looks at Severus, who gives him a leave me out of this look. He turns back to Hermione. "Miss Granger, or Mrs. Snape, or whatever it is I'm to call you—"
"I'd prefer you didn't call me at all."
"I allowed myself to be tortured and killed so that your husband could make his escape after invading the Dark Lord's mind. I may not remember it, but it happened, as surely as what happened to you on the first of those five repeated nights happened. I wonder, Mrs. Snape, how long it took me to die? Did he use the Cruciatus, or a cursed whip, or both, before he finished me off? Perhaps he let each of my enemies—and believe me, madam, I have a great many of those amongst the Death Eaters, who are a nasty, envious, and vindictive lot—have a go at me? Once the torture was finished, did he do me the kindness of a simple Avada, or did he let Bellatrix perform her favorite spell, the Entrail-expelling curse? Or perhaps I suffered a similar fate to yours on the first iteration of that evening? I've seen more than a few wizards raped as the Dark Lord looked on."
Severus looks back and forth between his friend and his wife. Lucius did not raise his voice, but Severus has known the man long enough to recognize the tightness around his mouth, and the flat stare that has replaced the glint of humor in his friend's gray eyes. Hermione has gone pale, and when she draws in a breath, it is shaky.
When she speaks, however, her voice is steady. "Then why offer to be the one to cast the Imperius, knowing that you'll be the one tortured—again—if he knows you've done it?"
Lucius hesitates. "Atonement."
"We both have much to atone for," Severus points out.
"You've been atoning since 1981. Besides, I'm the one who got you mixed up in all this in the first place. I think I owe you."
Hermione looks at Lucius for a long moment, then asks, "Who would be the best person to Imperius?"
"Someone who would be easily Imperiused, because then it could have been done by almost anyone, not only by someone particularly adept at it."
"Goyle," Severus suggests.
"Perfect."
"How would he kill the snake?" Hermione asks. "Does it have to be a basilisk fang or the sword of Gryffindor as with an inanimate Horcrux, or would a simple Avada do?"
"I doubt the Avada would be sufficient," Lucius says. "Fiendfyre? I don't see how we'd get one of the other weapons into Goyle's hands without detection."
"Fiendfyre is too hard to control," Severus says. "I don't think Goyle could manage it."
"But if he's Imperiused, I'd be the one managing it."
"Have you ever tried to control Fiendfyre through an Imperiused person?"
Lucius frowns. "You're right. And since this will be happening in my house, I'd just as soon avoid burning the whole thing to the ground."
"We've got time to figure it out," Severus says, "since we can't kill Nagini until she's the last Horcrux. If he knows his Horcruxes are being destroyed, he may try to make another one."
"Until Nagini is the last Horcrux besides Harry, or including him?" Hermione asks.
"I need to use the potion again to find out exactly what Albus knows about the Horcrux inside Potter."
"Well, don't use it today," Lucius says. "I don't want to have to be told about this entire conversation again after I've forgotten it."
"I'd just as soon you did forget it," Hermione says.
"And why is that, pray tell, Mrs. Snape?"
She hesitates, the says, "Hermione, or, if you absolutely must, my dear."