Dumbledore rose suddenly and stood by the window over looking the great lake. Fawkes let out a soothing croon which though seemed to appease the headmaster did nothing to help with my frayed nerves.

'And you agreed to do so?'

'Well I feared I had no choice but to agree with his plans and hoped you would find some way to prevent me from carrying it out'.

'And you say Lucius defied the dark lord over his order and was punished terribly?'

'Yes Albus, I have seen the dark lord punish all of us and of course been on the receiving end of his punishments but this one was particularly violent. I fear the dark lord is truly unhinged'.

'We can't have you suffer the same fate Severus, obviously we want to avoid you having to involve Miss Granger in any of the dark lords whims but I'm at loss to see how we can avoid doing so'.

Several of the headmasters portraits made disappointing tuts or noises of disbelief.

'Headmaster what are you suggesting?'

Surely the headmaster was not seriously entertaining me destroying the young girls innocence? The thought of it was churning my stomach, the only thing preventing me from completely losing it and soiling the headmasters nice kilim rug was the small hope that he will find some way out of this living nightmare.

'Right now I'm hoping to stall Tom if possible, test the waters of this new found insanity of his'.

'Oh because that sounds like a fun evening in for me headmaster' I replied acidly. Test the waters of the dark lords sanity? Was the old man insane himself?

Dumbledore ignored my sarcastic jibe and continued to pat Fawkes, the bird enjoying his ministrations and returning in kind his warbles of soothing nonsense.

'I'm wondering if its at all possible for you to when the time comes, report back to the Dark Lord with your observations of the girls coming and goings. To portray to Tom your seriousness of his commands without actually assaulting the girl…'

'Headmaster I'm not entirely sure this will be enough, the Dark Lord is insistent'.

'Then perhaps you will have to convey in your memories some overt sexualisation of Miss Granger so you can show your willingness to obey your lords commands, and how ahem happy you are to do so.'

'And how pray tell headmaster will I do so?'

'Need I say out loud Severus? Play the part of a lecherous professor noticing a young girls charms, she is blooming into quite a lovely young woman'

Was the old man serious? Lecherous professor?! My stomach was starting to churn again and I had half a mind to be sick on his nice rug just to spite him.

'Headmaster I couldn't care less if she was blooming into Circe herself, she is a student!'

'She is of age, you know this. What else would you suggest we do, I think you can agree that this method of stalling is far more agreeable than the alternative of just following through on Voldemort's directives…'

I rose from the headmasters chintz chair and strode quickly to the hidden liquor cabinet behind the portrait of the previous headmaster Armando Dippet. I grabbed the nearest decanter of fire whiskey and poured myself a liberal shot and quickly made work of it. The searing liquid clearing my head but did nothing to calm my roiling stomach acid.

'I will do as you say headmaster, as you so pointed out we have little choice, something must be done and hopefully this will be enough to appease the Dark Lord for now. I secretly hold out hope that this latest bout of insanity will desist and he will forget all about his desire to see me sully students'.

'Right now it seems all we can do is hope Severus…'

I answered him by demolishing the last of his fire whiskey and striding out of his office in a billow of robes and alcoholic fumes.