A/N: Thank you to the fanfiction community for the last sixteen years. It's been a wild ride. This is my attempt to finally give something back.

My goal here is to write something that edgelord thirteen-year-old me would have enjoyed back when I first discovered fanfiction but avoid the worst excesses of reheated canon and coming-of-age power fantasy.

PROLOGUE

Igor fancied himself a sophisticated drinker, but reality was refusing to cooperate. He felt the burn from the Muggle whisky at the back of his mouth and a moment later felt the earthy, woody aftertaste which Igor associated with the flavour of bile. Perhaps there was something wrong with the bottle.

His quarters at Durmstrang were lavish. Hardbound spell books ran down the two walls behind him. Some of them were first editions. Some of them were even real first editions. His desk was empty, save for an English copy of the Daily Prophet and his now half-empty tumbler.

Igor regretted not inviting Jablonski to join him. Sure, he did his best to remain aloof from his staff, but right now he could do Jablonski's incessant babbling about some naïve new application a charm for duelling. Anything to take his mind off his current problems.

I drew his eyes back to the picture on the front of the Prophet. He could—Igor's eyes flit to the corner of his room by the chimney, his body frozen tight, right hand reaching for the wand in his belt. He was letting Lucius' letter get to him.

The shadow created by the fire in the hearth in one corner of the room didn't look quite right.

In one movement, with the first syllables leaving his mouth as his fingertips came into contact with the hardwood of his wand, Igor breathed the word "Aparcium," directing his intent at the shadow.

The spell shot from his wand and splashed harmlessly against the stone wall. Igor allowed himself to blink and let out the breath he had been holding.

"Immobulus."

The word had come from six inches behind Igor's head. Igor felt the freezing spell wash over him instantly. He sat with the hard edge of the chair digging in to his backside, hand and wand outstretched. He struggled for another second but was locked in position. Even his eyes remained locked straight forward.

"Well, well, Igor. You always were a jumpy one." Each word was delivered slowly and Igor didn't need to see the sneer on the other man's face. "Still, I guess this time you did have a reason to be afraid."

For a moment, Igor felt his face heating with anger in spite of the situation. This arrogant, smug son-of-a-bitch hadn't changed. He was still delivering two-bit lines with all the exaggerated pomposity of an amateur dramatist.

"I'll be taking that, Igor," the voice continued, and Igor saw the man from his peripheral vision casually twist his wand out of his hand before pocketing it. "And now, old friend, I'm going to tell you a story and you will listen as if your life depended on it. Nod, if you understand."

That son-of-a-bitch.

Severus Snape walked around Igor's table, looked at the chair opposite Igor, sniffed as if casting disdain on Igor's choice of office furniture before finally deigned to sit down.

Severus looked older and gaunter than when Igor had last seen him. Leading Dumbledore's motley crew over the past ten years had strained the man. The Prophet implied Snape had been a central player in the restoration and subsequent collapse of the British Ministry over the past decade.

"The last war never ended, Igor. I know you ran away and cloistered yourself here in these godforsaken mountains, but most of us stayed and fought."

Severus reached around to Igor's desk shelf and retrieved the bottle of whisky and a second tumbler. He gave Igor a refill and then filled his own.

Snape took a sip and made a face. "Karkarov, this is vile. Although I don't know why I would have expected any better." Snape raised his arms to gesture at Igor's office.

Igor could feel an itch developing on his left cheek. Damn this man. He struggled furiously against the spell, but all he got for his efforts was a bead of sweat running down his forehead, only to be caught in his eyebrow.

"English wizards are obstinate fools, for the most part," Snape said, enjoying speaking to his captive audience. "With Dumbledore gone, we found ourselves re-fighting the same tired war." Snape knocked back the rest of his tumbler.

"You heard that Avery's cell was plotting to get into Hogwarts and start killing Muggleborns?" Snape gave an abrupt laugh. "He made it outside the Hufflepuff common room. We found enough fortified eruptment potion on him to bring the dormitory ceiling down on top of him."

The Severus who Igor remembered from their Death Eater days had been the most controlled man Igor had ever met. In this older, waxy-faced ghoul, it seemed only the man's black, sunken eyes and caustic nature had survived the years intact.

"Still, we got Lucius' whelps." Those eyes flit up to meet Igor's own, challenging.

It had been a decade since Igor had become estranged from the Death Eaters, but this news still made even his heart skip a beat. If the war in Britain had reached the stage where both sides were targeting children, it was much worse than the Prophet suggested.

Perhaps if he survived the next ten minutes, he would have to write to Lucius and seek certain reassurances.

"And that's what brings me here today, to you, Igor," Snape continued. "Harry Potter just turned eleven. They will kill him. Publicly and nastily. It would only be a matter of time."

Snape reached into a deep pocket and withdrew an envelope and from that pulled out a form. Igor did his best to avoid administrative drudgery but dimly recognised it as a Durmstrang application form. At the top was a headshot of a smiling eleven-year-old with a long fringe of black hair. There was no sign of a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt. Reading upside down, the name on the form read Robert Penrose.

"I have decided to petition the Headmaster of Durmstrang to accept one more student this year to his fine institution. To appeal to his better nature and implore him to act like a good humanitarian and, personally, to do a favour for one of his oldest friends."

While still immobile, Igor's mind began to move for the first time since Severus had appeared in his room. The traitor's plan seemed like madness. How would Snape explain to the wizarding world that he misplaced the boy who lived? And what was to stop any Death Eater from checking the international schools for the boy? At least Severus' visit tonight now made sense. He had the angry apprehension that freezing him to his chair and treating him with contempt was only the start of the indignities the traitor was going to subject him to.

Snape reached forward and clinked his empty glass against Igor's full tumbler. "You are widely known as a man of your word, Igor. It's high time you gave your word to me."