A/N: Still chugging along with more of the same. Just remember: James Knox Polk was the eleventh and finest president of the USA.

Severus Snape had nearly forgotten how vastly unpleasant Lucious Malfoy could be, having spent a great deal of time in the presence of his merely-annoying son. But unpleasant he was. And the symbolism was troubling to say the least. Malfoy was in charge of muggle-torture. Voldemort was obviously making a statement - one which did not bode well for Snape - by handing him over to the sneering Malfoy: Snape, a pure-blood, was to be treated as a muggle.

At the moment, Snape was having difficulty recalling several things, including his name, his age, the date, and the circumstances surrounding Harry Potter's presence in his house, but he had no difficulty recalling the unpleasantness of Lucious Malfoy.

Questions. Lots of them, and not enough sarcastic responses to go around, but in the end, they had believed him. He had kissed the hem of Voldemort's robe, murmuring his greatfulness for his lord's mercy, utterly humiliated and just furious enough to remain fully aware of his surroundings, despite the pain.

And now he was back home, feeling vicious pains all over his body and trying to recall what it was he needed to do. He sat down at his desk, exhausted, but unwilling to slump. His dignity was quite offened enough for the night.

Night, Black, Potter. That was it. Potter was supposedly still in his closet, though the boy had likely thought himself the better of that rule and wandered off. He rose slowly, but steadily, and headed to the back room to retrieve Potter. The bed was empty - maybe the boy had obeyed after all. He slid the closet door open, surprised to see a vigilant Harry Potter exhale mightily.

"Professor," he said with a restrained half-yawn, obviously tired.

"Go to bed, Potter."

The boy nodded, did as he was told, too tired to even ask.

Snape returned to his desk. Wandless magic. Magic without words. How to teach that? Oh, of course. It would steal a little bit of Potter's glory, but it was better than nothing.

Harry fell asleep the moment he entered the bed, unaware of how long he had sat in the closet, still and silent - as requested. Without his friends and their conspiracy theories available to compound his discomfiture, he was finding himself to be far more docile.

But as he awoke slowly the next day, the image of Snape, leaning into the closet, began to stick out in his mind. Snape often looked unwashed and slimy, but he always looked controlled and tempered. Last night, he had not. Harry had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what the meeting was about, which he was about to toss about in his mind when he heard a sharp rapping at the front door.

He slipped out of bed and padded across the floor, opening the door only a crack so that he could watch Snape interact with the visitors.

It turned out that visuals were largely unnecessary.

"OPEN THE DAMN DOOR, YOU GREASY BASTARD!"

"Now, Sirius, keep your voice down, I don't think-"

Severus opened a window pleasantly. "There is an enchantment on this house such that none can enter without my invitation. And that is certaintly not the way to go about getting it." He smiled, feeling far more Snapeish than he had the previous night. "Now may I be informed as to why you - of all people - felt the need to pay me a visit this morning."

"We know you have Harry Potter."

Lupin took a small step apart from Black, as if to distance himself from the first-person plural in that statement.

"I don't know if the possessive is an appropriate choice of verbiage," replied Severus, entirely unruffled.

"If I find that you're not treating him well..."

"Well, I was planning to scar his body with extensive elective surgery, but why don't you explain the alternatives first?"

Remus Lupin decided that now was a good time to intervene. "Sirius, calm down, please. Professor, may we please come in?"

Black was meanwhile muttering something which contained the words 'surgery,' 'slimy,' and 'kill.'

"Please do, I wanted nothing more than a werewolf and a murderer to join me for...is it lunchtime already?" The sarcasm was thick enough to choke Hagrid.

Harry sat at the lunch table, still in his pyjamas, across from a concerned-looking Lupin and an irritated-looking Snape. Black sat next to him. "Dumbledore thought this would be a good idea. Safer, I suppose."

"You'd be safer with me."

"There's a lovely idea," interupted Snape, "would you feed him to a werewolf as well? Or perhaps a troll this time?"

Lupin bristled slightly and unnoticeably at being compared to a troll. "Snape, what is it that you're working on?" At the 'you're', he gestured across to Harry to denote the plural.

"Avoiding hexes. And wandless magic."

"And where does elective surgery come into all of this?" asked Sirius with a growl.

"A project I've been doing a great deal of research on. I don't imagine you would understand, as it requires a fourth-grade reading level."

Unlike his snarling compatriots, Lupin actually had work which needed to be done that day. "Then explain it to me."

Snape turned, willing to accept the premise. "As you are aware, each wand contains an item of magical significance: a dragon heartstring, unicorn hair, or phoenix tail-feather. Wandless magic can be very...useful in wartime."

Lupin nodded.

"These same items can be inbedded in the body to facilitate wandless magic. Essentially turning the whole body into a wand. The extra scars are decoys."

"What d'ya mean, extra SCARS?" Sirius was beginning to yell again, which was not a good sign.

"If we continue with the procedure, there will be a small scar where the item is inserted. It would be wise to create several decoy scars so that the item cannot be removed simply and immediately."

Now Sirius was thoroughly agitated, because the planning sounded extremely plausible and the idea sounded useful. He hated lacking a strong target for wrath.

"It doesn't really sound like a bad idea," said Harry, tactfully refraining from mentioning that this was the first he had heard of it. "If I were to be captured, the first thing the Death Eaters would do is take my wand."

"And how do you know that, hm? From him. Because he is one." Sirius's teeth had become fangs and he was bearing them at Snape.

"Sirius, please." Lupin was rapidly becoming very annoyed with the antics of both so-called adults.

Snape looked genuinely offended for the smallest of moments while before contorting his face into a typical sneer. "And you can identify them so well. Too bad you missed Peter Pettigrew."

The silence was more violent than either the words which proceeded it or the flailing lunge which followed it. Sirius was furious, but Snape was well-trained. A full body-bind brought the fight to an end before it began; Snape returned his wand to its resting place in his robes and sat back down, unruffled and unbothered by the unconscious man on his floor. "Where were we?"

Lupin's hand reached his forehead with remarkable efficiency and speed. This was going to take all day.

"Did you really mean what you said, or were you just trying to piss off Sirius?" Harry had become bolder in his week of living with Snape, as the latter no longer threatened to take away Gryffindor points at every turn.

"Which statement are you referring to? The spells on this house? Our cirriculum this summer? His reading abilities?"

"The surgery."

"Oh, that. I was quite serious, Potter. Yes, I'm afraid it has the potential to make your victories less glorious and noteworthy, but it has the benefit of making your battles more likely to be victories."

Not rising to baited, loaded statements was becoming a habit. "Actually, I was wondering how we would go about choosing the magical item. Does it have to be the same one as is in my wand?"

"That would certaintly help, yes, but it might prove impractical. What is the core of your wand?"

Harry hesitated. It was from Fawkes, Dumbledore's Phoenix, which wasn't embarrassing in the slightest, but Voldemort's wand bore the same core, a fact which disturbed him greatly, though it had saved his life when he had battled Voldemort in the graveyard.

"Don't you know?" came Snape's liquid sarcasm when the answer took too long.

"Phoenix feather," he said finally. "I might be able to get another..." He trailed off, not really knowing how one went about getting feathers from a phoenix.

"Really?" Snape raised his eyebrows with interest. "And how is that?"

"It's Fawkes. Fawkes's feather, I mean, in my wand. Maybe the Headmaster could, um, ask Fawkes for another."

Snape offered an eye-roll at 'ask,' but otherwise seemed pensive. "From Fawkes? How interesting."

Harry positively winced as the interest rolled off of the Potions Master's tongue. Did Snape know where Fawkes' other feather was? Snape didn't know. Snape couldn't know. Because there was no one in the world who he would prefer to keep in the dark regarding his wand's origin.

"As I understand it, Fawkes is rather recalcitrant when feather-donations are requested, but I will write to Dumbledore nonetheless. It is vastly preferable that you use an appropriate core..."

Harry nodded, then found himself in a Leg-Locker Curse, entirely unrelated to the subject matter at hand.

"Give me your wand, Potter, and find me when you can walk again."

Harry hopped indignantly away.

"I don't trust him, not for a minute, and certaintly not with Harry."

"I'm quite aware of your sentiments, Sirius." You've been making them known to me for the past hour.

"He was a slimy little bastard as a kid and he grew of to slimier Death Eater of an adult."

"I know you disapprove." Nothing he said now mattered, really. If he agreed, Black would continue to rant. If he dissagreed, Black would shake him by the collar and rant more loudly. If he remained neutral, there was a fair-to-decent chance that Sirius's short attention span would kick in and the ranting would be done.

"Why didn't they ask you? He's a threat to the ongoing-"

"They did, Sirius."

"And I think he ought to be strung from the Whomping Willow by his toenails for some of the things he's done. And a Death Eater to boot. I should've-" Something registered. "They did ask you?"

"Yes, and I declined."

"WHY?"

"Keep your voice down. This is what Muggles call a 'mall' and decorous behavior is expected." I can't take you anywhere, can I?

"Why are we here?"

"Because I am selecting a present for my third cousin, Marian, who is a muggle and is celebrating her birthday." Not that Remus Lupin had ever met her, but one only turned seven years old once.

"Why didn't you take the job?"

"I decided that my malady would be inhibitive. Far too simple for a Death Eater to simply attack on the full moon. Besides," he said while examining a toy which seemed to exist solely to irritate the parents of its posessor, "Dumbledore preferred to leave him with Snape. Thought it would be good for the both of them, it seems."

Sirius did not seem to have Lupin's fath in Dumbledore. "I don't like Snape, I don't trust him, and I don't want Harry living there."

Like a two year old, Black could be. Remus sighed audibly and inspected another toy. Might as well put the childish man to good use. "Keep your present mentality and imagine you are female. Would you like this?"

Snape wrote more notes on the page, carefully adding partitions. No, this wouldn't work either. He couldn't add the lemongrass without more aconite, but more aconite would make the potion deadly. He scratched the list out and began a fourth. Perhaps a swelling solution could be modified to produce scarring, with a separate potion to induce discoloration. And that had the added benefit of being reversible. But there were so many things which couldn't be mixed with swelling solution. This was going to be complicated.

He wrote ideas down as quickly as they arrived in his mind so he wouldn't lose any and so that he could sort and organize them later. A previous idea about actually killing small amounts of tissue also promise, though it would require a great deal of precision.

"I'm done."

Damn that, Potter, almost made me lose my train of thought.

"After how long? Two hours?"

"I produced the countercurse."

Interesting tone. Clearly not trying to brag, but also trying to forestall another vicious lecture. "For your own sake, I hope you are only ever accosted by very, very slow Death Eaters. Perhaps a demonic turtle, or oak tree." He paused. "And why are you still standing here?"

Harry seemed to consider this. "Do I have any more work to do today?"

"I was planning to wait until later to re-lock your legs."

Harry nodded and began to walk out of the room as Snape returned to his paperwork. There had to be a more efficient way to solve the puzzle, but he was too tired to see it. Far too tired. Far, far too tired.

"Sit down, Potter. Let's see if you're really as awful at potions as you appear to be."

He explained the lemongrass/aconite problem to the nodding mass of dark hair that sat across the table. "What do you think should be done?"

Harry shrugged, but pensively. "I had assumed you were going to make the scars with a knife."

"Not really a bad idea, I suppose, but so inelegant." Of course he had considered using a knife. After meeting with Sirius, he had even considered using a knife without a numbing potion, but outright, physical sadism had never been of interest to him. Besides, Sirius would kill him.

"Aren't you going to use a knife to put the phoenix feather in me?"

"Stop thinking like a muggle. Of course not."

"How, then?"

"Something like Apparating for objects. Think of it like a very fast accio spell."

"The why all of the scars?"

"Because there are two constants in the universe: death and stupidity. If there are decoy scars, your captor will assume that there is a reason for this and procede to inspect each and every one of them, giving you a great deal of time to plan some sort of idiotic stand."

"Have you ever done this before?" What was that tone? Suspicion?

"No. But this is just the sort of thing you should be taught in Defense Against the Dark Arts, not you personally, but every student. How to think ahead. How to think in general."

"Is that why you want the job?" So slow with the question, as if my interest in it were some sort of secret. Stupid boy.

"No, the pay is better." Stupid question gets a stupid answer. He paused. "Perhaps we could transfigure your skin. Did you read the book I reccommended?"

"I tried, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. It's nothing like what we've done in class."

"Of course, McGonagall teaches you spells and you spit them back. Advanced magic consists almost entirely of learning to contstruct your own spells. Go get the book and find the part of partial human transfiguration. And read the chapter on permanance and semi-permanance."

Snape looked back at his sheets. Potions could be used to accomplish virtually every magical task - they weren't, however, always the best way. He hated that.