The next match to be played was Gryffindor vs. Slytherin which, as always, promised to be the grudge match of the season. Slytherin had soundly beaten Ravenclaw two weeks before, but there had been a bit of a stink kicked up over the dirty tactics on display. And that was just standard play - this time, it was personal.
Sev felt a buzz of certainty that was almost like second sight. This was, traditionally, the match where students were most likely to hex each other, commit fouls, and generally resort to all sorts of deviousness. If ever there was a good window for an attack on Fletcher, this was it.
The antidote to the poison had to be brewed freshly the day it was used. Sev had been keeping the ingredients ready to go at a moments' notice, but on match day he actually made up a batch and concealed it in the inner pocket of his robes. "What's that?" asked Colin Crabbe curiously.
"Oh, just a little something I might use at the match today," he said with an evil smile. Malfoy or Avery would have twisted his arm mercilessly for details, but Colin didn't have the imagination. He just laughed and went back to gazing longingly at Malfoy's designer broomstick.
Technically, first years weren't supposed to have their own brooms - not until they'd had at least six months' worth of flying tuition, anyway - but it was more a guideline than a real rule. A number of the better-off students from wizarding families had brought brooms from home, and the teachers didn't bother to confiscate them.
Remembering who else happened to have a broom of his own, Sev had an idea. At lunch that day, he suggested to Malfoy that he arrange to show up for the match riding his own very flashy, very expensive broom. "That'll show those pathetic Gryffindors."
He wasn't sure exactly what it was supposed to show them, but Malfoy seemed to like the idea. He liked any idea that involved showing other people how what his family had was better than anybody else's.
Then, in their usual 'chance' meeting in the library, he leaked the news to Lily. "Make sure it gets around to James and Sirius," he instructed.
"Okay." She hesitated. "Um... why?"
"I want your boyfriend to be there with his broom. Fletcher's going to take a fall, and all the antidotes in the world won't save him if he breaks his neck. You keep an eye on him all through the match, and point it out to James the second he starts to fall. Trust me, he'll be in the air and after him before you can blink."
That was true enough; James Potter was nothing if not impetuous. Others might think his tendency to leap to the rescue heroic, but Snape was unimpressed. A truly smart person would see situations coming and prevent them before they even arrived.
"Okay. He's not my boyfriend, but we've had this argument before so let's just skip that. Why James?"
"He's exactly what we need. If he's the one heroically rescuing Fletcher, nobody's watching me."
"You think it's gonna be this match."
"Yes."
"Why- No, wait. Don't tell me. Because it's when you'd do it."
He shrugged and offered her a thin smile. "Exactly."
The plan had worked beautifully, as he knew it would. People were so easy to manipulate.
Malfoy's dramatic entrance was punctured when James and Sirius also turned up on their brooms, but he still got to call it a victory because their brooms were so much older and cheaper than his. James responded by going into a display of flashy acrobatics they all knew Malfoy couldn't possibly match. However, the Slytherins got the last laugh when Professor Vitae called him down.
"Now, James, how about we leave the showing off to the actual players, hmm?" she said, although her tone was affectionate. The Gryffindor head of house could never muster a great deal of sternness, and she was very fond of James. He and Sirius got away with murder under her lax eye, to the Slytherins' disgust.
Whilst everybody else was watching James and Malfoy, Sev studied the crowd. Dumbledore wasn't there, but the rest of the staff were... including Fennel. Nobody seemed to think it particularly odd that he'd turned up for this match and not the others; he had been a Slytherin in his own school days, and the rivalry between the two houses was by no means restricted to current students.
All the players were in place; the game was about to begin. But the game Sev was watching was not the same one everybody else was.
Whilst the crowd oohed and aahed, Sev watched Fennel. Across the other side of the pitch, Lily kept her eyes firmly fixed on Audley Fletcher. If James hadn't been so wrapped up in the match, he'd probably have been jealous.
Play was fast and furious, eliciting gasps of delight and dismay every few seconds. Brilliant goals were scored, daring strategies tried, incredible defences mounted. Sev didn't see any of it, only heard the commentator's words. Every iota of his attention was focused on the Potions teacher. Lily might be keeping her own watch, but he trusted nobody but himself to read the signs exactly right.
The commentator, Greg McDonald, suddenly sucked in a sharp breath. "The Snitch! He's seen the Snitch!"
Sev's were the only eyes that weren't turned to the sky - and the only ones that saw Saxius Fennel suddenly tense and reach for his wand. This was it. Sev got to his feet.
"Where are you going?" gaped Avery beside him.
"I need a drink."
"But- the Snitch!"
"He's a Gryffindor. He'll miss," said Snape coolly, and threaded his way past him down towards the bottom of the stands.
Only now did he first glance upwards, and catch a glimpse of Audley Fletcher wrestling with a suddenly errant broomstick. There were gasps as people started to realise something was wrong, but nobody moved.
Nobody except Lily, who Sev saw elbow James pointedly and say something that was lost in the noise. James looked startled for an instant, and then he suddenly grabbed his broom.
The gasps quadrupled as James launched himself into the air, zooming up towards the falling Fletcher. None of his confusedly circling teammates had thought to try something so crazy as to try and stop his fall.
James Potter, though, had just enough of a mix of recklessness and skill to try it. He whipped around and matched his broom to Fletcher's, barrelling down towards the ground at the same speed. It could only be seconds before impact.
Completely letting go with his hands, James steered the broom with his knees as he reached out to grab Audley's outstretched hand. There was a gasp of dismay as he missed... then he reached out again and connected.
Sev actually heard the crunch as Audley's arm was wrenched out of its socket by his sudden dead weight. His broom fell away from him, and Potter's was suddenly taking the weight of both of them. James tried desperately to pull up, but all he could do was slow the descent. They both hit the ground with a thump, Audley crying out in pain.
Fennel might not have counted on James' intervention, but either he'd decided it didn't matter or he was too desperate to abandon his plan at this late stage. In the sudden mass rush towards the two fallen boys, he was first off the starting blocks. Snape, having already woven his way down to the front of the crowd, was right on his tail.
"Here, drink this." Fennel quickly pushed a vial of potion against Fletcher's mouth.
Even here, now, in this vitally important moment, the cool and collected part of Sev's brain was observing the brilliance of it. Everything seemed perfectly, one hundred percent natural; the Potions master diving to the rescue of the injured student.
And now, for the third actor in their little play; keen young first-year trying to impress his Potions master with his skill.
"Professor! I have the Numbweed potion here," he said, pulling out the little bottle of antidote. "Should I-?"
Fennel looked for a moment startled, but quickly recovered. "Um - yes, by all means." Numbweed was a general anaesthetic that would dull pain without interfering with any other kind of medication. For the record, that was what was in the bottle - in addition to the antidote.
Numbweed - proper, non-altered Numbweed - would have no effect whatsoever on the poison. Fennel would know that - and he would also know that letting a student feed an untested potion to Fletcher gave him an absolutely perfect scapegoat if the boy suddenly died.
Always play to other people's best interests, thought Snape cynically, as he poured a dribble of the liquid into Audley's mouth.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then Fletcher started to cough. The coughs racked his athletic frame with ever-increasing strength and frequency, and Sev caught the flare of triumph in Fennel's eyes. Then Audley twisted to one side, and threw up. Repeatedly.
All thoughts of subterfuge were forgotten, as realisation dawned across Fennel's face. Fletcher had brought up Sev's potion, the one that had gone before it, and just about anything else he'd ingested in the last eight hours. The poison was out of his system.
Fennel snapped around to stare at Snape. Sev stared right back, with his most unreadable expression in place. After a moment, the Potions master spun on his heel and stormed away.
Sev caught hell for his little 'stunt'. Professor Vitae was furious, convinced that he'd deliberately given Fletcher something to make him throw up.
"Is this a time for jokes?" she raged. "Is this a time for silly little schoolboy rivalries? He could have been very seriously injured."
Audley had turned out to have nothing worse than a dislocated shoulder - and a very queasy feeling after the reaction of the two potions inside him. He was spending the night in the infirmary, under the watchful eye and clucking tongue of Madame Florence.
Fortunately, Professor Malachite turned up to rescue Snape. "Come now, Ellida. It's been a very stressful day for you, but you're being unfair. You mustn't take it out on the boy. The potion was a little too strong - it was an honest mistake. No harm done, hmm?"
Still muttering darkly, Professor Vitae allowed herself to be led away. But as he left, Malachite threw a calculating gaze over his shoulder at Sev. In return, he sent the same carefully blank look he'd given Fennel.
Malachite wasn't fooled. They both knew Sev didn't make 'honest mistakes'. Especially not when it came to Potions.
His fellow Slytherins had reached the same conclusion - with an altogether different outlook. They threw an impromptu party for him in their dorm room, and Malfoy clapped him happily on the shoulder.
"Brilliant, Severus, brilliant!" He gave a wickedly triumphant smile. "And they couldn't prove a thing!" Snape suspected he thought Sev had not just used the potion but cursed Fletcher off his broom as well.
When the others had grown tired of celebrating, Malfoy spoke to Sev again. "That really was an inspired bit of trickery, Severus. I know some people who would love to hear about it." He gave a cold smile. "We're gonna need people like you, if we're ever gonna put wizardry in this country back where it belongs."
Sev just nodded, and wondered if Malfoy's mysterious 'people' could be traced back to Professor Fennel's unseen master.
The plan had gone off almost perfectly. James Potter had been applauded as a hero, and Sev's part in the whole affair had been grossly misunderstood... by all except one. The most important one. Fennel had to know his cover was blown. You couldn't turn up and cure the Callahan's Brew poison by accident.
The way he saw it, Fennel had two options. Disappear before he could be caught - or kill Fletcher and then disappear before he could be caught. Given that his master didn't seem to be particularly tolerant, Sev's money was on the latter.
And that meant tonight.
Sev waited impatiently for the rest of his dorm to fall asleep. Colin started snoring abominably as soon as his head touched the pillow, but Malfoy took much longer to stop discussing Quidditch and curses with Avery. Neither of them, though, were quite as much a night-hawk as Severus Snape, and after a while he was the last one left awake.
The statue that took Slytherin passwords was the only one to mark his passage, and all it did was wink at him. It had seen him leave in the night before, for his secret lessons with Lily, and besides - house Slytherin was the traditional home of sneaking about.
However, he was not the only sneak in Hogwarts. He bumped into Lily in a side corridor, and only just managed to magically disarm her before she threw a leg-lock curse on him.
"Sorry," she hissed nervously.
"Going to the infirmary?" he asked her. She nodded.
"I should have guessed you'd be on your way there. I could've stayed in bed." He knew that she wouldn't have done so even if he'd specifically asked her to. "I figured Fennel might try to do something while Fletcher's still stuck in sick bay."
"You're finally starting to think like me," Sev told her. She grimaced.
"You say that like it's a good thing."
The two of them crept through the corridors together. It was almost like one of their usual midnight expeditions, except for the tension in the air. Sev's ability to plan might be unsurpassed, but even he had to fit himself around other people sometime. What if Malfoy's inability to get to sleep had delayed him too much?
The infirmary was no difficulty to get into. Audley was the only patient, and he was in no particular danger - at least not from his injuries. Madame Florence had doubtless long since wandered off to bed.
Motioning for Lily to guard the door, Sev stepped in and moved towards the bed. Fletcher looked still. Very still. Was he...?
Suddenly, he let out a huge, shuddering snore, like one of Colin Crabbe's. By the door, Lily let out a nervous giggle. Snape called her over to him. "Quickly. Lie down on one of the beds, and pretend to be another patient."
She frowned. "What if Fennel knows Audley's the only one here?"
"Then you're caught. Which is why I'll be hiding elsewhere." He stepped back into an alcove, and mumbled a little charm he'd found in one of Professor Malachite's books. It wasn't invisibility, exactly - that was a much more complex spell - it just made him... shadowy. He could be seen, but only by someone who was specifically looking.
He stood in the corner, motionless, and steeled himself to wait as long as necessary. Lily seemed less comfortable, shifting nervously, and fiddling with her wand under the covers. After a while she stilled, and Sev wondered if she'd actually gone to sleep.
In the minutes that followed, Sev's eyes roamed over every inch of the darkened infirmary. They grew adjusted to the darkness, and he committed every detail of the view to memory.
Anybody else - less observant, less trusting of their own eyes - might have dismissed the tiny flicker in the moonlight spilling through the window as nothing. An optical illusion, a trick of the light.
Not so Sev. His muscles tensed, and he scanned the room even harder for another flicker of motion that would betray what he was sure he had seen - somebody moving through the room in an invisibility cloak.
Trusting his own senses, he was almost expecting it when Fennel abruptly appeared out of the air, the silvery cloak rippling into a pool at his feet. Lily was not, and he saw her bundled-up form flinch with surprise - but she didn't make a sound.
Well done, Lily.
Fennel's face was twisted into an even more ugly expression than usual. He looked down upon the sleeping Fletcher with equal parts venom and triumph, and started to raise his wand...
Perhaps, in her nervousness, Lily couldn't think of a single spell to stop him. Perhaps she just feared her own magic wouldn't be enough, and neither would Sev's. Or perhaps a little bit of James Potter's influence was rubbing off.
Seemingly without stopping to think, Lily jumped off of the bed and tackled Fennel from behind. Either by design or sheer chance, the sheet she had been disguised under went over his head.
Sev had his wand at the ready, but there was no way to fire off a hex without it rebounding onto Lily. If he'd been James Potter, he'd have dived into the fray himself, but he wasn't that stupidly heroic.
In any halfway decent fairytale, the eleven-year-old girl with a sheet should have no problem trapping - and probably tying up - the ruthless evil wizard. Sev not being a great believer in fairytales, he wasn't phenomenally surprised when it didn't turn out that way.
Fennel threw off the sheet with a curse, and the valiantly struggling Lily with little more effort. He loomed over her with a sneer. "Ah, it's you. Strange. I would have expected it to be your stunt-riding boyfriend. Still, little matter."
Lily opened her mouth to make the traditional good-guy retort, but Fennel was having none of it. "Stupefy!" Lily slumped to the ground, stunned.
Fennel made the exact same expression he used in class when a student did something stupid, and turned back to the sleeping Audley Fletcher. Sev was just preparing to step out of the shadows and let loose a curse of his own, when a voice from the doorway startled them both.
"Hey! What the hell's going on?"
