With a sudden movement that made most of the watchers flinch, Malfoy produced his wand. Josh stared him down stonily.
"Oh, please," he retorted. "What are you gonna-"
Malfoy cut him off with a single barked word. "Crucio!"
Unlike most of the curses and hexes the students casually threw at each other, there was no flare of light or other flashy effects. Josh didn't sprout feathers or tentacles or suddenly transform. He just started to scream.
His hands were clamped to the sides of his head, face contorted in a helpless mask of pain. The scream was the most blood-chilling sound Sev had ever heard, a completely involuntary ululation of absolute agony.
Josh doubled over, still screaming, and then Malfoy flicked the wand away, ending the curse. He let out a rattling gasp, and managed to half-straighten up. Tears glistened in his eyes, not of fear or rage but simply squeezed out by the force of the pain.
Josh breathed raggedly, and pushed himself up to stand straight. He looked Malfoy in the eye, and forced out the words "You... don't... impress... me."
"Crucio!" Sev was perhaps the only one there who didn't wince, and that was only because his face was carefully schooled to betray nothing of what was going on beneath.
Josh fell to his knees, screaming again. His voice had cracked and gone hoarse with the strain he'd put onto it, yet he didn't stop. He fell to the floor, writhing as if there were something inside of him trying to escape. Sweat was literally flowing from him, pouring down his tortured face. And still Malfoy didn't stop the curse.
Avery and Simon Lestrange were watching with a horribly eager light in their eyes, as if this was the most fascinating thing they'd ever seen. Everybody else in the room, even the thuggish Colin Crabbe, had looked away, unable to stand a moment longer. Jack Brisingamen had his hands jammed over his ears, although Sev doubted that it could be doing anything to block out that unearthly howl.
Sev didn't look away. Every moment of this scene was burning into his flawless memory, probably forever.
Josh's liquid brown eyes briefly met his. The state he was in, they had to be unseeing, but even so the mute plea in them was unmistakable.
Sev couldn't meet those eyes, but he couldn't look away. He started counting inside his head, doubling numbers and doubling them until they were big enough to fill his head and blank out any other kind of thought.
Two. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Sixty-four. One twenty-eight. Two fifty-six. Five hundred and twelve. Ten twenty-four. Twenty forty-eight. Forty ninety-six. Eighty-one ninety-two...
The numbers grew bigger, taking up his more and more of his thoughts until he had to think about the math, blocking everything out, not seeing or thinking or feeling...
Finally, Malfoy stopped. The silence that followed was like death.
Josh was locked up in a mute ball on the floor. Gradually his body untensed, but he made no attempt to get up or even move. Malfoy stood looking down at him with a satisfied expression for a moment, then aimed a final vindictive kick at the curled up boy and strode out of the common room.
Nick, Simon and Colin quickly followed. The rest of the Slytherin boys hovered uneasily; none of them wanting to just leave, none of them wanting to be the one to approach Josh where he lay, possibly mortally injured.
Sev couldn't do anything at all whilst they were still there. Face as impassive as ever, he stepped around Josh on the floor and headed for the door.
Sev headed straight over to Professor Malachite's office. He knew exactly what he'd witnessed: the Cruciatus curse.
Many of the more advanced Dark Arts books made reference to the three Unforgivable Curses. One was Cruciatus, another was Imperius... the third was never named, but it brought only instant death.
The books spoke of the three curses; the dark days of their discoveries, what they did, how they had come to be unilaterally banned. But one thing even the very darkest tomes did not do - and that was tell you the words of command that brought them about.
From somewhere, Lucius Malfoy had learned to use one of the three most powerful, most deadly curses known to wizardry - and it definitely hadn't been from school.
Malachite's books had surprisingly little to say on the exact effects of the Cruciatus curse. All they said was that it brought pain, and that some of its victims never recovered. Sev was sure that however nasty it had seemed, Malfoy at nearly thirteen couldn't have half enough power to make it that bad.
Now that was a thought that he didn't have any logical basis for. But some things, you had to just let yourself believe.
He headed down to the Potions dungeons. If Professor Ephemeria had been there, he would have had to think on his feet; he didn't have his invisibility cloak with him, and he wasn't about to go back and get it. However, the teacher wasn't there. She was probably up with the rest of the staff, still congratulating the new Quidditch players on their appointments.
It seemed odd to think that barely ten minutes had passed; that it was still a sunny Saturday afternoon up there, and people were still playing. Sev gave a humourless snort at his own sense of drama: what had he expected, a sudden dark and stormy night?
Sev raided the Professor's cupboard for ingredients, but even his great talent for Potions was drawing something of a blank here. None of the books had given him any guidance as to what he would need here, because none of the books even entertained the crazy idea that you might be trying to avoid calling in a trained healer.
In the end, he trusted to his own skill, mixing ingredients he knew had healing and soothing properties. He worked as much through instinct as through knowledge, judging quantities and mixtures by what seemed to feel right. He heated the mix in his cauldron until its colour seemed to settle, and risked a small dab on his tongue. A numbness quickly suffused it, and he felt momentarily light-headed. He took a deep breath to clear his head, and poured the potion into a vial.
It was the first potion he had ever made up without adhering to a strictly drawn-up recipe. The school had very strict rules about that kind of experimentation. Magical ingredients could react extremely unpredictably, and even very experienced research wizards could be caught by surprise. But Sev's faith in his own intelligence was such that he'd never entertained the possibility he might do something wrong.
Slipping the vial into an inner pocket, he made his way back up to the Slytherin common room. Something in him was telling him he should be running, but he ignored it. He'd been brewing potions for an hour; any sense of urgency now was only in his own mind.
Josh had gone from his place on the floor when Sev returned. The common room was empty, but for Jack Brisingamen and Stuart Flint. They were playing a purely mechanical game of Exploding Snap, and when he came in they glanced at him and then quickly looked away, not meeting his eyes. There was an aura of shared guilt so thick it flavoured the air.
Sev passed through into his dorm room, and saw that it was empty; Malfoy and his lieutenants had not returned. He pushed the door lightly, so that it stood half closed, shielding the room from prying eyes but not clicking shut.
He quickly crossed over to his own bed, and fetched out the invisibility cloak. Smoothly sliding into it, he walked straight back out again. There was no telling how long the rooms would stay this deserted... although he suspected that most of the Slytherins would find good excuses to stay away as long as possible.
Moving in perfect silence was a habit he'd picked up living with his uncle, sneaking about in library stacks he probably wasn't supposed to be in. Since he'd acquired the invisibility cloak at the end of last year, it had become second nature to him.
He glided unnoticed past the two quiet boys, and into the other dorm room. There were two second year rooms, each with five beds in. As he had rather suspected, this one was empty except for Josh.
The sandy-haired boy was lying awkwardly on his back; the way you might lie if you'd taken a tumble from a broomstick and had bruises all over. He was not sleeping, but simply staring at the ceiling.
Sev half-considered staying under the cloak and keeping his anonymity, but it was just wishful thinking. There was no way to do this without blowing his cover. Josh would have to be a pretty big fool indeed to take an unknown potion after what had happened an hour ago.
Sev went to stand beside him, and whipped off the cloak with a quick motion. He had a hand ready to stifle any outcry, but Josh just stared at him apathetically.
"What do you want?" he croaked, painfully but with a flash of dull insolence.
"Drink this," Sev advised simply, tilting the potion to his lips. Josh looked for a moment like he might want to refuse, but the lure of some release from the aches that covered his body must have been too much. He gulped greedily at the cure until Sev pulled it away from him.
He slipped the remaining potion into the top drawer by Josh's bed. "I'll leave the rest. Don't drink it now; I'm not sure how strong it is."
Josh's eyes followed his movements, but he didn't say anything. Not having expected any wild thanks, Sev simply picked up the cloak and turned towards the door.
"Thanks for coming by," said Josh, in a voice that was both stronger and thick with sarcasm. He licked his lips painfully, and added bitterly "You're a real hero."
Sev crossed back over to stand above him. He answered Josh not out of an urge to be understood, but just because he somehow felt that he owed him an explanation.
"Any halfwit can be a hero," he said quietly. "Go to the Gryffindors, if you want dumb courage. They might be able to leap up and brawl with Malfoy, but none of them could ever do what I do."
"And what do you do?" asked Josh sharply.
"Watch," he said, with a flicker of a shrug. "From the inside."
"Yeah?" he asked bitterly. "See anything interesting?"
"I won't, until he lets me in. And if I want him to do that... I have to do what I do."
"Oh, I see what you're doing," Josh remarked quietly. "And I see what it's doing to you. How long can you survive, Severus? How long before you forget why you do what you do?"
"As long as it takes," he said simply.
"And how long is that?"
He didn't answer, just slid the cloak back on and drifted away.
The rest of the Slytherins trickled back in slowly. Eventually, Josh came out of the dorm to sit alone at a table and work. He walked stiffly, although Sev's sharp eyes saw that thanks to the potion, he was in less pain than he pretended. None of the others looked at him.
Eventually, too, Malfoy returned. There was a sudden flare of tension as he stepped inside, but he just glanced at Josh and briefly curled his lip. So far as he was concerned, it was 'lesson learned'. Sev didn't suppose it occurred to him for a minute that Josh might be anything less than terrified now.
Late that night, when everybody else was asleep, Sev sat up in bed and spoke to Malfoy. "That curse you used; what was it?"
Malfoy's cool grey eyes narrowed. "I would have thought you'd know that, if anyone did, Severus." His tone was mild, but Sev recognised a challenge when he saw one.
"I do," he admitted instantly; pretending would have been a stupid move. "What I don't know is how you got it."
Satisfied, Malfoy grinned smugly. "Oh, I have powerful friends," he said enigmatically.
"I'd like to meet them," Sev threw out, sounding every inch the ambitious Slytherin.
Malfoy yawned and stretched. "Patience, Sev. These things move slowly, you know. He doesn't want to tip his hand."
"'He'?" Snape asked, with just the right tint of eager curiosity.
Malfoy smiled darkly. "'He' is the one who's gonna usher in a new age, Sev. And when he arrives..." he grinned to himself, in the semi-darkness "...oh, we're gonna have ourselves a ball."
All was quiet for the weeks that followed. It would have been easy to assume that Malfoy had all but forgotten about Josh, or that he was satisfied with what he'd done. Sev knew him better than that. Malfoy could hold a grudge eternally, and what satisfied him now would wear away with time. Sooner or later, he would move against Josh again. Even if Josh never did or said anything else remotely rebellious, those impassioned words after the Quidditch tryouts had sealed his fate.
Lewis's unofficial Gryffindor bodyguards remained in evidence, and Nott and Goyle had pretty much left him alone. If only there could be such a simple solution to his older brother's situation.
If James Potter could be made to see past the fact that he was a Slytherin, Sev had no doubt that he would leap to Joshua's defence. That was because James Potter was too cheerfully heroic to have a clue how incredibly bad that would be.
If any Gryffindor so much as smiled at Josh in passing, he would surely suffer for it. Malfoy would never forget that final crack he'd made when Lucius asked if he'd rather be a Gryffindor.
That was why Sev went back to studiously avoiding Lily. Alerting her to Josh's problem had been a necessary evil, but he couldn't afford to let her know how bad it was. She was too compassionate to not take action, and her intervention might be even more disastrous than James'. Malfoy hated James, but to Lily he considered himself genetically superior. For her to stand up to him would be something he simply couldn't allow. His view of the universe wouldn't let him.
Sev could trust nobody else to watch Josh, so he did it himself. Probably even Josh, who was now much more aware of Sev's role in things, had no idea what he was doing.
One Sunday, he spotted Crabbe and Avery shadowing Josh as he wandered the grounds. The chain of events Sev sparked off to get Professor Malachite there without anybody knowing he was even involved ought to have won some sort of award. But of course, the whole point of such subterfuge was that nobody did recognise it.
As it happened, that particular temporary solution was better than he could have guessed.
Sev 'happened' to wander by in time to see Malachite catch the three boys on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. It was pretty clear that Crabbe and Avery had planned to chase Josh inside, maybe even get him lost.
Despite their repeated assurances that it was just a prank - Josh, of course, was not stupid enough to argue - Malachite went ballistic.
"It's the Forbidden Forest!" he told the three of them. "It's not called the 'ooh, probably not too smart to go in there' Forest. It's not the 'maybe ought to stay away from' Forest. It's Forbidden! It's Forbidden for a reason."
"We were only-" Avery began, trying on the angelic look that usually worked with the Slytherin house-master. For once, it didn't.
"Quiet, Avery. No excuses. And you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves. We're all Slytherins here. We're all wizards here. Wizarding folk should stick together!"
Professor Malachite even took points off them for their foolish behaviour. Since he hardly ever did so, especially from his own house, the Slytherins were all treading warily for days afterwards.
Even so, Sev didn't relax his guard. He kept an eye on Malfoy, looking for any glimpse of chaos being plotted.
Fortunately, Malfoy had other things on his mind. The Quidditch season had started in earnest, and he was training with the Slytherin team most days. And Malfoy being Malfoy, he liked to bring his entire house-group along to show off in front of.
The Slytherin team had changed little from its previous line-up. The Keeper had been promoted to Captain, and Malfoy and a fourth-year boy had been brought in as new Chasers.
The new Captain, Adam Caulstone, was openly contemptuous of the Gryffindor lineup. "Hah! Four of their team graduated last year, including that poser Fletcher. Two of the newbies are second-years, and it's not because they're talented like Malfoy here. There just aren't enough good players in Gryffindor to fill out the roster. Hell, one of their reserves is a twelve-year-old girl on a model one Comet." There was a ripple of laughter. "Now, you can argue that that's a charity case, but I think it's a good sign of how desperate they are."
Of course, his words were so much propaganda, but there was an element of truth to them. The Gryffindor team had suffered a blow losing so many players at once; Fletcher, being the kind of person who only cared about the world when he was in it, had gone against usual practice to use all sixth- and seventh-years. The team had been a powerhouse last year, but now there were no able third- or fourth-years to step up and fill the gaps.
However, James Potter was anything but a token player. In fact, he was the only reason the generally scrappy team did as well as they did. They were often losing or barely holding even when he whipped the Snitch out of the air and won them the game.
Slytherin played Hufflepuff first, and then Ravenclaw. They really were a good team, and whilst their victories weren't as flashy as James' last-minute rescues, they were far more solid in terms of gameplay. Malfoy proved himself an excellent Chaser, fast moving on his expensive broom and slippery because he was so small. He had a real flair for dodging Bludgers, and he scored a lot of goals.
The days leading up to Gryffindor vs. Slytherin were even more tense than usual. Last year, Gryffindor had been expected to win hands down - or at least until Fletcher's unexpected tumble from his broom. This year, though they'd won all their matches, they just weren't as good - and the debate raged endlessly over whether one brilliant Seeker and a scrappy team was better than a solid team with no particular flair.
Not, of course, that the Slytherins thought of themselves that way. Malfoy translated a few friendly staff comments about him being a promising new addition into his being the star of the team. He certainly considered himself a few thousand levels above Potter.
"I don't know why Gryffindor don't just concede the match right now," he announced loudly as they made their way to the pitch. "They must know they haven't got a prayer."
He followed the rest of the Slytherins as they squeezed themselves into a space on the stands. The whole school had turned out, and Malfoy would insist on arriving late to make an entrance.
He hopped on his broom and made a few flashy circuits before the game started. Sev, of course, didn't join the general enthusiasm, and Malfoy swooped down to hang in the air before him.
"Cheer up, Sev," he smirked. "This is gonna be a good day for house Slytherin. A very good day." His smile grew more feral. "Today, I'm gonna take down all the thorns in my side in one go. It's gonna be a beautiful day." Whistling happily, he flew off to join the rest of this team.
With Malfoy's words hanging in his ears, Sev noticed for the first time that he'd been wrong; the whole school hadn't quite turned out. In fact, the deserters were from his very own section of the crowd. Nick Avery and Simon Lestrange were nowhere to be seen.
And neither was Josh Matthews.
