Sev soon discovered that the mark on his arm was not the only new thing Malfoy had acquired over the holidays. Later that week, in Care of Magical Creatures, they were out by the Forbidden Forest trying to train Caretynes in their groups.
The Caretynes were like white lions with golden manes and spotted coats, except for their long horns and tusks - and their tendency to shoot flames from their mouths or either ear without the slightest warning. The class was predictably chaotic, Pete Pettigrew setting the brim of his hat on fire and his friends unsure whether to laugh or glare at the Slytherins for doing so.
Malfoy waited until Professor Cuero was occupied trying to put Peter's hat out, then pulled Sev aside. "Quickly! While nobody's looking." The two boys slipped deeper into the Forbidden Forest.
"I wanted to show you something," he said with a smirk, as soon as they were well clear of their classmates.
"What is it?" asked Sev, careful to sound eager enough. Though he was always keen to learn, he doubted any enchantment Malfoy had to show him would bring him much pleasure.
"I didn't want to show the others how to do this just yet," Malfoy confided. "They're soldiers. Workers. They're never gonna see the big picture, but you..." He shot Sev a pointed glance. "You could get in good with these people. You've got brains, and you could be nearly as powerful as me."
Sev schooled his expression even more carefully than he usually did. Malfoy would have to be completely blinded by his own arrogance to not realise that Snape might very well do better than that.
"He didn't just give me the Dark Mark," Malfoy revealed, rubbing his arm almost absently. "He showed me how to make it." He smiled cruelly. "It's about time we gave all these Muggle-lovers a bit of a scare, don't you think?"
He waved his wand with a flourish that Sev was willing to be wasn't part of the spell, and intoned in a deep voice "Morsmordre!"
Green light exploded from the wand and flared up into the air. For a second, Sev saw an almost shocked expression cross Malfoy's face, as if he hadn't really realised this kind of magic could come from him. Sev saw the green stars of the Death Eater symbol already beginning to swirl into shape.
"Hellfire!" Malfoy gasped, and Sev wondered if he'd even known exactly how hugely and vividly the Mark would display. It was already rising into the sky, swelling rapidly; it would be visible for miles.
For a moment Malfoy stared up at his own handiwork with awe, then his grey eyes met Snape's and panic flared in them. "Run!" he advised, scurrying quickly back towards the safety of their class group. How very Lucius Malfoy, Sev noted. Utterly devoted to his hate group's agenda - provided there was no chance of his getting caught.
Nobody saw them arrive; everybody's attention was completely focused on the growing Dark Mark. There was an oddly intent look on Professor Cuero's face, and the angular lines of his body seemed full of tension.
They all stood there watching for a long moment. There was an uneasy murmur rumbling through the class, and little Peter Pettigrew looked just about ready to faint. Jade Creevy and Helen Beck clutched at each other, and James slipped a comforting arm round Lily. To Snape's sharp eyes she didn't look scared, only anxious and locked in deep thought, but she didn't move to shove him off, either.
Finally Cuero turned to look back at the students. His eyes met Malfoy's, and there was something in them... He knows exactly who did it, Sev observed. But he said nothing to reveal as much.
"All of you, back to your rooms," he ordered. "Potter, go and get the headmaster." James nodded quickly and sped away. The others were slower to disperse, still gaping at the bloated skull hanging obscenely above them.
Malfoy seemed to have recovered from his panic as soon as it was clear no one would point the finger at him. He pulled Sev aside when they got to their dorm and said eagerly "Cuero - did you see? He's one of ours!"
"He knows you did it," Sev nodded, although that was still a distance away from him being a Death Eater in his mind. But of course, somebody like Malfoy would easily assume that somebody else would believe in their agenda.
"Exactly! And he didn't say anything. You saw his face; he recognised the Mark. Nick!" He snagged Avery as he came through the door. "Cuero; did he do anything weird?"
"When the... skull thing appeared?"
"Yeah - were you watching?"
Avery's forehead creased into a frown. "He, uh..." He thought for a moment. "Oh! Yes, he did! He kinda... hugged himself or grabbed his arm or something."
A liquid smile spread across Malfoy's features. "See?" he said triumphantly. He pushed back the sleeve of his robe, revealing the skull tattoo - looking darker and stronger than before, closer to the colour of blood. "He has the Mark, same as I do! He's one of ours."
"Perhaps," said Sev more coolly. He would have to observe Cuero far more carefully before he would jump to any such conclusion - it wasn't in his nature to assume.
"That was you, wasn't it?" said Colin Crabbe eagerly, as he burst into their dorm. Malfoy just grinned, cat-like.
"The Gryffindors'll try to tell them it was us," Avery warned him. Malfoy shrugged.
"So? Their word against ours."
"Or it will be. Give me your wand," Sev ordered.
"Huh?" Malfoy frowned.
"Your wand, quickly! They'll be here any minute."
The blond boy looked uncertain, but his sudden fear that he hadn't thought of everything spurred him to take orders when he wouldn't normally stand for it. He quickly pulled his wand out and pressed it into Snape's hands.
The wand felt unfamiliar in his grip, the wrong length and the wrong texture, but it was still a wand. Sev made a few practise sweeps, and then cast a few spells in quick succession. "Lumos! Nox! Orchideus! Relashio! Avis!"
The wand lit up, went out again, produced a bunch of flowers, sparked, and sent a small flock of birds twittering out of the nearest windows. His fellow Slytherins were staring at him as if they couldn't be sure whether to think he was insane or give him a round of applause.
"What the hell was that?" asked Malfoy, not taking the wand back as Severus held it out to him.
"The wand tests; they do them when they're checking wands for competitions and the like." Sev poked the wand to him again, and he took it gingerly.
"But why-?"
There was a commotion in the common room outside, and he heard Professor Fractalis call for the third years. "No time! Cast a spell! Anything; just the lumos, whatever. Quickly!" he snapped, as Malfoy dithered.
"L-lumos!" In his confusion, Malfoy barely stuttered the word correctly, and the light it produced was a feeble flicker. He cancelled it with a snap of his wrist, and looked at Snape questioningly. Sev gave him a quick nod, and led the way through into the common room.
Professor Fractalis' usual timid expression had been replaced with one that was equal parts nervous and stern. "Boys, there has been a very serious infraction on school grounds. I'm going to have to ask you for your wands."
Malfoy looked to Sev in silent alarm, but he gave an almost imperceptible nod. With what looked like a slight gulp, he held his wand out to the deputy headmaster.
Fractalis went over to the first of the boys, Jack Brisingamen, and took his wand. He waved it and snapped the words "Prior Incanto!"
After a second, a fuzzy image appeared at the tip of the wand; it showed a small human figure summoning something to his hand - the 'accio' charm. Fractalis left it hanging in the air and repeated his spell; another, similar image appeared. He studied this one, too, and then said swiftly "Deletrius!" and the images collapsed in on themselves. He handed Jack back his wand and moved onto the next.
His search turned up quite a few little tricks whose academic uses were somewhat doubtful, but he barely even seemed to notice. By the time he got to Malfoy, the blond-haired boy was looking positively sick with nerves.
"Prior Incanto!" The feeble flicker of Malfoy's light spell recreated itself. Fractalis ignored it and repeated the enchantment. A silvery mist sprang up... and dissolved into nothingness. He frowned, and tried again, with the same result.
The deputy headmaster gave Malfoy a sharp look. "Have you used this wand at all today?" he asked.
Nervous or not, Malfoy was a quick study. "Uh - only to do the light spell," he lied automatically. Fractalis just looked at him for a moment, then silently handed the wand back. He tested the remainder, then nodded, and walked to the door.
"Hmm; good. I told Professor Dumbledore that it couldn't have been any of our students, and I'm glad to see I was right. Okay, all of you stay in Slytherin quarters until it's time for your next lesson, please - the rest of this period is cancelled."
When he'd gone, Malfoy staggered back into the dorm room and flattened himself against the wall, breathing heavily. As Snape stepped inside, he stared at him and asked "What the hell was that? Why didn't it-?"
"The mixed signatures confused it," he explained with a matter-of-fact shrug. "So many spells, cast so quickly... swapping the wand from person to person like that... Prior Incanto was only ever really designed to go back one stage, and it just couldn't follow the trail back to the last spell. It acted as if there wasn't one - as if the wand hadn't been used in a while."
"And you knew it was going to do that?" Malfoy demanded, eyebrows raised.
Snape shrugged again. "It seemed... logical."
"Logical?" Malfoy spluttered as if he was choking, but it gradually turned into laughter. He clapped Sev on the shoulder delightedly. "You're really something, Severus, do you know that? You're really something."
"So I've been told," he replied, perfectly dryly.
Malfoy might have seen enough to be convinced of Professor Cuero's loyalties, but Sev was less easily swayed. Sneaking about and spying was less easily done now that he had given his invisibility cloak away, but he'd always had a talent for it. He could move very surely and silently, and most importantly he never panicked.
If the others had ever woken and noticed him gone, they probably assumed that he was about some small schoolboy mischief like their own - or, correctly enough, that he had insomnia. Snape's lack of sleep never troubled him - indeed, he relished the extra hours of thinking time it gave him. He normally slept only five or six hours a night, and losing a few of those little troubled him.
The caretaker, Mr. Pringle, was always on patrol, but Sev was a flitting shadow. He roamed the halls almost every night, and if any of the ghosts were aware of his passage they had long since grown used to it.
Reading voraciously and patrolling as he did, Sev knew a great many of Hogwarts' secrets. He knew where all the house dormitories and common rooms were, and both the staff's private offices and their quarters.
He had a hunch Cuero might be a night-owl like himself, and in any case, nobody was likely to be sleeping soundly tonight. Sure enough, the red-headed teacher was sitting in his office, quill scratching away with a fairly furious intensity.
Sev found that in itself very interesting. Care of Magical Creatures was hardly a classroom-based lesson; it couldn't possibly be anything work-related he was scribbling down.
He waited silently for a quarter of an hour as Cuero wrote. He wasn't terribly surprised that the teacher completely failed to mutter key phrases to himself or conveniently contact someone and explain himself to them. Maybe that was how the likes of James Potter expected their adventures to turn out, but Sev knew that if you wanted to find things out, it took hours of painstaking observation. Even people who were up to something usually spent a great deal of time doing absolutely nothing interesting.
Tonight, though, was something of a special night, and when Cuero had finished whatever he was writing to his satisfaction, he got up from his desk and left the office. Sev faded silently into the background, and then padded after him through the corridors.
He quickly surmised that they were going to the Owlery, and after figuring which route Cuero was taking, split off from him and found a different one. He arrived up in the tower before the professor, and concealed himself in a corner. The owls barely stirred at his presence; he was in the habit of visiting Hogwarts animal residents from time to time, getting them used to the sight and scent of him. Severus Snape always planned ahead.
He had quickly learned that almost any hiding place could work provided you stayed still. Ninety-nine percent of people, especially in a neutral setting like Hogwarts, would simply never expect anybody to be spying on them. There might be nosy students lurking about, but everybody knew kids couldn't keep silent and still, didn't they?
'Silence' and 'stillness' could easily have been Sev's middle names. After all, they fit in rather neatly with the general naming scheme.
He noted with interest the way Cuero studied the massed owls, instead of just giving the message to the first to approach him. He looked to Sev's eyes as if he was not searching for a favourite, but going through a mental checklist - as if he was being wary not to use the same owls too often. Interesting.
Finally, Cuero picked out an owl, and gave it the message. It was sealed in a small envelope, and Sev's sharp eyes noted that there was no address on the front. Instead, Cuero simply gave the owl a name; "Gorvic Shimmersby." The owl silently launched itself into the dark, and Sev quietly filed the name away in his memory for the future.
Cuero watched the owl fly away, then slipped his hands in the pockets of his robes and started back down the stairs. Sev made no attempt to follow; the stairs in this tower were far too creaky to chance following somebody.
There was no light up here, so it was safe to stand by the window and observe - even had he not stayed still, his movement could easily have been mistaken for that of one of the owls.
In the bright light of the full moon, he saw Cuero leave the tower, and stalk rapidly back towards his quarters. Sev was about to consider returning to his own dorm when something caught his eye.
At first he thought the tiny movement in the grass below was nothing more than a mouse. But none of the owls beside him paid any attention, and after a second he saw it again. The springy grass was flattening and bouncing back momentarily, as if under some sort of pressure... As if, in fact, somebody was walking on it under an invisibility cloak.
Lily? Or somebody else? Sev had acquired the cloak from the murderous Potions teacher, Fennel, at the end of the First Year; they were not exactly common toys. But there were other ways to make yourself invisible, if you were a powerful enough wizard...
He tracked the motions carefully, focusing intently for fear of losing them against the gentle actions of the wind. Finally, the invisible footsteps came to a halt beneath the large, flailing tree Professor Parilia had nicknamed the Whomping Willow. The tree was a fairly new addition to the Hogwarts grounds, planted the summer before he had started there; it had taken some months for the more adventurous students to learn that 'stay well clear of the branches' was not exactly optional advice.
As Snape watched, there was the liquid shimmer of the cloak being dropped. From beneath it emerged not one, but two figures. James Potter and Sirius Black.
In the time it would have taken for most people to gasp in surprise, Sev's brain was zipping through the logical connections. Clearly, this was Lily's cloak; the odds of James having one of his own were very small, and he hadn't when Sev had seen him wandering the halls in earlier years.
Lily was fond of James; however, she well knew that Sev had given her the cloak for her own protection, and she wasn't frivolous by any means. If she had lent the cloak to James and Sirius, then this was more than mischief they were about.
Sev watched as Black picked up a stick and prodded at something on the treetrunk. Abruptly, the flailing limbs froze in position. A secret trick to paralysing the plant? Dumbledore had to have known about it when he asked for it to be planted. As the two boys descended into some kind of secret passage, Sev's mind was looping back to the end of his first year.
James Potter had rushed to Lily's rescue when she was Stunned by the rogue teacher Fennel. Professor Malachite had demanded, on one of his usual 'different standards for Gryffindors and Slytherins' riffs, to know why he'd been out so late at night. I was going to check on somebody, he had said. And Dumbledore had waved Malachite silent with the words I know what this is about.
Sev remembered that night. He had spotted an invisibility cloak then, and perhaps for the same reasons - under direct moonlight, you could sometimes see the tiniest shimmer of motion that wouldn't otherwise be visible.
Under direct moonlight...
Three years' worth of tiny clues abruptly clicked into place, and Snape started to smile. Suddenly, it all made sense...
