Malfoy presumably got into contact with Voldemort by owl, but Sev wasn't involved in any of that. He did get to see their supposed leader stomping about the place with a fierce scowl, and concluded that he'd been told to wait and not make any moves just yet. Malfoy was impatient for swift retribution, but Voldemort had more cunning. Partly the wait might be to prevent people from tying the events together, but also it was to give Malachite a chance to sweat.

Except he wasn't sweating. He wasn't stupid enough to believe there would be no retribution for breaking Voldemort's plans - he was just fully confident he could deal with it.

"Most likely he'll send them after you," Sev warned him. "Us, even." If there was to be a revenge attack on Malachite, there was no way he could bow out of it without casting suspicions on his loyalties.

"Then I'll turn your attack aside," he said simply. "Severus, I would remind you that despite everything, not one of your little group is over the age of eighteen, and whatever their intent may be, there is a limit to the amount of magical expertise you can amass in that little time."

Sev would have begged to differ, but they weren't really talking about him, just his less knowledge-obsessed fellows. "Perhaps - but they've been getting their education from more sources than just Hogwarts, and the Death Eaters have no interest in placing age limits on their research."

"Learning isn't the same as doing," Malachite pointed out. "And incomplete learning is even lesser. Voldemort may teach tricks, but even if they can repeat them, they don't fully understand them, and they're no match for someone who's spent as long studying the lore as I have." He shrugged. "At the end of the day, they're still boys."

"Well, Avery's a sadist and Lestrange is mad, but you're right - they're probably no danger to you. Malfoy is a different matter. The Death Eaters have been training him for I don't know how long, maybe all of his life. I've seen him use the Cruciatus curse, and that was when he was twelve."

Malachite nodded soberly. "Then perhaps a wise man should be concerned - but you should remember, I'm not a man."

Sev returned his gaze levelly. "The legends might have said the Naga were semi-divine, but I know you're not immortal."

"Maybe not - but I think you'll find we're pretty hard to kill." He chuckled good-humouredly. Sev frowned.

"I haven't forgotten that, but neither will Voldemort. Malfoy will know by now that you're a Naga."

"What good will that do him?" Malachite wanted to know. "Come now, you've doubtless read every footnote there is to read on our people. And what more do you know about us? Precious little. We're a secretive breed, and we're rare in this part of the world."

"I know a few things," said Snape. "I know you can't harm a human unless they attack you first."

Malachite smirked. "Somehow I don't see Malfoy restraining himself long enough to bother with that little restriction."

"Nonetheless, that gives him control of the situation. You may not get a chance to take it back."

Malachite stood up with an air of finality. "Severus, I can take everything Malfoy throws at me, and walk away long after he'd think me dead. But I thank you for your concern. It's nice to know you care."

Sev kept his face expressionless. "We wouldn't want to sacrifice our operatives unnecessarily. It's inefficient."

Malachite laughed. "You know," he said, clapping Snape on the shoulder, "I really don't know anymore if that cold front you put on is false or true."

Sev shrugged and got up to leave. "Maybe I don't either," he suggested with a thin smile.

It took Lily nearly a month to successfully corner him, but she caught up with him eventually. "Snape. Talk to me."

He shrugged. "Been missing my scintillating conversation?"

"Not to mention your delightful company." She backed him into a deserted classroom. "Okay, spill."

"You want me to tell you everything I know?" He raised a single eyebrow. "That could take a while."

"I have all the time in the world." She hopped up to perch on the edge of a desk, and glared at him. "Okay. What's going on?"

"Well, there's a suspicion two of the teaching staff have got engaged, Derek Dobbs turned his brother into a gerbil, Hagrid's trying to adopt a sea monster, and I hear Gryffindor are tipped for the Quidditch trophy this year."

"Quite. What about Professor Vitae?"

"She's gone."

Lily snorted. "Thanks for that. Where?" She regarded him sharply. "Is she dead?"

It was Snape's turn to roll his eyes. "It would probably be better if she was, but no. Malachite and Dumbledore confronted her, and then they let her go."

Lily nodded slowly. "Good. Well, not good, but... we shouldn't have to become like them. In the end, that's just another form of losing."

"Yes, well. Losing is also a form of losing, and if we're not permitted to be ruthless or pragmatic, all we have to rely on is our intelligence. And, unfortunately, not all of us are me."

"Oh, come on," Lily insisted. "You can't say Dumbledore and Malachite aren't smart!"

"They'll do, but Dumbledore's far too trusting. Malachite's got more of a clue, but he's also well convinced that we have justice on our side, so we must be indestructible. He's arrogant."

"And you're not?"

"I'm not arrogant, I'm just well-informed on the subject of my own brilliance."

"Good God," she groaned, shaking her head. "Typical Slytherins, the pair of you."

"Smile when you say that."

"Talking of typical Slytherins," Lily said sharply, "what about Malfoy? He knew Vitae was the spy, right? He must be spitting!"

"He is." Sev turned more serious. "He knows Malachite was behind it, as well, and he'll be out for revenge. But Malachite doesn't think he's old enough or experienced enough to be a danger."

"Well, that's just stupid." Lily, seeing the side of Malfoy and his followers that the teachers never saw, was well aware of what he was capable of.

"And now we're back at the point I made quite some time ago. These conversations would go much easier if you just accepted that when I tell you something, I know what I'm talking about."

"Whatever," she waved him aside. "Well, what's Malfoy going to do? Can't you stop him?"

"No, in fact I'm going to have to join him." She gave him a dark look, but sighed and turned her eyes away, knowing he was right. "I can't afford to let him think for a moment that my loyalties are wavering."

"True... but you've fought from the inside before. If you could just find a way to-"

"I could, but Malachite won't budge. He wants to have the confrontation, because he's so confident they won't be able to hurt him. And if it comes down to a face to face duel, and I can't use the cloak because I've got to be seen to be there, then there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. The ball's completely out of my court." He smiled humourlessly. "And you know how much I love that."

Lily pulled her knees up against her chest and hugged them reflectively. "Well," she said finally, chewing anxiously on her lower lip, "maybe he does know what he's doing. He is a Naga, after all. You saw the way he recovered when he got stabbed last year."

"Perhaps," Sev acknowledged with a nod. "Certainly we're going to have to assume so."

Perhaps Lily was right, after all. But Sev was accustomed to living only by his own expert judgement, and he didn't like the idea of trusting to Malachite's overconfident self-image much at all.

It was hard to say if the young cadre of Death Eaters were looking towards the inevitable revenge on Malachite with eagerness or terror. Around their head of house Malfoy was his usual insincerely charming self, but in private he ranted and raged and muttered about how soon they would be wiping the smirk off his face. Sev hadn't been aware of Malachite smirking particularly much, but he didn't think it was very wise to point it out.

The Slytherins were scared of Malfoy in this dark mood; everybody was, apart from James Potter and his suicidally confrontational band of Gryffindors. In one spectacularly nasty magical brawl outside the Charms classroom, Malfoy cursed Pete Pettigrew so nastily that he spent the remainder of the spring term in the hospital wing.

The Gryffindors took their revenge in various ways, but mostly it was directed at the rest of the group, not Malfoy. Sev wondered if Lily was behind that somehow: she had to know that crossing him right now was a long way from a good idea.

Sev suspected that his fellow Death Eaters were glad of the distraction. Spying was one thing, as was launching attacks on their long-term schoolyard enemies. A possibly fatal, definitely highly nasty assault on a teacher - and one who had been mostly pretty good to them, to boot - was in an altogether different league.

"But what if we get caught?" Sev overheard Avery whisper to Colin, when Malfoy was out of the dorm.

"Lucius won't let that happen," Crabbe insisted, but his usual slavish devotion was tinged with a hint of uncertainty.

"Yeah, but... he's a teacher," said Nick, sounding quite close to panic.

"He'll bleed and die just like anybody else," said Simon, and everybody listening shuddered. It wasn't so much the words as the pleasantly conversational way in which he spoke them.

"Lucius is right," spoke up Goyle. The two younger boys had taken up sitting in the seventh year dorm with their fellows since the winter when Voldemort had proclaimed their little group something akin to a military unit. "They won't catch us. They can't stop us."

"Yeah, but Dumbledore..." Avery shuddered. "He always knows when people have done stuff. We'll be caught for sure." Sev supposed it said a lot about Nick Avery that this was a far bigger concern in his mind than any kind of moral qualms.

"It's kiddie stories," snapped Alex Nott. "He doesn't really know everything. He's just an old fool who's got everybody believing in him." As the junior members of the troop, the two sixth years usually felt obliged to talk it up as if they were tougher and more dangerous than anyone else there.

"Yeah... Yeah," agreed Avery more firmly. "We're cool. We're untouchable. We're the serpent, right? They can't touch us." It sounded more like he was convincing himself than proselytising, but the others all nodded in agreement. Whatever private doubts they had, they were too invested in their own pride, and in too deep to back out now. When Malfoy came calling for them to do his bidding, they would be there.

When Easter came rolling around that year, Malfoy didn't invite the others to come back home with him. In fact, he left the school with hardly a word to any of them. If he was getting any final orders from Voldemort, he obviously wasn't prepared to share them with anyone.

There was only a tiny scattering of students remaining in the school for the holidays, and amongst the seventh years Sev was the only one not madly cramming for exams. When they came along, he would pass them, and pass them as excellently as he desired; he always did. But when it came to his exit from Hogwarts, the grades he got in his NEWTs were going to be just about the least important thing imaginable in determining his future.

In the relative privacy of the holidays, he was able to seek out Dumbledore and try to talk to him about Malachite.

"He won't listen to me," he warned the headmaster. "He's convinced he can deal with Malfoy on his own."

"I agree that Professor Malachite's self-confidence can be a little... excessive," Dumbledore admitted, peering at him over half-moon spectacles, "but it is not unjustified. I assure you, he's as well-schooled in magical defences as anybody in the wizarding world. That's how he came to the post he occupies, after all. In these dark days, did you supposed I'd trust the defence of Hogwarts to anybody but the most qualified?"

Sev refrained from pointing out that for all the qualifications of its defenders, Hogwarts had been infiltrated by Death Eaters, had staff members killed and students assaulted, and had only narrowly turned aside a raid that could have had horrific consequences.

"I'm not casting doubts on his abilities," he said instead, "only his attitude. He's not taking Malfoy seriously."

"Severus, I assure you," said the headmaster, "Carnus may seem to take things lightly, but he is as prepared for what may come as anyone could ever be. I know, perhaps better than anyone, what a terrible thing it is to ask others to take risks for the sake of your goals - but it is something, alas, that we all must do from time to time. There are dark things coming, but if we work together and trust each other, we'll be ready to meet them."

The headmaster spoke with absolute conviction, but Sev was less than satisfied with his answer. Even at seventeen, he had seen more than enough of the world to know that self-righteousness and a noble cause was not an automatic guarantee that you would win.

Still, what could he do? The warnings had been given; repeating them would do nothing. Ironically, he began to appreciate more something Dumbledore had said to him a few years ago - that for all his brilliance, his knowledge was only worth something if people were willing to listen to him.

Unfortunately, he had a suspicion that their wake-up call would not be a long time coming... And by then, it would probably be entirely too late.

The holidays seemed to end as quickly as they had approached, and the rest of the students came grumbling back to their studies. Or most of them did, anyway.

Of Lucius Malfoy, there was no sign.