Faith would always remember the next week in terms of dust.
Dusty books, dusty files, dusty newspapers. Endless hunting for a suitable candidate, a suitable precedent.
And it was so dry and so, so boring.
The heat just got more and more suffocating as the clouds piled up and up.
Everyone in the castle moped around miserably in the hot weather. Hairstyles drooped, Quidditch was effectively cancelled and no one ran, or even laughed much. It was too hot to waste the energy.
And all this heat Faith, Snape and Blackthorn existed in clouds of dust.
Faith forced herself to begin exercising again. She needed to build up her drained strength and wasted muscles, but her pathetic performances were so depressing she found herself drinking more booze than ever. Minerva was still advising against her transforming.
Snape truly believed that if he had to read about one more idiotic, botched coup from five fucking fifty AD he was going to scream.
There were two minor bright spots in life. One was that even this heat had a hard time surviving in the dungeons. This meant the Slytherins were, for once, the most cheerful people in the school.
The other was the meeting they had had in Blackthorn's apartments. They had ascertained at the start that no one had got anywhere, after this they had had quite a pleasant, alcoholic evening.
The one possible candidate they had had been rejected because they were a member of the Yorks, one of the Eight Families.
As faith had explained to Blackthorn,
"The Eight Families used to run the Country. They would rule, with absolute power, their area. For instance we Llewllyns had Wales, the Snapes the North West, the Macbeths Southern Scotland etc…
"Now they fought, married and fucked each other over, for more than two thousand years. An each member will always be more loyal to their family than any cause."
She raised an eyebrow. "In theory anyway!"
There had been laughter then. Faith it seemed had hardly met any of her family. Snape had, but hated them. He was actually the Head, and was therefore supposed to run the damn thing, but since he refused to acknowledge their existence, and sold off half the land, the Snapes hated him as much as he hated them.
He remembered Faith's laughter at that, it had managed to carry like chimes in the tepid air.
Faith had had two nightmares that week. The first she had been able to deal with, but the second had been agony. She had say hunched in the cold bath water for hours, rocking herself and trying not to break down and weep. She had screamed so much that whisky had scalded her throat.
There had been a Death Eater attack on the wizard community in Manchester. A meeting to discuss local Death Eater activity had been blown up. Five died.
It had been a horrible week.
***************************
That Friday morning you could actually taste the static in the air. The sky was almost black with dirty, sodden clouds that looked like they were going to burst. There had already been three bursts of spells from the children and even Flitwick had flipped and given out detentions.
Snape knew, with absolute certainty, that the rain was going to come crashing down today. There was no way the atmosphere could support this heat.
He nodded at Faith as she slipped in beside him at breakfast.
She picked at some fruit and the glanced over at his goblet.
"Since when have the house elves served grapefruit juice?"
"Since I asked them," he sneered back at her.
She swilled the sticky, orange liquid round her own glass.
"I hate pumpkin juice."
"Well ask for something different then!"
She looked at him angrily. Then she began to scrape bits of melon round her bowl. The noise of the metal fork scrapping the china bowl screeched across his brain. What made it worse was the fact that she must know just how annoying it was.
He began to tap his fingers. He had developed this rhythm ages ago. You never just tapped, you tapped out of time. Tap tip Tap. Tip Tip Tap. Tap tap Tip. He had put a spell on the clock in his office to do the same. Within five minuets it would turn anyone's brain to sludge.
Faith scratched her fork across the china even louder. It squeaked worse than nails ripped down a blackboard.
Snape shifted, he mustn't react, mustn't tell her to stop. That was just the reaction she wanted.
He was saved by the appearance of Blaise Zabini crossing in front of the staff table. Faith sighed softly and the faintest ghost of a smile glimmered on her lips. She glanced up at Snape.
"He does look like his brother."
"Yes. I'd noticed. After teaching him for, well this is the seventh year now, I'd managed to make the connection."
She was going to respond when Hooch cut in,
"You know Adagio Zabini?"
"Yes, he was in my year."
"Oh right! I met him a few years ago."
The two women seemed to share a conspiratorial look that made Snape clench his fingers. What was worse was he didn't know why it bothered him.
"He was my partner at the Yule Ball." Faith was saying in a voice that sounded far too deliberately casual to Snape. "That's my claim to fame!"
Hooch laughed and said,
"Good company isn't he?"
Faith smirked, "Very."
They both sniggered. Snape took a gulp of his coffee. It didn't bother him, and he wasn't going to let it bother him. He wasn't quite sure why their conversation should bother him, well obviously it didn't. He took another gulp to try and drown the twist in his stomach in coffee.
"Have you heard from him at all?"
He turned round and looked down at Faith, trying and completely failing, to read her face.
"No." And then, because he was in foul mood and was feeling inexplicably hostile towards Adagio Zabini added, "He's too busy trying to rule the world."
Hooch reacted as expected and raised a worried eyebrow. Snape just shrugged.
Faith cut in, "Oh for God's sake Adagio's not a bloody Death Eater! He's trying to rule the World completely legally." She paused and considered that sentence. "Mostly legally."
Snape snorted.
They ate the rest of the meal in silence. But as Faith stood up she leant over to brush the crumbs from her place. Her hair fell forward and Snape felt it brush his shoulder. He breathed in sharply, and caught a breath of a soft, light scent. As she drew back a few of her hairs swept over his cheek like a spider web.
But then the presence and the scent was gone with the arrival of the owls.
A few letters dropped around him, and through the melee he saw a scrawny barn owl fly down and drop a letter into Faith's hand. The owl then flew up to the table and dropped one right in Snape's goblet. Grapefruit juice splashed across his hand, and he groaned as he wiped it off fastidiously before opening out the soggy letter.
Dear Severus
I am sorry to trouble you, but, and I do hate admitting this, I need your help.
This may be nothing of course, but last week the Wolfsbane potion was not as effective as usual. It was only slight, but something was wrong. I would really appreciate being able to see you before next month. Let me know.
If Faith asks you about this, and you can be sure she will, I have no objection to you answering. Although I suppose that wouldn't actually make any difference to whether you would or not.
Thanks.
Remus
Snape groaned. Just another thing going hideously wrong. Great.
A.N. There is always a possibility that Snape is fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. And from there borrowed the idea of an out of time clock designed to turn the brain of anyone around it too long to mush. He would like to thank Mr. Pratchett very much for the idea!