Faith lay back in the chair, the leather smelt of disinfectant and felt sticky under her sweating hands. She could hear the man walking around, but he was behind the glaring light in front of her eyes, and she couldn't see him. This light dazzled out all the other shapes in the sour smelling room. She felt sick.
The man appeared with his wand outstretched, and gave her a lecherous look that lingered on her breasts and thighs. She wished she had worn a robe.
"So, Ms Llewllyn, a few questions, routine I assure you."
His voice was high and thin. He was disgustingly fleshy, with shiny, sallow skin that spilled over his collar. His nose was red and bulbous, and Faith could see the little broken veins. He gave off a vague smell of mouth balls.
"Have you ever been subjected to any Grade Five curses?"
"Yes."
He almost dropped the clip board his fat fingers were clinging to.
"Really?"
"Yes. Crucio, Imperio, Asphyxio and Nocthorrifica."
"Ah. Alright. Were any of them under six months ago?"
"Nocthorrifica. It was June, yes it is still in my system, and no I can't take any thing for it apart from a calming potion."
The man scribbled on his clipboard. Faith's hands tightened on the chair's arms. You could get chairs like this that strapped the victim to them so they couldn't move. Maybe this was one of those chairs… She resisted the urge to peer over the side of it.
"Apart from the um, obvious, have you been ill recently?"
"No."
"Right." He put the clip board down and shoved his wand in her face. "Open wide…"
Faith shuddered as the magic began to scrape at her teeth. She hated going to the damn dentist!
When he'd finished he ran his eyes over the clip board again. Faith had her back to him as she fastened up her coat, staring out of the window at the grey sky. There was a collection of dead and swollen blue bottles on the window sill.
"Um, Miss Llewllyn, I wonder, I was supposed to ask you at the beginning, before the examination, but have you taken any illegal drugs lately? Apart from in the calming potion that is!" He laughed, but it turned into wheezing. Faith wasn't listening. She had been about to enquire whether his practice could of cope with the lawsuit she would of bring if he had done something that had reacted to drugs in her system, when his words caught up with her.
"Drugs, in the potion?"
"Oh yes! A lot of calming potions contain cannabis, others even have opium."
"Really?"
"Why yes!"
Faith nodded and drifted back to the Hogwarts gates in a daze. She had sworn off drugs. She knew she had an addictive personality, and drugs were terrible because she couldn't just use them recreationally. She had frequently meant to, but one time, became two, became three… If they were in that potion she had to stop taking it, but… It was the one thing that had ever helped.
She was so lost in thought she didn't notice the air shimmer and a small, slightly greying figure appear next to her.
"Aren't you pleased to see me Faith?"
"Remus!"
**********************************************
Snape stood staring into the river Thames, and gloomily watched a condom float by through the oily, brown water. He was early for his meeting with their potential candidate for the coup to remove Fudge, being early was always wise, the other person could have anything set up, it paid to be alert for potential surprises.
He sipped his coffee and made a mental note to never, ever, even if he was suffering from some horrible curse that could only be relieved by drinking coffee, go into Starbucks again.
He felt horribly insecure. It made sense to meet in muggle London, in a public, open space, where it would be virtually impossible for them to be overheard. But he didn't feel comfortable in the Muggle world. He knew an awful lot of wizards were able to slip quite comfortably between the two communities, but he never had. He had hardly ever been exposed to muggle society as a child, and it had hardly been a fashionable thing to do among the Death Eaters. Then there had been a few years he chose not to remember, and then Hogwarts. All in all he had barely ever needed to leave the close confines of the Wizarding world.
He had had to thrust a twenty pound note at the spotty brat in Starbucks so he wouldn't look stupid counting out the wrong change, and then made a complete idiot of himself trying to get the stupid plastic top on the cup off. And anyway it was a paper cup! Admittedly anyone willing to buy coffee from there on a regular basis probably shouldn't be trusted with sharp instruments, but still…
And although he was wearing a suit he was also aware that most of the muggle businessmen who hurried past, their heads bent down from the wind, did not have shoulder length hair.
He felt ridiculously out of place.
He stared though the spitty rain to the Houses of Parliament across the river. The building was shaped like a cathedral. Ironic really, the idea that politicians were pure enough to be housed in a building like the homes of God…
He poured his coffee into the river and watched some more scum float past.
Then he saw him. Martin Lear, the future Minister of Magic, if they had their way, walking cheerfully along the embankment. He did not look out of place, he moved with an ease and grace that made Snape's stomach crawl.
He also had, Snape viewed the people around him, at least three bodyguards. The man browsing through a newspaper on his left, the woman with the baggy jeans and crew cut just behind him, and the young man who stationed himself on the barrier just in front of Snape.
Lear reached Snape and his eyebrows went up in surprise.
"I have to confess to not expecting to see you Professor Snape, I rather had the impression it would be Blackthorn."
Snape forced out a smile and offered his hand.
"No Mr Lear. I am your contact for the moment."
"Ah." Lear shook his hand delicately. "You do realise the Aurors wish to reopen the case on you? I heard of the request this morning. I'm meeting with a suspected Death Eater it seems. Cigar?"
Snape's guts twisted up. Why the fuck was the file being reopened? He swallowed and shook his head at the offered packet of thin, cheroot cigars.
Lear lit one, tapped some ash into the river and then spoke again.
"I have four body guards stationed around me. If anything happens they will act, they will not be merciful."
Snape cursed himself for only spotting three.
"Nothing will happen to you. Now, you know the basic outline of our plan?"
"I know that some shadowy figures have found my views on the current situation align with theirs, so they wish to promote me. I do not however know who leads these people, although I suspect they are based at Hogwarts…?"
Snape watched him for a moment and then said very carefully,
"Albus Dumbledore does not, I repeat not, know anything about this."
He held Lear's eyes for a fraction too long. Lear blew out a long plume of smoke and nodded.
"I understand."
"Good."
"Are you going to assassinate Fudge?"
"More trouble than it is worth, no we are going for character assassination. Then he will choose you for his successor."
"Not technically very legal is it?"
"We are in the grey area certainly."
Lear turned his eyes to the building across the river.
"They are in there right now, making laws, making a future for this country. Maybe a good one, maybe a bad, but still a future. A future we do not have with Fudge."
Snape nodded. "We have two years, at the very most, before Voldemort is successful. That's Dumbledore's estimate, I'm a pessimist and say one."
Lear twirled his cigar in front of his eyes and shuddered. Snape noticed his glossy brown hair was beginning to turn grey.
"I will not be Dumbledore's puppet. Our views on how the War should be run are the same at present, but I will not view myself as continually in your debt." He turned to face Snape and his eyes were like steel, "I will be minister my own way. I will make my own decisions. I will not shirk from the tough ones, or take the easy way for my own self-preservation, but they will be my choices and only mine. Do you understand?"
Now Snape had to suppress a smile.
"I do." He reached into his pocket. "Here is a list of our goals and how we think they can be best achieved. The goals are written in the form of a very polemic speech. If you are caught with this you can just say it was a draught you were given."
Lear took the paper and read the speech with smile permanently playing round the corners of his thin mouth.
"Very polemic, but well written. May I know who wrote it?"
"Faith Llewllyn."
"She's mixed up in this! I'm surprised, but then she has managed to stay out of the gossip columns for the past few years. Do you think she'd like a job as a speech writer?"
"No," Snape spat. He'd forgotten how much gossip Faith used to generate, she had been written off as an upper class slut by the majority of their world. Useless gossips who knew absolutely nothing!
Lear cut through his thoughts.
"I must be going. You have my cooperation Professor, and my best wishes for the next stage of your endeavours."
"Thank you."
They shook hands again and Lear sent his cheroot flying into the river, its end was a small spark of light shining briefly in the polluted air.
*******************************************
Faith and Lupin walked down towards the dungeons.
"Are you sure you can't stay longer?"
"Yes. I've found something potentially important, I can only stay for today. I wouldn't have come at all, but obviously I have to see Snape straight away."
"Yes." She stopped in the corridor and placed her hand on his arm. "Are you, I mean, do you…?" She trailed off wretchedly and he squeezed her hand.
"I don't know what can be done. I just have to hope."
"Where do you get your endless capacity for hope! I don't understand."
Remus looked at her sadly and whispered,
"I'm running out of it Faith."
She squeezed his hand back and they carried on downwards.
As they walked past a corridor a voice called out,
"Professor Lupin!"
They turned and Faith saw Blaise Zabini and Eleanor De Sade walking towards them, Blaise was striding eagerly ahead. Remus's face lit up at the sight of his old pupils and one of his slow smiles spread across his lips.
"Blaise, Eleanor! How are you?"
Eleanor only nodded, but Blaise beamed and said,
"I'm absolutely fine Sir! What are you doing here?"
As Lupin blabbered some excuse about buying some ingredients from Snape, Faith glanced over Blaise. He was ridiculously good looking, in her opinion one of the best looking people in the school. He had auburn curls falling all round his face, and wide blue eyes that wore an expression of total innocence. Faith wasn't fooled by that for a minute.
Then she noticed Remus noticing the man his old pupil had grown into. The innocence in Blaise's eyes had dropped and taken on a slightly inviting look. Faith's eyes met Eleanor's, and the girl raised an eye brow with a slightly amused look on her face.
"Um, Remus, you know what Severus gets like if you're late."
"Oh right!" Remus seemed startled to realise there was actually anyone else there. "Okay. Goodbye Blaise, Eleanor."
As they walked down the corridor Remus looked back, he saw Blaise's head turning back towards his, and then the younger man gave a last wave.
***************************************
Snape watched the syringe fill up with Lupin's blood and then pulled it away, leaving a tiny slit in the skin filling with beads of blood.
He heard Lupin muttering words to heal it, and then squeezed the blood into a test tube.
"I've performed some experiments, but I needed a fresh sample."
"Of course," Lupin sighed tiredly.
"You do realise that the Wolfsbane Potion has been a huge breakthrough. It is extremely difficult to calibrate to the individual werewolf. The other work that has been done of werewolf transformation has always, always, failed. It seems impossible to find a way to allow the werewolf to retain its human mind when it is wolf form. That is why Wolfsbane works, it sedates you."
Remus looked up sharply from buttoning up his robe.
"What did you say?"
"To be blunt, Lupin. Wolfsbane dopes you."
"No before then." He jumped off the worktop and said, "Before then you implied that all this work was based on the principle that I am human three weeks out of four and then a wolf!"
"Well aren't you?"
"No! I'm always a werewolf."
Snape looked blank and then began to try to explain. He hated it when he had to fall back on various experts to make his case, it generally meant there was a gap in his argument.
Remus looked at him scornfully.
"None of the so called experts you have just named have ever talked to werewolves then."
Snape shut his mouth, Remus's eyes were gleaming dangerously.
The other man began to pace round the room.
"None of these people listen to us, they speak in patronising voices about how they want to 'relieve our suffering' but they have no clue, no concept of what we suffer! And to rub salt into the gaping wounds they make huge assumptions about us!
"I am not a human Snape, and I am never a wolf. Wolves hate werewolves. They'd rip me apart if they walked in here now."
"Why, I mean, aren't you…"
"Humans hate werewolves, why shouldn't wolves? They can sense that, unlike them, we're vicious murdering beasts."
He sank down on one of the lab stools, and looked so tired, so old and tired.
"All the work you've just described is entirely flawed if it works on the premise that I'm one species for three weeks and a different one for the fourth."
Snape didn't speak. There was no comfort he could give this man, just as there was nothing Lupin could offer to him. But the wheels in his mind were turning and spinning in all kinds of new directions. He sat down and began to scribble notes. After awhile Lupin looked up and said,
"Snape?"
Snape just waved his hand at Lupin vaguely to dismiss him. Lupin glanced over the other man's shoulder, saw nothing in the notes he understood, and crept away.
*************************************
Faith marched into the staff room and then hesitated. She moved over to the bookcase and pretended to browse the titles there. She didn't actually see any of them.
She had been confident about this. She was going to walk over to Snape, find out exactly what was in the calming potion, and then when it turned out to contain drugs, say a polite 'thanks but no thanks.' Easy, simple.
Except. She was really nervous. Stupid, incredibly stupid, but there you go. The potion helped, not just immediately after, but it replenished the huge amounts of strength she lost. It helped. And she had to throw it back in his face. She felt ripped up inside.
She also felt guilty. And this was even more stupid. She felt guilty that Snape had spent quite a bit of time on this, and then she was being completely ungrateful. She really shouldn't feel this of course, but she just did…
She stole a look at him. He sat reading a magazine at the table in the corner. The soft, violet evening light fell across him softening his features, and making him look, sad? Not his usual angry bitterness anyway. And he was ugly, but… There was a but. She hadn't quite worked out what the but was, but it was there. Maybe it was in his eyes? She didn't know. She just knew that for all she spent half her life squabbling with him, she also enjoyed being near him.
It was horribly disconcerting. She was even being to think she couldn't write the whole thing off as some brief sexual attraction.
This was even more disconcerting.
She drifted over to him slowly. Talking to the other teachers and glancing at the newspaper headlines. But eventually she reached him and sat in the chair opposite his.
He glanced up at her and nodded briefly before going back to the article he was reading.
"Severus? I have a question about the calming potion."
"What?" He didn't look up.
"What's in it?"
He stared at her in surprise. She dropped her eyes from his face and scratched her nail in the varnish on the table.
"Why?"
"Humour me?"
He gave a short explanation of each of the ingredients and she thought that it actually might be alright till he added,
"And cannabis."
She couldn't help the desperate sigh that hissed through her lips, and she watched her fingers curling round each other. If she was the kind of person that cried, there would have been tears leaking out of her eyes and running down her face.
"I'm afraid then I can't take it anymore then."
"Why?" He was staring at her with an odd expression on his face. Concern? Compassion? Neither were likely.
Faith thought. Admitting extreme susceptibility to narcotics was weak. However then saying that she resisted taking them because of this was surely a sign of strength?
She spoke to his hands.
"I have had some difficulties with addictive drugs in the past," she looked up into his now blank face, "Because of this I never take them. Even in potions."
He held her gaze, and she tried to understand why she thought his eyes were so attractive. Nothing that hard and cold could really be beautiful, but, she could stare at his face for hours.
He shrugged.
"Its up to you, but I think you're being idiotic."
She snapped her head away and pushed her chair back so hard it crashed into the wall behind her.
"Faith, wait."
"The potion is designed to react to the magic in you. If you take it when the magic is not affecting you I doubt anything will really happen."
She lowered herself back into her chair. He gave her a disdainful look that she had thought he reserved for those he considered maggots, and it was easier to look at the floor than his face.
"Take the potion now and the most you will feel is dizzy and nauseous."
"Really?" Her voice seemed lost and she could only whisper.
"Yes."
"Thank you."
He shrugged again and went back to his magazine. She stared out of the window and tried to calm down. She needed a drink. Peaty whisky poured over ice cubes and sliding down her throat…
"There's an article on your father."
"What?" She spun round to face him.
"Its this month's Dark Defences. There's another article on your father, it calls for his notes to be made public."
She went white, actually felt the blood drain from her face and her voice wouldn't work, but she pulled the magazine out of his hands.
"Are you alright?" He sounded completely unconcerned.
"Yes." Oh she could speak after all.
"No one will take it seriously."
"Really?" She leaned over and grabbed his hand without even realising she was doing it. "Really?"
"Yes. His calculations are works of genius, but belong in some other universe I'm afraid."
Her lips went up into a smile that came out more like a death mask grimace.
"Would you be prepared to say that, if you had to, officially, if anyone did ask…?"
"Yes, I wouldn't damage my reputation by saying anything else!"
She didn't say anything else but practically ran out of the room.
******************************************
Two days later, at breakfast, the official Ministry letter came demanding the release of all Rhys's papers.