Serpentigena
Chapter 1: Knockturn Alley
Knockturn Alley is a place that few ever go for a good reason. The long and twisted cobblestones are full of a hodgepodge of shops, ranging from more innocent goods to the deadliest of poisons and the rarest torture devices. There are shops that sell things that no one should have: shrunken heads and the hot brain of a cat that will make you invisible if you eat it; the pelts of centaurs and bits and pieces of the human body, all bundled up in parcels with brown paper and white string.
The people there can be as unsavory as the goods they sell. Hags and vampires walk freely here, alongside Dark witches and wizards whose weary eyes dart from side to side, watching for spies. There are spies, and spies who spy on the spies, and if there is a whistle and someone is dragged off the street into one of the many blind corners, it is highly unlikely that they will live long enough to scream, let alone tell what they shouldn't have seen.
There were 'newbies', witches and wizards new to Knockturn Alley. They were the jumpiest, their eyes roving constantly in the fear that someone would grab them and they would die. Next were the regulars, who either had the misconception that they were invincible or were strange and withdrawn. The difference between the latter and the former was as simple as whom the Spies's Spies, or the SS, had questioned, and who had escaped the close watch.
Lastly were the 'Old bones'. Charcoal Sarah was one of these, an urchin who had spent much of her life on her street corner, avoiding the law of the Ministry and abiding the laws of the underworld. To most it seemed like she had been there forever, for Sarah had lived in Knockturn Alley for seventy-four years. She was old, her skin falling into creases and pleats on her face. The strong muscles and bones that had made her beautiful in her youth had now relaxed, leaving only her sharp black eyes and the firm set of her jaw.
She was thin and slouched, her yellowing canvases propped up on the barrels of the vendor next door. True to her name, Charcoal Sarah had spent most of her life sketching Knockturn Alley. There were sixty canvases with her now, and thousands more that she had sold for the meager pennies she could squeeze from the buyers. The drawings were worth every penny: After seventy-odd years of practice, her skill had gotten close to photographic. It showed, in the dust that suffused her garments, in the fingers that had gone black at the tips and the fingernails that stood out a garish yellow among her spotted gray flesh.
Pretty she was not. Sarah was, however, one of the oldest Old Bones on Knockturn Alley. That gave her enough prestige to get through the days without unnecessary hassle.
It was Emily 'Sweetfingers' Martin that found her first, before the morning mists had lifted from the cobblestones. Emily was in her forties, buxom and trim even as her own skin began to slacken. "Hey thar," she drawled. "SS awake yet?" Emily's curious accent, a clash of Southwestern drawl and clipped British, betrayed her mixed heritage.
"The SS never sleeps," Sarah replied, smudging a shadow into blurry perfection. "They watched me all last night."
"Even with the fog." It was not a question. Emily sighed and leaned again the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. "They're watching now."
"But not listening." Sarah began on the long lines of Emily's robes. "I won't have one of their foul snoopers near me." She smudged and sketched, her black eyes narrowed to arrowhead-slits in her face. "Nor their little elves creeping underfoot and asking questions. I killed the last one. Damn thing nearly ruined a week of drawings." She used two quick flicks of the charcoal to indicate her friend's slitted eyes.
Emily stayed still. "Are you drawing me?" The woman was used to her older friend's frequent impromptu sketching, and knew better than to move until she was allowed.
Sarah nodded, glancing up to put the finishing touches on Emily's long hair. With a quick smudge of dust she caught the shadow underneath the curl that fell across her friend's forehead.
Emily sighed and relaxed against the bricks. "You see the Newbie in here a few hours ago?"
"I see everything in this Alley."
"He looked pretty calm."
"Buy anything?"
"Nope."
"Probably a Death Eater."
"They usually are."
"Yeah," Sarah grunted. With a flourish, she signed the bottom. "Not bad," she admitted. "You should model, Emily."
Emily glanced over the old woman's shoulder. "I used to. Got pregnant, got thrown out."
"Pity."
"Yeah." Emily left to her own private street corner, in front of the Hotel Noire.
The next visitor was Toad, an Auror who had been left to die at the hands of Voldemort. He had twisted off Toad's right leg and then left him alone to bleed to death. Toad had cried out for help for days, but no one came back to see if he was alive—neither Aurors nor Death Eaters. Toad was now an avid hater of both the Ministry of Magic and the Death Eaters, and stumped around with his crutch cursing everyone. He was white-haired and young-faced; would have been tall if he could stand up straight. His yellow-green, slightly protruding eyes had earned him his nickname.
"Curses upon the Ministry. May they be raped with wasps' nests' and dragged through nettles," he grumbled, leaning against the wall Emily had vacated.
"Lovely, Toad. Is that how you speak to Grandmother?" asked a younger girl who had been standing behind Sarah. "You should at least say ma'am at the end."
"The young who know much about courtesy and use it little should mind their own business," Toad retorted. "Don't you have somewhere to be, Josephine?"
Josephine shrugged. She was young for an Old Bone, but she had been born in Knockturn Alley and lived there for all of her life. She was Gypsy-looking, with dark hair and exotic blue eyes. Only a thin white scar that rain from her hairline to the base of her nose and over her left eye flawed her parchment skin. Her skills lay in the art of poisons and brews, though she had never attended Hogwarts or any other school. The owls of Hogwarts do not enter Knockturn Alley. Had Josephine attended Hogwarts, she would have done well. As it was, she was the most disreputable potion brewer on Knockturn Alley. She liked it.
"Toad has a wicked tongue, Josephine," Sarah replied. "For all."
"All but you, Grandmother," Josephine retorted. "What news, Toad? New Death Eaters? Any more SS victims?"
Toad licked his thin lips and drummed his fingers together. "The SS got two more, one of them's one of those stupid kids the Aurors hire as undercover agents. They really aren't much good, always getting caught. This one got freed, but they'll never come back to Knockturn Alley." Toad murmured a short curse on Aurors and continued. "The other was that old lady, Sepporah? You know, the midwife? She's a spy for the Ministry. Or should I say was? Anyway, she's not going to be doing any more delivering."
Charcoal Sarah nodded. "Knew she was, but she was decent sort. Plus, I did enough flattering drawings of her to keep us safe. She never told the Ministry nothing about us."
"Good!" Josephine kissed her knuckle. "I could be in Azkaban if she talked."
"We all could, girlie. Some of us is just smarter, that's all."
"Shut up, Toad. One day I swear I'll poison your mead."
"They'll getcha for that, too."
Sarah finished her sketch and cast an appraising glance over it. With a little shadowing and some slight modifications, she could pass it off as a lover's spat. Some art fanatic would pay for that. She smudged Toad's outline so that his missing leg was less evident, and darkened the defiant line of Josephine's jaw. Yes, this one had real potential. It might sell for more than a dollar—maybe some sucker would pay a good twenty or so. Sarah nodded and smudged, the bickering of the girl and cripple a soft background noise as she worked.
~
Severus Snape stalked down the street. He never really walked normally—he enjoyed the powerful feeling of swooping down the street, like he could fly if he walked a little more forcefully. In addition, the powerful stride covered his fear as he stalked the cobblestone lane of Knockturn Alley.
It's stupid to fear something that doesn't exist, he thought to himself. You know that the underground resistance here shorted out years before you were born. But there was always something weird about the way people gathered in this place, the way that this woman watched him and this man watched the woman, and some just sat, watching everyone. Nothing went unnoticed but everything went unsaid.
He pushed open the door of the rickety shop, the dim light of a streetlight filtering through the newspaper that covered the broken window. It was deceptively innocent looking inside, but a slight rotting smell that came from the thousands of bottles on the walls clearly said to Snape's nose that these were poisons, cleanly made and aged to perfection. Every one seemed to be in it's prime, but Snape knew that this could not be possible. The elderly man that sold the potions here could not possibly be three hundred years old, but these potions were. This shop had been founded five years before. It was a mystery nobody had solved—where did these perfect potions come from?
"I need supplies," he told the man who came to the counter. He was bent and twisted, one side of his spine curving grossly to the right and inwards, making each of his breaths a labored process.
"Name it, my gal'll find it," the man wheezed. His breath was foul and smelled of cheap booze.
"A half-pint of murderer's wash water, female if you have it, and another half of the blood of a virgin centaur." Snape held up a gold Galleon. The man's face lit up in a way that made Snape think of a long row of frothing glasses. "I can pay."
The shop owner's 'gal' returned almost instantaneously with the required bottles. She was tall and thin, her back plumb straight in juxtaposition to her boss's twisted stature. "Would you like to see them?" she asked. She was dirty; like everything else in the shop, but her face was classic and her blue eyes were startling in her tawny face.
"Certainly," Snape replied. The girl plucked the cap off the wash water and handed the bottle to him.
"That's a female, about thirty."
Snape inhaled deeply and had to agree with the girl's guess. "Female, thirty-two. Probably not dead, though."
There was a reluctant nod from the girl. "The centaur's blood is in order. I cannot allow you to sniff that," she said. Her voice was slightly accented, a soft velvet purr.
"It would cause bad business if I was to faint on your floor," Snape replied. He held out his hand with the sixteen Galleons he had been holding—the bare minimum for such items.
"To accept such a sum would disgrace the name of this shop," the girl said, placing a hand to her heart dramatically. "I will accept nothing less than forty Galleons five Sickles."
"These must be good items, to be so overpriced," Snape replied.
"The very best. There are neither impurities in the blood nor mildew in the water. Forty is a reasonable charge for high quality."
"The best at Diagon Alley sells for twenty-six," Snape pointed out.
The girl looked offended. "Diagon? You should never buy their goods! They salt the water and thin the blood! Their quality is a pustule compared to mine."
"Yours? A mere girl?" Snape allowed himself a decisive laugh. "I am three times your age and know quality when I see it!"
Her cheeks flushed. "With age come not wisdom but doddering wits and a frail body!" She raised the glass of murderer's wash water and waved it in his face. "Look closely, grandfather, for this is quality!"
"Twenty."
"Thirty-seven."
"Thirty-one galleons six."
"Done." He counted the money into her waiting palm, noticing that the girl counted it again before putting it in the cashbox. She tucked a long strand of hair back into her braid. "Would you like anything else?" she asked, her voice once again deceptively polite.
"Where did you train?" he queried. "It takes a skilled witch to know the age of the murderer, especially from the water." The girl's eyes widened, and she glanced downward. She cleared her throat.
"Well, thanks for your business, stranger," the man broke in, puffing smoke from a strange twisted pipe into Snape's face. "We'll be seeing you."
Snape was forced to back out of the shop, back onto the street. He watched the girl through a rip in the newspaper until a man bumped into him from behind.
"Whatcha starin' at?" he snarled. "Lil' Josephine?"
He sneaked one last glance through the papers. The girl's back was to him, the loose rounds of black hair hanging to her waist. "Josephine," he murmured, before striding off to the lighter end of the Alley, where Knockturn ended and Diagon began.
~
"I didn't like it, Grandmother," Josephine told Sarah, her hands wringing as she leaned against the wall. "Didn't like it one bit. He looked right through me—like you do, almost."
"An artist's gaze. I must meet this man."
"No!" the girl erupted. "I don't want to see him again! He's not fooled by all this Knockturn Alley hibber-de-jibber, he knows something more! About what really goes on in here." She bit her knuckle, blue eyes stormy above her fist. "It was frightening. Like having no skin." How could she describe the feeling of being looked at as if she were no more than an interesting shape, the curve of an eyebrow, the shape of her nose?
Charcoal Sarah nodded. "Aye, girl, aye." She bent forward to put the details on the drawing of Josephine's hands that she'd been working on. "Is that a scar on your left palm?"
Josephine looked down. "Yes. I think I tipped a vile once and tried to catch what was in it before it hit the floor." She made a motion like she was cupping her hand. "It was dragon's blood."
Sarah winced as she detailed the rippling white scar with charcoal dust. "Bet you never did that again."
"Nope."
"Lemme see your hands again, girl. My eyes aren't so keen anymore."
Obediently Josephine held out her hands, palm up. "Do you think he'll be back, Grandmother?"
"No. Unless..." Sarah looked up at Josephine and snickered, then howled with laughter. She banged her fist so hard on the chair she snapped her charcoal stick into three pieces. As suddenly as the outburst had begun, it ended. Sarah cleared her throat with a noise like a pepper grinder with rocks in it. "Other side of your hands, please."
"What was that?" Josephine asked, flipping her hands.
"Nothing. It's just a little surprising that nobody's hit on you before." Sarah delicately traced a knuckle onto her sketch. Toad, who had been lurking around the corner, cackled with merriment and did a little hopping dance, thumping his crutch against the ground as he pointed gleefully at Josephine. The girl retaliated by hooking her foot around his and jerking him to the ground, where they sat laughing hysterically until no one remembered why they had begun.
~
"Who are these people?" Albus Dumbledore asked, surveying the seven charcoal portraits before with interest. "It looks like three central people: a girl, a one-legged man, a grown woman. Why are they so significant?" Remus Lupin and his young assistant, Neville Longbottom, stood across from him. Neville's arms were full of yet more drawings.
"I'm not sure," Remus Lupin confessed. "There's an old woman who sells portraits on the corner. I was looking through her stock of drawings, and I noticed that these three people were just everywhere in them. Especially the cripple; the one who appears the least often is the grown woman." He ran his hands through his entirely gray hair. Though Remus was barely halfway through his fourth decade his hair was fast approaching white and his young face was pleated with fine lines around his eyes and mouth.
Dumbledore rested his chin in his hands. "This one," he said, tapping the canvas. "The hands."
It was a picture of someone's hands, badly scarred. It was actually three drawings on one canvas: the hands open, wringing, and the relaxed backs of the hands. "It was different. Most of the others were straight-out drawings, but this one stood out like a sore thumb," Neville chirped. He was a dark-haired young man with round blue eyes and a thin, slumping stance.
"No pun intended?" Albus smiled a little, gesturing at the poor condition of the hands. "That's an acid burn," he mused aloud, pointing at the rightmost hand. "And that's broken glass if I've never seen it."
Remus grunted in reply, picking up the next canvas. "This is one of the middle-aged woman. She's a prostitute by the Hotel Noir."
Dumbledore sorted through and pulled out one of the girl and an unrecognizable man. The man's back was to the viewer, but the girl's face was twisted in fury. The photographic detail left no doubt this was the girl from the other portraits. "This is our young Janie Doe?"
Neville nodded. "Yes. And here's the cripple—his name's Toad. He's pretty well known. And the prostitute." Remus laid each one out in turn.
"She's pretty," Dumbledore remarked blandly to the older man.
"I've given up on women, Headmaster," Remus replied, equally bland. "Especially the pretty ones."
"I know, Remus."
Dumbledore looked at the drawings and sighed. "Good work. Very good." Neville's ears went pink with pleasure. Dumbledore watched the pair as they left. It had been good of Remus to take on Neville after the boy graduated. Neville Longbottom was shy, quiet, and had grown up without either of his parents. They were both kept in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies. When Neville was barely a year old an encounter with Voldemort had resulted in his parent's going insane. Remus was like a father to the younger man, and Neville was, surprisingly, one of the few people who could grow the plants for, and brew, Remus' Wolfsbane potion.
It works beautifully, Dumbledore thought. If only all could go so well.