Chapter Ten
The Art of Not Running
Rasputin loved the extra attention he got the next week when Essie helped Corey feed him. She couldn't believe how big he was getting. Corey said that when he had first seen him, the lizard had been as long as his arm, and now he was half that again, and he seemed to weigh a ton. Only Snape tried to carry him anymore; even Jennifer ordered him around like a misbehaving puppy when he was in the way rather than try. But unlike any other sort of basilisk Essie had heard about, Rasputin was very docile; lazy in fact, his glass eye surveying the room while they cleaned up after him and gave him stoned kibble meat or an occasional mouse (Essie let Corey do that part, since for some reason it really began to bother her.)
The lecture had been the best part of the week, hearing Harry Potter himself tell them about his own experiences with the Dementors and how he'd learned the very spell he taught them from an old professor at Hogwarts. Except for a squint every now and again when Harry mentioned certain people, Snape more or less let him have the floor, only putting a word in when the students would wean Harry's subject off Dementors and onto more interesting adventures, making sure they got back on topic.
It was during the Quidditch game that weekend that Greisley had determined would be the best time to try and go over and grab the paper, for both Craw and Snape most undoubtedly would be at the Ravenclaw-Slytherin game.
So, while Greisley and his friends waited near the classroom door, Essie went in, quietly whispering the password and then slipping in the office door. As she stared at Rasputin, who moved his large head around to look at her, she suddenly felt guilty about what she was doing. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. In fact, she knew it wasn't. How did she get talked into doing this? Well, it was far too late to back out now. Slipping Rasputin some more of his stoned kibble, Essie stepped over to the desk, praying that the drawers would be unlocked. By some miracle they were, and Essie sorted through the papers, scanning them now and then until she finally found what she knew must be it. Her heart was pounding loudly as she quickly made a copy and shoved it in her robe, carefully trying to put everything else back where she found it and shutting the drawer tight.
As she made her way to the door, she heard the knob turn. In a sudden panic she changed into a mouse, scurrying onto the lower bookshelf and in between the books just as Severus came into the office. He seemed to be looking for something, something in particular. He glanced through his drawers, then after a moment of searching walked over to the bookshelf. But as he was scanning the shelves, he noticed that several of the volumes on the lower shelf had fallen at an angle. As he shoved them to the side, he saw a tail sticking out from the back. With lightning reflexes he caught the mouse by the tail and held her up.
"So, thought you were going to gnaw on my Holmes collection, did you? You picked the wrong office to try that in," Severus said, dangling the mouse by the tail as he went to take the eye patch off Rasputin. A sudden panic gripped her and she couldn't concentrate to change back, only managing to wriggle and shut her eyes, knowing all too well what was going to happen next.
But Rasputin stared at the mouse with its glass eye, turning the other eye away from her.
"You are going to feed me that?" Rasputin hissed.
"What do you mean am I going to feed you that? It's a mouse. Since when don't you want a mouse?" Severus hissed back.
"I'm not hungry," Rasputin decided, rubbing his eye patch until it fell into place. Then he crawled back into its bed. Severus forgot all about the mouse, dropping it and going over to his familiar worriedly. He didn't see the mouse scurrying out the door as he felt Rasputin's belly and looked the lizard over.
Professor Alvin Archibald knocked lightly door, peering in.
"No luck finding that book?" he asked.
"No, but I'll try to get it to you later on. I need to get Rasputin to Sagittari," Severus said, picking the hefty lizard up. "Tell Jennifer I'll catch up with her as soon as I can."
"What's wrong? Is it serious?" Alvin asked, closing the door behind them.
"He says he's not hungry," Severus said.
"My word, that is serious," Alvin agreed as the two men walked out.
Counting her blessings that the basilisk seemed to recognize her, Essie stepped into the next classroom long enough to change back to her normal form and then ran down the opposite hallway. Near the corridor to the Quidditch Pitch, Greisley and the others were waiting, looking up at her with surprise.
"So? Did you manage it?" Victor asked.
"I thought you were going to be guarding the door for me?" Essie asked.
"We tried, but we didn't get much warning before he showed up. How did you get away? Did he believe your story about feeding the lizard?" Greisley asked.
"Oh, I almost fed the lizard alright," Essie said. "Look, I did get it, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to be doing this here... anybody could come along. Besides, I'm not sure I really want to do it at all."
"What do you mean, Willowby?" Greisley said with a frown. "You've already gotten this far, what could go wrong now? Look, if you're so worried about it, why don't you just give it to us and you can forget doing it yourself? Forget the dance, forget having a good mark for a change, and forget everything. But I swear if you don't give it to me, Willowby, I am going to make your life miserable."
"What is going on here?" Victor jumped and turned around to see Corey, not looking too happy to see him. "Get away from my sister, Greisley!" Corey growled, "or I swear I'll knock you out where you stand."
"What, we were just having a pleasant conversation here, weren't we, Willowby?" Greisley said. Essie nodded fervently.
"How is making her life miserable pleasant conversation?" Corey demanded. "Essie, what's he after?"
"Nothing, Corey. I'm fine, really," Essie said. Corey and his friends glanced at each other.
"Fine. But you're coming to watch the game with me," Corey said, grabbing his sister's hand and pulling her off. "I think you've had enough pleasant conversation for one day." Essie was unusually quiet as he led her around the outside of the stands, out of sight from everyone and far enough away for them to be heard. "All right Essie, are you going to tell me what's going on?" he asked.
"I'm trying to look after myself for a change," Essie said. "You see, I got Victor to stop teasing me the last few weeks."
"How?" Corey asked. Reluctantly Essie took out the paper showing it to him. Corey's eyes went wide, staring at her. "You got this out of Dad's desk! You were trying to help those creeps, weren't you?" he hissed at her.
"Look, Uncle Severus said none of us could go to the dance if we missed any of the essay questions, so they asked me to try and get it, and in return they promised to leave me alone," Essie said, looking miserable.
"You know what's going to happen when you get caught, don't you?" Corey said.
"Yes, but… but I'm tired of being the brunt of the jokes all the time! At least this way they'll stop."
"Essie, I am glad you're not running away anymore, but I don't think this is much of an improvement. Tell me honestly, is this something you really want to do?" Corey asked her seriously. Essie shook her head. "Good. Then let's go see Dad."
"Corey! You can't be serious!" Essie said, turning pale.
"Please, Essie, you have to trust me on this one. Once I was in real bad trouble, just like this, and Dad helped me straighten it out. If you go to him now, you're not going to get in trouble."
"But then, that'd only be because I'm your sister…"
"No, it wouldn't," Corey said, turning around. "When he helped me, I wasn't anything to him but a student. Please, Essie. If you want to help yourself, fine, but sometimes you need help to help yourself."
Essie looked at the serious look on Corey's face for a long time. She was definitely afraid of what was going to happen next, but she knew that if she was going to stop running from her problems, she also couldn't run from this.
"Alright," Essie agreed.
Putting two fingers in his mouth, Corey blew out a loud whistle and then wrote a quick note with the words, "Student Emergency" on it, rolling it up as Cheshire appeared, licking his paws. He slipped the note into the small decanter around the cat's neck and sent it off. Quickly Corey pulled her back behind the stands then, taking out a small potion kit and taking a powder out of it, dusting her with it and then himself. To her surprise, the two of them had suddenly begun to blend in their surroundings, barely visible.
"Chameleon Powder? But why –"
"You don't need Greisley seeing you going back to Dad's office right now," Corey explained. "Not until we know how he wants to handle this," he added, taking her hand and walking her to the office.
Seeing the door wasn't ajar, Corey made her step to the side and made a thumbprint on the blackboard with chalk. Essie waited curiously, not quite sure why they hadn't gone in. But finally Snape arrived, gazing around to see the small mark on the board before closing the classroom door. Then he opened his office door wide and stepped out of the way. Corey led her inside. Severus slipped in behind them and then pulled the door shut, watching as Corey's hands appeared and began to brush the powder off his sister. Severus squinted in surprise as she emerged, looking over where Corey's hands were inquisitively.
"Dad, Essie's got something to tell you. Essie, good luck. I'm out of here," Corey said.
"You're not staying?" Essie asked in a panic.
"Take another phial of powder with you," Severus said. His voice was calm but his eyes were watching Essie steadily, still keenly aware of when the hands disappeared and the door opened and closed again. Severus then pulled out a chair as an obvious gesture, leaning against a bookshelf nearby with a suspicious look on his face. "I don't suppose this has anything to do with Rasputin acting oddly, does it?" Essie chuckled nervously, sitting down in the chair. This was not going to be easy.
Leaves fell to the ground as Halloween drew near, and excited students chatted merrily as they headed through the halls to their afternoon classes. Only in the Defense class was there any real tension as everyone took their seats, their fate still hanging in the balance from this one specific test. All of the students waited nervously at their seats waiting for the Professor to come in, and Essie glanced over to Victor Greisley, who smiled back at her slyly. And why shouldn't he? After all, she had given them copies of the tests, but unlike them, she was quite curious about what then would happen next. Finally Snape came out of the office with papers in hand, the class immediately facing front and going quiet.
"As you know, we'll be having dinner a bit early this evening, so you won't be having your next class. Because of that, I had intentionally planned a full-scale test for you today. However, since it seems I've gotten myself wrapped up into chaperoning this event, I've decided to shorten the test a bit," Severus glowered. Many of the Hufflepuffs breathed a sigh of relief. Many on the Slytherin side, however, were looking at each other thoughtfully. "Not that I think any of you deserve a break, but I'm sure you'll find the questions cover all the material at hand," he said, handing out papers one at a time. "There will also be only one essay problem on this test. This is literally do or die…if you get it wrong, you won't be going, and I doubt any of your classmates plan to stick around for a wake. Don't bother looking at each other's tests either. I purposefully gave you all a different question at the end so that you couldn't try looking off of each other's papers," he snarled, handing them out. Essie risked another look around to see Victor looking at his page with his eyes and mouth wide open. "Problem, Mr. Greisley?" Snape asked in an almost concerned tone.
"No, sir," Victor answered, and Essie turned quickly back around so he wouldn't notice her watching. Snape finally made it around to their corner of the room, handing out a copy to Angela and Essie silently before moving on.
Essie glanced at the top of the test and found that most of the multiple choices had been on the original test, except in a different order or slightly reworded, sometimes asking for the opposite than the original answer. It was then that she scanned down to see what her question was, and surprisingly, it wasn't asking her a situation with a Dark creature at all.
"Begin," Snape said finally, wandering back through the tables as Essie read the question again.
Name one of the most important things you need to know to be effective against the Dark Arts?
The schoolbook answer was, of course, quite obvious to Essie, for it was: knowing how to prepare. But Essie decided to take a chance, knowing that he had said before he would take reasonable answers on essays, and put 'learning who to trust' instead. That done, she turned back to the regular portion of the test, feeling a lot more confident about it.
Finally she was ready to turn her test in… she was hardly the first, still struggling to remember some of the answers on the first part of the test and not quite sure she got it all right… but finally she felt she could do no better and handed it up, sitting back down and looking at Angela nervously. Angela, who had finished her test a few minutes before smiled at her questioningly, wondering how she did, and Essie shrugged slightly.
Snape didn't say a word, marking each page and seemingly taking his time about it, sometimes grimacing or making some other unpleasant face or shaking his head as he went through them in a displeased sort of manner. Finally, near the time for class to normally have gotten out, he stood up and began passing them out. Some of them he didn't comment on as he flung them on their tables, and on most of those, sighs of relief went up. Every once in a while he shook his head slightly and frowned, and they knew they were in trouble, and others he'd make a comment on.
"Mr. Greisley… a valiant attempt as always on the multiple choice, although a couple of them surprised me. You're usually a bit better than that," he said thoughtfully. "A valiant attempt at your question as well, unfortunately it wasn't enough to save your life," he said with disappointment, handing him the test. "Better luck next time. Good thing this is only a class exercise; in real life, you wouldn't get another chance. See you in the Houserooms," he added, going on to Tyler Jeffers beside him and shaking her head. "Rest in peace," Snape said, going on down the line.
Finally he got to the Hufflepuffs, which for the most part turned out as Essie expected; Mick survived but Bianca didn't and so on, until he finally got to their table.
"Miss Ames, survived, as usual," Snape said, handing over her paper. "And as for you, Miss Willowby," he said with a stern frown that made Essie quite nervous. "As usual you didn't really do so well on the multiple choice, but somehow, for the first time since I began these essays, you actually survived the test… barely," he said, looking at her steadily. "If you had acted any slower, you wouldn't have," he added, handing her back her test before heading towards the front. Essie broke into a glowing smile and Angela patted her back, excited they were both going to get to go.
"Very well, you all know your fates. I hope this will finally convince some of you that death can be painful," Severus said darkly. "Dismissed," he said, heading to stand near the door, watching them all carefully as they headed out.
Essie and Angela were nearly the last to leave, and Essie was about ready to bolt down the hallway in the opposite direction as Greisley when Corey came around the corner, his books in hand.
"There you are, I was hoping you'd be out about now," Corey smiled at her, putting an arm around his sister and walking with them up the hall. Victor and his friends watched them suspiciously, but after they heard Snape clear his throat, they decided to move along. "So, how did the test go, Essie? I know you were worried about it."
"I survived it," Essie said with a grin. "And you know what, Corey, I'm starting to understand why Snape is your favorite teacher now."
"Essie, I think surviving that test went to your head," Angela laughed as they walked down the hall, but Essie only smiled at her.
Jennifer came up the back stairs and walked over to where Severus was standing, looking over his shoulder as he watched the different groups of students splitting down different corridors.
"Problem?" Jennifer asked curiously.
"Nothing out of the ordinary," Severus said. "Ready?"
"Whenever you are," Jennifer said cheerfully. "I can't wait to see everyone! This is going to be a fabulous night." Severus frowned at that as he went back in to get his cloak and throw his books in his office. "What's wrong, Severus?"
"There hasn't been a Halloween in years when something hasn't happened. Even if we don't quite realize it first… like the year Caprica woke up," he said, closing his office. "I have a terrible feeling we are leaving ourselves open for some unknown tragedy."
"Can't you ever go to an event without forecasting gloom and doom? Really, Severus, you're getting to be almost as bad as Icarus. He at least has the excuse of being dead," she teased him.
"He doesn't like this either, Jennifer. All of the apprentices are worried for some reason. I only hope they're not right this time," Severus said as they walked out the door.
