My rooms after dinner were as lively as the Bedouin tribal gatherings I had attended with Fahad and his family. Faculty members passed in and out, eager to meet this flashy new arrival, and students from every House managed to slip past the open doorway to sneak a peek. After a couple of hours of noise and crowds, I shooed out everyone but those privy to my assignment; I wandered into the kitchen to gather the things for traditional Arabic coffee.
Fahad was curled gracefully on the floor before the fire when I returned with the tray. He took the tray from me, insisting on preparing the coffee himself. As he poured the beans into a small roasting pan, I slipped back into the kitchen to boil water for tea. I jumped slightly as a cool hand fell on my shoulder; Severus squeezed my neck gently before rummaging in a cupboard for mugs.
"I assume the tea preparations are a not-so-subtle warning against the coffee." His voice was dry, pitched low enough to not be heard in the next room. I smiled at him as I fussed with milk and sugar.
"Well, as I recall, Fahad tends to make his coffee somewhat stronger than I do. I don't think you'll find it to your taste, and as keen as the others are on trying new things, I doubt they'll like it any more."
He helped me carry the tea things out into the sitting room; we handed mugs around to Hermione, Ron, and Albus. Harry declined a cup, saying he preferred to wait for coffee. Severus took his own mug and settled into his usual chair.
I folded myself onto the floor facing Fahad so I could grind the beans as they finished toasting. We worked together with the ease of much practice and many long nights spent waiting out the silent desert nights. He grinned at me, a flashing of strong white teeth in his dusky face, the only outward sign of approval of my work he had ever given. I handed the ground coffee to him and leaned back against Severus's leg, resting my head on his knee. His cool fingers stroked my hair absently as he scrutinized Fahad's movements.
Hermione shifted slightly on the couch, trying to find a comfortable position sandwiched between Ron and Harry. I glanced at them sleepily.
"Why don't one of you sit on the floor? 'Mione looks like she's going to wiggle right off the couch at any moment now."
Harry nodded, grinning, and slid onto the floor. Dumbledore also shifted in his chair, leaning forward to study my face.
"I know you have not had time to confer with your colleague, Professor Llewellyn, but have you made any decisions about your plan of action?"
I shook my head. "Nothing firm, Albus. Unfortunately, there's really only so much planning I can do before I'm in the group; until then, there is a lot of information that I need that I don't have. Elder brother, what news do you bring?"
Fahad finished adding the ground coffee to a pot of water over the fire. He turned his attention to us, wrapping his arms around his knees.
"Our agents have learned that this Madhi, as he likes to call himself, is very young, barely a man. Despite this–or perhaps because of it– he has attracted a large number of followers, mostly female. He seems to have a special fondness for young women of a certain type which I am sure you will be able to fit, sister."
He paused to stir the simmering coffee. "He is a prophet, with some skill at prediction. Apparently he is some type of wizard, because our reports say that he has performed miracles and had visitations in full view of non-believers. He claims to talk to Allah Himself and to be the chosen leader of all Muslims everywhere. According to the Madhi, Allah wants his people to lead a global revolution to take over every single country. He claims that dominion over the earth was promised to his people by God, and that God told him dominion would come by warfare."
I sighed, squeezing my eyes tightly. Severus touched my forehead gently before speaking.
"This troubles you, Anne. Perhaps you might explain for those of us not familiar with the situation."
"It's bad, Severus. Very bad. Ordinarily, a small extremist group like this wouldn't pose much of a threat; Islam doesn't advocate violence except in extreme situations of self-defense, and the majority of Muslims don't listen to fanatics like the Madhi. But things have been unstable in the Middle East since the wars–our wars, that is. And if this man can create visitations, it will only take a little effort to convince a lot of people that he is genuine."
Fahad poured three tiny cups of the thick coffee and passed one each to Harry and me. I sipped carefully; the liquid was so strong it numbed my tongue before releasing a wave of cardamom and cinnamon into my mouth. He nodded slowly at my words and continued.
"And he has convinced quite a few people; even non-Muslims have begun converting because of these visitations. Any outward aggression toward him would be incredibly dangerous, given the number of people that surround him at all times. So the puzzle, then, is how to eliminate the Madhi without endangering ourselves and without inciting his followers to violence."
"I just don't know, brother." I pressed my fingers to my temple. "I'm afraid anything we do will end badly."
Harry spoke from the floor. "What if you use his own tricks against him?"
Fahad glanced at him sharply. "What do you mean?"
"Could you create your own visitation, one that destroys everything he's been teaching?"
Fahad and I stared at each other in amazement. Fahad laughed aloud, a great ringing sound in the cozy room.
"That might work. That might work indeed."
The rest of the month flew by altogether too quickly. We all worked too hard, poring over obscure texts trying to find a spell, any spell that might help us. Fahad spent most of his time with Hermione and Ron, working through increasingly complex illusions, each carefully calculated and researched to recreate the miracles attested in mainstream Sunni Islam. He reasoned that, since most of the new fanatics had been more moderate before joining the movement, the Madhi's followers still retained many of their prior beliefs and thus would be most affected by familiar phenomenon.
At first, I experienced the same rush of excitement and anticipation that had always preceded a potentially difficult assignment. During the wars, I volunteered for every dangerous mission that crossed my superior's desk, diving into each one with little or no regret and perhaps an unhealthy thrill. I burrowed into obscure texts with a glee that rivaled 'Mione's, studying until all hours of the night, practicing and memorizing and always working on something or other.
I hit the wall after two weeks of constant work. My migraines, dormant for months, returned more vicious than they had been since just after my injury. I woke up with headaches on several mornings, unable to get out of bed or do anything other than lie in the bed with a pillow pressed over my eyes. Even when I could start the day, my eyesight almost invariably failed after less than an hour of reading. My nerves, usually fairly steady in the practice arena, seemed to be shattered; on several memorable occasions Harry and Ron narrowly escaped a spell thrown badly awry by a sudden fit of shaking.
All of that was familiar from the first weeks after the war; more disturbing were the sudden attacks of anxiety and doubt. I would be strolling through a corridor or eating or engaging in some other innocuous activity, and would panic; the attacks were crippling in their severity, leaving me weak and faint from hyperventilation. I began second-guessing every action, every thought, unable to make even the simplest decisions. Increasingly often, I caught myself sitting and staring at myself in a mirror without realizing that hours had passed.
Most frustrating to the people around me was the process of pulling away from everyone, of distancing myself from anyone and anything that might suffer if I didn't come home. I could tell people, all I wanted, that my job was dangerous and required me to not care about anything, but I doubt they fully understood this until they found themselves shut out. I particularly found myself pulling away from Severus; I know he noticed and I know he tried not to let it hurt him, but it steadily became obvious to me that he wouldn't tolerate my indifference for long.
"Anne?" I blinked, shaking myself out of reverie. I met my own eyes in the dressing-table mirror; I was shocked by the haunted expression on my face, the deep shadows under the eyes, the visibly thinning features. Severus stood behind me, his own face creased with worry.
"I'm sorry, Severus. What were you saying?" I turned away from the mirror to face him. He crossed his arms across his chest, gathering his sooty robes around him.
"I asked if you were hungry. You missed dinner. Again."
I shook my head, a sharp, convulsive movement that I couldn't seem to control. "No, thank you. I'm not hungry—I'm not feeling very well, actually. I don't think I could eat..."
I listened to my own voice trail away. Severus shook me slightly, gripping my shoulder with surprising strength.
"It isn't too late to decline, Anne. You can still step away from this assignment—no one will blame you."
I fought against a sudden wave of grief and despair that rose in my chest like a great bitter tide. I shook my head again.
"I can't, Severus. I'm in too far now to back out, even if I wanted to." I clasped my shaking hands together, pressing as hard as I could to hide the trembling. Severus grasped my hands in his own, gazing into my eyes.
"Anne, you're driving yourself too hard. Why? Can't you see that you're hurting yourself?"
I could hear the strain in his voice; I closed my eyes against the onslaught of his concern. Twisting out of his grasp as gently as I could, I dropped back onto the bench with my back to him.
"Severus, I appreciate your concern, truly I do, but you can't keep coddling me like this. I will be fine—I always am. This is normal. You just don't know it." I tried, but couldn't meet his eyes in the mirror.
I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck, drilling into me. I fiddled about with objects on the tabletop, moving bottles and boxes from side to side. He was a silent presence behind me, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders icy and still. He stood there for a long time, waiting for me to say something.
I didn't intend to speak first, but something about his waiting pushed me into it. I stared into his eyes in the mirror, saw all the frustration and anger and fear that he was trying so hard to hide, and something inside me snapped.
"There's nothing you can do, Severus. I don't need you in this. What's more, I don't want you involved."
I winced internally at the icy edge in my own voice. Severus blinked, also surprised by my tone. He started to speak and I cut him off, choosing words I knew would hurt him, would push him a safe distance from me.
"I mean it. You're an academic now. Whatever work you did in the last wars was a long time ago, too long to be any good. You'd be worse than useless to us—you'd be a hindrance and a distraction, and I'll be damned if I see good operatives get killed because you don't know when stay out of the way."
I dropped my eyes back to the tabletop, hating myself for what I was about to say. "This job is my life, Severus. I don't love anything else more. Not even you."
He inhaled sharply. I resolutely avoided looking into the mirror. His voice, when he spoke, was the bitter, flat drawl he had often turned on Harry during our school years. "I see that I have overstepped my bounds. Do forgive me for troubling you, Professor. I would not wish to impose my incompetence on you."
He turned on one heel and stalked out of the room. I remained in front of the mirror, watching tears fall onto the vanity surface and splatter the lap of my robes.
Severus and I avoided each other for the last week I was at Hogwarts. We each kept to our own rooms, deliberately sat in isolated areas of the library, and I stopped visiting the laboratory when I knew he'd be working late. We were required to sit together at meals, but we only spoke when it was absolutely necessary in the course of the meal. He also stopped speaking to the others in our group; it was as if any contact with them was painful to him, as it might well have been. He became again the dark, sullen figure I remembered, unpleasant to his colleagues and an unholy terror to his students. I noticed, though, that his eyes often followed me as I crossed a room or sat at the table.
I didn't tell anyone, not even Hermione. I seemed to be back at school again, always hiding something, keeping secrets. I tried to tell myself that what I was doing was best for everyone involved, but I still spent hours of every night missing Severus so badly I could hardly breathe. During the day, I tried to pretend I was fine and that I didn't want to cry
The others noticed, of course, but for the most part chose not to comment directly to me. Hermione, however, wouldn't let the issue go. She cornered me one evening after dinner, demanding to talk.
"Really, Hermione, it's not a good time. I have so much to do—we're leaving in two days, you know, and nothing's finished and—"
She gripped my elbow surprisingly hard. "All that can wait. This is important, Anne."
She steered me out of the dining hall over my protestations, and kept a tight hold on my arm until we reached the rooms she and Ron shared. Ron was in a rocking chair, feeding Sara, when we entered; he glanced at his wife's determined face and my decidedly irritated expression, gathered up the baby, and left the room.
Hermione pointed at the now-empty chair. "Sit."
I hesitated, feeling my irritation increase dangerously quickly. I opened my mouth to refuse, but my jaw snapped shut when she placed on hand very carefully in the center of my chest and pushed me gently into the chair. She crossed her arms, glaring down at me in the same way she looked at her daughter when she was caught doing something naughty. I was ashamed of myself and wasn't sure I appreciated it.
After a few moments of her staring me down, I sighed resignedly. "Fine, Hermione. What it is?"
"I don't know," she shook her head at me, annoyed. "You tell me what it is."
I glanced away guiltily. "I don't know what you're talking about."
She tsked at me in exasperation. "Oh, come off it, Anne. Quit pretending nothing's wrong. I know you better than that, and you know it. What's going on with you these days? You don't look good, you don't sound good, and--if you'll forgive me saying it—you're acting horribly."
"I'm working, Hermione. I have important things to think about," I snapped at her, letting my annoyance seep out. She shook her head again, her expression steady and piercing.
"That's not it, though, is it? Not really. You're hiding behind your work, but whatever's going on has precious little to do with that. Now, you can either tell me, or I can go have a chat with Albus. Or maybe with your friend, if Albus can't get through to you."
"How dare you threaten me?" I surged up out of the chair to my full height, looming over her. "I'm not your child, Hermione. I won't be bullied or pushed around, by you or by anyone else. What I do isn't anyone's concern unless I want it to be."
"Is that why you've stopped talking to Severus?" she challenged. "Do you think he's pushing you around or trying to interfere with your work?"
"No." I turned away from her, drawing my robes tighter about me. She grasped my shoulder and hauled me around to face her again.
"Then why?" Her face was worried, despite the sharp tone of her voice. "Look, Anne, all I know is you both seemed to be really happy, happier than I'd seen in a long time. And now you're avoiding each other like you hate each other."
"I don't hate Severus." My voice caught on his name. I cursed inwardly as I felt the tears collect in my eyes again. "Don't you understand? I don't hate him."
Hermione's face softened when the first tear streaked down my cheek. "Why are you avoiding each other, then? I don't understand. And neither of you will talk about it—Anne, I just want to help."
It was my turn to shake my head. "You can't help, 'Mione. There's nothing anyone can do. I have to keep him from getting hurt, even if it means hurting him a little now. He'll be glad of it later." I picked at one fingernail nervously, a habit I thought I'd outgrown. Hermione took my hand in her own and pulled me over to the sofa. I couldn't seem to make the tears stop; I thought I'd reconciled myself to losing Severus, but now I realized it was the last thing I wanted.
She sat quietly, letting me talk. "I know, it sounds stupid. I don't want to let him go, 'Mione, but I have to. This assignment…I don't know if the Ministry has any idea how dangerous this is going to be, not really."
"How bad is it?"
I sighed. "If I were given to drama, I'd say the situation is dire. That's a little overblown, but not by much. I won't lie to you—you'd just figure it out anyway—it's going to be awful. There's a better than usual chance that we're going to lose our own people."
"Is that why you're trying to distance yourself from Severus? Because something bad is going to happen?"
"Yes. In an assignment like this, the person in the most danger is the one who has to infiltrate the organization. You're cut off from the other agents—you have to be to keep the group from finding out—and there's almost no way to tell if a situation is going to explode until it's about to happen." I went back to picking at my nails.
"And you're the infiltrator. So you're trying to push Severus away because you think something will happen to you…"
"Exactly. I've seen them, 'Mione. I've had to go to families and tell that that their son or daughter or husband is dead, or missing, or that we don't know what happened to them. That's what you tell the family if something horrible has happened, something you wouldn't want the survivors thinking about. It's hard enough to tell a mother that her child is dead without leaving them with details of a curse." I struggled to keep my voice controlled, to curb the rising hysteria I could hear building.
"I can't put him through something like that. I just can't. And I can't be worried about that when I'm in. Distractions are hazardous, Hermione."
She stood up abruptly, striding across the room to the fireplace. She took several deep breaths before speaking again.
"Anne, are you cutting Severus loose because you don't want him to get hurt, or are you leaving him before he can hurt you—like Harry did?"
Fahad and I left Hogwarts on a grey, rainy May afternoon. Dumbledore saw us off, reminding us that any number of professors were willing and able to help if we required any assistance at all. He had thoughtfully created an unobtrusive summoning device, a plain silver veil pin that would, when broken, instantly send a distress message to Hogwarts.
No one else attended our departure. Hermione and I had barely spoken since our conversation in her rooms. I said my goodbyes to Ron and Harry the evening before, and asked them not to come see us off. I knew leaving again would be harder than it had ever been before; a strange sort of creeping dread had come over me as I had prepared for the assignment, a deep and abiding conviction that I would die in Egypt, and I wanted what I believed would be my last sight of my dearest friends to be cheerful.
Fahad met me on the Quidditch pitch just after sunrise; we would Apparate to his tribe's newest location, stay for briefing and a reacclimation for me then travel by horseback to Cairo. If all went well, we should arrive in the city by the end of June. I was hoping that the desperate plan we had hatched would be completed within the next month; again, if all went well, I would be back at Hogwarts before classes started in the fall. As I shouldered the small bag I was taking with me, I silently prayed that our luck would hold that far, that I could finish this thing and come home.
"Are you ready, sister?" Fahad's soft voice broke into my musings. He was clad in the traditional robes of his tribe, stark black offset with indigo blue and touches of silver edging. I fingered my own robes, a set that I had packed away two years before. The robes, like Fahad's, were deep black, the soft fabric brushing the tops of my shoes and the backs of my hands. I nervously adjusted the dark blue veils that swathed my head, checked that no hair was creeping out from under the tight wraps. I had cast an appearance-altering Charm on myself earlier that morning; my neck was tickled slightly by the straying end of the knot of dark brown hair.
I swallowed, steeling myself for the Apparating, and jerked my head once toward Fahad.
"Let's go."
Just before we disappeared, a dark shape moved in the Slytherin box. Severus stood, rigid and somber, watching us leave.