Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nope, not me.
A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers… and review some more! And don't worry… the mystery of Regina will make a return to the story!
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Aemilia slammed another large codex down on the table, making it shake violently, upsetting ink all over Severus's painstakingly copied notes for his incoming Seventh Years.
Another person, Severus thought, would say 'would you mind?' in an exceedingly condescending tone to that rudeness.
"Fudge," he said shortly, "stop that, or you will find Skrzynecki's Serum in your pumpkin juice tonight."
Aemilia looked at him. "Laxatives, Snape? Low, even for you."
"If you have quite finished insulting my nobility," he snarled, "what exactly are you looking up in that book? I doubt you're going to find information pertinent to the lawsuit in Magical Musical Melodies."
"And I think that I am the lawyer here, not you," she snapped, "so you can stop concerning yourself in my business!"
"Well, please refrain from spilling ink all over my notes, then!" Severus took out his wand. "Scourgify!" The ink blot disappeared but so too did all of his painstakingly copied recipe, and he cursed under his breath.
"Charms letting you down, eh Snape?" Aemilia commented snidely.
As he gathered up his sheafs of parchment and codices to move to a spot far, far away from that damnably irritating Aemilia Fudge, Severus considered that perhaps instead of inflicting Skrzynecki's Serum on her, he should give her Keller's Concoction. How he would love to see her struggling about unable to speak, even for a short while.
*
"Any progress, Miss Fudge?" Kingsley Shacklebolt asked Aemilia at dinner that night. Dumbledore had invited the better part of the Order of the Phoenix - except Mundungus Fletcher and Nymphadora Tonks, who were watching over Harry - to dinner at Hogwarts that night, and Severus wished he hadn't. Who was the fool, he thought vehemently, that thought Fred and George Weasley would be a valuable addition to the Order?
"The case is coming together quite well," Aemilia replied, swallowing a mouthful of pumpkin juice - which Severus had not, in the end, added either Skrzynecki's Serum or Keller's Concoction to. "We definitely have a leg to stand on - more than one, I'd say. Where's Remus?" she asked suddenly, looking round for him.
"St. Mungo's," Arthur Weasley replied. "There's a werewolf fellow there at the moment - or rather, one that's just been bitten - and ever since his success with that bloke in December when he was visiting me -" he beamed as if the whole enterprise was due to him, "- they've taken him on at a small salary as a part-time counsellor."
"Considering that nasty Anti-Werewolf legislation that was put through not long ago," Kingsley said thoughtfully, "I suppose that would be good employment for him."
"Bloody Umbridge," George Weasley said vehemently.
There was a murmur of similar sentiment round the table.
"There is talk at the office that she will be appointed Counsel for the Dursley family, you know," Aemilia said thoughtfully.
"WHAT?" Fred and George Weasley yelled in unanimity.
"Highly interesting," Dumbledore mused.
"I wasn't aware she passed the Bar examination," McGonagall said.
"Oh, she has," Aemilia said. "She was in her last year when I was in my first - but I think she all but abandoned being a lawyer when she was employed personally by my father a few years ago. She's out of practice, but she used to fight fiercely, I've heard."
Probably dirtily too, Severus thought sardonically.
"Fah," Moody snorted. "Umbridge is a bloody weasel, that's what - no offence nor pun intended on your name, Weasley," he added to Arthur.
"She certainly isn't the most… savoury of characters," Professor Flitwick offered.
Moody snorted again. "She's savoury and I've won Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award. I'd have someone keep an eye on her, Albus," he said to Dumbledore. "After what she did last year, what with sending those Dementors after Potter like that, I wouldn't be surprised if she's gone over."
He would not have her if she did, Severus thought. The Dark Lord is more… discerning than that. Inwardly, he winced at the thought of exactly how discerning Voldemort could be, but refused to let it show on the outside. Merlin only knew he could not afford to show weakness, no matter where he was.
"Rest assured it has been taken care of, Alastor," Dumbledore said placidly.
Moody grunted. "I trust ye, Dumbledore, but you better make sure it's taken care of. Constant vigilance!" he barked suddenly, making Aemilia and Flitwick both jump.
"Always so, Alastor," Dumbledore told him calmly.
*
"Hello, mother."
Arethusa Lupin glared at her son as he pulled up a chair and sat by her bedside, but she could not speak. Even a Silencio charm would not shut her up, Remus thought idly. It had to be the old leather between the teeth, didn't it, Mother?
"It's been three months since I bothered coming to see you last, Mother, did you realise? Though I doubt you cared much."
Arethusa shook her head violently. No Remus, I did not care, he could almost hear her say.
"A lot of things have changed in those three months, you know, Mother," Remus said conversationally, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands over his stomach. "I have a job - aren't you proud of me? I work downstairs with the werewolf victims. I even have a little name badge that says Remus Lupin, Counsellor. Of course, the pay isn't much - it isn't even half of what I was getting paid that year I taught at Hogwarts - but it suffices. It pays the bills."
Arethusa glared at him. He had expected nothing less. Or more, really.
"And you know what? For the first time in my life, Mother, I finally saw the infamous veil."
He could practically see her ears twitch with excitement, and it disgusted him.
"That's right, Mother, I went to the Department of Mysteries, haring after Harry Potter. You remember Harry, I assume. James's son. I've told you a lot about him over the years."
I may have told you a lot about Harry, he thought, but I've told him nothing about you. Another skeleton in my closet, Mother, that I must hide from him. I've let him think it was me being a werewolf that led Sirius to think I was the spy just before Lily and James died. But it was you, Mother, it was you. Who could seriously trust someone with such a criminal for a mother?
"And Sirius, my best friend left in this world, fell through. Duelling with Bellatrix Lestrange. He wasn't bad, Mother, he wasn't bad at all, but the veil still ate him. I - I tried to follow him, but - but I couldn't. I was too late. He was gone, and I had to stop Harry following him. And all that was left, Mother? All that was left was the whispers. And - and he was gone."
And, finally, burying his head on his knees, under his mother's frigid gaze, Remus wept.
*
"- and so, it exploded!" Charlie Weasley finished, leaving most of the table, including Dumbledore, snorting into their soup.
Severus sighed. I wish I could find simple stories like that funny, he thought, but I'm far too jaded. Idly, he played with his spoon, and it bent in his fingers, twisting into a sort of circle.
"Hello, everyone," came Remus's voice as he walked in the door. He sounded quite cheerful, but Severus's sharp eyes picked out shining tracks on his cheeks - he had been crying.
For Black, I assume, Severus thought dryly, but little of his old bitterness remained. He really had, he realised, meant it when he said he was sorry that Sirius Black was dead.
Dead? Or gone? Severus thought suddenly.
He'd never really thought much about how exactly the veil in the Department of Mysteries worked, though, after his father's death, it had haunted his nightmares often enough. It was clearly some kind of portal, but the question was, where to?
Even Dumbledore has no idea what comes after death, he thought. How many times have I heard him say that death is only the next big adventure?
He cast about for what he remembered about the construction of portals. A place to a place, surely, he thought. Not a place to a state like death. And - the whispers!
Could it be - that the people behind the veil…
…were alive?
*
Remus took the last remaining seat at the table, quite close to where Severus was sitting, but, Severus noted, quite a long way from Aemilia. He wondered if he had Fate or Albus Dumbledore to thank for that one.
"All well at St. Mungo's, Remus?" Flitwick asked.
Remus smiled tiredly. "Quite well, thankyou, Filius. It is good to have paid work again."
Severus chose that moment to sip from his goblet. He knew it was his fault that Remus had resigned from the Defence Against The Dark Arts position - if he hadn't 'accidentally' let slip that Remus was a werewolf, it was likely he would have stayed on.
He didn't pretend to feel regret, but he supposed, for the first time, that it must be difficult to be in Remus's position - shunned wherever he went, discriminated against by narrow-minded people like Umbridge. A fault to exploit or choose not to.
He had exploited it. Viciously.
Sirius Black tried to exploit Lupin's lycanthropy as well, a little voice hissed in his head.
Severus shook it away. I am not in a mood to think on the so-called heroism of James Potter tonight, he told it vehemently. Instead, he forced himself to concentrate on the conversation around him as a kind of distraction, albeit white noise.
"- bloody lawsuits," Moody was growling. "Why dinna ye just threaten the Muggle, Miss Fudge?"
"Because that would improve our case so much," Aemilia said dryly. "You know the law, Mr. Moody. It's illegal to coerce Muggles into lawsuits."
Moody grunted. "Muggle law ain't my strong point, Miss."
"Some would say that law itself isn't your strong point, Mad-Eye," Professor McGonagall commented, eliciting laughs all round, including from Moody.
"My way might not be legal sometimes, but it works, and that's what matters, Minerva," Moody said.
"Just like the Arachniae and their aphrodisiacs, eh?" Kingsley Shacklebolt said sardonically. "Not legal, but it works."
Out of the corner of his eye, Severus saw Remus suddenly go very still.
"Can someone please inform me," Fred Weasley said, "who in hell the Arachniae are?"
"Priestesses of Arachne," Kingsley replied. "One of the last real clergies left in the Wizarding World, but very reclusive. Powerfully magic, though, but their methods are highly illegal."
Remus's hands were starting to shake, Severus noted.
"Why?"
"Narcotic abuse," Kingsley replied. "Their potions make you not only -" Kingsley tapped two fingers to the side of his nose, and Fred guffawed, "but high. Ministry hates them. There's been more of them arrested and sent to Azkaban over the years than Death Eaters."
Abruptly, Remus let out an animalistic howl that sent shivers down Severus's spine - and it took a lot to send shivers down Severus's spine. Primal, primitive, it betrayed the wolf that lurked under his skin, waiting to come out at the moon's provocation. Without a further word, Remus pushed his chair back from the table violently and almost ran out of the room. His hands were bleeding where his nails - long and sharp as every werewolf - had dug into his hands.
"What did I say?" Kingsley said, looking around.
Dumbledore sighed. "Perhaps, Mr. Shacklebolt, Mr. Weasley -" he looked at Kingsley and Fred in turn, "it would be best not to bring up the Arachniae in front of Remus. Ever."
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Next chapter… we finally see Sirius and the mysterious Regina again!
