Disclaimer - All JKR's, nothing mine! Except for a few characters I added.
Disclaimer 2 - Draco drawing dragons belongs to PikaCheeka. Sorry I forgot to mention that in the first chapter of MNS. I sort of adopted the idea subconsciously.
Disclaimer 3 - Severus' raven belongs to J. L. Matthews. I just borrowed him because he's such a perfect pet for Sevi and promise to return him unharmed.
The catar however are all mine and I love them so please don't use without asking me first.
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A/N - I'm afraid the next chapter might take two weeks to write. It'll be a busy week. Sorry in advance.
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Chapter 9: Black Ice
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The Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were in the Transfigurations classroom when Severus and Draco arrived right after Lucius had dismissed them from Potions.
They had to wait until the last students had left before they could approach McGonagall.
The teacher looked up in surprise.
"Potions ended early." Severus explained with a shrug. "Professor Malfoy found his hand in a mousetrap and had to go to the hospital wing to have it fixed. He didn't trust us not to blow up the classroom while he was gone."
"A mousetrap?" McGonagall repeated.
"Not one of ours." Draco assured her.
"It might have been Potter's or maybe Neville's, though I'm not sure he still has any left." Severus elaborated. "We were helping Professor Pince with a cockroach problem, so we were late for Potions and had no time to set up any traps. "
McGonagall looked doubtful, but she didn't like Lucius, so Severus doubted she'd take any action without good proof.
"You're here about the incident." the teacher stated more than asked instead.
"Yes, you said that Sandra Invers left class." Severus explained. "But what about Keith Gorl?"
"Keith?" Minerva asked surprised. "What about Keith?"
"He's on Filius' list of suspects." Severus stated calmly. "Was he in class?"
Minerva frowned. So Flitwick was Filius and she was Professor McGonagall? "Of course he was. I'd have reported it to Albus right away, if he'd left at any time."
"I'm only trying to make sure, Professor." Severus returned stiffly. "He had Potions last time."
"You're the one that got us stuck with Lucius in the first place." Minerva reminded him.
"Which doesn't mean I trust him to tell the truth about his students." Severus stated.
"He's my father." Draco reminded them both. "And I don't trust his word either."
They went to Flitwick's office next, but it was closed and the charms teacher didn't show up at dinner either. After one last attempt an hour after the meal they decided to postpone their talk with Flitwick to the next day and returned to their common room to keep an eye on their top suspects.
Severus slipped upstairs for a moment first, though. Theodore had found and disarmed his last mousetrap without getting harmed. That couldn't be tolerated.
The first and second years were still nervous, Severus soon noticed. They'd returned to the common room right after dinner and seemed afraid to leave again. He actually overheard a first year begging some others to accompany her to the library.
"Numbers can't protect us from an explosion." one of the boys answered her. "We're safest if we remain here where Potter can't get in. The dark lord has no reason to attack our common room so it would have to be a really big explosion to hurt us here."
Severus shook his head at them, but didn't attempt to calm their fears. As long as they were afraid of him they weren't likely to want to join Voldemort and being afraid of him was, in his opinion, a sign of a healthy survival instinct.
Most of the older students were engaged in discussions of Harry Potter's survival chances and theories about the attacker.
"I'm telling you he's as good s dead." Hieronymus Mattels declared. Since Professor Lupin wasn't here today, he and his brother hadn't retreated to the library for once. "He got lucky twice now, but how long can his luck hold? The Lord's agent could be any one of us. The Old Bumbler has no way to tell. The only way he could protect Potter would be by sending him away from Hogwarts, but then he couldn't continue his magical education and it would only be a matter of time until the Lord finds him."
"And that'd be the end of Potter for sure." Maximius grinned.
"Do you two really think that's funny?" Joanna Jenkins, a seventh year, asked sounding slightly annoyed. "Potter is just a sixteen year old boy who happens to have survived a deadly curse as a baby by sheer luck. An orphan who had to grow up with a bunch of Muggles instead of his real family. What's he ever really done to deserve the dark lord's wrath? He didn't banish him from this world on purpose, if it was his doing at all, which, considering his age at the time, is highly unlikely."
"He's a shameless show off." Lionel Bardon argued.
"Like he's the only one in this school." Blaise snorted glaring daggers at Draco.
"Boasting isn't exactly a crime, though. Nor an attack on the dark lord." Alice reminded him.
"And you can't exactly blame a Muggle raised orphan for wanting attention." Severus added as he sat down next to Draco again. "Potter is a pureblood who's had to live the life of a mudblood. Of course he's looking for some sort of compensation."
"Through attacking the dark lord?" Stephan challenged. "He has no right."
"Attacking the dark lord?" Estella repeated. "Excuse me, but it looks to me like the dark lord attacked him first. Potter's never gone out to look for him. He just had the gall to not lay down and die when the dark lord wanted him to."
"He did more than that." Theodore argued. "He actively fought back."
"Well excuse him for wanting to live." Joanna said sarcastically.
Severus watched the discussion of Potter's crimes closely noting who took what side of it. Lionel was apparently jealous of Potter, but he was already cleared. Pansy and Millicent took surprisingly little interest in the topic, Theodore seemed mostly interested in stating facts while Stephan and the Mattels brothers got very angry about the lack of support for their side. They apparently hadn't expected Blaise to retreat so easily, but when Blaise had realised that he wasn't impressing Pansy, he'd shut up very fast.
Several students from the lower years kept looking to Draco expectantly, probably expecting guidance, or maybe just a show from Potter's biggest rival, but Draco didn't oblige.
"It was weird to see him fall." Draco finally commented out of the blue. "I always thought I wanted him dead, but when he was actually rushing towards the ground like that, I was almost scared for him."
The discussion stopped as everybody turned to stare at Draco. Such admissions to 'weakness' were rare in the Slytherin common room and totally unexpected from a known death eater supporter like Draco.
"It's quite a different thing to think or even say that you want somebody dead in a moment of anger and to actually mean it." Severus supplied.
"Well, I wouldn't want my worst enemy to be killed by somebody else either, I think." Iago Orson suggested. "I'd want to do it myself."
"I don't." Draco said softly. "I've decided I don't want to kill anyone at all."
Some people laughed.
"That's rich." Stephan declared. "Next he'll decide he wants to become a healer."
Draco considered that. "Nah, too much work and some patients die anyway. I'll probably go into politics, like father."
"That's a dirty game, you know." Severus reminded him.
"Or maybe I'll try out for one of the professional Quidditch teams after school." Draco continued. "I could imagine being a teacher, too, but I guess father wouldn't approve."
"Why not?" Estella asked. "He's teaching himself right now."
"Not voluntarily." Severus grinned. "And he hates it."
"He's no good at it either." Susan complained not taking her eyes off Severus.
"Yeah, I almost burned my face when my cauldron exploded last week." Paula from fifth year commented. "And all he did was look up from his paper and say 'Oh.' A real Potions teacher would have warned me I was stirring the wrong way before my potion exploded."
"How do you know you were stirring wrong, if all he said was 'Oh.'?" a first year named Judith piped up.
"Because I read up on it afterwards, stupid." Paula snapped. "You always have to find out what you did wrong after a Potions accident. Potions mistakes are dangerous."
Judith nodded eagerly.
'Good.' Severus thought. At least one of this year's first years wouldn't forget that basic lesson.
"I bet your Ginny would like to hear that you're considering becoming a teacher." Theodore told Draco.
"She would?" Draco said surprised. The thought had only just occurred to him, so he'd never mentioned it to Ginny.
"Yes, of course." Theodore nodded. "She's from a poor family, so she'll want to marry a wizard who has an honest job with a steady income that will support her and her children."
"I'll inherit the entire Malfoy fortune." Draco argued. "And what's wrong with being a politician or Quidditch player?"
"Poor people are used to the idea that money comes from working." Theodore explained. "They won't trust a bank account as much as a job. Politics, like Severus said are a dirty affair and Quidditch holds too many risks. You can only play as long as you're young and don't get injured. Ginny would call that an insecure job."
"I hope you'll be a better teacher than your father, though." Paula declared.
"I'm not stupid enough to read the paper during a Potions class." Draco sneered at her.
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It was already late when they went to bed that evening. With no head of house to send them to bed the Slytherins had completely ignored curfew and talked on until they were almost falling asleep in the common room. One first year boy actually lay curled up on a couch fast asleep when the sixth and seventh years finally split up to head for their beds.
Theodore yawned as he quickly checked under his blanket for Severus' mousetraps. Nothing. Maybe the little prankster had finally given up.
Theodore slipped into bed, blew out his candle and snuggled into his pillow. He was dead tired, he decided as he pulled the covers up hugged one corner of the blanket close, like he always did, and slipped his other hand under the pillow as every night.
SNAP! "AHHHHHH!!!!"
Theodore sat up in pain and stared at the mousetrap on his fingers. That's how Professor Malfoy must have felt.
At least he wouldn't have to limp up to he hospital wing this time. An injured hand was a lot more comfortable than an injured foot, right?
Wrong. It turned out to be very difficult to open a mousetrap one-handedly. Twice the trap snapped shut again, before he could pull out his throbbing fingers. Each time it hurt even more.
"I hate you, Severus." Theodore declared as he slung a handkerchief around his hand and took off for the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey wouldn't be happy to see him at this time of night.
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They used their lunch break to visit Professor Flitwick with their list of suspect second and third years.
Filius summoned a cup of tea for each of them and even offered them some biscuits, but they declined those reminding him that they'd just eaten lunch.
"Luisa Hunter-Moor couldn't have done it." the tiny teacher declared the moment he glanced at their list. "She's the weakest student in her year. I suspect it's her wand that causes the problem, but she insists that it's a family tradition to use only dragon heartstring and ebony wands. She refuses to try anything else."
"Well, there goes our last Slytherin second year suspect." Draco commented with a satisfied smile.
"We've still got two Gryffindor suspects in that year, though." Severus reminded him. "How about them, Filius?"
"Quintus Palmer is a very advanced student." Flitwick reported. "I'm convinced that he can perform a severing charm easily. As for Vestalia Flemming, I'm not sure. She's talented, though not as much as Quintus. They've got a bit of a rivalry about their grades, I think. He's top in my class, but she outdoes him in Transfigurations, I believe. I have seen Vestalia try third year level charms occasionally, but never a severing charm as far as I remember. Maybe she can do it, maybe not."
"Then Quintus might have cast the laughing charm on Vestalia on purpose last week?" Severus asked.
"Most likely." Flitwick agreed. "He was probably bored and decided to lighten up the mood with a little prank. Or maybe those two were just fooling around and he didn't really mean to hit her."
Severus nodded. "What about the third years then?"
Flitwick read on. "Caius Rude is a sloppy student, but has mastered the charm quite easily. He's talented, but unwilling to work for his grade. Aemilia Andres already knew the charm when we started working on it. Apparently her mother taught it to her for sewing. Gaia Ushton managed on her second try. Curtis Marston took longer than that, but got quite good at it by the end of the second lesson. Maximius Mattels does it with ease. He's the best of the year, a particularly good year, at least in Charms. Bran Lewis has problems with the wand movement. No finesse, that one. Maximius has been trying to help him, but with little success. Bran's clever enough, but has no patience for delicate work."
"You're sure Bran isn't faking it?" Severus asked.
"If so he has been faking since his first year." Filius answered with a shrug. "I doubt Voldemort would have chosen him that far back, so what reasons would he have had?"
"I see." Severus nodded his agreement. If Voldemort had been planning this for so long, he'd have used Bran long before now. The traitor was either newly acquired, or Voldemort had only just thought of using him against Potter. "What of the last two?"
"Marsha Alton is good at the charm." Flitwick reported. "Better than I expected of her, but then she might have had some sewing lessons as well. Marsha's performances in my class always vary in quality. Some charms she performs with ease, while there are others she barely manages at all. Mathilda Harris cannot perform the charm at all, nor does she apparently want to. From what I hear of Minerva she doesn't care about her Transfigurations grade either, though. I don't know what's wrong with the girl. It's as if she wants to fail on purpose completely unlike any other Slytherin I've ever met."
"I have encountered such behaviour in other students before." Severus remarked.
"Yes, but those were Gryffindors, weren't they?" Flitwick reminded him. "Slytherins usually are ambitious about their grades and even the lazy ones do want to pass their NEWTs. In Hufflepuff there are rarely lazy ones in the fist place, but occasionally I get untalented Hufflepuffs who just can't manage any better. Still they always make a visible effort and are devastated every time I have to give them a failing grade. Ravenclaws rarely fail Charms. There are less talented ones and lazy ones of course, but they all like Charms. It might have something to do with not wanting to disappoint their head of house of course." he twinkled happily in an almost Dumbledore like fashion. "You might get less idealism from them."
Severus nodded. "Less idealism, yes, but rarely an actual refusal. Some could do better, if they showed more interest, but when in danger of failing they always work to save themselves."
"Only Gryffindor sometimes gets little rebels that want to fail just to annoy us or their parents."
"There was that young muggle born Hufflepuff who didn't want to become a witch once." Severus pointed out. "And the lovesick Ravenclaw who insisted on failing so he could be in the same year as his girl."
"The Harris family however has a five hundred year old tradition of proud pureblooded wizards and witches, so Mathilda has no reason to want to be a Muggle." Flitwick pointed out.
"Mathilda despises Muggles." Draco added. "She'd never want to have anything in common with them."
"And she's been behaving like that from the start." Flitwick nodded. "She can't possibly have had a younger boyfriend when she was eleven."
Severus nodded as well. "I'll look into this sometime, Filius, but right now I'm more concerned with finding our murderous traitor. If Mathilda fails this year, it won't kill her and maybe even would be a lesson for her. If we don't catch the traitor, though, he'll sooner or later get lucky and kill Potter. There'll be time to solve Mathilda's problem once the boy is safe."
Still Draco kept wondering about the girl for the rest of the day. He even suggested to Severus that they should follow her for a bit in the hopes of finding some clues, but Severus just shook his head at him.
"Mathilda is cleared, Draco." he reminded him. "And we still have 17 suspects that need watching. If you're so eager to follow somebody, follow Stephan."
"Not Maximius?" Draco teased.
"No, I'll do that myself." Severus answered matter-of-factly.
Other than give both of them a tour of the castle the observations didn't result in much though. Both suspects did their best to avoid spending time in the common room with Remus, but were otherwise rather boring.
Maximius liked to go to the library and sometimes sneak up the astronomy tower and occasionally just walked around aimlessly with his brother or one of his friends.
Stephan hung around the Quidditch pitch most of the time. He spent a lot of time in the broom shed polishing his broom or just admiring all the brooms. Draco sometimes even followed him inside and pretended to be equally dedicated to the care for his own Nimbus. Stephan even talked to him about Quidditch strategy a few times. After all they were on the same team.
On other occasions however Stephan shot him angry glances apparently wishing to be alone. Draco then pretended not to take any notice of the seventh year's presence, or the students that came in to talk to him.
Stephan was apparently selling something to them, but Draco could never see what it was. When he mentioned it to Severus his friend immediately suggested to switch suspects, but had to admit that he couldn't follow Stephan to the pitch as inconspicuously as Draco, much less into the broom shed.
Severus didn't own a broom and everybody knew that he didn't like to fly.
Stephan also frequently visited a couple of abandoned classrooms in different parts of he school. He seemed to be meeting other students there as well, but Draco couldn't follow him inside to see what they did. He did make a list of all students Stephan met, though. Severus asked him for it, no matter whether those students were suspects or not, cleared or even Muggle born.
What annoyed Draco the most however was that Stephan visited his father's office almost every second day. It was hard not to get noticed by his own father, and even harder to avoid Ron Weasley. It seemed the Gryffindor was always just arriving for his detention or leaving after it.
Whenever Draco managed to get a glimpse of Ron actually serving detention, it was a disappointment. Somehow the Gryffindor had managed to convince the house elf, that was supposed to watch the Potions teacher's activities, to do all the work for him and was usually just sitting around, playing with a brush and ordering the elf about with a smug look on his face.
How Draco hated him for that! But he was Ginny's brother, so he did his best to ignore all the jibes.
Ginny herself was much happier now that Percy was back home unharmed and they spent most of their weekend together flying and sitting by the side of the lake while Severus was trailing Maximius through the school.
Draco did feel a tiny touch of guilt having fun while Severus was investigating, but he told himself that it would be suspicious, if he didn't spend lots of time with his girlfriend as he normally did.
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Sunday afternoon while Draco and Ginny were out flying enjoying what might be the year's last truly warm weekend Severus went to visit the school's caretaker Argus Filch.
Lucius Malfoy was supposed to provide them with clues, but so far they hadn't given him much attention. It was time to change that.
Mrs Norris turned up her nose and walked out tail raised high at the sight of Severus standing in her office's door with Greenie in his arms, but Filch invited them in, though grumpily and even poured Severus a cup of tea which Greenie inspected closely, but kept his nose just short of touching. He was by now experienced enough with human meals, to know that teacups tended to be hot and burn tender little hedgehog noses. Sniffing through a burned nose was a very unpleasant experience and not sniffing was simply against Greenie's nature, which meant he had to be cautious around teacups. Saucers of course were a totally different matter.
Corvus fluttered over to the table as well and greeted Severus by declaring: "Stupid Cockroach!" standing next to the teapot with his chest puffed out.
"Language, Corvus!" Severus scolded grinning.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid." Corvus insisted unabashed.
"Where did you learn such language anyway?" Severus continued mock sternly.
"Malfoy." Filch answered for the bird. "He doesn't like ravens so he keeps insulting him and doesn't even realise when he insults him back."
"Stupid Cockroach!" Corvus commented happily.
"He doesn't like ravens?" Severus asked scratching Corvus' head and regarding the bird's gleaming black feathers. "What's not to like?"
"They're too black, if I understood him correctly." Filch shrugged taking a sip of his own tea.
"Too black? For a death eater?" Severus almost laughed. "Lucius has a problem."
Filch shrugged indicating that he didn't care about Lucius or his problems as long as he cleaned up his own mess.
"I had to replace two of your worktables." the caretaker reported a little later. "He managed to burn one beyond repair and the other one melted into a puddle. Trelawney may know how he managed to do that to a wooden table, but, to be honest, I don't really care. Tilly managed to reparo the chairs he flattened, but one of them's still grinning. It doesn't seem to be able to produce any sound anymore, though."
Severus nodded. "I'll have a look at it when I return to teaching again. Maybe I can fix it. Otherwise Albus might want to have it." He took a sip of his tea. "What's the report on Lucius' other activities? Is there anybody he meets frequently?"
"Lots of people." Filch reported. "I have Twinky's list somewhere. Ah here it is!" He pulled it out of one of the files on the Weasley twins."
"Those two have left school, you know." Severus remarked nodding towards the files. "You don't need to keep these in here anymore."
"I know." Filch confirmed. "But what would I put on all these shelves, if I removed them? Besides dragging them out would be a lot of work and I don't need the space right now."
"I'm sure I could find a way to replace them." Severus smiled. "You could make a mousetrap file, a firecracker file, a food fight file ..."
"You're my friend, not my customer." Filch declared. "As the later you're just too much work." he elaborated when he saw Severus' surprised look.
Severus didn't quite know how to react to that, so he turned his attention to the list of Lucius' visitors instead. It was long indeed, but luckily the house elf spy had also added the number of times the people had come and even little notes on the circumstances.
There were lots of Slytherins that had come for advice. Severus found almost all his suspects on there, though some had only come once or twice while others seemed to visit daily. Curtis Marston held the record with eight visits per week.
Then there was a large group that had come with Potions related questions, or to hand in homework early or late. Here the highest number of visits went to Seamus Finnigan who seemed to have discovered a new fascination with the subject.
The third group were students who'd come to serve detention. Record holder Ron Weasley visited at least four times a week, but it appeared that Lucius had a favourite detention server in almost every year.
"Some of those are already cleared." Severus decided. "And I don't think we need to bother with the one time only visitors. The detentions are probably unimportant as well."
"He always has the same kids in detention." Filch growled.
"Yes, but that's his own clumsiness in giving them out. He just doesn't understand how to use his disciplinarian tools."
"He's the worst teacher I've ever seen." Filch decided, then amended: "Well, with the exception of that Blackwell woman. And Lockhart. I don't think I've ever met anyone nearly as annoying as Gilderoy Lockhart. Did you know he tried to teach me how to fill out detention forms?"
"Well, writing was one of the few things he really knew how to do." Severus commented. "It was much worse when he attempted to get his hands on my lab."
Filch shuddered at the memory of the damages caused by that incident. Luckily Lockhart hadn't managed to actually get at a cauldron. Severus' protective wards had seen to that. It had been a little triumph for Severus that those wards had finally caught an intruder. Most students that managed to sneak into the office also were clever enough to get around the wards. Severus knew very well that the wards were insufficient, but setting any stronger ones could cause the intruder that set them off serious harm and that was out of the question when you expected said intruder to be nothing worse than a nosy student.
"Indeed." the caretaker confirmed after a moment. "Think this list will help you any?"
Severus sighed. "Maybe. There are a lot more names on it than I had expected, though. Tell the elves to keep watching, okay? Maybe I can come up with a way to listen in on those conversations."
Filch nodded, though he looked doubtful.
To be honest Severus was doubtful himself. Lucius was too clever not to set wards against listening spells and sneaking a spy into his office would be terribly risky. Maybe there was a way to determine if and when Lucius set additional wards, though. He wasn't likely to do that when answering questions about homework, or supervising a detention, but it made sense when he was talking about plans to murder someone.
Their best chance however was still that the traitor himself might make a mistake. He was less experienced than Lucius and after two failures probably getting impatient and nervous.
The next week went by quietly, though. The traitor apparently was biding his time now, while Harry Potter was sulking over his banishment from flying and the first years were visibly frightened. Even some of the older students stuck together in tight groups whenever they walked through the castle. No house trusted the others and Slytherins were as usual treated as complete outcasts.
Tuesday at lunch a group of fifth year Gryffindors refused to sit anywhere near Neville Longbottom only because they'd seen him talk to his Slytherin friends and when Draco asked him about it later Neville admitted that he'd even been threatened by several other housemates.
"Anyone who has friends in another house is getting the cold shoulder and whispers behind his back." Neville explained when he saw the looks on the Slytherins' faces. "They're just trying to protect Harry and don't know who against. That's all."
"It's not fair." Gregory insisted anyway. "Just because there's one killer in the school, you're supposed to give up your friends?"
"How do they know it isn't one of their own friends anyway?" Vincent frowned. "A perfect little Gryffindor?"
"The dark lord is unlikely to trust a Gryffindor." Blaise reminded them.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Severus commented calmly. "There are Gryffindor death eaters. Ever heard of Peter Pettigrew?"
Neville nodded nervously, but the rest apparently hadn't. The story served well to distract them from their anger, though.
Later, while they were all in Care for Magical Creatures, Severus snuck into the girls dorms for, hopefully, the last time. Cautiously he knocked on the door to the third years' dorm before entering, but this time even Marsha seemed to be in class.
Severus grinned triumphantly and went straight to her trunk placing Greenie on the floor next to him.
The little green hedgehog sniffed the big brown trunk for a bit, but decided that it wasn't edible and shuffled off to inspect the leg of the next bed over.
Severus meanwhile had Marsha's trunk open despite a clever little locking spell that kept trying to relock it every five seconds. What he found inside was hardly surprising anymore. A book from the restricted section of the library lay on top of a small chest that contained two vials of one of Stephan's simpler potions. Probably the cheapest drugs available in the school. Marsha might be a pureblood, but her family wasn't rich.
For a moment Severus considered returning the apparently stolen book to the library, but Marsha was sure to miss it and she'd already seen him try to sneak in last week. Maybe if he tipped off Professor Pince, she'd get Remus to conduct an official search of Marsha's trunk. That plan had the additional advantage that Remus could confiscate the drugs as well as the book and the staff would be officially alerted to the presence of drugs in the school without anyone having told about them.
After two more attempts he finally found Gaia Ushton's trunk hidden in the back corner of the room. It was warded with several protective spells that were clearly above third year level, but none of them were aggressive. They just cost Severus time.
Inside Severus found more books on the dark arts, one of them from the Hogwarts library as well. Had those two broken into the library together? It was at least likely considering that they were friends.
There was a number of neatly stored vials containing different potions. They were labelled, but in some kind of code that Severus couldn't decipher. So he was forced to take samples. He wondered how many more potions he could analyse in class before Lucius got suspicious.
Last he checked the contents of a chest that looked identical to the one Marsha kept her drugs in, but to his surprise this one contained very different items. Severus counted six mousetraps, about fifty firecrackers, one biting teacup and a pack of dung bombs.
He almost felt sorry about his plan to tip off Professor Pince that the third year girls had restricted books. The prank utensils would no doubt be confiscated along with the books and potions, but he couldn't allow the girls to keep those books. They were too dangerous. For a moment he was tempted to simply take the chest and rescue its contents by adopting them, but that would most certainly attract attention. In the end he compromised by taking one mousetrap and a handful of firecrackers. With a little luck Gaia would think that she'd used up more of her supplies than she'd thought.
On Wednesday everybody in the school was unusually jumpy. Nobody had mentioned it, but so far the traitor had always struck on Wednesday and somehow they all expected him to do it again. The Gryffindor sixth years remained in one big group the whole day surrounding Harry all the time. Draco even saw them hovering around a bathroom door once when Harry had apparently needed to go.
After Harry swore to Lucius that last week's snow had been an accident caused by his still having been a little out of it after his fall and that he was now completely restored to health, he finally got permission to work on his soup again.
Potions class seemed rather ill fated that day however. Lavender and Parvati's potion blew up three times, though the explosion was never bad enough to harm the cauldron. It only scorched the walls a bit and left soot stains on the girls' faces.
Gregory's robe caught fire and Vincent had to take him to the hospital wing. In their panic the boys forgot to take their cauldron off the fire and, since Severus didn't feel like getting involved and Lucius took fifty points off Gryffindor when Hermione tried to warn him, it boiled over and soaked Lucius' robes, which promptly turned orange in the places it had touched.
Ron's potion exploded so violently that Seamus' cauldron was knocked over and the almost finished mind control potion spilled onto the floor.
Lucius jumped back with a frightened scream when it almost hit him warning the rest of the class that it was possibly dangerous. In the resulting panic Alice and Pansy collided and Alice was knocked into Pansy and Millicent's worktable. Some of their potion spilled over and into Millicent's book bag ruining most of its contents. Juliana started to sob hysterically thinking that Alice had touched the mind control potion and wouldn't calm down until Estella slapped her.
Hermione had been forced to back away from her cauldron by the spreading mind control potion and despite her hasty extinquo charm her potion exploded when the next ingredient wasn't added on time.
Trevor the toad was stranded on Neville's worktable which had been surrounded by the potion as well. Harry just hadn't thought of the animal when he'd dragged Neville along as the boys abandoned their table.
One by one the potions exploded, boiled over or evaporated while Lucius, who had had to retreat onto his desk was trying to figure out what to do. Severus, who along with most of the rest of the class had had the presence of mind to head towards the door rather than away from it, decided to watch this play out a little longer before stepping in and concentrated on calming Greenie, who apparently didn't like the burnt smell all the explosions had left in the room.
Dean Thomas finally thought of rescuing his potions book and best quill by levitating them off his table and into his hand. Hermione stopped him before he could do the same with his book bag, which was lying in the puddle of spilled potions. There was no telling whether the mind control potion as still active despite getting mixed with the other potions and the bag was no doubt soaked with it.
The rest of the students on the door side of the puddle soon began levitating their still safe belongings out as well. Draco kindly agreed to rescue Trevor, since Neville didn't want to trust his own levitation charm with the life of his beloved pet.
On the other side of the room Theodore had the idea to climb onto the next chair and try to cross the dangerous puddle by climbing from chair to table, to chair.
Seeing that Blaise began to levitate more chairs into his way until he could step from one to the other comfortably. The Gryffindors followed that example to get their own out as well. If they teamed up they could even levitate whole worktables to build a comfortable bridge.
Lucius was the last to be rescued when the Slytherins finally took pity on him and stopped levitating away exactly those pieces of furniture Lucius was about to climb onto. When he finally reached the safe shore Severus looked up at him with his best puppy dog look.
"So when are you going to vanish the potions, Professor?" he asked innocently.
Lucius stared at him. Draco started to laugh. Several students groaned.
"Vanish the potion!" Hermione exclaimed. "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"
Severus just smirked at her.
Lucius clenched his jaw and raised his wand to vanish the puddle, but was interrupted by a sudden hiss. Harry Potter's soup rose out of its cauldron. Black liquid splashed onto the floor, students jumped backwards out the door squealing, soon followed by their teacher. Within seconds the whole potions classroom was covered in a shining coating of black ice.
"POTTER!" Lucius yelled a the top of his lungs.
The Gryffindors were the first that turned and ran, but the Slytherins weren't far behind.
"Detention Weasley!" Lucius roared after them then sank against a wall with a deep sigh. If this black ice was as magic resistant as the black fire had been and as unmelting as last week's snow, how the hell would he get it cleaned out before the next morning's classes?
Ron Weasley trotted up to him looking slightly weak in the knees. "I didn't mean to do that, Professor Malfoy. Honest."
Lucius just nodded. "Any ideas how to get rid of black ice?"
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Madame Moony - Ah flattery. Your story sounds really tempting, but unfortunately time is the one thing I absolutely don't have any of at the moment. I'm putting your fic on the read-as-soon-as-you-have-time-list, though. (It's growing and growing, but I'm determined to read everything on that list.) It might just take me a little to get around to it, but I promise to read!
toffee - Blush! Oh, don't worry, Sevi will find that traitor for us, then we'll all know.
Elsa - Remember that it wasn't Voldemort who placed Luci at Hogwarts and that it was only done after Voldemort's plans for the traitor were already complete. Luci is an added bonus for the traitor, but not a vital part of his mission. . . . Seen the Rock Horror Picture Show lately, haven't you? We once sang some of those songs during a school celebration. It was quite a hit after all those other classes singing in proper black and white standing in orderly rows. (We even put make up on our (male) teacher.)
Pam Briggs - Um, did you read the part in the last chapter where Luci thought about having talked with the traitor about possibly arranging a Quidditch accident, but not having made definitive plans, yet? I'd say that should make it pretty clear what Luci knows. . . . And no Voldemort did not leave Luci in the dark. He decided Luci's sentence was a gift horse and he just had to use it.
JerseyPike - Mother would be Mater. So what might Matris be? . . . Gee, do you have Mary Sue for a head of house? What you're telling me there sounds terribly familiar!
Black Angel - 20? Now which ones do you have, that Sevi and Draco don't? They're down to 17. . . . They've also got only three Gryfindors, so it's apparently all Gryffs that you've added. I think Sevi would love to have your list. . . . I only began to love Luci when I saw him on screen, but now that I've had time to think about him . . . Whenever I write something from a character's POV I get to like them better. . . . I think to 16 year old wizards Quidditch is everything, at least to some of them. Neville would probably disagree and so would Sevi.
Demon of Fear - Well, this wouldn't be a mystery, if I put a big 'this is him' sticker on the traitor, I'm afraid. I need to stay vague, or this will get boring. . . . Well, somebody has to teach Luci how to teach and Sevi doesn't want to.
Ruby - And there people over here always claim it has something to do with the average Americans' level of intelligence. Here serious people (like Director Smith) frown on cartoons. . . . Well, it's my first mystery. I've got to keep things simple enough so I can keep it under control. Maybe, if I ever write another one, it will have more twists.
Kayla Hemlock - Believe me, the name change wasn't my idea. (GRRRR, ff.net!) I absolutely hate being numbered. . . . Um, Trelawney was teaching while the first trap was set. The students would have reported it, if she'd just walked out of class for a bit. (And it would have been a long bit, if she had to go all the way down to the great hall from her tower.)
Thistle - Well, after the last 'chat' Draco isn't exactly eager for another. He thinks Luci is pretty annoying and worthless (as something to have in school) right now. . . . Actually Albus isn't planning on doing anytthing about Luci's visitors at all. That might scare away the traitor and eliminate an important source of clues.
holly - The identity of which suspect? (I think I already stated all of their names, by the way.)
Semmel - Greenie ist meine Muse und mein Wappentier. Was würd ich denn ohne ihn anfangen? . . . MNS ist eigentlich viel älter als RD. Ich nehm an du bist einfach erst dazugekommen als es schon fertig war.
Colibi - Ah, I thought I hadn't heard from you in an unusually long time. That explains it.
Nyaar - Yes, I know. I'd love to have a chance to get into the internet at my office some days. . . . I'm going as fast as I can, but I can't promise to always manage the weekly updates. For the moment I'll continue posting chapters of my Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs fic whenever I don't get a chapter of this done in time. I know SRATTSS isn't nearly as popular as HP, but I've got several chapters of that fic done and unposted, while Double O is never more than a chapter ahead from the posted version (usually a lot less).
Namarie - No need to apologise. It isn't my first language either. . . . I'm writing as fast as I can, but sometimes it all just gets too much. As long as I can manage I update once a week.
Rena Lupin - Thanks. Always love to hear that!
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A/N: Should Harry have gone back to classes this soon after his accident? Was it a wise idea of Lucius to suggest banning him from Qidditch? And how did Seamus manage to get accepted by the crowd of Slytherins outside Luci's office? (Guesses about the identity of the traitor as always will be read with great interest, but not answered, yet.) Please R/R.
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Next: Well, to be honest I'm not entirely sure, yet, but as far as I can predict Sevi watches Lucius, Draco still wants to include Neville and Lucius causes a panic among the first years.
Disclaimer 2 - Draco drawing dragons belongs to PikaCheeka. Sorry I forgot to mention that in the first chapter of MNS. I sort of adopted the idea subconsciously.
Disclaimer 3 - Severus' raven belongs to J. L. Matthews. I just borrowed him because he's such a perfect pet for Sevi and promise to return him unharmed.
The catar however are all mine and I love them so please don't use without asking me first.
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A/N - I'm afraid the next chapter might take two weeks to write. It'll be a busy week. Sorry in advance.
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Chapter 9: Black Ice
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The Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were in the Transfigurations classroom when Severus and Draco arrived right after Lucius had dismissed them from Potions.
They had to wait until the last students had left before they could approach McGonagall.
The teacher looked up in surprise.
"Potions ended early." Severus explained with a shrug. "Professor Malfoy found his hand in a mousetrap and had to go to the hospital wing to have it fixed. He didn't trust us not to blow up the classroom while he was gone."
"A mousetrap?" McGonagall repeated.
"Not one of ours." Draco assured her.
"It might have been Potter's or maybe Neville's, though I'm not sure he still has any left." Severus elaborated. "We were helping Professor Pince with a cockroach problem, so we were late for Potions and had no time to set up any traps. "
McGonagall looked doubtful, but she didn't like Lucius, so Severus doubted she'd take any action without good proof.
"You're here about the incident." the teacher stated more than asked instead.
"Yes, you said that Sandra Invers left class." Severus explained. "But what about Keith Gorl?"
"Keith?" Minerva asked surprised. "What about Keith?"
"He's on Filius' list of suspects." Severus stated calmly. "Was he in class?"
Minerva frowned. So Flitwick was Filius and she was Professor McGonagall? "Of course he was. I'd have reported it to Albus right away, if he'd left at any time."
"I'm only trying to make sure, Professor." Severus returned stiffly. "He had Potions last time."
"You're the one that got us stuck with Lucius in the first place." Minerva reminded him.
"Which doesn't mean I trust him to tell the truth about his students." Severus stated.
"He's my father." Draco reminded them both. "And I don't trust his word either."
They went to Flitwick's office next, but it was closed and the charms teacher didn't show up at dinner either. After one last attempt an hour after the meal they decided to postpone their talk with Flitwick to the next day and returned to their common room to keep an eye on their top suspects.
Severus slipped upstairs for a moment first, though. Theodore had found and disarmed his last mousetrap without getting harmed. That couldn't be tolerated.
The first and second years were still nervous, Severus soon noticed. They'd returned to the common room right after dinner and seemed afraid to leave again. He actually overheard a first year begging some others to accompany her to the library.
"Numbers can't protect us from an explosion." one of the boys answered her. "We're safest if we remain here where Potter can't get in. The dark lord has no reason to attack our common room so it would have to be a really big explosion to hurt us here."
Severus shook his head at them, but didn't attempt to calm their fears. As long as they were afraid of him they weren't likely to want to join Voldemort and being afraid of him was, in his opinion, a sign of a healthy survival instinct.
Most of the older students were engaged in discussions of Harry Potter's survival chances and theories about the attacker.
"I'm telling you he's as good s dead." Hieronymus Mattels declared. Since Professor Lupin wasn't here today, he and his brother hadn't retreated to the library for once. "He got lucky twice now, but how long can his luck hold? The Lord's agent could be any one of us. The Old Bumbler has no way to tell. The only way he could protect Potter would be by sending him away from Hogwarts, but then he couldn't continue his magical education and it would only be a matter of time until the Lord finds him."
"And that'd be the end of Potter for sure." Maximius grinned.
"Do you two really think that's funny?" Joanna Jenkins, a seventh year, asked sounding slightly annoyed. "Potter is just a sixteen year old boy who happens to have survived a deadly curse as a baby by sheer luck. An orphan who had to grow up with a bunch of Muggles instead of his real family. What's he ever really done to deserve the dark lord's wrath? He didn't banish him from this world on purpose, if it was his doing at all, which, considering his age at the time, is highly unlikely."
"He's a shameless show off." Lionel Bardon argued.
"Like he's the only one in this school." Blaise snorted glaring daggers at Draco.
"Boasting isn't exactly a crime, though. Nor an attack on the dark lord." Alice reminded him.
"And you can't exactly blame a Muggle raised orphan for wanting attention." Severus added as he sat down next to Draco again. "Potter is a pureblood who's had to live the life of a mudblood. Of course he's looking for some sort of compensation."
"Through attacking the dark lord?" Stephan challenged. "He has no right."
"Attacking the dark lord?" Estella repeated. "Excuse me, but it looks to me like the dark lord attacked him first. Potter's never gone out to look for him. He just had the gall to not lay down and die when the dark lord wanted him to."
"He did more than that." Theodore argued. "He actively fought back."
"Well excuse him for wanting to live." Joanna said sarcastically.
Severus watched the discussion of Potter's crimes closely noting who took what side of it. Lionel was apparently jealous of Potter, but he was already cleared. Pansy and Millicent took surprisingly little interest in the topic, Theodore seemed mostly interested in stating facts while Stephan and the Mattels brothers got very angry about the lack of support for their side. They apparently hadn't expected Blaise to retreat so easily, but when Blaise had realised that he wasn't impressing Pansy, he'd shut up very fast.
Several students from the lower years kept looking to Draco expectantly, probably expecting guidance, or maybe just a show from Potter's biggest rival, but Draco didn't oblige.
"It was weird to see him fall." Draco finally commented out of the blue. "I always thought I wanted him dead, but when he was actually rushing towards the ground like that, I was almost scared for him."
The discussion stopped as everybody turned to stare at Draco. Such admissions to 'weakness' were rare in the Slytherin common room and totally unexpected from a known death eater supporter like Draco.
"It's quite a different thing to think or even say that you want somebody dead in a moment of anger and to actually mean it." Severus supplied.
"Well, I wouldn't want my worst enemy to be killed by somebody else either, I think." Iago Orson suggested. "I'd want to do it myself."
"I don't." Draco said softly. "I've decided I don't want to kill anyone at all."
Some people laughed.
"That's rich." Stephan declared. "Next he'll decide he wants to become a healer."
Draco considered that. "Nah, too much work and some patients die anyway. I'll probably go into politics, like father."
"That's a dirty game, you know." Severus reminded him.
"Or maybe I'll try out for one of the professional Quidditch teams after school." Draco continued. "I could imagine being a teacher, too, but I guess father wouldn't approve."
"Why not?" Estella asked. "He's teaching himself right now."
"Not voluntarily." Severus grinned. "And he hates it."
"He's no good at it either." Susan complained not taking her eyes off Severus.
"Yeah, I almost burned my face when my cauldron exploded last week." Paula from fifth year commented. "And all he did was look up from his paper and say 'Oh.' A real Potions teacher would have warned me I was stirring the wrong way before my potion exploded."
"How do you know you were stirring wrong, if all he said was 'Oh.'?" a first year named Judith piped up.
"Because I read up on it afterwards, stupid." Paula snapped. "You always have to find out what you did wrong after a Potions accident. Potions mistakes are dangerous."
Judith nodded eagerly.
'Good.' Severus thought. At least one of this year's first years wouldn't forget that basic lesson.
"I bet your Ginny would like to hear that you're considering becoming a teacher." Theodore told Draco.
"She would?" Draco said surprised. The thought had only just occurred to him, so he'd never mentioned it to Ginny.
"Yes, of course." Theodore nodded. "She's from a poor family, so she'll want to marry a wizard who has an honest job with a steady income that will support her and her children."
"I'll inherit the entire Malfoy fortune." Draco argued. "And what's wrong with being a politician or Quidditch player?"
"Poor people are used to the idea that money comes from working." Theodore explained. "They won't trust a bank account as much as a job. Politics, like Severus said are a dirty affair and Quidditch holds too many risks. You can only play as long as you're young and don't get injured. Ginny would call that an insecure job."
"I hope you'll be a better teacher than your father, though." Paula declared.
"I'm not stupid enough to read the paper during a Potions class." Draco sneered at her.
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It was already late when they went to bed that evening. With no head of house to send them to bed the Slytherins had completely ignored curfew and talked on until they were almost falling asleep in the common room. One first year boy actually lay curled up on a couch fast asleep when the sixth and seventh years finally split up to head for their beds.
Theodore yawned as he quickly checked under his blanket for Severus' mousetraps. Nothing. Maybe the little prankster had finally given up.
Theodore slipped into bed, blew out his candle and snuggled into his pillow. He was dead tired, he decided as he pulled the covers up hugged one corner of the blanket close, like he always did, and slipped his other hand under the pillow as every night.
SNAP! "AHHHHHH!!!!"
Theodore sat up in pain and stared at the mousetrap on his fingers. That's how Professor Malfoy must have felt.
At least he wouldn't have to limp up to he hospital wing this time. An injured hand was a lot more comfortable than an injured foot, right?
Wrong. It turned out to be very difficult to open a mousetrap one-handedly. Twice the trap snapped shut again, before he could pull out his throbbing fingers. Each time it hurt even more.
"I hate you, Severus." Theodore declared as he slung a handkerchief around his hand and took off for the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey wouldn't be happy to see him at this time of night.
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They used their lunch break to visit Professor Flitwick with their list of suspect second and third years.
Filius summoned a cup of tea for each of them and even offered them some biscuits, but they declined those reminding him that they'd just eaten lunch.
"Luisa Hunter-Moor couldn't have done it." the tiny teacher declared the moment he glanced at their list. "She's the weakest student in her year. I suspect it's her wand that causes the problem, but she insists that it's a family tradition to use only dragon heartstring and ebony wands. She refuses to try anything else."
"Well, there goes our last Slytherin second year suspect." Draco commented with a satisfied smile.
"We've still got two Gryffindor suspects in that year, though." Severus reminded him. "How about them, Filius?"
"Quintus Palmer is a very advanced student." Flitwick reported. "I'm convinced that he can perform a severing charm easily. As for Vestalia Flemming, I'm not sure. She's talented, though not as much as Quintus. They've got a bit of a rivalry about their grades, I think. He's top in my class, but she outdoes him in Transfigurations, I believe. I have seen Vestalia try third year level charms occasionally, but never a severing charm as far as I remember. Maybe she can do it, maybe not."
"Then Quintus might have cast the laughing charm on Vestalia on purpose last week?" Severus asked.
"Most likely." Flitwick agreed. "He was probably bored and decided to lighten up the mood with a little prank. Or maybe those two were just fooling around and he didn't really mean to hit her."
Severus nodded. "What about the third years then?"
Flitwick read on. "Caius Rude is a sloppy student, but has mastered the charm quite easily. He's talented, but unwilling to work for his grade. Aemilia Andres already knew the charm when we started working on it. Apparently her mother taught it to her for sewing. Gaia Ushton managed on her second try. Curtis Marston took longer than that, but got quite good at it by the end of the second lesson. Maximius Mattels does it with ease. He's the best of the year, a particularly good year, at least in Charms. Bran Lewis has problems with the wand movement. No finesse, that one. Maximius has been trying to help him, but with little success. Bran's clever enough, but has no patience for delicate work."
"You're sure Bran isn't faking it?" Severus asked.
"If so he has been faking since his first year." Filius answered with a shrug. "I doubt Voldemort would have chosen him that far back, so what reasons would he have had?"
"I see." Severus nodded his agreement. If Voldemort had been planning this for so long, he'd have used Bran long before now. The traitor was either newly acquired, or Voldemort had only just thought of using him against Potter. "What of the last two?"
"Marsha Alton is good at the charm." Flitwick reported. "Better than I expected of her, but then she might have had some sewing lessons as well. Marsha's performances in my class always vary in quality. Some charms she performs with ease, while there are others she barely manages at all. Mathilda Harris cannot perform the charm at all, nor does she apparently want to. From what I hear of Minerva she doesn't care about her Transfigurations grade either, though. I don't know what's wrong with the girl. It's as if she wants to fail on purpose completely unlike any other Slytherin I've ever met."
"I have encountered such behaviour in other students before." Severus remarked.
"Yes, but those were Gryffindors, weren't they?" Flitwick reminded him. "Slytherins usually are ambitious about their grades and even the lazy ones do want to pass their NEWTs. In Hufflepuff there are rarely lazy ones in the fist place, but occasionally I get untalented Hufflepuffs who just can't manage any better. Still they always make a visible effort and are devastated every time I have to give them a failing grade. Ravenclaws rarely fail Charms. There are less talented ones and lazy ones of course, but they all like Charms. It might have something to do with not wanting to disappoint their head of house of course." he twinkled happily in an almost Dumbledore like fashion. "You might get less idealism from them."
Severus nodded. "Less idealism, yes, but rarely an actual refusal. Some could do better, if they showed more interest, but when in danger of failing they always work to save themselves."
"Only Gryffindor sometimes gets little rebels that want to fail just to annoy us or their parents."
"There was that young muggle born Hufflepuff who didn't want to become a witch once." Severus pointed out. "And the lovesick Ravenclaw who insisted on failing so he could be in the same year as his girl."
"The Harris family however has a five hundred year old tradition of proud pureblooded wizards and witches, so Mathilda has no reason to want to be a Muggle." Flitwick pointed out.
"Mathilda despises Muggles." Draco added. "She'd never want to have anything in common with them."
"And she's been behaving like that from the start." Flitwick nodded. "She can't possibly have had a younger boyfriend when she was eleven."
Severus nodded as well. "I'll look into this sometime, Filius, but right now I'm more concerned with finding our murderous traitor. If Mathilda fails this year, it won't kill her and maybe even would be a lesson for her. If we don't catch the traitor, though, he'll sooner or later get lucky and kill Potter. There'll be time to solve Mathilda's problem once the boy is safe."
Still Draco kept wondering about the girl for the rest of the day. He even suggested to Severus that they should follow her for a bit in the hopes of finding some clues, but Severus just shook his head at him.
"Mathilda is cleared, Draco." he reminded him. "And we still have 17 suspects that need watching. If you're so eager to follow somebody, follow Stephan."
"Not Maximius?" Draco teased.
"No, I'll do that myself." Severus answered matter-of-factly.
Other than give both of them a tour of the castle the observations didn't result in much though. Both suspects did their best to avoid spending time in the common room with Remus, but were otherwise rather boring.
Maximius liked to go to the library and sometimes sneak up the astronomy tower and occasionally just walked around aimlessly with his brother or one of his friends.
Stephan hung around the Quidditch pitch most of the time. He spent a lot of time in the broom shed polishing his broom or just admiring all the brooms. Draco sometimes even followed him inside and pretended to be equally dedicated to the care for his own Nimbus. Stephan even talked to him about Quidditch strategy a few times. After all they were on the same team.
On other occasions however Stephan shot him angry glances apparently wishing to be alone. Draco then pretended not to take any notice of the seventh year's presence, or the students that came in to talk to him.
Stephan was apparently selling something to them, but Draco could never see what it was. When he mentioned it to Severus his friend immediately suggested to switch suspects, but had to admit that he couldn't follow Stephan to the pitch as inconspicuously as Draco, much less into the broom shed.
Severus didn't own a broom and everybody knew that he didn't like to fly.
Stephan also frequently visited a couple of abandoned classrooms in different parts of he school. He seemed to be meeting other students there as well, but Draco couldn't follow him inside to see what they did. He did make a list of all students Stephan met, though. Severus asked him for it, no matter whether those students were suspects or not, cleared or even Muggle born.
What annoyed Draco the most however was that Stephan visited his father's office almost every second day. It was hard not to get noticed by his own father, and even harder to avoid Ron Weasley. It seemed the Gryffindor was always just arriving for his detention or leaving after it.
Whenever Draco managed to get a glimpse of Ron actually serving detention, it was a disappointment. Somehow the Gryffindor had managed to convince the house elf, that was supposed to watch the Potions teacher's activities, to do all the work for him and was usually just sitting around, playing with a brush and ordering the elf about with a smug look on his face.
How Draco hated him for that! But he was Ginny's brother, so he did his best to ignore all the jibes.
Ginny herself was much happier now that Percy was back home unharmed and they spent most of their weekend together flying and sitting by the side of the lake while Severus was trailing Maximius through the school.
Draco did feel a tiny touch of guilt having fun while Severus was investigating, but he told himself that it would be suspicious, if he didn't spend lots of time with his girlfriend as he normally did.
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Sunday afternoon while Draco and Ginny were out flying enjoying what might be the year's last truly warm weekend Severus went to visit the school's caretaker Argus Filch.
Lucius Malfoy was supposed to provide them with clues, but so far they hadn't given him much attention. It was time to change that.
Mrs Norris turned up her nose and walked out tail raised high at the sight of Severus standing in her office's door with Greenie in his arms, but Filch invited them in, though grumpily and even poured Severus a cup of tea which Greenie inspected closely, but kept his nose just short of touching. He was by now experienced enough with human meals, to know that teacups tended to be hot and burn tender little hedgehog noses. Sniffing through a burned nose was a very unpleasant experience and not sniffing was simply against Greenie's nature, which meant he had to be cautious around teacups. Saucers of course were a totally different matter.
Corvus fluttered over to the table as well and greeted Severus by declaring: "Stupid Cockroach!" standing next to the teapot with his chest puffed out.
"Language, Corvus!" Severus scolded grinning.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid." Corvus insisted unabashed.
"Where did you learn such language anyway?" Severus continued mock sternly.
"Malfoy." Filch answered for the bird. "He doesn't like ravens so he keeps insulting him and doesn't even realise when he insults him back."
"Stupid Cockroach!" Corvus commented happily.
"He doesn't like ravens?" Severus asked scratching Corvus' head and regarding the bird's gleaming black feathers. "What's not to like?"
"They're too black, if I understood him correctly." Filch shrugged taking a sip of his own tea.
"Too black? For a death eater?" Severus almost laughed. "Lucius has a problem."
Filch shrugged indicating that he didn't care about Lucius or his problems as long as he cleaned up his own mess.
"I had to replace two of your worktables." the caretaker reported a little later. "He managed to burn one beyond repair and the other one melted into a puddle. Trelawney may know how he managed to do that to a wooden table, but, to be honest, I don't really care. Tilly managed to reparo the chairs he flattened, but one of them's still grinning. It doesn't seem to be able to produce any sound anymore, though."
Severus nodded. "I'll have a look at it when I return to teaching again. Maybe I can fix it. Otherwise Albus might want to have it." He took a sip of his tea. "What's the report on Lucius' other activities? Is there anybody he meets frequently?"
"Lots of people." Filch reported. "I have Twinky's list somewhere. Ah here it is!" He pulled it out of one of the files on the Weasley twins."
"Those two have left school, you know." Severus remarked nodding towards the files. "You don't need to keep these in here anymore."
"I know." Filch confirmed. "But what would I put on all these shelves, if I removed them? Besides dragging them out would be a lot of work and I don't need the space right now."
"I'm sure I could find a way to replace them." Severus smiled. "You could make a mousetrap file, a firecracker file, a food fight file ..."
"You're my friend, not my customer." Filch declared. "As the later you're just too much work." he elaborated when he saw Severus' surprised look.
Severus didn't quite know how to react to that, so he turned his attention to the list of Lucius' visitors instead. It was long indeed, but luckily the house elf spy had also added the number of times the people had come and even little notes on the circumstances.
There were lots of Slytherins that had come for advice. Severus found almost all his suspects on there, though some had only come once or twice while others seemed to visit daily. Curtis Marston held the record with eight visits per week.
Then there was a large group that had come with Potions related questions, or to hand in homework early or late. Here the highest number of visits went to Seamus Finnigan who seemed to have discovered a new fascination with the subject.
The third group were students who'd come to serve detention. Record holder Ron Weasley visited at least four times a week, but it appeared that Lucius had a favourite detention server in almost every year.
"Some of those are already cleared." Severus decided. "And I don't think we need to bother with the one time only visitors. The detentions are probably unimportant as well."
"He always has the same kids in detention." Filch growled.
"Yes, but that's his own clumsiness in giving them out. He just doesn't understand how to use his disciplinarian tools."
"He's the worst teacher I've ever seen." Filch decided, then amended: "Well, with the exception of that Blackwell woman. And Lockhart. I don't think I've ever met anyone nearly as annoying as Gilderoy Lockhart. Did you know he tried to teach me how to fill out detention forms?"
"Well, writing was one of the few things he really knew how to do." Severus commented. "It was much worse when he attempted to get his hands on my lab."
Filch shuddered at the memory of the damages caused by that incident. Luckily Lockhart hadn't managed to actually get at a cauldron. Severus' protective wards had seen to that. It had been a little triumph for Severus that those wards had finally caught an intruder. Most students that managed to sneak into the office also were clever enough to get around the wards. Severus knew very well that the wards were insufficient, but setting any stronger ones could cause the intruder that set them off serious harm and that was out of the question when you expected said intruder to be nothing worse than a nosy student.
"Indeed." the caretaker confirmed after a moment. "Think this list will help you any?"
Severus sighed. "Maybe. There are a lot more names on it than I had expected, though. Tell the elves to keep watching, okay? Maybe I can come up with a way to listen in on those conversations."
Filch nodded, though he looked doubtful.
To be honest Severus was doubtful himself. Lucius was too clever not to set wards against listening spells and sneaking a spy into his office would be terribly risky. Maybe there was a way to determine if and when Lucius set additional wards, though. He wasn't likely to do that when answering questions about homework, or supervising a detention, but it made sense when he was talking about plans to murder someone.
Their best chance however was still that the traitor himself might make a mistake. He was less experienced than Lucius and after two failures probably getting impatient and nervous.
The next week went by quietly, though. The traitor apparently was biding his time now, while Harry Potter was sulking over his banishment from flying and the first years were visibly frightened. Even some of the older students stuck together in tight groups whenever they walked through the castle. No house trusted the others and Slytherins were as usual treated as complete outcasts.
Tuesday at lunch a group of fifth year Gryffindors refused to sit anywhere near Neville Longbottom only because they'd seen him talk to his Slytherin friends and when Draco asked him about it later Neville admitted that he'd even been threatened by several other housemates.
"Anyone who has friends in another house is getting the cold shoulder and whispers behind his back." Neville explained when he saw the looks on the Slytherins' faces. "They're just trying to protect Harry and don't know who against. That's all."
"It's not fair." Gregory insisted anyway. "Just because there's one killer in the school, you're supposed to give up your friends?"
"How do they know it isn't one of their own friends anyway?" Vincent frowned. "A perfect little Gryffindor?"
"The dark lord is unlikely to trust a Gryffindor." Blaise reminded them.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Severus commented calmly. "There are Gryffindor death eaters. Ever heard of Peter Pettigrew?"
Neville nodded nervously, but the rest apparently hadn't. The story served well to distract them from their anger, though.
Later, while they were all in Care for Magical Creatures, Severus snuck into the girls dorms for, hopefully, the last time. Cautiously he knocked on the door to the third years' dorm before entering, but this time even Marsha seemed to be in class.
Severus grinned triumphantly and went straight to her trunk placing Greenie on the floor next to him.
The little green hedgehog sniffed the big brown trunk for a bit, but decided that it wasn't edible and shuffled off to inspect the leg of the next bed over.
Severus meanwhile had Marsha's trunk open despite a clever little locking spell that kept trying to relock it every five seconds. What he found inside was hardly surprising anymore. A book from the restricted section of the library lay on top of a small chest that contained two vials of one of Stephan's simpler potions. Probably the cheapest drugs available in the school. Marsha might be a pureblood, but her family wasn't rich.
For a moment Severus considered returning the apparently stolen book to the library, but Marsha was sure to miss it and she'd already seen him try to sneak in last week. Maybe if he tipped off Professor Pince, she'd get Remus to conduct an official search of Marsha's trunk. That plan had the additional advantage that Remus could confiscate the drugs as well as the book and the staff would be officially alerted to the presence of drugs in the school without anyone having told about them.
After two more attempts he finally found Gaia Ushton's trunk hidden in the back corner of the room. It was warded with several protective spells that were clearly above third year level, but none of them were aggressive. They just cost Severus time.
Inside Severus found more books on the dark arts, one of them from the Hogwarts library as well. Had those two broken into the library together? It was at least likely considering that they were friends.
There was a number of neatly stored vials containing different potions. They were labelled, but in some kind of code that Severus couldn't decipher. So he was forced to take samples. He wondered how many more potions he could analyse in class before Lucius got suspicious.
Last he checked the contents of a chest that looked identical to the one Marsha kept her drugs in, but to his surprise this one contained very different items. Severus counted six mousetraps, about fifty firecrackers, one biting teacup and a pack of dung bombs.
He almost felt sorry about his plan to tip off Professor Pince that the third year girls had restricted books. The prank utensils would no doubt be confiscated along with the books and potions, but he couldn't allow the girls to keep those books. They were too dangerous. For a moment he was tempted to simply take the chest and rescue its contents by adopting them, but that would most certainly attract attention. In the end he compromised by taking one mousetrap and a handful of firecrackers. With a little luck Gaia would think that she'd used up more of her supplies than she'd thought.
On Wednesday everybody in the school was unusually jumpy. Nobody had mentioned it, but so far the traitor had always struck on Wednesday and somehow they all expected him to do it again. The Gryffindor sixth years remained in one big group the whole day surrounding Harry all the time. Draco even saw them hovering around a bathroom door once when Harry had apparently needed to go.
After Harry swore to Lucius that last week's snow had been an accident caused by his still having been a little out of it after his fall and that he was now completely restored to health, he finally got permission to work on his soup again.
Potions class seemed rather ill fated that day however. Lavender and Parvati's potion blew up three times, though the explosion was never bad enough to harm the cauldron. It only scorched the walls a bit and left soot stains on the girls' faces.
Gregory's robe caught fire and Vincent had to take him to the hospital wing. In their panic the boys forgot to take their cauldron off the fire and, since Severus didn't feel like getting involved and Lucius took fifty points off Gryffindor when Hermione tried to warn him, it boiled over and soaked Lucius' robes, which promptly turned orange in the places it had touched.
Ron's potion exploded so violently that Seamus' cauldron was knocked over and the almost finished mind control potion spilled onto the floor.
Lucius jumped back with a frightened scream when it almost hit him warning the rest of the class that it was possibly dangerous. In the resulting panic Alice and Pansy collided and Alice was knocked into Pansy and Millicent's worktable. Some of their potion spilled over and into Millicent's book bag ruining most of its contents. Juliana started to sob hysterically thinking that Alice had touched the mind control potion and wouldn't calm down until Estella slapped her.
Hermione had been forced to back away from her cauldron by the spreading mind control potion and despite her hasty extinquo charm her potion exploded when the next ingredient wasn't added on time.
Trevor the toad was stranded on Neville's worktable which had been surrounded by the potion as well. Harry just hadn't thought of the animal when he'd dragged Neville along as the boys abandoned their table.
One by one the potions exploded, boiled over or evaporated while Lucius, who had had to retreat onto his desk was trying to figure out what to do. Severus, who along with most of the rest of the class had had the presence of mind to head towards the door rather than away from it, decided to watch this play out a little longer before stepping in and concentrated on calming Greenie, who apparently didn't like the burnt smell all the explosions had left in the room.
Dean Thomas finally thought of rescuing his potions book and best quill by levitating them off his table and into his hand. Hermione stopped him before he could do the same with his book bag, which was lying in the puddle of spilled potions. There was no telling whether the mind control potion as still active despite getting mixed with the other potions and the bag was no doubt soaked with it.
The rest of the students on the door side of the puddle soon began levitating their still safe belongings out as well. Draco kindly agreed to rescue Trevor, since Neville didn't want to trust his own levitation charm with the life of his beloved pet.
On the other side of the room Theodore had the idea to climb onto the next chair and try to cross the dangerous puddle by climbing from chair to table, to chair.
Seeing that Blaise began to levitate more chairs into his way until he could step from one to the other comfortably. The Gryffindors followed that example to get their own out as well. If they teamed up they could even levitate whole worktables to build a comfortable bridge.
Lucius was the last to be rescued when the Slytherins finally took pity on him and stopped levitating away exactly those pieces of furniture Lucius was about to climb onto. When he finally reached the safe shore Severus looked up at him with his best puppy dog look.
"So when are you going to vanish the potions, Professor?" he asked innocently.
Lucius stared at him. Draco started to laugh. Several students groaned.
"Vanish the potion!" Hermione exclaimed. "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"
Severus just smirked at her.
Lucius clenched his jaw and raised his wand to vanish the puddle, but was interrupted by a sudden hiss. Harry Potter's soup rose out of its cauldron. Black liquid splashed onto the floor, students jumped backwards out the door squealing, soon followed by their teacher. Within seconds the whole potions classroom was covered in a shining coating of black ice.
"POTTER!" Lucius yelled a the top of his lungs.
The Gryffindors were the first that turned and ran, but the Slytherins weren't far behind.
"Detention Weasley!" Lucius roared after them then sank against a wall with a deep sigh. If this black ice was as magic resistant as the black fire had been and as unmelting as last week's snow, how the hell would he get it cleaned out before the next morning's classes?
Ron Weasley trotted up to him looking slightly weak in the knees. "I didn't mean to do that, Professor Malfoy. Honest."
Lucius just nodded. "Any ideas how to get rid of black ice?"
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Madame Moony - Ah flattery. Your story sounds really tempting, but unfortunately time is the one thing I absolutely don't have any of at the moment. I'm putting your fic on the read-as-soon-as-you-have-time-list, though. (It's growing and growing, but I'm determined to read everything on that list.) It might just take me a little to get around to it, but I promise to read!
toffee - Blush! Oh, don't worry, Sevi will find that traitor for us, then we'll all know.
Elsa - Remember that it wasn't Voldemort who placed Luci at Hogwarts and that it was only done after Voldemort's plans for the traitor were already complete. Luci is an added bonus for the traitor, but not a vital part of his mission. . . . Seen the Rock Horror Picture Show lately, haven't you? We once sang some of those songs during a school celebration. It was quite a hit after all those other classes singing in proper black and white standing in orderly rows. (We even put make up on our (male) teacher.)
Pam Briggs - Um, did you read the part in the last chapter where Luci thought about having talked with the traitor about possibly arranging a Quidditch accident, but not having made definitive plans, yet? I'd say that should make it pretty clear what Luci knows. . . . And no Voldemort did not leave Luci in the dark. He decided Luci's sentence was a gift horse and he just had to use it.
JerseyPike - Mother would be Mater. So what might Matris be? . . . Gee, do you have Mary Sue for a head of house? What you're telling me there sounds terribly familiar!
Black Angel - 20? Now which ones do you have, that Sevi and Draco don't? They're down to 17. . . . They've also got only three Gryfindors, so it's apparently all Gryffs that you've added. I think Sevi would love to have your list. . . . I only began to love Luci when I saw him on screen, but now that I've had time to think about him . . . Whenever I write something from a character's POV I get to like them better. . . . I think to 16 year old wizards Quidditch is everything, at least to some of them. Neville would probably disagree and so would Sevi.
Demon of Fear - Well, this wouldn't be a mystery, if I put a big 'this is him' sticker on the traitor, I'm afraid. I need to stay vague, or this will get boring. . . . Well, somebody has to teach Luci how to teach and Sevi doesn't want to.
Ruby - And there people over here always claim it has something to do with the average Americans' level of intelligence. Here serious people (like Director Smith) frown on cartoons. . . . Well, it's my first mystery. I've got to keep things simple enough so I can keep it under control. Maybe, if I ever write another one, it will have more twists.
Kayla Hemlock - Believe me, the name change wasn't my idea. (GRRRR, ff.net!) I absolutely hate being numbered. . . . Um, Trelawney was teaching while the first trap was set. The students would have reported it, if she'd just walked out of class for a bit. (And it would have been a long bit, if she had to go all the way down to the great hall from her tower.)
Thistle - Well, after the last 'chat' Draco isn't exactly eager for another. He thinks Luci is pretty annoying and worthless (as something to have in school) right now. . . . Actually Albus isn't planning on doing anytthing about Luci's visitors at all. That might scare away the traitor and eliminate an important source of clues.
holly - The identity of which suspect? (I think I already stated all of their names, by the way.)
Semmel - Greenie ist meine Muse und mein Wappentier. Was würd ich denn ohne ihn anfangen? . . . MNS ist eigentlich viel älter als RD. Ich nehm an du bist einfach erst dazugekommen als es schon fertig war.
Colibi - Ah, I thought I hadn't heard from you in an unusually long time. That explains it.
Nyaar - Yes, I know. I'd love to have a chance to get into the internet at my office some days. . . . I'm going as fast as I can, but I can't promise to always manage the weekly updates. For the moment I'll continue posting chapters of my Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs fic whenever I don't get a chapter of this done in time. I know SRATTSS isn't nearly as popular as HP, but I've got several chapters of that fic done and unposted, while Double O is never more than a chapter ahead from the posted version (usually a lot less).
Namarie - No need to apologise. It isn't my first language either. . . . I'm writing as fast as I can, but sometimes it all just gets too much. As long as I can manage I update once a week.
Rena Lupin - Thanks. Always love to hear that!
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A/N: Should Harry have gone back to classes this soon after his accident? Was it a wise idea of Lucius to suggest banning him from Qidditch? And how did Seamus manage to get accepted by the crowd of Slytherins outside Luci's office? (Guesses about the identity of the traitor as always will be read with great interest, but not answered, yet.) Please R/R.
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Next: Well, to be honest I'm not entirely sure, yet, but as far as I can predict Sevi watches Lucius, Draco still wants to include Neville and Lucius causes a panic among the first years.