Hiding Under the Ninth Earth
Book 02 : A Bit Of All Right
by I Got Tired of Waiting

Part I : Severus
Chapter Four : The Nagger Within

Friday : 11 June 1999

Severus woke with a blinding headache the next morning, his head feeling like it was stuffed with carded wool--fuzzy around the edges but with a lingering feeling he'd missed something. Something important. He shrugged, taking a potion off the bed table for the headache. It would come back to him. It always did.

He lay back in bed a few moments willing the potion to work faster. Horatio slithered across his stomach, tickling it, as the shortest path possible to the small rodent he'd spied in the corner for a light morning snack. He idly thought, 'I'll have to order more rats for him soon, he's almost cleaned them out.'

As he was getting dressed, he tried very hard (without much success) to forget about the previous evening. 'I fell completely out of character. How stupid. I wonder what rumours will be flying around this morning about how Snape cracked up last night. Lovely. I truly can't wait.'

He'd let Potter cry himself out (and himself if truth be told) and afterwards, they went through the usual awkwardness one goes through when one receives comfort where not expected. They'd then walked back to their respective quarters not more than a dozen words exchanged the entire time. There'd been the usual clumsy thank you's at the place of parting, neither one able to meet the other's eyes and then it was over.

He'd made his tired way to the dungeons, his thoughts awhirl with new impressions. He'd collapsed in his bed exhausted in spirit but wakeful nonetheless. Finally giving up, he'd resorted to a sleeping potion, even knowing the side effects, just to stop the feelings and thoughts coursing through his mind.

The headache dulled but not gone, Snape made his way up to the Great Hall. He was running later than normal, although he didn't know why he should be concerned; they had few classes right now and even though it was in the middle of the school year, were more on a Holiday schedule. The smell of food tantalised him as he entered via the staff door. He was uncharacteristically hungry for some reason. He nodded in greeting to Dumbledore as he passed him and sat in his customary seat near Madame Pince.

In the middle of his morning feast of fried eggs, a plump black pudding, and crisp points of toast smothered in Marmite, the little nagger finally bothered him. He slowed down but did not stop as the completed thoughts, finally cooked, came out in sumptuous courses for his conscious digestion.

'Draco is up to something--forbidden, something to do with Harry, something permanent but has met with some unexpected resistance.' He chuckled, earning him a reproving glance from Pince. He didn't care. 'Malfoy has a means of spying on Dumbledore's office and/or has connections in the Ministry.' Thoughtfully chewing a bite of his grilled black pudding, he wondered how the two notions could possibly be related. Then it came to him. 'Which Malfoy? While Draco is obviously old enough to spy, he is definitely too young to have made Ministry contacts.' He mopped up some of the gooey yolk of his eggs with his toast. 'Lucius? Indubitably. Therefore Draco must be working for his father. Perhaps even earlier for Voldemort?' Taking a sip of his tea, he washed down another bite of his sausage. 'Possibly--he and Harry got together before Voldemort was killed. Directly? No, he has never borne the Dark Mark--he must be working solely through Lucius.'

Even though he was training to be an Auror, Draco was not a member of the Order, but was somehow privy to the Order's counsels. 'So how is he getting the information? From Harry? Ah yes, the Imperius!' Swallowing a bite of toast, he chided himself, 'No, that's not right--Harry can throw it off. A new curse then? Or a charm? One we don't know about; something tied to the sex? Albus might know.' Mumbling a warming spell on his now luke-warm tea, he took a cautious sip and continued to let the thoughts seep through his head.

'A Potion? Damned difficult to administer but not impossible; the really dark ones can be quite--palatable.' He knew it wasn't Veritaserum; Harry was pretty much immune to it--the doses necessary to break through his magic were large enough to knock him senseless.

He carefully put down his knife and fork, the last of his black pudding forgot as a staggering line of thought appeared. 'Perhaps a potion Draco takes, the effects of which he passes onto Potter? Not unheard of but very rare, very dark, very dangerous to the one administering it. Can't see Draco taking the risk--unless he doesn't know about it?' He had no difficulty whatsoever in imagining Lucius sacrificing his son for the information he could get out of Potter. 'I need to confer with Albus. And Harry must be warned.'

He suddenly itched, his danger senses alerted. Looking straight ahead to the main doors, he saw Harry and Draco walk in together. Their posture was strange. Harry seemed unconcerned, loose even, whereas he could almost feel the hot rage below Draco's otherwise icy exterior. 'This is disturbing; I thought they'd cooled to each other. I must not delay in talking with Albus.' He suited actions to words, standing up abruptly from the table, his appetite gone. As he walked away, he threw a muttered spell at Dumbledore who nodded his head. They would meet in two hours.

****

Snape pulled the book carefully out of the locked cabinet in a large private library connected to the back of his personal study. Fashioned in Wizard Space, Albus jokingly called it "The Darkroom".

In this room were thousands of tomes and scrolls (some made of human skin) Severus had collected over the years in his pursuit of the Dark Arts both before and after his service to the Order. Its existence was known only to Dumbledore. There were more wards on this one room than over the entirety of Hogwarts; some were cast by his own hand from the very pages of the knowledge within, some cast by Dumbledore. Even Voldemort wouldn't have been able to break into it, the contents set to violently explode should anyone try and force the locks.

Snape took the book to a special table in the middle of the stacks, its surface protected against the various evil humours which could escape when the documents were opened. This protection was primarily afforded by a talisman given to him by a former lover, which was embedded in the table top. The door to the room was firmly locked behind him.

This particular book, one of many on obscure potions, posed no overt threat except to the unschooled mind which could be easily trapped were one not careful. He laid the heavy tome in the center of the table and called forth a special transport spell Albus had created. It was a timed Charm and if he did not answer its call at a random interval with the proper counterspell, it would 'port him away to safety and notify Albus there was a problem. He was never too careful when working with the knowledge in this room.

He started turning the pages of the old volume as rapidly as he dared. 'Where is it? Where is it? Paranoid old beggar wouldn't leave a Table of Contents or an Index. Nooo, that would be too easy. I remember it came right after the bleeding potion--' Nearing where he thought it might be, he slowed down, skimming the formulas and lurid illustrations he found, 'Ah, there it is.'

He read the ingredients and the Schema. It was dangerous but not so much to the person taking it. 'Insidious but lovely, I do have to admit; the older Dark Potions have an elegance about them we cannot reproduce today. And perfect. I'd wager good odds this is what Draco, excuse me, Lucius is having Draco use.'

He reread the potion through, fixing it in his mind; the ingredients were easy to procure, the potion simple to make. The Dark Magic ostensibly used to bind it skirted the edge of Light so closely it would not set off the warning wards Albus had in place for such things, which meant Draco could make it himself at Hogwarts. However, its deadly potency was defined by the maker's Dark intent, which would cause nary a twinge in the wards. The subsequently imbued, yet almost invisible, Dark Magic was what made it so cunning.

Closing the book gently, he spoke the counter-wards and placed the volume back on the shelf where he found it. He patted it, making sure it was secured, before he relocked the cabinet it was in. Muttering a quick spell, he temporarily made a small square of wall disappear, letting him see the room beyond. No one was there, so he released the lock and moved into the cooler, cleaner air of his study. The wall shimmered behind him into normalcy.

He went to see Albus.

****

Dumbledore fussed with the tea things. "Severus, so secretive. What can I do for you?"

Severus cast a silencing ward over the office in addition to the ones Dumbledore always had in place. He raised his brows in question. Severus shrugged and said, "I have reason to believe someone has been privy to things spoken only in this room."

Dumbledore was flummoxed. "How on earth--?"

"Albus, you'll just have to trust me on this one, it would take too long to explain. Besides, it's not our more immediate concern."

Dumbledore raised a brow. "There's something more important than the security of my office? Now you're really disturbing me. Please continue."

Severus' slow words belied the urgency he felt, "I have reason to believe Draco Malfoy is planning to harm Mr. Potter and, through him, the Order. I also think Draco has been using some kind of coercion in the manner of a charm or a potion to get Harry to reveal our plans. More specifically, I think he is using the Basium Excessum Potion also know as the Kiss of Digression or Kiss of Death depending on how it is used."

Dumbledore looked perplexed. "All right Severus--I admit, I have never heard of this one. What does it do?"

Snape was pleased he'd stumped him for once. "It is fairly obscure. Simply put, Draco takes the potion and administers it to Harry via the mouth. Kissing, nipping, biting--anything involving direct oral contact with the victim would suffice. Once transferred, the potion makes the recipient pliable to questions. While it does not force the truth, one must be trained, in the same manner as the Imperius, to resist it. It causes great pleasure to the receiver, hence it has almost always been a woman's potion used for seduction. It's also been known to make the giver mentally unstable and prone to violence and temper, although that's a rare side-effect and disappears once the ingestion of the potion is stopped."

He hesitated--this was the cunning part. "It is called the "Kiss of Death" because the potioner can turn poisoner just by continual contact with the prey, usually through biting. Thus, with intention, the potion turns to poison. Actually quite elegant but equally insidious. If I'm right, Harry's withdrawal from the Aurors may be placing him in serious jeopardy."

"This is a serious matter. What do you base it on?" Dumbledore sipped his tea, his eyes intent on Severus.

"Do you remember about five months ago, when our raids started falling through? Moody commented at the time it was like someone had been reading our Owls? You added the extra wards to your office in the event the leak was here?" At Dumbledore's nod, he continued. "I found out yesterday--Harry and Draco have been together longer than we thought--the same amount of time as our failures--almost to the day."

"This is most grievous. What other links did you discover?" Severus could tell Dumbledore was dying to find out how Severus had obtained his information, but was biting his tongue on his curiosity; Severus concluded that, like most of the information he'd given him over the years, it was probably better he not know.

"Mr. Malfoy's and Mr. Potter's relationship is not all it seems on the surface. Both admit there is little to no emotional entanglement. Draco, though, lies about it, whereas Harry is quite honest and feels Draco is after something from him, but he doesn't know what. However, from what I observed, Draco is inordinately angry over Harry's defection from the Aurors, well beyond what one would normally expect out of a domineering partner, which I'm not sure he is. It's almost as if he's afraid. I'm afraid Lucius is involved in this somehow."

Dumbledore was quiet. "Severus, do you have any proof?" When he shook his head, Albus sighed. "That's most unfortunate. We have been friends and colleagues for a great many years, and if anyone else had brought me these conclusions I would commit them to St. Mungos." He looked hard at Severus. "Are you absolutely sure?"

Severus looked out the window onto the moors beyond. "Albus, nothing is sure in this life--even life itself. Ask me the odds of my conjecture, ask me to show you more of the logic, but to ask me for surety? No, Albus, I'm not sure."

"If it were anyone else--" He sighed again and folded his hands on the desk. "However, your ideas have never been the sunspots of delusion. I promise I'll look into it, especially for the possibility of a charm or curse we might have missed. Embedded in the sex? No, the potion makes more sense--" his voice trailed off. "It makes more sense than a charm and bears looking into, but we can't do more, my friend, unless we find something tangible. With Lucius singing like the yard bird survivor he is, we must tread carefully. Despite our triumph, Fudge is still making trouble. It's vital we capture and try the Death Eaters Lucius is betraying. Although--although--if what you say is true, then he's not giving us the inner circle. Yes, it bears looking into."

He looked over at Snape, his eyes distressed. "I'm sorry, merely the ruminations of a tired old man. Thank you Severus. Do you want to warn Harry, or shall I?"

"I'll do it. I've--other--matters to discuss with him anyway."

"Oh?" Dumbledore raised his brow at the statement.

Snape faltered. "Yes, like his career choices among other things."

"Ah yes, his letter of resignation threw Fudge for a loop, it did. I've never seen him so mad. Even when you were baiting him earlier that same day." He eyed him kindly over the half-moon spectacles. "I could have cheerfully throttled you, you know. Between your skillful gibes and Harry's letter, it took me an extra hour of his odious company to calm him down."

Snape looked as sheepish as he was ever going to get. "Sorry, didn't much think on that."

"No harm done, and it was amusing at the time." He chuckled, his smile genuine. "And thank you for taking over the onerous task of helping Mr. Potter choose a new career, although I admit I'm a bit surprised you would bother, given your past history with him. It saves me a spot of work since McGonagall has been unable to get much of a reply out of him. With her away on school business and this new situation--I don't want to wait. He's been uncommonly cagey about the whole thing."

'Cagey? More like scared spitless,' he thought. "I assure you, no one is more shocked by the offer than I," he said on a short bark of laughter.

Dumbledore gave him one of those infuriating smiles he'd pay dearly to forcefully remove. He noticed Albus pointedly glancing at the stack of papers on his desk. He took the hint.

Snape stood up and made his way to the door. "I'll be going Albus. Thank you for your time."

"Anytime, dear boy, anytime," he said as Snape walked out the door. He shook his head and bent to his tedious paperwork.

****

School was still not back in session. With everything in disarray, all the students who could were back home with their families; however, the older students remained and Dumbledore decided they needed to continue their studies regardless, so their classes had resumed. It gave them all a reason to turn the last few unreal weeks into something approaching normalcy, as well as the opportunity to catch up the missing month's worth of studies. The mornings were usually devoted to rebuilding the castle, which had taken serious damage during the last battle, the remaining students working side by side with the faculty and other specialists. The afternoons were double classes--one per day--or rest periods.

His interview with Albus had killed Snape's appetite for anything other than solitary thought. 'I suppose I could be better occupied by helping with the renovations, but right now that has about as much appeal as eating lunch with the First Year Gryffindors.' So when he returned from Dumbledore's office, he sat idle in his classroom ruminating still on the situation with Potter. 'On second thought, maybe that lunch might be more pleasant, after all,' he thought, the vision of insipid Gryffindor fledglings dancing through his head. 'It's enough to put someone off their feed for life.'

Severus knew that until he found a new direction to explore, Potter was stuck in the Auror Classes. Since he himself needed something to do to keep his mind off past events, Snape decided to take matters into his own hands. He'd never done well with free time. While he was uncomfortable with the previous night's pathos, and he skirted the more personal issues raised, the remaining thoughts convinced him Harry's decision to drop the Auror training was sound. The Auror's work itself could destroy him and not in a 'tipping over the parapet' kind of way, although that always remained a remote possibility.

'No, as much as I hate agreeing with Potter about anything, continuing the Auror training would be a very bad idea. I fully understand his need to expiate his iniquities, as he sees them; we all have demons left to fight inside us as a result of our efforts over the years.' He side-stepped this as well; he didn't want to look at his sore spots any more than Potter wanted to be reminded of his.

'While being an Auror might give him something positive to do with his life, it couldn't satisfy his 'itch' to make things 'right' again. With no direct reparation, his past would always haunt him; he would end up hating it, in much the same way we all hated the things we had to do to win. As much as we've had our differences, I wouldn't wish that on--Voldemort.' Again, he turned his wayward thoughts away from the depressing places they wanted to go.

He was startled by a latent insight. 'Except for the odd exception, I was able to keep my Potions work completely unsullied by my Death Eater activities. It would have been too much to bear to turn my one pleasure into the same anathema as everything else in my life. I at least had a vocation to protect; Potter has none except Quidditch, and we're both agreed it's not a viable option.'

Despite the sarcasm and angst, Harry had actually recited a fairly accurate picture of his abilities, although he'd left out one and glossed over another. 'Now the question is, how can he best exploit them?' Snape was not without resources and he took from the shelf behind him, a fairly recent book called "Wizarding Professions", which had a tabular format using OWL and NEWT scores as a basis for career choices. Once all the values, both objective and subjective were in place and calculated, there were other tables in the back outlining the most likely career choices for the derived scores as well as a suggested curriculum for each. Tedious but not impossible.

Chortling over his unexpected role as a Gryffindor counselor, he set to work. 'If such a thing even exists--McGonagall's haphazard efforts are a prime example of the uninspired leading the indifferent.'

Looking through the tables and applying Harry's OWL scores, he thought about how little he'd been able to use this workbook in past years. 'Really, I think most of my Slytherins would be better off somewhere other than Hogwarts. Perhaps a Muggle school with private tutouring would be more appropriate?'

It was a radical thought, but one he'd had often. Most of his Slytherins followed the path of their parents and very few went on to higher education. Hogwarts, for the most part, did not teach them how-to-rob-people-blind-while-making-them-want-it, nor did it teach the Dark Arts directly. Most of the parents of his students hired private teachers for the summer to fill in their 'proper' education and only sent their children to Hogwarts for the 'tradition and experience' or the contacts and alliances they could make with this and the next generation. 'So I was taught, so they are taught,' he thought sadly.

He had always been surprised Voldemort had never started his own school, one where he could be sure future generations of Death Eaters were properly indoctrinated and not subject to the temptations of the Light. And it would have kept them all firmly beyond Dumbledore's reach.

Finished with the objective scores, he started delineating Harry's articulated perceptions of his skills from the night before into the formulas, his mind wandering again, not fully occupied with such a mundane task. 'No, it's those who would remain, the ones with minds of their own who comprise the best that is Slytherin. And there are so few of them. It's our one weakness, this arrogance that we cannot be bothered to do more than we always have. Voldemort, like the others, never truly understood the power of diversity, only Power, which with nothing else to temper it, is a dead-ended trap.'

He grimaced at his next thought, 'As much as I dislike their simpering whining, the other Houses could teach mine so much if they would only listen. Perhaps now that the war is over and I am no longer required to keep up appearances, a new, more secular, curriculumn could be added to tempt my Slytherins away from their previously pre-ordained paths. It might be worth talking to Albus about.'

Almost done, he added the more personal, subjective scores for Harry's expressed desires and inclinations and was left with two choices. He muttered out loud, "Auror and Unspeakable? Damn, these choices are worse than I had when I started this whole exercise." Glancing at the clock, he was surprised it was almost time for his afternoon class to start arriving. He turned back to the tables and started searching for any errors.

Still talking to himself, he murmured, "Hold on a minute. If I add the skills he didn't mention and change Potions--like this--discount the History and beef up the Herbology--there. Now, add the personal choices and--Voila!" He now had three very different choices--Auror, Medi-Wizard, and Healer.

Healer? Now that might have some promise." He looked over the charts again. "Harry certainly meets all the academic criteria and undoubtedly has the talent, as I have good cause to know. I suspect the choice might give him the other satisfaction he wants. It bears looking into further.

He conferred with the curriculum. 'The Medi-Wizard has some smaller appeal as the Healer; it is well below his capabilities and would not challenge him as much. Besides, given how well he takes orders--' He snickered at the thought. 'The Auror would also be well within his capabilities but--unless he's changed his mind since--' It would have to wait now. He could hear the first of the students trickling in. He hurriedly but carefully, gathered all the papers off his desk and placed them and the workbook in the deep lap drawer for later use.

He would confront Harry after class.