Chapter 27: The Tangled Web

PRESENT: LATE FEBRUARY

Not surprisingly, Dumbledore called a faculty meeting after dinner that evening. Just as unsurprisingly, Andrea was also present. She had changed out of her pantsuit, which had practically screamed "Muggle law enforcement", and into the dark, dangerous robes associated worldwide with Aurors. She stood to one side in the faculty boardroom, silently observing everyone who entered, her mere presence enough to elicit gulps and furtive looks from some of the more nervous teachers. Hagrid, in particular, did not react well to the presence of an Auror—no surprise, given that he had spent three months enjoying the hospitality of both Aurors and Dementors in Azkaban. Most of the teachers, however, had long practice at appearing unflappable in all but the most trying situations, of which this was not one, and they put that skill to good use now.

Once everyone was seated, Dumbledore, who alone of the faculty remained standing, indicated Andrea with one hand. "I wish at this time to introduce to all of you Agent Kimberly Hiller," he said quietly. "She is one of the Aurors currently assigned to the investigation of Crimson Fell's murder."

That brief introduction sent an unpleasant stirring and murmuring through the ranks of teachers. Meli remained as still and silent as a stone in the midst of this river, however, as did, she noticed, Snape, Zarekael, McGonagall, Vector, and a few other stalwart individuals.

Dumbledore waited while the murmurs ran their course and died down, then he continued. "Agent Hiller will be asking questions of many of you during the next fortnight or so. Please cooperate with her in her efforts to bring Miss Fell's murderer to justice." He turned now to Andrea, clearly inviting her to speak.

Andrea nodded once, respectfully, then stepped forward. "There are only a few things I'll be asking about," she said, intentionally (Meli thought) thickening her American accent. As soon as she spoke, another brief stir went through the faculty. When it, too, faded, Andrea smiled wryly, then resumed. "We're attempting to put together profiles on both Crimson Fell and her murderer. Both were students here starting just over seventeen years ago, so I'll be speaking with those of you who taught and attended here during their time as students. If any of the rest of you have anything that would be helpful, though, I'd be glad to hear from you." She raised amused eyebrows, then added, "And yes, as you've doubtless noticed, I'm an American. The murderer we're pursuing killed an American citizen, so the British Ministry has graciously allowed American Aurors to conduct the investigation."

There were no questions for either her or Dumbledore, so the meeting was adjourned shortly thereafter. As Andrea moved across the room to join Meli, Dumbledore cleared his throat and called Snape and Zarekael over to him.

"It's fortunate that Agent Hiller's arrival necessitated the calling of a meeting," the headmaster said. "I need to speak with both of you about a complex potion. I hope you'll be able to brew it . . ."

Dumbledore's words faded as Meli led Andrea away, but inwardly she smiled fit to make a pit viper squirm. There had, in fact, been another meeting before dinner between Dumbledore, Snape, Zarekael, and her, laying out a delicate but necessary cover for the two Death Eaters during the Auror's stay. Her presence would make it impossible for them to answer Voldemort's summons—which, due to the laying of groundwork for two unspecified missions, were becoming more and more frequent—without arousing suspicion, so a ready excuse that would not itself raise suspicion was needed. A complex potion that the school actually needed, requiring some ingredients to be added every hour on the hour and others to be added at irregular intervals, would cover for the Potions master and his apprentice needing to leave suddenly. However, since Andrea would doubtless check to see that such a potion was actually being brewed (and was actually needed), and since the collaboration of someone who knew the Auror well enough to put her off-scent would be invaluable, Meli had been brought in on the conspiracy. Her precise role was as yet undetermined, but it required her to behave naturally and calmly when situations might motivate her to act otherwise, and to keep an eye on the potion that Snape and Zarekael would be brewing, adding what needed adding when they were unable to see to it, without making it look like she had anything to do with it.

What a tightrope we walk to protect from one another people who are fighting for the same cause, she thought sadly. The evil of the enemy is most clearly shown in the way he divides allies and pits them against each other.

AUGUST 1986, FRESHMAN YEAR AT UNIVERSITY

By dinner time that first day, Meli and Andrea had pretty well settled that they still had things to talk about that shouldn't be discussed in the cafeteria. Andrea was only too happy to suggest calling for pizza; Muggle cafeteria food was thoroughly infamous.

There followed a highly amusing episode (for Meli) as Andrea tried to figure out how to work the phone. After several abortive attempts at dialing off-campus, she turned coolly to Meli.

"I don't suppose that you, having been raised by Muggles, have any clue how to get an outside line on this dang thing?"

Meli suppressed a grin, but it was a near miss. "Am I to assume, then, that you didn't take Muggle Studies?"

"Take what?"

"I'll take that as confirmation." Meli took the proffered phone, glanced at the phone number, and nonchalantly dialed, taking care to hit 9 first.

The person who took her call had some difficulty adjusting to Meli's accent, which was more than a little frustrating, but after several minutes of talking, she successfully ordered a large mushroom pizza. She hung up, then turned to her roommate, not quite hiding a smirk.

"You want to know what I think?" Andrea said darkly.

"What do you think?"

"I think you're a smug little brat."

Meli took a bow as she deposited the phone in her roommate's hands. "Thank you for noticing." She raised her eyebrows. "Returning to the earlier topic . . . your school didn't offer Muggle Studies?"

Andrea stared at her a moment, shaking her head in wonderment. "Not by that name," she answered at last. "What you call Muggle Studies is probably what Ariel Academy dubbed Exterior Social Studies, and no, I didn't take it."

Meli wrinkled her nose. "'Exterior Social Studies'?"

Andrea smiled mirthlessly. "Yeah. It's a self-esteem thing," she replied sardonically. "They're worried it'll damage our self-esteem—especially those students living in the Muggle world—if we have classes whose names are markedly different from the ones in Muggle schools. You know, we'll feel inferior or weird or something like that. Muggles take Social Studies; hence, we take Exterior Social Studies. Now isn't that special?"

"I'm going to throw up."

"Try actually going to that school for seven years," Andrea suggested grimly. "What you call Herbology probably answers to our Botany, but that might be a dialect difference; Herbology doesn't sound particularly abnormal. But in place of Potions, we took Natural Chemistry, and Fortune-Telling became—get this—Time Meteorology."

"We called it Divination," Meli told her. "We also called it incredibly stupid."

Andrea shrugged. "That, too."

"Time Meteorology?" Meli mused incredulously. "Some sick muddlehead lay awake nights thinking these up, didn't he?"

"As near as I can tell."

"What about Arithmancy, Charms, Transfiguration?" Meli inquired. "Or Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

Andrea furrowed her brow. "I think Arithmancy sounds like it'd correspond to Integrated Meteorological Math," she said slowly.

Meli collapsed on her bed, laughing out loud. "That's terrible!" she hooted.

Andrea smiled and shrugged helplessly. "So what was I supposed to do about it?" she retorted. "I'd need explanations of Charms and Transfiguration to tell you what we called them." Her smile faded. "And we don't have Defense Against the Dark Arts—or Self-Defense, as they called it."

Meli abruptly sobered. "You what?!" she demanded. "Why?"

The fire of long-standing anger smoldered in Andrea's eyes. "It teaches absolute values and seeks to impose what certain parties—Death Eaters and sympathizers—call Judeo-Christian morality, on the students. Since the Ministry funds the school, they successfully had it removed from the curricula of all the American schools of magic, on the grounds of separation of Church and State."

Meli stared at her. "You must be joking."

"Don't I wish!" Andrea's smile was that of a person with no way out of a bind. "Thus the motivation for my aspirations."

"And to what do you aspire?" Meli asked.

"I'm majoring in Criminal Justice," Andrea replied, "then going to Blackwing University to become an Auror. And from Day One, I'm going to push to get Self-Defense put back into Ariel, Prospero, and Tres Brujas' required curricula. If no one thinks it's important, they won't bother to do it, and all it takes is a charismatic leader who also happens to be a Dark wizard . . ."

"Like Voldemort," Meli murmured. "Even those who wouldn't turn would be crippled, lacking the knowledge and skills to stand up to him."

Andrea nodded. "And . . . Voldemort . . . was dangerous enough in a country where everyone takes Defense Against the Dark Arts."

Meli shook her head slowly, memories of Voldemort's charisma and the Death Eaters' pursuits and capabilities dancing through her mind. "Those bureaucrats have no idea what they've done," she breathed.

"Maybe they're counting on help from Britain," Andrea muttered.

"Britain's got enough problems of its own," Meli said grimly. "And you can be sure that as soon as America's in over its head, Britain won't have anyone to spare."

"You think another Dark Lord's coming?"

Meli shook her head. "I don't know that we got rid of the last one."

Andrea's eyes narrowed. "I thought Harry Potter pretty well finished him off," she said.

"Defeated him, yes." Meli knew a death scream when she heard one; she'd heard quite enough in her day, courtesy of Voldemort. What she had heard that night had been something other. "But there are ways for a clever Dark wizard, which he is, to come back if he was not all the way killed."

"I very much hope you're wrong," Andrea said quietly.

Meli managed a weak smile. "So do I, Andrea." For a whole host of reasons.

PRESENT: LATE FEBRUARY

The following day, Meli arranged for Andrea to guest-speak in her Defense Against the Dark Arts classes, feeling that it would serve a dual useful purpose of showing the students that what they were learning was applicable to life and of keeping the Auror out of trouble. If she was visiting Meli's classes, she couldn't be stalking either Snape or Zarekael. Meli wasn't quite sure how to keep Andrea out of trouble for the rest of her visit, but she had planned day-to-day before and could do it again. Her old roommate was quite willing to visit the classes, counting it an honor to speak with students who had received necessary and desperately needed education that she had not received until entering the Auror training program at Blackwing.

Andrea, perceiving that a single-topic lecture might not adequately keep the students' attention, decided to use a question-answer format, inviting students to ask whatever was on their minds with the promise that she would answer as well as she could, if she was at liberty to do so. As a result, nearly every first-year class (with the sole exception of Ravenclaw) asked if she had ever faced down a hinkypunk and, if so, how she had defeated that fearsome foe.

Meli knew well in advance, and that without asking, that Andrea most looked forward to the fifth-year Gryffindors, among whom she would be able to catch a glimpse of the famous Harry Potter. She also suspected that the Auror hoped to evaluate the Boy Who Lived based upon what questions he did—or didn't—ask. That particular class period didn't go quite as foreseen, however.

The first hand raised was Hermione Granger's.

"Why isn't the Sangriatus Vomitus in the Vomitum family?" she asked without preamble. "You're vomiting blood, yes, but after all, you're still vomiting."

Andrea smiled as most of the students in the room went green. "Well, it's really just a matter of semantics," she replied. "The first word of the curse is Sangrio, so that determines the family it belongs to. If the first word was Vomita, it would be in the Vomitum family."

Ron Weasley raised his hand next and set the stage for a complete U-turn from the established format. "How come only Avada Kedavra is Unforgivable?" he inquired, screwing up his mouth in puzzlement. "There are lots nastier deadly curses, like the Sangriatus family. Why aren't those Unforgivables?"

The introduction of one of her two greatest pet peeves drew from Andrea a predatory grin. "Well, you'll have to tell me something first," she said. "Do you want the real answer, or the bureaucratic drivel?"

Ron laughed, perhaps thinking of a bureaucrat he knew or had met. "Both, I guess," he answered. "I really want the truth, but the bureaucratic drivel sounds interesting."

"The bureaucratic answer is that the Kedavra is more calloused because it shows ultimate disregard for human life," Andrea began, but she never got further than that.

"I beg to differ," a quiet voice said matter-of-factly from the back of the room. All eyes, including those of the teacher and the Auror, turned to the shadows where Zarekael was busily straightening and unfolding his tall form. Meli knew for a fact that he had not been there when class had started; he must have come in during her introduction of "Agent Hiller" or shortly thereafter.

Andrea, meanwhile, favored Zarekael with an appraising look, then nodded and gestured for him to continue.

Zarekael acknowledged her yielding of the floor with a slight bow, then went on. "The other curses—such as the Sangriatus series—show more cold blood and deliberation than the Kedavra ever could do. In a sense, the Kedavra is the coward's way out because death is easily dealt out and the death itself does not seem real to the killer—it's easier to hide behind those two words. With the other curses, the killer watches the suffering of another human being who is bleeding or suffocating or vomiting, for example, and that is more calloused than simply killing the victim."

"Well said," Andrea said. "On that we agree." She paused as an idea lit behind her eyes. "For the edification of the class, would you be willing to examine a textbook case?" Zarekael nodded, so she continued, "Here's a high-profile case most of you'll recognize since it's fairly recent."

A horrible premonition seized Meli and the taste of bitter irony filled her mouth. Before she could fall, she leaned backward against her desk and prepared to weather the coming storm.

"You should all have heard about the Golden murders," Andrea went on, not noticing Meli's behavior. "There were three victims. The husband, John, was tortured and killed first. The skin on the front of his torso was peeled back, his ribcage was torn open, his organs fell out, and he died when he was stabbed through the heart. The only magic used on him was an enervation charm to keep him from passing out from the pain.

"The wife, Elizabeth, and their four year-old daughter were forced to watch. Then Elizabeth was hit with the Sangriatus Poros and, while she was dying, her daughter was killed by the Kedavra. Based upon your previous statements, which death is more calloused, and why?"

Meli forced herself to look at Zarekael. He had taken to heart the term "textbook" and had clearly removed himself entirely from the scenario being described; his manner was analytic, as though this was nothing more than a logic problem. Given the possible consequences of his showing any other reaction, Meli could not fault him.

After a thoughtful pause, Zarekael said, "Let me see if I have this straight. Am I correct in saying that you believe these were all done by the same person?" Andrea nodded. "And the husband died first, his body mutilated by a knife-wielding attacker." The Auror nodded again. "The wife was attacked next, but she didn't die next. Instead, she was hit with the Sangriatus Poros, one of the slower-acting curses, and while she was dying, the little girl was killed with the Kedavra." At Andrea's third nod, he shook his head once. "Perhaps this is not the best example."

Andrea was taken aback. "Could you explain that?"

"We're discussing the callousness of the Kedavra in relation to other deadly curses. In this case, the context of the Kedavra makes it more callous than it would be otherwise. To address the original question, however, we could examine each of the incidents in isolation. In that case, what was done to the little girl was actually a mercy after what she had just witnessed. However, the fact that she was murdered at all demonstrates a disregard for human life. It must be noted, though, that she suffered no pain; she was simply dead at the end.

"Her mother's case was a step up in the murderer's callousness; he used a slow-acting curse. He would have watched her slowly dying in agony. Depending upon the victim involved, the death takes an untold amount of time, which suggests further that the killer enjoyed it. That is beyond disregard for human life."

Meli's stomach lurched and her skin went cold as she perceived the hidden message conveyed by those words. Zarekael, as she had observed, did not relish the memory of killing Elizabeth, but at the time, he had enjoyed murdering her. Not a comforting thing to know, really.

He continued in his analysis, never missing a beat. "As for the husband," he said, "there was no hiding behind words. Here the culprit had to harm him physically; based upon your description, he would have had to be near his victim, who was very probably screaming and struggling. The killer had blood on his hands with the husband, which was not the case with the other two victims. A killing in this manner suggests either a deranged mind or someone so cold and calculating that he has the ability to willfully detach from himself and to ignore another's agony. This, I believe, would be the ultimate disregard for human life." There was an odd sheen in his eyes as he paused, then finished with the final nail in his own coffin: "Nevertheless, each of these three murders is worthy of a life sentence in Azkaban—at the very least."

I know for a fact that he's not deranged, Meli thought, catching his second hidden message. He can detach—he has detached before. The chilling expression he had worn during their conversation at the edge of the Forbidden Forest came back to her, and she forced herself not to shiver with reaction.

Andrea took a moment to process this thorough spiel, blinking a few times before she nodded. "A very complete analysis," she told him. "And well thought-out to boot. Thank you."

Zarekael bowed again, then stepped back to the shadows. At that juncture, Meli noticed two things, one of which rattled her more than anything else had yet done.

First, she noticed that Harry Potter was watching Zarekael intently, even suspiciously, as though he suspected that Zarekael's analysis hadn't been all off-the-cuff. That would have been bad enough, but then Meli saw that Zarekael was watching Andrea just as intently.

He didn't come here for the entertainment of hearing an adversary talk, she realized suddenly. He came here to build up a profile on her. And if he thinks she's getting too close to anything that could compromise either his cover or Snape's . . . She laid a hand on the desk to steady herself. Zarekael is planning to kill Andrea Underhill.

Andrea, quite unaware of the potential shortness of her own life, surveyed the class. "Are there any other questions?"

There was a very long pause as the students attempted to shake the dark mood that had settled over them during the extended treatment of deadly curses. Finally, Seamus Finnigan raised a hesitant hand.

"What was your funniest mishap as an Auror?" he asked cautiously.

The question elicited a smirk from Andrea. "Well, actually," she said, "this was the first day my current partner and I were together. Someone called in a report that a flock of hinkypunks were loose in their neighborhood . . ."

Meli tuned out the story, which she had heard a few times already—five times just that day—and instead turned her thoughts to figuring out the earliest time she could arrange a meeting with Dumbledore without alerting Andrea that something was up. After all, telling Andrea that someone was plotting to kill her was only the first disastrous drop in the bucket—and while it wouldn't be wise to warn the Auror anyway, none of them could afford for Andrea to start asking the questions that must logically follow from that initial tidbit of information. Snape might already know by now, but whether Dumbledore knew it or not, it would be best to have it on the record before something happened to put it there in a more dramatic fashion.

Near the end of Andrea's story (when she had just gotten to the part about Kevin being allergic to manticore fur, just after the part about Andrea's encounter with a misplaced boggart, and just prior to the part about the hinkypunks tarring and feathering a chicken as a diversion), Meli tuned back in to find half of the class nearly on the floor because they were laughing so hard. She studiously avoided looking to Zarekael for his reaction; if she was to function according to her role for the remainder of the day, she had to remain calm and collected.

After a rousing description of how she and Kevin had finally, against numerous odds, rounded up and confined the renegade hinkypunks, Andrea had about a five minute breather while the students laughed themselves into eventual silence. Even so, one or two of them randomly burst out laughing at odd intervals throughout the rest of the period. Seeing that another humorous story would probably not be in order, and perceiving the low chances that any of the students was thinking clearly enough to formulate a question, Andrea apparently decided to round out the hour with a question of her own.

"Now here's a good hypothetical question for you all to consider," she said thoughtfully, turning to Meli, who fervently hoped that it would be purely educational. "Could the Ministry send in a spy to infiltrate the Death Eaters?"

Meli smiled and straightened, drawing her wand. "An excellent educational question," she replied. Andrea, you're my friend, but I really hate you sometimes. Here I am, trying to figure out how to save your life, and you're doing your best to get yourself killed anyway! She pointed her wand at the air over her desk. "Tabula rasa." A shimmering surface appeared in the air where she summoned it. "All right, Agent Hiller. You introduce a very interesting idea, so let's run with it and play it out to its logical end."

The students, she saw, also watched the interaction with rapt attention. Selling them would take precious little effort; putting a close friend off the scent would be a touch harder, unfortunately, but for the sake of another close friend present, she slid into Slytherin mode and made the most of it. She began writing with her wand, and when she stepped aside again, the words "Infiltrator" and "Bought Spy" glowed red at the top of the slate. Branching out from the former heading were the words "Former Death Eater" and "New Recruit"; branching out from the latter were the words "Coward" and "Irredeemable".

"There are two options which come to mind when dealing with covert operations," Meli said. "Most preferable is to have someone on the inside whom you trust, for obvious reasons."

Andrea nodded, a peculiar look in her eyes. She was trying to figure out Meli's tactic, and so far it eluded her. That was good.

Meli tapped "Bought Spy" with her wand. "Sometimes it's possible to buy the loyalty of a member of the group in question," she continued. "In the case of Death Eaters, however, we run into a fundamental problem. By their very nature, the Death Eaters are either too cowardly to be trusted or too loyal, either to the Dark Lord or to the quest for power, to be turned by anything as paltry as money or other wealth." She struck a line through "Bought Spy", and it and its branches exploded in small, impressive fireballs.

"Now, that leaves us with the option Agent Hiller has suggested." She nodded respectfully to Andrea, tapped "Infiltrator", and smiled again. "It certainly is more viable than the other, and it gives us the added advantage of sending in someone we know and trust one hundred percent.

"There are two different types of people we could send in. We could send a repentant Death Eater—someone they already know—or we could send fresh blood that they've probably never encountered."

She raised her eyebrows and looked to the class. "Which would you send?"

Hermione's was the first hand in the air; Meli nodded to her. "I would send a new recruit," Hermione answered. "There's less of a chance that they'd know much about him and less of a chance they'd find out he's a spy."

Andrea was frowning thoughtfully, but made no comment.

"True enough." Meli paused a beat, then went on. "However, this is a double-edged fact because while the Death Eaters, and more importantly, the Dark Lord, may not know enough about him to suspect he's a spy, they will also not trust him very much because they don't know enough about him. Any intelligence he could provide would be incomplete, almost to the point of uselessness, and he would have no chance at sabotage for some time—months, or perhaps even years. He would certainly be unable to infiltrate the inner circle, where the most valuable information is to be gathered.

"A former Death Eater would be more known," she continued. "That might make him more likely to be trusted, but there are other serious disadvantages that would accompany that. For example, all of the Death Eaters who survived the Dark Lord's fall both alive and free from Azkaban were people who denied their previous loyalties. Some even testified against other Death Eaters, the better to secure their own freedom. How far do you think any of them trusts the others?"

Silence greeted this question, but she could hear wheels turning in the proper direction. Andrea, by contrast, had an odd little smile indicative of wheels turning in a wholly different direction. Oh, now that's just ducky, she sighed internally.

"Moreover," she went on quietly, forcing herself not to choke on her next words, "there are initiation rites by which any of them must prove their loyalty." She cleared her throat. "For example, the Golden murders are suspected to have been part of an initiation." Her students looked ill; Andrea nodded thoughtfully; Zarekael was unreadable. "A former Death Eater would know only too well what such proof of loyalty entails. I can assure you that going back to something like that will not appeal to him in the least. His unwillingness to go so far would surely expose him as a spy. A new recruit would almost certainly be likewise exposed."

She returned her attention to the words floating behind her. "So, Agent Hiller, you ask if we could send in a spy." She arched an eyebrow. "Can we? Of course. The true question, however, is will we?" She slowly and deliberately crossed out "Infiltrator", and as the remaining words went up in smoke, she answered, "I very seriously doubt it. We shall have to find other ways of dealing effectively with the Dark Lord."

As if on cue, the bell rang and the students slowly filed out. Meli took a deep breath, not daring even to sigh with relief. If Andrea had seen through it, she would say so soon enough; if not, Zarekael might well leave his knives in their sheaths another day.

What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. She didn't know offhand who had said that, but she knew that poet for a very wise person indeed. The web grew larger and larger, ever more intricate, and ever more deadly—not to flies, but to the very spiders that wove it.

The bell rang, signaling the beginning of Meli's free period and turning loose the fifth year Gryffindors. Andrea noticed suddenly that Zarekael had already departed, probably before the bell, and that turned her mind to an analysis of the dialogue she'd had with him "for educational purposes". It had proven quite educational, as it happened, as had Meli's later answer to the Auror's "hypothetical" question.

Based upon her observations of both Snape and Zarekael, as well as Meli's continued defense of Snape, a clear picture of the probable state of affairs was forming in Andrea's mind.

Meli would not defend a Death Eater who was loyal to Voldemort; they were enemies, antitheses one of the other. The chances of her being mistaken about Snape's loyalties were small, and then of course there was Dumbledore. He was, if possible, even more prescient in these matters than Meli was, and he plainly trusted both Snape and Zarekael.

All right, then. I'll ask her one more time about Snape, and if she still stands by him, I'll know that my gut instinct is correct, and he's all right.

Andrea's gut had told her as soon as she'd met the father and son that they were creepy but on the right side; she only hoped that her gut wasn't slipping.

What her gut hadn't told her was what sort of disloyal former Death Eater Snape might be. Two possibilities had remained, and it had been up to her logical faculties to determine the rest—not that the distinction mattered . . . but on the other hand, if she could figure out what his situation was, she might be able to help him in some way should the need arise.

Zarekael had displayed a surprising capacity for serious thought—surprising for a nineteen year-old, anyway, she amended. He was very mature, as exemplified by his ability to teach at such a young age, and he had a compelling ethical and moral standard, shown in his final verdict in the Golden case. He did not display a disregard for human life or a desensitization to violence, either of which might surface in a war orphan. Conversely, of course, a war orphan might develop a higher sensitivity to the value of human life and to the violence that took it. Perhaps Zarekael had always been that way and Snape had encouraged (or at least not discouraged) him in it, or perhaps Snape had infused in him a sense of morality and ethics. Either possibility spoke in Snape's favor.

Zarekael's detached manner of answering suggested that he had little or no experience at having carried out such horrors and that they were unreal to him as a result—Andrea thought. However, that detachment might come from having been exposed to the horrors of war earlier in life; his detachment might indicate a desensitization, then. But when viewed in light of his evident ethics, that desensitization did not preclude a respect for human life and a moral opposition to the likes of Voldemort.

Approaching the question from a different direction, Andrea saw that something held Zarekael at Hogwarts, something other than his apprenticeship. Even in Europe, where long-standing traditions were still observed, potions apprenticeships were rarely heard of; most potions masters obtained their training at universities nowadays. Based upon her observations, Andrea was confident that Zarekael would have done well outside of Hogwarts, and he seemed the sort that would wish to leave, to learn more about the rest of the world. He was curious and intelligent; nothing about himself should have held him back.

Thus, it must have been something outside of himself that kept him from going, and Andrea strongly suspected that that something was Snape.

Aurors the world over had noted subtle signs of Voldemort's return, and by the time word got out that Hogwarts' Chamber of Secrets had been reopened, only Aurors who were given to criminally foolish wishful thinking even dared to hope that Voldemort was gone for good. How much more, then, would a former Death Eater in close proximity to these happenings be aware that Voldemort would rise again and soon? Snape, who actually had a Dark Mark, would know even better than Andrea the multiple disadvantages of such a brand; he would have known that if Voldemort rose and he did not return to the Dark Lord's service, he would suffer.

As Snape's adopted son, Zarekael might very well have learned of this. Had Snape returned as a spy, or even a loyal Death Eater, there would be no reason for Zarekael to remain at Hogwarts; indeed, he would have been safer elsewhere. As Meli had pointed out, Snape would have been suspected of treachery from the moment of his return, and had Voldemort thought that anything was awry, Zarekael would make a convenient hostage, easily grabbed by students being courted by the Death Eaters. Moreover, his remaining at Hogwarts would make it far more likely that he would learn of his father's illicit activities and jump to the conclusion that Snape was a Death Eater (if he had not, indeed, learned of Snape's prior activities, which was also plausible), and his ethical standards would not permit him to remain silent.

But Zarekael had stayed at Hogwarts, and he was pursuing his father's profession. In fact, he had immediately picked up more duties than Andrea might ordinarily have expected a first-year apprentice to do. He had been teaching nearly half of the Potions classes for a year and a half now, and he had been an apprentice only two months longer than that. This suggested to Andrea that there had been some urgency to it, as if Snape had feared that he would be unable to carry his full workload. Given that Voldemort's preparation for his return had begun about the time Zarekael could have started his apprenticeship, it made sense; Snape's Dark Mark would have begun to darken either that summer or the autumn immediately following, a sure sign if he needed one that his respite was coming to an end.

So, faithful son and friend that he was, Zarekael had put his future temporarily (he must have hoped) and partially on hold, taking a position as Snape's apprentice in order to help him when things turned bad. Snape had a great deal of self-control when necessity demanded it, Andrea perceived, but even beneath his impassive surface, he must be suffering a great deal.

Well, she amended, his relatively impassive surface. Some strain showed through, and according to Meli, he had a temper that was best not tried, even under the best of circumstances. All things considered, he was holding up quite well; it required the perceptive eyes of an Auror—or a close friend—to see through it.

Meli must know, then, she thought suddenly. No wonder she says I'm barking up the wrong tree.

Unless, of course, there was something else going on . . .

That maddening possibility kept coming back, tapping steadily at her skull with the terrible regularity of Chinese water torture. But her gut told her that Snape and Zarekael were on her side in the war, and Meli would never deliberately deceive her—not in matters of right and wrong.

All right, you vicious little voice, she thought darkly. I'll ask Meli one more time, and then you'd better shut up once and for all or you'll wish otherwise.

Not that she knew precisely how to punish a voice in her head.