Sneaking around the castle at night was much easier than Melanie expected. The only time she encountered someone else was when Professor Trelawney walked down the other side of the hall, muttering something about an early death for Harry.
"Minus Points," she whispered, hoping that the door would open quietly and that Snape would still be awake. Luckily, she was right on both counts; the door silently opened, and Snape was sitting in an armchair, reading.
Snape was so engrossed in his book that he didn't notice anyone was in there. It took Melanie a minute to realize that she was still wearing the invisibility cloak. "Professor Snape?" she asked, now removing it.
"Melanie? What are you doing here? Is everything alright?" Snape quickly asked, dropping the book.
"Oh, most everything's okay," Melanie replied, sitting down in the opposite chair, "It's just that I don't know if I can take this spying thing any longer...Harry was saying horrible things about you this evening, and it was all I could do not to say anything in your defense."
"How did you manage to get his cloak, then?" Snape asked.
"Oh! Well, I told him that I wanted to go study in the library tonight, so he lent me it."
"Melanie, I'm very surprised that the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You seem much to cunning, more a Slytherin...wait a minute. How did you come here without Harry knowing? Doesn't he have that blasted map?"
"Oh, the Marauder's Map? He let me borrow that, too. Told me to use it so that I wouldn't get caught."
Snape smiled, then asked Melanie he could see the map. After she said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," the contents of were revealed to Snape, who had been waiting a very long time to see something other than insults on it.
"So this is what those four dunderheads spent all of their time working on," Snape murmured, watching the tiny dots marking every person in Hogwarts.
Melanie made some tea and sat and talked with Snape for quite a few hours. It was soon very late at night, so she stood up and got ready to go.
As Snape was folding up the Marauder's Map for her, his robe sleeve got caught on the edge of the table, exposing his Dark Mark from his Death Eater days. Melanie gasped and hurriedly stopped putting the cloak on. Just as fast, Snape fixed his sleeve and tried to nonchalantly go back to his tea.
"Wh-what was that?" Melanie asked. She knew what that mark was associated with, but didn't want to admit that to herself.
"Huh? Oh...umm...just a...tattoo from my...bike days?"
"I'm not stupid," Melanie firmly replied. "I know that that came from. Why didn't you tell me you were...one of them? How are you here now?" Questions were racing through her head; suddenly the late time of night didn't matter.
Snape sighed the sigh of a very old man. "Do you really want the story tonight? It's very late."
"Yes." Melanie said, not taking her eyes off of the spot on his arm. Neither spoke for a minute, then Snape sighed again, and sat back down, obviously trying to think of a place to start.
"You could always start with that time you were a death eater," Melanie sarcastically prompted him.
"Okay, okay...so. Yes, I was a Death Eater for Voldemort. And for a while, it was great. But then Albus Dumbledore asked me if I wanted to teach here, and act as a go-between for him and the dark lord. I wanted the Dark Mark to leave me, but nothing made it go away. I suppose Voldemort is still slightly with me.
"So you're not fully on the good side?" Melanie asked, on the verge of tears.
"I would think I am..." Snape slowly replied. "But I still have this mark that—"
"How could you be nice to me? Were you trying to get me on i his /i side?" Now Melanie was crying, barely listening to Snape.
"Melanie!! What?? No!" Snape said, reaching out an arm to comfort her.
"No...I can't be here..." she replied, shoving him away, "Goodbye." And with that, she grabbed the cloak and map, and stormed back to the Gryffindor tower. It took a very long time for her to fall asleep, but when she did, she did not wake up until noon the next day, Sunday.
