LOST PERSPECTIVE 7

PAYBACK TIME

By Bellegeste

A/N: The next few chapters cut fairly rapidly between the kids and Snape… A little more Neville here. I always think he is an underused resource in canon.

Chapter 11:LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

"…and I'd got him at wand-point, backed up against the wall, and he was begging me not to curse him…" Harry, flushed with retrospective adventuring, affected not to notice as Hermione heaved her eyes in disapproval. He couldn't help himself - Neville was such an absorbent audience.

"Who was it? Did you get a good look? Was it one of the guys who was at the Department of Mysteries?" Neville questioned him eagerly, his own gripes briefly forgotten.

"Mask." Harry extemporised. "Couldn't see his face."

Disgusted, Hermione picked up the copy of the Daily Prophet and began to turn the pages noisily. If Harry enjoyed lying to Neville that was his business, but she wanted nothing to do with it. Nor, however, did she want to accuse him outright and make a scene. Seemingly entranced by the 'Cookery at Christmas' feature ('Have you Cooked your Goose? 101 ways to rehash turkey and game left-overs') she was, nonetheless, listening intently.

"So Snape's OK?" asked Neville.

"Yeah, a few scratches and bruises. As I said, I interrupted the guy - "

"Then I don't get it," said Neville, sounding puzzled.

Hermione eyed him over the top of her paper. She had gone very still. Suspense caught her breath and twisted it into ropes around her chest. She was waiting for Neville to continue, willing him to have picked up the anomalies in Harry's action-packed fiction. As yet she hadn't dared voice her suspicions to anyone, not even Harry, and the strain of keeping the secret was gnawing at her like toothache.

"Why didn't he kill him? The Death Eater? Why try to strangle someone when you could do the job quicker and quieter with a Curse? Why take the risk?" Neville pondered out loud. "It's risky enough breaking into St. Mungo's as it is, and getting to Snape's room, but… Strangling? No, I don't buy it." He was shaking his head slowly. "I mean, what if he'd woken up - well, he probably did - but he could have fought back, couldn't he? Snape's pretty strong…"

Not that night he wasn't, thought Hermione, but in principle she agreed. She was anxious for Neville to take it further.

"And then there were the scratches," she hinted.

"Aye, Harry said."

"But Harry hardly saw them! They were really deep, Neville. Vicious. What sort of Death Eater claws a man across the face? That's not the way they work."

She had lifted the lid now and one by one her slanderous assumptions were clambering out of the box and insinuating themselves into the conversation.

"Hermione, what are you getting at?" A short while ago Harry had been worried that she might trash his story in front of Neville and show him up. She'd spared him that, but now there seemed to be something more sinister going on. She was agitated and nervous, and there was that infuriating, patronising note in her voice that told him she'd spotted some glaringly obvious error which he, in his crass, inadequate, male imperviousness, had overlooked.

"What?" he demanded.

The newspaper slipped off her knee, its pages fanning out onto the floor and, automatically, she knelt to gather it back together. She didn't answer at once, but went on lining up the sheets of print, patting the edges into position, smoothing and folding. Suddenly she looked up at him, her eyes imploring and fearful.

"Didn't it seem odd to you - the way Snape was talking to Dumbledore that night? When we Portkeyed to his office?"

"Odd? I didn't notice anything."

"Well, you were half asleep. But it was like they weren't telling us everything…"

"There's nothing odd about that!" When did adults ever tell you any more than they thought you needed to know?

"Harry, I'm serious. Alright then, don't you think it's strange that no one from the Ministry has been to interview us? Either of us? And has Snape spoken to you about it - asked you to go through your version of events again? Well, has he? No. And what Neville said just now - why didn't the 'assassin' use the Killing Curse? He could have murdered Snape in his sleep and disappeared, and none of us would have been any the wiser."

"'Appen he didn't have his wand," put in Neville, "or could be he didn't use it because…" he floundered for a reason, "…because he went in to… to talk to him? Maybe he wasn't going to kill him, but things got nasty…"

Hermione was nodding vigorously at Neville.

"Harry, I think it's possible Snape may have known the attacker."

Neville appeared to be counting backwards on his fingers, his brow puckered. Hermione could see him hovering over the scraps of information, turning them over and around in his mind and eventually placing them dubiously into the awful picture. The painstaking, jigsaw process irritated Harry to distraction.

"What are you saying?" he cried angrily. "That Snape's still a Death Eater? That he was having a secret meeting? In hospital? That's rubbish! You're both mad! Didn't you see what they did to him?"

"The dates fit," Neville stated, ignoring him. "…for the moon. And then there's the scratches…"

"Harry - " Hermione was trying to be calm and rational, but her voice was shaking. "Don't you remember how Hestia told us that the Raggnerites went on the rampage on the first full moon after the solstice? And remember how bright it was that night when we were flying over the moors?"

"So?" What stuck in Harry's mind about that flight was how pissed he'd been with Snape for dragging him away from all the excitement… and how frozen his hands had been… He hadn't been gazing at the moon!

"What if… what if it was a werewolf who attacked Snape?" Hermione whispered her suspicion, praying that Harry would quash it with some irrefutable counter-argument, some proof that she was hopelessly, horribly mistaken. Something he'd neglected to mention so far. But his expression became scared and hostile.

"I'm not listening to this. It's sick!"

"You've got to listen. Do you think I'm happy about it either? But it would explain why Snape and Dumbledore have been hushing it up. And why there was no magic, and the throttling…"

"And the cloak?" Harry spat. "How often have you seen a werewolf in a cloak? This isn't Little Red Riding Hood, you know. And how did he get away? Do werewolves Disapparate? Don't they bite?"

He didn't want to believe her; he deliberately refused to understand the implications. Hermione knew she would have to spell it out.

"Oh Harry, "she sighed, "What if it were Remus?"

Even Neville started, and he had guessed what was coming.

"Remus!"

"Think about it - he would have been starting to change back by then. Perhaps he thought he was OK - he might have thought he'd be alright visiting Snape… Or maybe he needed more Potion or something. I don't know. Harry, don't you see…?"

Harry didn't want to see. He was categorical, obstinate, terrified lest it were true.

"All I can see is that you've lost it. It can't have been Remus. He wouldn't… It just can't. Anyway, Snape said it was a Death Eater."

No, he didn't, Hermione thought. He never actually said that.

End of Chapter

Next Chapter: TO THE MANOR BORN. Snape returns to the scene of his childhood.