Evanna wandered the corridors, trying to decide what to do. Professor Snape had not been in his office, and Narcissus had not answered the door either, trying to downplay her presence in Hogwarts with Umbridge in charge. She nearly jumped when she heard Umbridge's shrill voice going toward the entrance hall.

"Hurry, children. The sooner the Minister learns of Dumbledore's treachery from me-"

Evanna had ducked into an alcove and watched wide eyed as Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were lead out of the castle doors, their wands clutched in Umbridge's hand. Somehow, Evanna wasn't sure how, Harry had caught her staring, eyes hardening as she watched him leave.

...last family I have left…. Only person who is trying to keep me safe…. Being tortured by Voldemort and she…

Evanna tore her gaze from Harry, knowing in her gut that she could never have ignored the coin in her pocket, could never leave Harry alone and in danger. But what could she do on such little information?

Professor Snape had a Floor connection that was unmonitored. Maybe, just maybe, if she could go to her father, distract him-

She turned and raced back to the dungeons, not even pausing as she pointed her wand at the door of Professor Snape's office and blasted it open with a surge of erratic power that broke even the Potions Master's wards.

But the room wasn't empty.

Professor Snape was kneeling in front of the fire, a face made familiar from the newspapers in the grate. Sirius Black.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he hissed, face contorted with a fury she had never seen before.

Sirius Black. Of course. He was Harry's godfather. She knew the story, after all, with Wormtail living in the Manor, somehow both the lowest of the low Death Eater and yet the most rewarded. Was that who Harry thought was being tortured? But he looked perfectly safe in the fireplace.

"Harry is being tricked," Evanna said, ignoring her professor's ire. "He's in danger."

"He is with our new Headmistress in her office-there is nowhere he can-"

"I just saw him and Granger go out into the grounds with her babbling some cockamamie story about Dumbledore's weapon, whatever the hell that is!" she shouted over him. "If they are outside of this castle, then he can certainly outsmart Umbridge and go wherever he thinks you are!"

She pointed wildly at Sirius Black.

"You call the Order, Snivellus," the convict said quickly, "I'm going after Harry."

"You are the most wanted wizard in Britain, Black, you can't just waltz into the Ministry-"

"I'm saving my godson, now do what you need to do to help Lily's boy!" Black snarled before shutting off the connection.

"The Ministry?" Evanna said. "That's where he's going?"

"Don't even-"

"Father must be going after the prophecy, I knew it!" she continued, not even acknowledging her professor as she paced frantically. "I have to earn him it's a trap-"

"You said yourself, Potter is a long ways away by now-"

"I don't care, he's walking into a trap and he'll die if we don't do something!"

"I have done something-Dumbledore and the Order have been alerted-"

"Dumbledore is out of the country and the Order is a bunch of washed up rejects who were losing the last war and likely can't win this one!"

"Evanna, if your father saw us trying to interfere-either of us-he would kill us on the spot!"

"So you'd rather save your own skin than help Lily's son?"

She did not entirely know what Lily Potter had to do with Professor Snape, but she knew she had not mistaken that twinge of pain when Sirius Black had said it a moment before. The man actually stumbled back a bit as though he had been shot.

"I'm going after him," she said before turning on a heel, robes flapping around her legs in a fine impression of her professor and ran out of the room.

"Evanna, no!" he shouted after her. She willed her legs to move faster, to disappear, not let him see her. "Come back here, damnit!"

He could not see her, he could not see her, he could not-

Suddenly, the Professor swore more viciously than Evanna had ever imagined him capable of. He looked wildly around the corridor and it took Evanna a few moments to realize what was going on.

He could not see her.

At least, he did not think he could see her. She was standing right in front of him, but somehow she had exerted her will over his mind to the point that he did not believe she was there. The implications of such a power were terrifying, but….

Perhaps she could play the good daughter and be a good friend a little while longer.

Not bothering to look at Professor Snape again, Evanna ran out the corridor.

As Evanna raced outside, alarms were ringing from the thestral paddocks. She cursed. Of course Harry would have made the most dramatic exit from Hogwarts since, well, since Fred and George Weasley had left only weeks ago.

In all the lessons with her father over the winter break, she had flown high, but not very far. And London was miles and miles away from Hogwarts and it would be getting dark soon. Still, there was nothing else she could do at this point.

Evanna did her best to focus on the words her father had said that first day she flew outside Malfoy Manor.

Let go of anything anyone has ever told you you cannot do. Let go of your attachments to the earth, to the obligations that demand to be fulfilled…. Be filled with your magic, your power…. Demand that it lift you to where you want to go….

It took longer for Evanna to focus than it had the first time she had done it. The smoke that surrounded her this time was darker, filled with more desperate purpose than it had been at the manor. But, it still lifted her into the air, swirling around her with a sort of playfulness. She tilted forward, whispering a "Point me!" charm to her wand. She turned toward the Lake, heading south.

"I'm coming," she murmured.

And she flew.

Severus POV

Five years before, when Severus had watched Harry Potter bobbing about dangerously on his blasted broomstick, he had thought there would never be a more maddening, reckless child.

The next year, he was proven wrong when Evanna Malfoy entered Hogwarts.

It had not come out at first, oh no. Her first year, Evanna was timid and fearful of her own shadow. Of course, it had been odd how she had latched onto students outside her house as her closest friends, but a Slytherin and a Ravenclaw friendship was far from unheard of, even a Ravenclaw as odd as Luna Lovegood. A Hufflepuff and a Slytherin was a little more rare, though Bridget Travers was from a traditionally Dark family, a member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Practically a Slytherin. Potter and Weasley, the Gryffindors, had been the head scratcher and should have been a red flag. But it wasn't her fault that she had been drug into the Chamber of Secrets by a possessed Ginny Weasley, so she could be forgiven any reckless action taken as an eleven year old trying to survive a monster.

She had almost fooled him into complacency the next year, still maintaining close friendships with Lovegood, Travers, and Weasley, but drifting away from Potter. All that had concerned him that year was keeping Narcissa alive and trying to find a way to remove the Malfoy children from Lucius Malfoy's care. He had not expected the Romeo and Juliet type performance the child would put on with Harry Potter the very next year. Even less would he expect her to charge into the maze after Potter to follow him into danger with hardly a thought about her own safety.

And then the other shoe had dropped. He had sworn to protect the Boy Who Lived, but so too he had sworn to protect the Heir of the Dark Lord.

He had been foolish to think that would be the end of her charging into misadventures with Potter. If anything, it had made her feel untouchable, when in reality he knew that she was in more danger than she ever had been as Lucius Malfoy's child.

He had been relieved to not see Evanna in Umbridge's office. For once, it seemed she had been using common sense, keeping her head down, avoiding trouble. When she had burst into his office, however, he knew he should have never believed it.

"So you'd rather save your own skin than Lily Potter's son?"

The question hit Severus like a blow. It was why he had entered into this cursed life, serving two masters, even if he had later come to realize that manipulative Albus Dumbledore might be, fewer innocents died because of the old man. Lily. Sweet Lily. His first friend. The girl who had shown him what it meant to have a family. The witch who had brought color to his world.

Allow her son to die? The last piece of her, even as much like his arrogant father Potter was?

Never.

"I'm going after him."

It took Evanna leaving the office to awaken him from his frozen state. He all but jumped over his desk, looking more like the awkward teenager he had been than the feared professor he was now than he had in years. He bolted after her, trying his best to catch her in the corridor. He was much taller, the girl always seeming so tiny, gaining on her should be no-

There seemed to be some sort of fog in his mind, full of panic and determination in equal measure. He blinked, trying to shake the fog from his mind.

She disappeared.

Evanna had been in grabbing distance, and she disappeared.

Severus cursed loudly. How? How was it that he had been tasked with protecting not one, but two children who seemed to make the impossible possible?

"Evanna!" he bellowed down the corridor. "EVANNA!"

He almost thought he could hear running footsteps, but could not see her anywhere. Again, he fired off a Patronus, Lily's doe.

"Albus, the situation is out of hand. Potter and Black are both headed to the Ministry of Magic, along with several other students," he paused before he added the next part. "Evanna Malfoy has gone after Potter."

With a sharp flourish of his wand, the Patronus was racing along the corridors. He began to hurry out of the corridors himself, making his way to the Quidditch pitch to take a broom and find the children himself.

A silvery phoenix flew in front of him just as he neared the storage closets.

"Stay at Hogwarts," the Headmaster's-Dumbledore's voice-came from the bird's mouth. "Remember your responsibility to our students. Protect Hogwarts."

Severus scowled at the bird. Albus Dumbledore was a fugitive, he had the entire Ministry of Magic searching for him because of his ridiculous desire to keep Potter from being expelled-a punishment the boy had earned many times over by any fair reading of the Hogwarts bylaws. Why should Severus listen to him? He wrenched the broomshed open when another silvery phoenix appeared.

"I will and can find another spy, Severus. Stay at Hogwarts."

The statement sent a chill down Severus' spine. There was a third child Severus sought to protect, though Draco was never as much trouble as the other two. Yet, he knew that Dumbledore had been grooming the boy to be his new eyes and ears in the Dark Lord's ranks. He knew Draco's sense of self-preservation was much stronger, but then, so had Severus' once been…

"Curse you, old man," he growled, glaring at the bird. "If something happens to one of them, I swear I will hold you responsible."

He glared as the two Patroni faded in front of him. He had once believed that taking the Dark Mark would allow him to make his own choices. Then he believed that Dumbledore would grant him his freedom.

He knew in that moment, however, he would die in chains of his own making.