Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
This chapter is being updated early because I won't be able to update tomorrow, and I didn't want to leave a kind of cliffhanger. It's, um, very different from what I thought the original Chapter 34 would be, because Chapter 33 tore all my plans to pieces. Here's hoping you enjoy!
Chapter Thirty-Four: Ravenclaw Tower
Snape stepped back and lowered his wand, blinking slowly. His ears rang from the explosions of smoke and light, and though none of the spells that Potter had hurled had touched him, the effort behind them was much improved.
"I am tempted to award points to Gryffindor," he murmured.
Potter inclined his head as he put his wand away. He didn't look tired, the way that most young wizards would have after casting that many spells in quick succession. He looked as though flames had taken root in him, hollowed him out, and spread to shine through his eyes. Snape studied him narrowly, and then nodded. He would not have thought it, but then, he had been letting the shadow of James—and of Harry, who was at home in both Dark and Light—blind him. This Potter was more closely akin in his magic to what a Weasley might be able to do. He could hurl much stronger Light spells than he would ever manage Dark Arts. His use of spells based on fire and light was nearly instinctive.
And rage, in this case rage fueled by protectiveness for his brother, enhanced his magic. But it had to be true and righteous anger, not the irritation that he had shown so far in his dueling lessons with Snape.
"But you won't award points, Professor?"
Potter's sly voice brought him back from his contemplation. Snape shook his head. "No, I won't," he said. "I will the day that you manage to knock me out with a spell." He grimaced immediately after having made the promise—he never awarded points to the Lion House if he could help it—but what was said was said. And Potter's smile was not as smug as he would have expected, merely confident.
"That's to be expected, Professor," he murmured. "Now, if you excuse me, I need to meet someone at nine." And he opened the door and hastened out of the office before Snape could even dismiss him.
Snape thought about taking points for impertinence. Then he thought about the flames behind Potter's hazel eyes—the same flames that he had once seen in the eyes of James Potter across the one battlefield where Snape had ever respected him—and refrained.
He moved slowly over to the simmering cauldron, and resumed brewing his potion. It would look like the Draught of Peace to anyone who came in and looked at it. He could account for all the ingredients to Minerva, and even for his reasons for brewing it. Of course he would want to show the students what a perfect example looked like, since it was an OWL-standard Potion and none of them had yet managed to brew it correctly.
No one but another Potions Master—and few of them, Snape was certain—would have noticed that there was the slightest green tinge to the Draught, a deep and living green like that on the Slytherin crests.
Snape worked swiftly, his fingers shredding and cutting and crushing and stirring without much thought. He would much rather remember the way Harry had looked after the Entrail-Expelling Curse had hit him than concentrate on a potion he had been able to brew since he was seven, or even the variation that he had perfected when he was sixteen.
He wanted to etch the memory of Harry's white and gasping face into his brain. He wanted to savor the realization that had hit him, a former Death Eater who had seen that curse performed numerous times, that this time was different from all the others, and that something in him would have died if he had lost Harry.
That mattered more than all the vengeance he might take, even more than the vengeance he suspected Connor Potter and some other students were on their way to take. It mattered that Harry was alive and healing and had the chance to change. His parents in prison, people paying for what had been done to him, Dumbledore executed or stripped of his magic—what were they but details?
For the first time in his life, Severus Snape could acknowledge that vengeance might not be the best course. He could look back on the potions he had brewed for James Potter and Minister Fudge last year not with regret that he had got caught, but with regret that he had ever brewed them all, because in brewing them he had hurt Harry.
The words were simple in his mind. He could not figure out why they were such an enormous revelation.
Then he looked down at the green-shimmering potion in the cauldron, and he knew.
Though he would certainly finish this potion, he might not use it. In fact, he might Vanish it the moment it was correctly brewed.
The thought of hurting Rovenan paled beside the thought of hurting Harry.
Draco nodded as Connor came up, completing their group. The other Gryffindors had met him at the base of the final staircase up to Ravenclaw Tower considerably earlier, since they had no dueling lesson with Snape to hinder them.
Granger had a dark frown on her face, and she was tapping her wand against her leg. That was considerably scarier than the two youngest Weasleys, who were either eyeing Draco suspiciously or eyeing the steps in anticipation, but not as scary as the Weasley twins. For the first time Draco had been around them since he'd arrived at Hogwarts, they weren't laughing, nor even smiling. Oh, sometimes they smirked, as when their hands went down and patted their robe pockets. But they weren't laughing, and Draco suspected he was about to see what Fred and George Weasley could be like when they were actually going into battle, not just pranking someone for the fun of it.
"Let's go," Draco whispered. They followed him up the stairs, though he heard Weasley—Ron—muttering about how come Malfoy got to take the lead. His sister shut him up with a few choice words that made Draco hide a chuckle. He wouldn't have thought any Weasley knew those words, never mind the youngest.
No one met them on the stairs. Draco did stop them halfway up to cast Disillusionment Charms on them all. If Ravenclaw Tower was set up at all like Slytherin or Gryffindor, then the sixth-year boys' room might be a considerable distance from the door. All they really knew was that Rovenan had received permission to spend one last night among his cronies, in his own room, before his ceremonious expulsion and the snapping of his wand tomorrow morning. Chang was going to be their guide once they entered the Tower.
Draco curled his lip, then shook his head. He shouldn't feel so irritated at the thought of Chang, really. She was joining them because of the life-debt she owed Harry; this couldn't make up for it, but taking revenge on someone who had hurt her ally would be a duty for a Light pureblood witch. And Harry had proven conclusively two days ago, as far as Draco was concerned, that he belonged to Draco now.
Smirking at the thought of that, he nearly missed Loony Lovegood's slight movement. She stepped out from behind the tapestry that overhung the front door of the Tower and startled them all. Draco controlled himself and narrowed his eyes, though they narrowed even further when she looked straight at them as if their Disillusionment Charms weren't there.
"Oh, hello," she said. "You might have wanted to choose stronger spells, though. I can see you."
"Yes, but no one else can, Luna," said Granger. Her voice rasped. Draco wondered if she was just impatient, or if Loony grated on her as much as she did on him. Of course, Granger was all about logic and clear ends, so maybe she would dislike anyone as mad as Loony.
And why the hell am I wondering about what the Mudblood, of all people, thinks? Draco shook his head. I'll be as bad as Harry next, insisting on "understanding" people all over the place. I should be thinking about revenge on Rovenan.
As it happened, though, he had the perfect curse, so he didn't need to think about it that much. Loony had already whispered the password to the Tower door, and it swung wide. They followed after her, while Loony hovered to the side and looked around vaguely. That was another reason having her let them in was a stroke of genius, and Draco had to admit he commended the Weasel—Ron—for having thought of it. No one would think it strange that Loony Lovegood was keeping the door open for a long time, or just standing there and staring into space.
The Ravenclaw common room was considerably warmer than the dungeons, of course, partially because of its location but also because of the many fires flaring along the walls; Draco didn't think he'd ever been in a room with so many hearths in his life. Blue and bronze was everywhere, and smooth, dark furniture dominated the view, if one didn't count the enormous mural of a soaring eagle on the far wall. Staircases sprouted at the other end of the long, narrow room, and even as Chang popped out of a chair near the largest fire and strolled casually towards them, Draco's gaze locked on them.
"This way," Chang murmured, pausing just in front of them. Draco stared at her suspiciously, but then realized there was a faint, rhinestone-colored glow around her eyes. She had on a spell that let her see through glamours and charms, then. It was comforting to realize that, and also to see that almost all the other Ravenclaws remained bent over their books or engaged in agitated, whispered conversations as they passed towards the staircases.
Draco studied the expressions on their faces, and sneered. Most of them seemed embarrassed or ashamed or fearful. Well, they should be. Ravenclaw was currently lowest in the number of House points, extremely unlikely to win the Cup, and Slytherin was preparing to declare a silent war on them. Even the seventh-years whom Draco knew had listened most sympathetically to talk of pureblood purity, and therefore might join the Death Eaters, were outraged that a half-blood had dared to attack someone powerful enough to be a Lord, and that he would only be expelled and have his wand broken in retaliation for that. The argument that the Headmistress couldn't do more than that because Rovenan wasn't of age had been ignored, as it should be, Draco thought. Any proper Slytherin knew there were ways of doing things outside the boundaries of the law.
He had already written to his father, asking him to pursue a few of those ways. If Lucius took Draco's suggestions, the Rovenan family was about to find itself a good deal poorer. They owed debts, it seemed, or at least his pureblood father did. Lucius only had to buy up a few of those debts, or procure them by favors granted, and then call them in all at once.
Draco rather thought his father would do it. Harry was theirs—the boy Draco loved, the leader they had sworn to follow, his father's truce-dance ally, his mother's all but adopted son. Lucius would probably come up with even more creative punishments, which Draco was all for.
They reached the foot of a certain staircase, and Chang tipped her head at them. "Be quiet," she murmured. "They're having a farewell party for him right now, but there're only a few people up there. They'll hear us coming unless we're careful."
Draco nodded, and made shushing gestures at the others, though he wondered how effective they would be, considering the Disillusionment Charms. He followed Chang as quietly as he could, and the Weasley twins did a creditable impression of sneakiness, too. It was not Draco's fault that Granger and Connor and the two younger Weasleys sounded like elephants.
They reached a door marked Ravenclaw Sixth-Year Boys. Draco rolled his eyes. He supposed Ravenclaws liked everything precise, but there was no need for that kind of nonsense in Slytherin. Everyone knew where the rooms were, and who they belonged to, and who should be in them at any given time of the day.
The room was indeed silent. Chang gave them one more warning glance, and then laid her hand on the door.
She froze. Draco wondered if she'd heard something suspicious. He gripped his wand tightly, waiting for her signal to move ahead.
Then Chang withdrew her hand from the wood, and Draco saw that she was shaking. A moment later, she slumped motionless to the floor. Draco stared down at her in shock. The door had some kind of ward on it. But who would do that, when they're living in common and—
The door to the room burst open, and many, many more Ravenclaws than Draco had expected to be facing rushed out. He could make out Parsons in the back of them, and Turtledove, Parsons's particular friend, and Corner, and Terry Boot, and a few others he knew.
At the head of them all was Rovenan, and his eyes shone with a mixture of desperation and fury.
"Finite Incantatem!" he bellowed, gesturing straight at them with his wand.
Draco felt the warmth of the Disillusionment Charms vanishing, and then Rovenan was on him, and he didn't have much time or chance to think about anything else.
He cast up a Protego, using the instincts that Harry had drilled into him in the dueling club, and so Rovenan's first hex bounced and went straight back at him. He rolled out of the way with what Draco thought were disturbingly battle-trained reflexes, and the hex took down one of the girls behind him. That still left too many for Draco's taste, especially since he was on a narrow landing with his allies ranged behind him and below him on the stairs, but at least he had a moment to breathe and think, and settle on the curse that he would like to use next.
It has to be a battle curse, not a vengeance curse. And no Dark Arts unless absolutely necessary.
Rovenan was already spitting out the first syllables of what sounded like a Dismemberment Curse—and where the hell had he learned so much about Dark Arts?—but Draco was faster than that. The Dismemberment Curse had at least eight syllables. He only had to speak four.
"Rictusempra!"
Rovenan began to laugh, and his wand trembled in his hand. Draco watched for a moment, and decided that he was not going to drop it. He didn't allow himself more than a moment to make that decision, remembering the lesson that Harry had tried to drill into him, and Professor Snape, and their battle on the night of the full moon: The wizard left alive on the battlefield is often the quickest.
"Expelliarmus!"
The wand soared from Rovenan's hand to Draco's. Rovenan's eyes flashed, but he didn't look a bit fearful, even as Draco stuck the wand in a pocket and clapped his left hand over it. Instead, he turned halfway around, crouching, and began yanking at his robe.
A pair of bright yellow pebbles soared over Draco's head and smacked down in the middle of the landing. One of the twins yelled, "Cover your nose!"
Draco had time to heed the warning. The several Ravenclaws on the landing, who were packed together and probably hadn't seen exactly who they were facing yet, didn't.
Plumes of yellow smoke burst into being from the pebbles. They didn't drift and dissipate like smoke, though, but maintained a solid fountain shape, like water, heading straight for the Ravenclaws. A few of them took it right in the nose, and began to moan. Draco watched as red blotches broke out over their faces and their eyes swelled shut, and chuckled in spite of himself. It looked as though the twins had given them a nasty allergic reaction to something.
He felt a shove at his side, and then the Weasley sister was on the landing with him, just as Parsons aimed her wand. Parsons said something that sounded nasty and twisting, not a spell Draco was familiar with, and a dark line sprang from her wand and head towards Ginny.
Ginny blocked it with Haurio, another shield spell Harry had been drilling into the dueling club, and then cast the Bat-Bogey Hex. Parsons clapped her hand over her nose, yelping indignantly.
Draco tried to press forward, to get to Rovenan and stop whatever he was doing, but the landing was too small and too filled with too many people. The Ravenclaws who'd succumbed to the twins' pebbles had fallen, and the others in the room were pushing their way out now. With a grimace, Draco knew they'd have to retreat down the stairs and hope they didn't caught on the carpet or tripped up—or worse, met by Ravenclaws from below. Draco had the impression that most of those in the common room had been caught by surprise, but surely that couldn't last.
He tapped Ginny on the shoulder and began to move backward, keeping up his Protego to get rid of the hexes and jinxes and curses coming his way. He strove to keep his head clear and his breathing even. Now was not the time for the kind of amateur heroics that Gryffindors favored. Just be steady, and they would all reach the bottom and be able to fight their way out of here.
Abruptly, all the magic around them turned foul. Draco gasped and began to cough. He felt weak in the knees. He bent over, closing his eyes, despite the fact that he wanted to stay upright and keep his hold on his wand. He'd never felt evil before, he thought, but he was feeling it now.
He remembered what it had been like on the battlefield when the bitch werewolf had tried to kill Harry. It had hurt to possess her and cast the Killing Curse on her, but he'd managed to do it, because he knew he had to. Harry was right. Push through this, and do what needs to be done.
He stood, and was glad to see that the female Weasley had retreated down to the step behind him, and that the rest of the Ravenclaws were coughing and gagging just like he was. A few of them had fainted. One or two were staring at Rovenan with looks of horror on their faces. Rovenan was coming forward, his face flushed, but he was seemingly otherwise unaffected by the magic. Maybe he's the source of it, Draco thought, though he didn't understand how that could be, unless he was capable of wandless magic.
He understood everything when he saw the bared and gleaming Dark Mark on Rovenan's forearm.
Harry said something like this happened once, that one of the Death Eaters he fought on the beach last summer turned all the magic foul. It's a last-ditch trick, apparently, but one that can be effective.
It was no longer working on Draco, though. He was stone-cold sober, and he knew what Rovenan was trying to do. He really had been trying to kill Harry, and playing on his House's general pigheadedness to hide his intent. And it had been awfully strange, hadn't it, Draco thought, his mind clattering along like the Hogwarts Express, that so many Ravenclaws were casting high-level Dark Arts spells like the Blood Whip and the Entrail-Expelling Curse?
Rovenan locked eyes with him, and his smile suddenly faltered, as though he realized Draco was neither choking nor flinching from him in panic. He thrust his Marked arm forward. Draco choked once, but he gripped his wand and prepared to use a Dark Arts spell. He could, now. A Death Eater was fair game.
"Draco! Do not."
Draco didn't move—he wasn't that foolish, to take his eyes off his enemy—but he felt every hair on his neck rise and tingle. Professor Snape was here.
Snape felt it the moment the Dark Mark went into action, befouling all magic in the immediate area.
He felt it even though he was in the dungeons and he knew the befouling was happening several floors above. Hogwarts was pure of such evil influences, since Snape would never have used his own Mark in such a way. That made the sudden presence of this particular vicious trick as noticeable as a fire in the midst of a closed room. He rose, and he turned his head, and he let the sucking presence lead him.
Once he was out of the dungeons, he knew it was coming from Ravenclaw Tower. He altered his direction, then. As a teacher, he knew several little-used passages that ran towards the Tower, and they would cut down on the length of time that he had to spend running, since this bloody school wouldn't let him Apparate.
He reached the tapestry, and realized he had no idea what the password was. He didn't care. He lifted his wand, and his magic coiled in him and whirled around, and his Reducto smashed the door, and the tapestry with it, to bits.
That particular spell was safe. It was used by wizards of the Light as well as the Dark, and for all that his own Mark was burning on his arm now, it wouldn't poison him—yet. Any use of Dark Arts in the befouled area would. Light spells were safe for at least the next half hour.
He tore through the common room, murmuring spells that repelled the bodies trying to run at him, the screaming students who didn't have an idea what was going on and probably never would. Snape felt a surge of contempt even through the worry he was feeling right now. How could students reach their seventh year in Hogwarts and yet still be so innocent? They should train them better. Were it not for the curse on the position, he would ask Minerva to let him teach Defense.
And then he saw the knot of struggling bodies on the staircase, and knew his destination. He also saw the moment that Draco Malfoy straightened, fighting back against the overwhelming influence of the twisted magic, and knew that he was about to use Dark Arts, because that was what he would naturally turn to, with the training that Lucius had given him during his childhood and the way he knew war.
"Draco! Do not."
Snape assumed Draco had heard him, since he didn't collapse and shrivel into a withered husk in the next moment. Snape cast Wingardium Leviosa on himself, so that he could rise to his Slytherin's level in a very short time. He wasn't about to bother with the stairs, given that it was crowded with Weasleys.
He knew only three ways to stop the poison the Dark Mark was spreading. One was for the Death Eater who had invoked it to end it willingly. Snape doubted this one would do so, since he'd kept it burning for so long already. Another was for the Death Eater involved to Apparate or Portkey out—impossible, because of the wards on Hogwarts and this room in particular, though Snape supposed the fool might make it to one of the common room's many fireplaces and Floo.
The third was for the Death Eater involved to die by a Light spell. Snape feared that course was the one he would have to take. He would see who the Death Eater was first.
He lifted his head, and was surprised and not surprised to see Gilbert Rovenan standing with his left forearm bared in front of Draco. The boy hadn't seemed any more likely to be a Death Eater than anyone else, but Snape had barely known him, and he would have had an excellent hiding place, in the pit of chaos that Ravenclaw House had become of late.
Rovenan smirked at Snape, as if asking what the professor intended to do to him. Snape leveled his wand, holding the boy's eyes all the while. He saw excitement in them, and vindictive glee, and no awareness of what he had done. Snape could understand that. He'd once felt much the same way, the first time he attacked a Muggleborn home as a Death Eater and saw the inhabitants cowering in front of him, someone paying him respect at last.
There were all sorts of routes by which Voldemort might have snared this boy. Perhaps he had been promised power and glory. Perhaps a family member had recruited him. Perhaps Karkaroff or Mulciber, during the time they'd taught Defense Against the Dark Arts last year, the most laughably named class in the whole of Hogwarts, had talked him into it.
Snape would never know, unless both of them managed to survive this confrontation, and he did not think they would. As he knew the emotions in the boy's eyes, he knew what the likely outcomes would be. And when it had been him in Rovenan's place, the earth could have shaken and he would not have yielded his loyalty to Voldemort, so convinced was he of his own rightness.
Snape felt something in him shift and click forward, a mixture of sorrow and utter determination that settled easily into place even though he had never felt it before. He had once been a loyal, joyous Death Eater, and then, after Regulus, he had gone cold to survive. There had never been this feeling, the regret mingled with the knowledge that he was ready to kill.
"Gilbert," he said, using the boy's first name in an effort to connect with him, his empathy for him in that moment outrunning even the remembrance that he was Harry's attacker. "Will you stop it from burning before it turns every spell in the school deadly?"
Rovenan curled his lip and laughed. Does he know, Snape wondered, can he know, that the spell is killing him even as it works? There was a reason that Death Eaters used this magic so little and only at great need, and usually ended it as soon as possible. "No."
And Snape would not let him leave here, not alive, not when he would join the ranks of their enemies and create more trouble.
The determination pushed forward and into all the corners of his mind, crushing out any other thoughts. Snape lifted his wand.
"Reducto."
He spoke it softly, but with all his magic behind it, concentrating on Rovenan's body as a barrier, an obstacle.
Rovenan soared. He soared across the landing and hit the wall of the tiny space—not far, but with considerable force. He hit the wall with an impact nothing could have survived, a crack that Snape knew would have ground some of his bones to powder. More to the point, it snapped his neck.
And the befouling stopped.
Snape knew how loud silence could be, but he hadn't heard this particular silence in a while, the shocked and hurting silence of children who had just witnessed death for the first time. He turned, his mind spinning along the course that it would need to take now, and wondered if this was the way that Harry felt all the time. If so, he was no longer sure if he feared for his charge so much as felt sympathy for him.
"I will take you back to your Houses," he told Draco and the Gryffindors he'd brought with him. He paused, and swept his eyes over the gaping Ravenclaws beneath him. "I will also summon Professor Flitwick to attend to you," he told them. "If you have questions about why I have done this, check Rovenan's left arm. But first," and he swept his wand around and down, "abscindo manulaes laevaes!"
The left sleeve of every student in the room fell away, exposing their forearms. Snape raked them with cold eyes, searching for some sign of the Dark Mark. He didn't know whether or not he should relax when he saw none. There could be Ravenclaws in their rooms who were Marked. He would certainly tell Filius to look for it.
Right before he himself checked his Slytherins, and then turned himself into Minerva and let her decide if she could continue to employ a teacher who had just killed a student.
Draco returned to the dungeons in stunned silence, pacing alone beside Professor Snape after they'd spoken to Professor Flitwick, and delivered the Weasleys and Granger and Connor to Gryffindor Tower. He still didn't know what to make of the utter collapse of their vengeance plan. In an abstract way, he supposed it was for the best. They weren't going to get into trouble for their actions, not when so much else had happened, and Rovenan definitely wouldn't be bothering Harry again.
On the other hand, the thought that there had been at least one Death Eater in the school filled him with deep shock, and the impulse to return to the hospital wing again and make sure that Harry was still safe.
And then there was the fact that Rovenan had managed to learn of their vengeance plan at all. Draco had already figured out the only way he could have learned of it. He longed to look at Professor Snape and know that he had been wrong, but he hadn't developed the courage to raise his eyes yet.
Snape stopped him with one hand on his shoulder as they reached the door to the Slytherin common room. Draco looked up at him at last, and saw the knowledge of war in his House Head's face, more clearly than he had ever seen it before.
"How many in Slytherin House knew of this vengeance plan, Draco?" Snape asked softly.
"Lots of people," Draco whispered.
Snape nodded. "And one of them betrayed it to Rovenan." He closed his eyes in a long, slow blink. "You know as well as I do that, given the circumstances, only one kind of loyalty could trump the loyalty of Slytherin to Slytherin."
"I know," said Draco weakly. So, I wasn't wrong. Someone in our House is a Death Eater.
Snape took a deep breath, then spoke the password and stepped into the common room.
It was quiet. The whole of the House, it seemed to Draco, sat on the couches and divans and chairs by the hearths, waiting for them. They would have heard what had happened by now, of course. News never stayed still for long in Hogwarts, and the prefects, patrolling the corridors, would have brought back rumors, and then confirmation, of the battle in Ravenclaw Tower.
Blaise snapped out, "Everyone, stand up now."
Everyone stood up, and turned their bared left forearms towards Snape and Draco. Draco felt his heart seize up as he realized what they were proving. He relaxed a bit with every expanse of unmarked skin he looked at.
Snape said, in a voice like the Draught of Living Death, "Where is Montague?"
Draco closed his eyes.
"Gone to the Dark Lord." Blaise's voice was calm, and surprisingly steady, though Draco knew that, if he looked, Blaise's dark face would be nearly gray. "We found enough evidence in his room to convict him, sir. Nothing very useful, but some of it incriminating."
Snape made a low noise. Draco wondered, with that same odd interest that had made him wonder what Granger was thinking on their way to Ravenclaw Tower, whether he was blaming himself for not keeping one of his students from treading the same mistaken path he had followed.
It's not his fault, Draco thought, and reached up to ghost his hand across Snape's elbow, wondering if he could convey that message with just a touch.
Snape shook his head, and seemed to snap out of his trance. "I am going to speak with the Headmistress," he said. "None of you will wear left sleeves for the next week." He didn't ask whether they understood, whether they would obey. They would, or he would know the reason why.
Blaise and Millicent, who stood the closest to Snape, actually bowed their heads as he left. Draco took a deep, shaky breath, and sat down on the couch with his yearmates. For the first time all term, Pansy reached out and took his hand, though she didn't speak.
"Harry's going to be all right," Blaise whispered. Draco looked up, and saw the force of new conviction in his eyes. Blaise had never been as close to Harry as the rest of them, perhaps because his mother wasn't allied as deeply as Hawthorn Parkinson, or the Bulstrodes, or Draco's own parents. Now, though, he obviously understood how close the war could scrape to them, and what the opposite side looked like. It might be a commitment born less of loyalty than of fear, but he would stay true, Draco thought, and other reasons might grow later. "I promise, Draco. He really will be. You have no idea how he's going to be guarded, from now on. And the rest of the school is going to see just how free of the Dark Lord Slytherin House can be."
Draco thought it was weak of him, that it was happening mostly because he was too tired to feel anything else, but he found hope in Blaise's words. He nodded, once, and then let the rest of them hustle him off to bed. A few other Slytherins left as they went up the stairs. Draco blinked at them, then nodded again. They would use their cunning to evade the professors and prefects of other Houses, and get to the hospital wing unnoticed.
Harry would not be alone or unguarded tonight, perhaps not ever again, until the war was over.
Draco felt a little bubble of fierce pride pop up through the numbness that had largely overtaken him. The other Houses have always looked down on Slytherin. Well, now they're going to see that we're more like them than they thought, and not just when we ally with them to avenge a Housemate. We can be as proud, as independent, as determined to fight, as they can.
Snape stood in silence before Minerva. He had told her the whole tale, and he had no idea what would happen next.
He could not help remembering another night, when he had come to Albus, and Albus had looked him in the eye, and in the soul, and tested him under Veritaserum, and then accepted his repentance as true. Snape had known the man Albus was, then. He did not know the woman Minerva had become, not that well. He knew she might sack him, might turn him over to Ministry Aurors, who would not be gentle with a former Death Eater who had acted like a Death Eater again, or might do nothing. He had no way to be sure.
"Severus."
Snape glanced up. Minerva was leaning forward, her gaze brilliant, catching the light from the torches on the walls like gleaming cat's eyes.
"You say that the evil from the Dark Mark would have poisoned the school?" she questioned.
Snape nodded. "Dark Arts first, then Light spells. Any magic performed in Hogwarts after that first half hour would have killed the person who cast it. Rovenan would have died eventually, but not until the poison had slaughtered anyone who had gone unwarned."
Minerva breathed in, breathed out, and waited as if for a sign, though Snape didn't know what it could be. Then she raised her eyes and said, "You defended the Ravenclaws, the school, a student in your own House, and your ward, against a Death Eater. So far as I am concerned, you deserve commendation for that, not condemnation."
Snape closed his eyes. He could feel relief crashing down over him, a torrent so great that he could not really respond to it as yet. He waited.
"I will contact Mr. Rovenan's parents," Minerva went on. "I will also see about securing his body, so that no—ah—surgery can be performed after the fact to disguise what he was. And I will speak for you, Severus. I will fight for you. You warned him, you asked him to reconsider what he was doing, and he did it anyway. And this was after he had used a lethal curse on another student." Minerva's hands tightened on the edges of her desk. Snape half-expected to see them grow claws.
"Death Eaters," she said.
Snape blinked at her, not quite understanding the chain of her thoughts.
"There were Death Eaters in my school," said Minerva, and she rose and paced back and forth. "Threatening my students."
She swung around, and Snape fought the urge to take a step backward. Voldemort had just vexed Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts, very, very thoroughly indeed.
"Go to sleep, Severus," Minerva said quietly. "I will reassign some of the wards to watch and guard Harry, and I will speak with Filius about his Ravenclaws, and whether he has discovered any more of—them—in his House. Know that you have my gratitude, and that I will fight for you." Her eyes were still brilliant with fury. "Anyone who tries to hurt you, or suggest sacking you for defending the school, will have to go through me."
Snape nodded several times. He didn't seem able to do anything else. He had thought before that Minerva McGonagall would be a very different sort of leader from Albus Dumbledore, but he had not realized just how different. She was not going to use manipulation. She very obviously did not need it.
He walked slowly back towards his offices, though he surrounded his body with shields and wards so that no one could sneak up and attack him on the way there. No one tried.
When he reached the office, he looked down at the ruined modification of the Draught of Peace, and Vanished it.
Then he called his Pensieve to him from across the room. He knew that he should follow Minerva's sound advice, and sleep soon. The past three days had cost him more than he realized he had to give.
But, first, he wanted to place certain memories he had in the Pensieve, and attempt to discover what they meant. When he had been up in Ravenclaw Tower, trying frantically to figure out whether anyone was about to cast Dark Arts in the midst of Rovenan's befouling, he had felt something else—a kind of drifting fog, a mist, a vicious presence that nevertheless did not feel like Dark Arts. The memory had tried to depart his mind the moment he noticed it, but he had trapped the impressions and slid them into an Occlumency pool, so fast that they didn't have a chance to escape.
He drew out the battle, placed it into the Pensieve, and then lowered his head to go under the surface of the silvery liquid. He would watch, and try not to get distracted by the sight of a dying boy too like the one he had been, and figure out what the hell that mist was.
It might be something that could hurt Harry. If it was, then Snape would find it out, and destroy it. It was part of what he, a man with chosen loyalties, did.