"I don't know if you see me the way I see you
But you held my neck and you said some shit
So I've been hoping you do
Spill all your secrets in confidence
Well I'm filing that as evidence
To stall the burn and calm my nerves after I've had a few"
"Cops" – Vanic x
Snape apparated them to the top-most landing that was still beneath the living space.
"I didn't want to give Declan even worse of a fright, provided he's still with us." He explained, somewhat sheepishly.
Hermione leaned on him heavily, now feeling the totality of her difficult day. She pulled in a laboured breath. "That's... thoughtful of you, Severus,"
"No," he argued. "Prudent. I wouldn't like piss-stains all over the carpet."
Together they climbed the final flight of stairs and he unlocked the door, letting them both in.
The scene that met their eyes was comical in its improbability. Declan stood behind the sofa, pointing over Eileen's shoulder at the laptop screen as she delicately moved the cursor with one finger. Crookshanks was pressed into the woman's hip, purring as she used her other hand to scratch him behind the ears.
"See, Mrs. Snape?" Declan tapped the screen, causing the liquid crystal layer in the monitor to distort and discolour slightly, "They're taking you for a ride. You don't have to pay for coins if you win enough hands—and you're certainly winning enough.
"I know the developers for this company, a bunch of fuckin—"
Eileen glowered back at him over her shoulder and he coughed to cover his misstep.
"A bunch of... of... erm... crooks." He finished lamely.
Crookshanks looked at the man and let loose with an offended yowl.
The cat leapt down from the sofa and stalked off, his tail held high in the air behind him.
Declan glowered at his retreating form. "I said what I said," he continued, "the devs for Ante-Up are swindlers. We don't require anyone to pay for Galdrvale!" He argued. "If you just wait an additional fifteen minutes between games you won't have to pay any more, not even once."
Snape cleared his throat. It seemed that neither Declan nor his mother had noticed them enter. "Deaf ears, Declan. She won't want to wait between games."
Eileen and Declan looked up sharply and Eileen nearly threw the laptop to the floor in her haste to rise.
"Severus! Severus, tell me it's not true!"
The wizard endured the older witch's assault on him, rolling his eyes heavenward as his mother hung off of him like a barnacle. "Tell you what's not true, Mother? That you're too impatient to wait between rounds of poker?"
The crack produced from Eileen's slap against Snape's shoulder cut sharply through the air. Severus grimaced and grabbed at the arm she'd attacked. His right one. The one that had been caught by sharp projectiles. "Mam!"
"Don't you 'Mam' me, Severus! You knew exactly what I was asking!" She all but shrieked at him. Then she turned to Hermione instead, taking in her dirty face and rumpled appearance. "Did they take you, girl?"
"Yeah, Eileen," she looked between Declan and Severus for backup but neither seemed inclined to help her out. "We were on the ward and they caught us leaving."
"Which begs the question why Declan was at the hospital at all, rather than in the asinine meeting he demanded I attend," Snape's voice was acid as he trained his black eyes on his partner.
The muggle man had the good grace to wince and looked at least somewhat apologetic, as well he might. "It wasn't asinine—those were all pressing issues—"
"More pressing than seeing my son." Snape snarled. "More pressing than being there to protect my wife—"
"Would you have been able to protect her?" Declan posed to him, "She seemed rather taken aback herself."
"Hermione is not trained for such situations, and it's been ten years since she encountered anything resembling—"
"I could have done better," Hermione said, her voice soft. She tugged at Snape's sleeve to stop him. "I never should have forgotten what Moody told us. I never should have let my guard down... and when it was happening? I felt the wards drop and all I could think was to lead them away from the NICU. I don't think they knew about Marcus, Severus."
The wizard swallowed, his eyes hard. "And they won't. They won't find out."
No one spoke as the man glowered down at the floor of his flat, tightening and releasing his hands in an odd rhythm as he pondered. "We need Potter."
"Harry?"
"Yes. I need to know if he found your personnel file and what was in it. And I need to let him know to stop searching for you." Snape withdrew his wand with a flourish, but stopped before he began casting. "Do you know if Ginevra would be home at this hour?"
Hermione frowned up at him. "She probably is. Why?"
"Because if Potter hasn't located you yet I assume he's still at the Ministry looking, and if that's the case then I don't want to send my Patronus to him. I'll send it to Ginevra and have her relay the message."
Snape's wand traced a familiar pattern and his lips spoke the familiar words: "Expecto Patronum!"
What emerged, however, was not his familiar doe.
The form was hulking—musclebound. It erupted charging forth like a dreadnought, taking a turn around the flat in a wide circle, its horned head lowered. Prepared to gore anything that stood in its way. It stopped short of Snape. Something which would have been impossible had it been a real animal, given its sheer velocity and enormous size.
"Is that... is that a bull?" Declan asked, breathless. "What's the bull for?" He pondered aloud, seemingly bewildered by the developments.
"Not a normal bull either," Hermione observed, her eyes wide. She approached Snape's Patronus and held out a hand to it, its powerful muzzle moving to press a wide jowl into her palm. "At least not in the regular sense. It's not a steer, it's an aurochs... Since when was your Patronus an aurochs, Severus?" She asked him.
He shrugged. "Does it matter?"
"Maybe a little." Hermione frowned. "Last time I saw your Patronus was last November, and it was still a doe—"
"Well that makes two of us." His voice was slightly defensive as he stared at the powerful creature before him. "I don't know when this happened, and I'm not exactly clear on the why of it, either, before you ask."
Declan had begun to creep forward and reached out a hesitant hand to stroke at the shimmering mist that constituted the animal form, but before he could reach it, the aurochs turned its massive head, let out a silent snort, and made an unmistakably violent motion with its hindquarters. The muggle man withdrew his hand quickly as if scalded.
"It... er... it resembles you in temperament, at least..." he observed, shaking his head.
"Far more than the doe ever did," Hermione agreed. She began to chuckle but was thwarted by the persistent pain in her ribs, which she grasped at with her right hand.
"Go sit, Hermione." Snape ordered. "And don't move too much until I'm able to see to your ribs."
The witch glowered at him. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself," she grumbled, but she did in fact lower herself gingerly to the sofa and reclined, moving slowly so as not to cause more damage than she'd already incurred.
Snape rolled his eyes. "Yes. Perfectly capable," he observed, his voice so dry as to suggest a sustained drought.
Snape's mother shook her head at the scene, apparently unimpressed by the developments. "An Aurochs! Really. Well, that hardly suits." Eileen scoffed.
Snape rolled his expressive eyes. "Pray tell what you think would suit me better."
"A donkey,"
"A donkey?" Snape asked, voice deadpan. "Why a donkey?"
"Why, because you're an ass, of course," his mother quipped, her arms crossed and a satisfied expression on her drawn face.
The look Snape gave her in response could have curdled milk. Declan had begun to chuckle and threw an appreciative glance at the old witch, nodding a bit.
"She's got your number, Sev."
"Shut up." Snape turned from all three of them and focused on the large beast that was still patiently waiting for his instructions.
"Deliver a message to Ginevra Potter, only if she is to be found at Grimmauld Place. 'Call your husband home. It is necessary to be conservative with the details. I've found Hermione and she's safe with me, but we will require Potter's assistance at his earliest convenience.'"
The bull seemed to blink for a moment before it began a forward rush, banked to the left, and charged, horns first, out of the wall.
Snape turned back to the three who were watching him.
"Declan," he began, his voice businesslike, "are you injured?"
The man in question glanced down at himself. He was covered in dirt and grass-stains but otherwise seemed in fine fettle. "Er... I don't think so..."
"Then I need you to make yourself useful and to go back to the office. If you can't handle that then I can wipe your memories of the past day—"
"Now wait a minute! Wipe my memories!?"
"Yes," Snape drawled, "you can't imagine that it's normal for the magical world to allow the non-magical to know all about us. If you can't be of assistance, I'm afraid you're more a liability. Much like you were a liability to Hermione escaping those three masked buffoons."
"Severus, that's not fair—" Hermione began at the same time that Declan cried out an inarticulate ejaculation of offense.
"Can you deny it, Hermione? Tell me you would have been taken had Declan not been there to distract you." Snape's black eyes were hardened black flecks of flint.
Hermione met his gaze without flinching. "I would have been taken. I was far more concerned with leading myself far away from our son's ward, and by the time I realised what was happening, they had lowered the anti-disapparition wards. I was stuck then."
"You could have hidden," Snape complained, nearly whinging. His face was slightly petulant, his lower lip loose in his oddly characteristic hang-dog expression.
"Maybe for a minute. If they had tracked me to hospital I fail to see why it would have been too hard to find me in a broom closet." She told him, rolling her eyes a bit.
Severus' mouth thinned into a hard line, the brackets of his frown lines deepening into two trenches that framed his snarl. He said nothing, and Hermione knew she had won by virtue of his silence.
Declan threw a bit of a smarmy look in his partner's direction, as if to say: "See?"
"So, what's this about me being of some use to you, Sev?" He asked, with a solicitous little smirk and a dip of his shoulders that might have passed for a bow.
"You're not the only muggle who found out about magic today." Snape grumbled with bad humour. "I had to let Terry and Charles in on the secret after you rang me. I don't know if they're still at the office, but if they are, they'll be waiting to hear back about whether I was successful."
"You need me to go make a report."
"That, and to tell them they'd better keep their fat gobs shut if they know what's good for them,"
"Severus!" Eileen gasped, her eyes narrowing up at her son's rude demand.
"I know what I'm about, Mam." He tossed in her direction, not taking his eyes off of Declan. "Especially Terry."
Declan sighed but nodded. "That woman's got a mouth on her,"
"She does. Call a cab and I'll get you back for it,"
"Don't worry about it," Declan demurred, shaking his head. "Anything else?"
Snape paused to consider for a moment, "My car's still at the office, but I can go back for it later. I expect you'll still need to see me around to fix the networking problem?"
The muggle man shrugged but looked a bit regretful. "If it's no trouble."
"It's trouble all right," Snape grumbled, shaking his head so his hair flew in all directions. "I'll explain what nature of trouble tomorrow in our AM meeting. Expect server downtime." He promised.
Declan winced and groaned a bit. "The players won't like that," he approached the door and inched his way through it. "That all?" At Snape's nod he inclined his head. "In the morning then, Sev."
Severus' mouth twisted, and he looked like something was paining him, but in the end he ducked his head a fraction to his friend. "Dec."
Declan's grin was incandescent, but he didn't acknowledge Snape's valediction verbally, he only smiled brightly at all present and closed the door behind him, his steps fading away as he descended the multiple flights of stairs to the ground floor.
They weren't left to ponder Declan's departure for long as Ginny's horse Patronus coasted in at a canter, tossing its long, maned head as it came to a stop in the centre of the room.
"Harry will be by shortly, Snape. Interesting new form you've got there. Hermione? If you can hear? We're so glad you're okay, we'll see you soon."
The Patronus collapsed in on itself in a great woosh of white mist and Harry's knock on the door came only moments later.
"'Mione! Merlin, am I glad to see you!" The Auror began as soon as the door was opened for him. His eyes were trained on his friend whose prone form issued a small wave from her position on the couch.
Snape let the man enter and then retreated to where Hermione was still laying, her eyes a bit glazed with pain.
"Her ribs are broken, Potter. I'm thinking a trip to St. Mungos will be in order, if you'd be willing to accompany her?"
Harry shifted from foot to foot a bit awkwardly. "About that, Snape... I actually think it may be best for Hermione to... er..."
Snape glanced up at the man with a touch of impatience, "Spit it out."
"I think she's got to lie low. Even... even to 'join you' in the afterlife, as it were,"
The three Snapes stared at Harry blankly for a few seconds before Hermione spoke. "You want me to play dead, Harry?"
"I think that'd be best for the time being, Hermione." The Auror said, a bit sheepishly. "If it's possible to fix your ribs here, then we ought to do it. I didn't manage to get my hands on your personnel documents. Someone pinched them, and if the people who took you are still out there—"
"That's of no concern." Snape replied, his voice terse. "They're gone."
Harry's lips thinned. "I'm going to pretend that I don't understand what you mean. But... between you and me? Well done. On the other hand, we don't know if there are additional actors involved. They may have her file now. It'd be best if she didn't register,"
"That would mean not leaving the flat!" Hermione observed, her brow creased. "I can't leave Marcus for that long..."
Harry shook his head sadly, "I don't have a great alternative for you, 'Mione. If you leave and someone catches wind of you, you could be a target all over again. Did you manage to see who it was who took you? Did they say why?"
She stared at him, her eyes sober. "One of them was Gerald Rudd. Severus recognised him."
The Auror paled and brought a hand to his face, pushing his glasses up into his hair as he rubbed at his face. "Great Gorgons... and the others?
She shrugged, her brown eyes troubled. "One of them was called Cal, the other Fergus. We didn't manage to see Cal's face, but Fergus didn't look like anyone special. He's maybe of an age, or perhaps younger than Severus, but he didn't recognise him... Fergus didn't have a Dark Mark. I don't imagine Cal or Gerald did either."
"And... and speaking of Dark Marks, Harry..." she hedged, fighting back tears, "they..." she gulped but had difficulty finishing her sentence. Snape shook his head a bit, his eyes softening as he grasped her by the elbow and helped her to show her arm.
"They gave her this, Potter."
Harry's eyes were unreadable as he approached, and he crouched down before his friend, gently taking her arm and turning it this way and that in the light. He made to run a finger over the brand but Snape caught his hand before he could.
"Don't touch it." He warned. "It's fresh—very painful."
"They gave you this?" Harry asked, thoughtfully. "How did they do it?"
"I was held down. Cal sat on me, Fergus held my arms. Gerald said he wanted to do it himself. He said he was the one who had found my files. They knew I was married to Severus and had been waiting to catch both of us, but they mistook Severus' friend Declan for him when we were taken. They thought he'd taken Polyjuice... They gave me my wand and cast an Imperius on me,"
"Your wand? Why would they give it back to you?" Harry interrupted.
Snape sneered at him. "How did you ever pass your NEWTs, Potter? Dark Marks are invoked through a magically binding oath. One may only make an oath with his or her wand in hand."
Glaring back at the man, Harry seemed to be trying his best to ignore the jibe at his expense. "A binding oath can be made under an Imperius?"
To this, the older wizard merely shrugged. "Of that we're not sure. I wouldn't have thought so, but the Mark did take. Though whether the clauses for certain of the provisions would have been enforceable is beyond me. We're optimistic, given that the one she made the oath to is now dead, that she's not beholden to it one way or another."
For the first time in a long while, Eileen spoke from where she'd backed herself up against a wall: "If he's dead the oath is voided."
Snape turned to her, "You're sure, Mam?"
"That's common knowledge. Or I would have thought it was. Perhaps not to you lot. Either you're too young and there are less oaths being made now than in past generations or being raised alongside muggles didn't impress that upon you."
Harry frowned. "I didn't think Gerald was a pureblood..."
Snape shook his head. "He wasn't. Mr. Rudd was a half-blood. But that matters not. Hermione's Dark Mark should be, by rights, inert."
"That's a bit of luck,"
"Luck had nothing to do with it, Potter." Snape denied. "He didn't fall a hundred feet into a ditch filled with Fiendfyre by chance."
"Perhaps the luck was in him having been senseless enough to conjure the vehicle of his own demise." Hermione proposed, ever charitable to Harry's ideas.
Severus frowned, but shrugged one shoulder. "There is that, but the presence of the trench for corralling the fire wasn't exactly an accident. Once they started blasting, it was quite intentional to try and concentrate the blasts in order to take advantage for the Expulso. Then again, there was no proper way to know what approach they'd use. We assumed you'd both be incapacitated, however, so knocking you back into the periphery of the duel and providing a portkey was about as far as we got, planning wise."
"We?" Hermione asked him, her brow creased with confusion.
"Charles, Terry, and me." Snape clarified. "We had nothing to do while sitting and waiting around for Potter's Patronus to saunter in," he intoned with a bit of a snarl in Harry's direction, "so they insisted on helping to 'plan' your rescue."
He looked a bit sheepish. "It was rather useless to explain to them that duels aren't scripted encounters, but it made them feel useful. And ultimately, extracting you and Declan from danger worked according to plan, so it wasn't entirely a wasted effort."
Harry's lips thinned a bit in irritation. "Just how many people am I going to have to obliviate, Snape? Did you let every muggle you know in on what's happening in our world—?"
"You'll not be obliviating a single soul, Potter."
For a second they seemed to square off, but ultimately Harry deflated, losing his righteous posturing and he rubbed at his eyes. "Just make sure they don't tell anyone,"
"They won't. They're not talebearers. This is privileged information."
Harry looked about helplessly. "It was hard enough explaining why I ran in today and stayed in the filing room when they hadn't seen me in a week..." he shrugged, looking exhausted. "It'd be impossible to explain why I needed to call in the Obliviators out of nowhere without explaining who told them what and under what circumstances."
Hermione perked up and attempted to sit up on her elbows, but she was clearly too pained to do so. At this point, the safety of their flat having allowed her to settle back to an equilibrium, the full pain of her injury was now upon her, and she found that moving was near to impossible. At her grunt Snape rose and walked briskly to the kitchen, the tinkling of glass all that could be heard as he rummaged through a cabinet.
"Why've you not been in to work, Harry?"
The Auror looked uncomfortable and glanced at Snape and his mother as the older wizard reappeared by Hermione's side with a pain potion, cautioning her to remain still even as her pain lessened.
"Do you read the Quibbler?"
"Your article?" She asked. "Was the fallout really that bad?"
He answered her with a shrug. "I wouldn't know. I made myself scarce and took holiday time after it was published."
"Rather cowardly of you, Potter,"
Frowning at her husband, Hermione rushed to reassure her friend. "Prudent, I'd say. You drew a lot of focus by writing that."
"I'd write it again," Harry vowed. "I'm not just hiding. Not really." He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers, staring away at nothing. "I'm thinking of quitting. You know what they've been asking me to do all year, 'Mione. It's not... I can't..." His false starts had him frowning. "It's wrong.
"And now? Knowing what I know about how you got your Mark?" He grimaced. "How many of the Little Death Eaters that we sent for execution were targets of something similar? Not just one, I'm sure. Possibly all of them. This whole situation is entirely suspect. I can't keep going in and conducting audits like it's business as usual. I can't sign off on reports that I suspect are fraudulent.
"Before I wrote that column, I was doing a bit of clean-up on a case about a man who had ostensibly been attacked by Death Eaters. The Dark Mark was there in the sky—but when I got to his house, I found an inferius." Harry stared at the three who were listening to him with captivated curiosity. At the news he'd imparted Snape's black eyes flashed and the dark wizard folded forward over his hands, which he'd latticed together at the knuckle, looking thoughtful.
"Professor? He was on your W4 forum." Harry reported. "He was talking about some misplaced spell registration,"
"I'm familiar with that discussion." Snape affirmed, his black eyes narrowed in concentration.
"I dispatched the inferius, but the mere fact of it being there wasn't the worst part," Harry looked rather green as he contemplated revealing his own role in the Penny Dreadful style drama that seemed to be unfolding before their view.
Hermione glanced at him, her brown eyes shining with sympathy. "What is it, Harry?"
"You remember... it was months ago. I don't know that you would... but... you remember when I told you about that half-blooded Death Eater we caught and sentenced? The one who seemed confused and was begging to see his muggle mother?"
The witch nodded, her face beginning to grimace as if she were working out for herself what must have happened.
"It was him. The inferius was. It was Harvey." Harry gulped, his hands clenching into fists as the guilt of his possible part in Harvey's demise washed over him.
"After I destroyed him, I went to the Ministry's burial plot. Do you know what I found?"
When no one answered him or seemed inclined to guess, Snape himself snarled impatiently. "These theatrics are unnecessary, Potter. Don't keep us in suspense—"
"The graves were empty." Harry emphasised. "All of them. Every Death Eater we'd executed since it was criminalised.
"Until I went back today for Hermione's files, I haven't been back in since I saw the graves."
Everyone was silent for several moments as they made to digest the unsettling news, before Eileen spoke, her voice quivering with pent up rage and terror.
"If they'd caught Severus, even after all he'd done for the Order, all he'd done for Dumbledore, they'd have made an inferius out of him?" She asked, her hands clawing in her cardigan. Her eyes were far away and wild with some unnamable emotion, but she seemed to be building to a level of hysteria.
"I..." Harry hesitated. "I can only assume so."
The woman let out a sort of muted wail. A cross between a groan and a shriek, looking every bit like the banshee that Hermione had compared her to upon first meeting the woman, and then she turned tail. She began to make her way up the stairs to her portion of the residence, her hands still clawed in the fabric of her blouse, tearing and shredding at the garment.
Harry, Hermione, and Snape watched her leave, none knowing quite what to say or why she'd had the reaction she'd had until she turned about, at the top step, and glowered down at all assembled.
"Severus was a baby once." She announced, her voice trembling. "He was tiny, and grey, and naked, and precious. And he left me at seventeen and I thought he was lost to me. And then I read about what he had supposedly done to Dumbledore, and he was lost to me yet again. And then again when the reports came out after the final battle and he was dead to rights... They'd take my tiny spark of fire—my tiny bit of life that I sustained from my own body for nine months and then fed at the breast for eighteen more—and turn him into an animated meat-suit..." Her lip quivered, the image apparently too much for her. The indignity of her only son, the life she'd poured herself into cultivating when her own felt impossible to value, being desecrated in death for the sake of such sinister ends was possibly too much for the woman to bear.
Eileen turned and left, not able to finish her thought.
"You should go talk to her," Hermione urged him, her eyes soft.
"She'll be alright," Snape shook his head. "She's stronger than she looks."
"Sure she is, but it'd help to see you. To see that you're not... that,"
"She knows that, Hermione." He shook his head. "She knows, she just has to stop dwelling on the worst possible outcome for something that didn't, in fact, happen." He stood. "In any case, I have an errand to run."
Harry looked at him, expression uncertain. "An errand? Professor, wouldn't it be best if you were to lay low for a bit?"
Snape advanced toward the door, situating his wand on his person and patting down his pockets to make sure he was in order. He still looked like he'd been through hell, and the upper sleeve of his right arm was torn and bloodied from the flying projectile that Gerald had sent his way, though the wound didn't appear terribly deep, the leather of his jacket having served to protect him somewhat.
"I don't imagine that only the three that we dispatched tonight were involved in this operation. They knew where to find us at the Royal London, it's only a matter of time until they find Marcus. He's coming home tonight."
Without another word to anyone, but with a nod to his wife, whose eyes were wide and slightly apprehensive, he exited the warm living space for the cold, cavernous server farm that constituted the lower levels of his building. The soft beeping and loud whirring was comforting in its familiarity, and he registered, on a passing level, the conversation from earlier in the day that had informed him of the fact that he'd be facing down time.
It was too much to think about at that moment.
A nightmare. It would be a nightmare.
Though he did suppose that it was as good a time as any to launch some of the upgrades and new features to the W4. He'd be sitting on his hands while he waited for the patch to install.
Informing the player base about the unexpected extended downtime would be no fun, but that wasn't his job, it was Terry's. Which was fair enough, given it had been her lapse in judgement that had necessitated the security upgrades.
He had a fair few ideas on what he could introduce to the W4 in the coming days, but also felt curiously rudderless.
Given what had just happened to his family, and what Potter had just told him he'd discovered about the fates of the Little Death Eaters, the most tempting direction was to investigate further. Potter's article had been a start, but there was a distinct and obvious opportunity to do more.
It was already a consequence of his own forums that led to the murder Potter had described to him earlier that evening.
It had been years since Snape had felt directly responsible for the fate of anyone or anything in the magical world. He felt the stirrings of duty once more, those terrible and weighty shackles of obligation.
He could do something about what was happening. Beyond the fact that it had happened to someone he knew and lo—cared deeply for—he considered, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists at the dangerous thought, and beyond the fact that she'd been implicated, in part, due to her relationship to himself, he had the uncomfortable feeling that he ought to do something regardless.
Altruism. He blanched. Disgusting.
Surely, it would benefit himself on some level to launch some sort of countervailing initiative?
Financially he wasn't making any money at all on the W4, but that was hardly the point. He made plenty with Galdrvale. The W4 was about influence. It was about disruption. New frontiers that seemed, to him, inevitable. So, why shouldn't it be him who surged on the front lines?
It bore thinking about. At least at some point. But not today.
He passed out of the door that led to the exterior metal staircase and jaunted down to the private alley—his personally warded apparition spot.
They'd been coming and going too often from inside the building. It was preferable for the condition of the servers to not have wild fluctuations in magic occurring with such frequency.
Within moments he was standing behind the familiar dumpster that sat adjacent to the ambulance bay, and he practically jogged his way to the reception table. Though it was after hours, parents were entitled to see their children in the neonatal unit round-the-clock. This, however, was a bit more of a delicate operation.
"Mr. Snape! Hello, what can I do for you?" The nurse's station attendant greeted him with a friendly smile, expecting, by this point, not to receive anything excepting a curt response in return.
"I have need of the Lead Clinician, if she's available, Ms. Stevens."
Ms. Stevens checked her computer screen and typed in a few things, pulling up Marcus' information. "It looks like you're meant to speak to one of our paediatricians at the end of the week, Mr. Snape. Can't this wait until then? Marcus is doing well by all accounts. Dr. Mitchell is quite busy—"
"I'm afraid it can't wait. My wife and I have an immediate concern which requires redress. It won't take but a few moments." He replied, a touch impatiently.
Ms. Stevens looked at him with unmasked curiosity, but in the end, did page for the doctor. "I don't know whether she'll be available to see you, mind," she warned, "We had a handful of births over the weekend, it's kept us quite busy."
Snape paced the room as he waited. He could have walked himself back to the ward, but it would be important for him to get Ms. Stevens and Dr. Mitchell in the room together. Otherwise, there would be too many possible points of failure.
Dr. Mitchell appeared after twenty minutes, her dark hair slightly askew after what was likely a long shift, and looking a bit rumpled in her creased white coat. She gave him an irritated twist of the mouth in the place of a smile, and rather than greeting him, immediately asked him what he was about demanding to see her.
"We already have an appointment for later this week. Marcus has reached six pounds, we're planning on discharging him then..." she informed him.
"That is certainly welcome news."
"Yes, well, was there an immediate concern regarding his care that I can address with you now? Whatever else there was can wait until Friday, surely?" She looked him up and down with a critical eye, and he realised that she must have been evaluating his disheveled appearance. It was likely throwing up some sort of red flag. His jeans were dusted with dirt, the arm of his jacket torn and splashed with blood. He'd not looked in a mirror, but it was likely that his hair was dirty and tangled, and he probably smelled like a fire.
Snape looked between the two women and moved quickly, withdrawing his wand from the inner pocket of his jacket and turning to stupefy Ms. Stevens. She slumped in her chair. It was clear that Dr. Mitchell was readying herself to raise a hue and cry, but he hit her with an Imperius before she managed, watching her animated face fall quiescent.
"Stay there, I'll be back in a moment." She only blinked at him, offering a gentle smile.
It was late enough at night that he was alone in the waiting room with the two women. Snape jumped the counter and pulled Ms. Steven's swivel chair away from her computer before he worked for a few minutes at scrubbing Marcus' records from the immediately accessible database. It was likely that there was residual information on him stored somewhere, but not anywhere that the casual observer would find. It would require digging. He finished by replacing Ms. Steven's slumped form at her post and Obliviating his visit from her memory.
Turning to Dr. Mitchell, he directed her down the hall before him. "Wait for me in Marcus Snape's ward. Unless there is an emergency with one of the other children, ask any nurses who are present to leave for the next ten minutes."
She preceded him down the hall, and as he passed out of Ms. Steven's presumptive field of vision, he woke her with a silent Ennervate. When she awoke, she went straight back to her filing, as she'd been doing when he arrived.
He luckily encountered no one on his walk back to the neonatal unit, and he met Dr. Mitchell in the ward. She was standing like a stone sentinel in the middle of the room, quite alone, and with a blank expression on her face.
"Prepare Marcus Snape for discharge." He ordered, watching as she marched over to his cot and began carefully extracting his son from the many remaining tubes he was attached to.
Luckily his breathing tube had been taken out already and it was mostly only his feeding tube and medication that he retained. "Debrief me. What do Hermione and I need to know for his care?"
He listened as the instructions were given to him in a dispassionate monotone. Marcus would need round the clock feeding, though likely no additional medication given the rate at which he'd grown (thanks, in large part, to the infusion of medicinal potions Snape had been supplying the boy with through Hermione's breastmilk), and he paid close attention to the information he was provided about how to settle the boy for sleep.
Dr. Mitchell swaddled the infant securely, and received only a lazy blink in response before Marcus drifted back to sleep as he was handed off to his father.
He was still an absolutely tiny child, Severus thought, as he stared down at the baby whose head rested in the crook of his elbow. He wasn't even as long as Snape's forearm. Marcus was so light that he felt insubstantial. Sleepy blue eyes blinked at him and then closed again, cycling out and then back in to a light doze.
"I need you to take us off the rota for the Health Visitor," Snape told the doctor, following her to the terminal adjacent to Marcus' cot as he stroked one fingertip down the boy's downy cheek.
In his sleep Marcus' mouth rooted for the source of the gentle prodding.
The wizard watched as the rest of Marcus' data was removed from the NHS system.
"Thank you, Doctor," he said in parting, before he removed the curse from the confused paediatrician and, in the fug left over from extracting himself from her psyche, obliviated all traces of himself and Marcus from her memories.
"But even if the cops come calling
Said even if the cops come calling
I'll never talk
Even if you wreck me, even if you waste the youth I've got
Baby if the cops come calling
I'll never talk"
"Cops" (reprise) – Vanic x