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Intermission: Among the Nightshade and Belladonna

"And does he yet suspect you?"

Snape could not help a smile. He kept his face lowered, so that the other Death Eaters would not see it, but his Lord would know it was there. And he would forgive Snape for it, when he heard what Snape had to say.

"No, my lord," he murmured. "I managed to convince him that I disappeared on the night of your return to save the Potter brat, and arrived only a moment too late. He did not take that well, but I gave him no hook to hang his suspicions on. His Legilimency is not as great as your own." He was offering flattery, but only if Voldemort truly wanted to look for flattery. He was better at Legilimency than Dumbledore had ever been. Part of what it required was a will dedicated to dominating other minds, to finding out their secrets. And Dumbledore, fool that he was when he could have been great, still held himself back from that desire. It had grown worse since Harry died on the altar-stone in the graveyard, and Remus Lupin had followed him. It was as if he believed that no evil would happen in the wizarding world if he did no evil.

Snape entertained the vision of Dumbledore stepping aside when the Dark Lord walked into the school, because he could think of nothing else to do. That was easily enough to put him on the verge of chuckling.

"And your other absences, my dear Severus?" One cold white hand came down and cupped his cheek, and Voldemort's power sang around him, treading the ground with a heavy step that made the Death Eaters standing on their feet sway. Snape did not pretend to understand all the complexities of that magic any more than he pretended to understand the whole of the Dark Arts, but from what he knew, some of the Potter brat's power had been wound with his Lord's own. Not until Harry had died had that magic returned home to his Lord.

"He believes I am still spying for him and the Order of the Phoenix, my lord," he murmured.

Voldemort laughed, and most of the other Death Eaters in the room laughed with him. Snape did not. For one thing, it was not a joke they understood, nor had any right to, and he did not share his amusements with lesser mortals.

He listened carefully to the peals of laughter, though, picking among them. Bellatrix was only laughing because it was her Lord, and she did what he did. Lucius was laughing because he had judged the moment was opportune to do so. Like Snape, he had broken and returned to the fold after all, now that he knew Harry was dead and there was no one to protect him against his Lord's rage. After maiming him permanently and claiming one night with Narcissa, Voldemort had decided his debt was paid sufficiently to let him back into the Death Eaters, but Lucius was always at the forefront of attacks now, and had to do what he could to curry favor with the others.

Walden Macnair's laugh was not as assured. Snape kept his face blank as he knelt there, and never glanced in Macnair's direction.

The man was the most likely to betray them of any of Voldemort's servants, he thought. He was a coward, of late, as if his joy at killing dangerous magical beasts for thirteen years had somehow translated itself into a reluctance to kill humans. And he sometimes listened with a slightly open mouth to Snape's descriptions of the Order of the Phoenix, and with wide and shining eyes.

I will be watching him.

"Describe Connor Potter," said Voldemort suddenly, stopping his laugh and leaving the other Death Eaters floundering. "What have they done with him, now that his brother is dead?"

"Put him into training, my lord, behind privacy wards that only his parents have the keys to," Snape murmured. "They believe that he must meet you and fight you soon, and that he is unprepared."

"Of course he is," said the Dark Lord. "I killed his brother, the true Boy-Who-Lived." He paused. "Do not think I have forgotten what you did for me, Severus, or the last bit of true pleasure I received from the boy's death."

Snape smiled. For a moment, as he had stooped over Harry, he had pretended this had all been a ploy, Lupin a necessary sacrifice, and he had been going to rescue Harry and take him home. He had waited to see the hope shine, and then he had withered it when he took the disemboweling knife from his Lord's hand.

"I wish you to discover the secret of these wards, Severus, and bring the Potter boy to me," said the Dark Lord.

Snape had known that would be his mission. He could have protested, said that Dumbledore would never trust him, but he knew that made no difference. He must make Dumbledore trust him again, and get around the fool's desires to see Snape as somehow responsible for Harry's death.

He was, of course. He sat in the same room with the parents of the boy he had helped kill and they stared at him with resentment, but not the hatred they would have to express if they knew. It amused him enormously. Snape was enjoying this form of revenge on James Potter more than he had ever thought he would.

"Of course, my Lord," he murmured, and made to stand.

"A moment, Severus."

Snape knelt back down at once, and stayed there in silence as the Dark Lord sent all the other Death Eaters away. They were in the Riddle house, a rather obvious meeting place. But Snape had convinced Dumbledore that the Dark Lord hated his Muggle ancestors so much he would never use their home for either a meeting or a hiding place, and subtle Dark magic helped to reinforce that impression the one time the Order of the Phoenix came to search it. Lily Potter had walked right through a room where Nagini lay curled on a pillow watching her. Laughter roared in Snape's throat at the thought.

"I have an unusual request for you," Voldemort continued when they were alone.

"My lord?"

For a moment, that pale hand came out and caressed his face again. Then it caught his chin, and tilted it up. Snape went obediently with it. The Dark Lord spread out his Legilimency, and Snape opened his barriers wide before it. He had no secrets from this man he had served so faithfully for nearly twenty years.

The Dark Lord moved through his mind like a mist with fangs, then nodded and stepped out of it. "You still think of yourself by your last name," he said. "I would like you to begin to think of yourself by your first."

Snape nodded. Of course he would do so, and not ask why, if his Lord did not want him to ask why—

"You wish to know why, Severus." He was amused. Of course he was. Snape could feel his Lord's magic breathing over his skin like the cool wind from the lungs of some ice dragon.

"I do, my lord."

"And I do not yet wish to tell you." The gentle, caressing hand on his throat turned sharp as barbs. When he wished, the Dark Lord could use wandless magic to grow claws that rivaled any werewolf's. "You will know when I deem you ready to know, Severus."

"Of course, my Lord." And then he rose to his feet and Apparated, because he could feel the push in his mind for him to do so. Voldemort's eyes were on his back the whole time, like burning coals, like watching werewolves.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"Severus! Come in, my boy."

Snape had no sneer on his lips when he came into the office of Albus Dumbledore, because he never did. He bowed and took his place across the desk from him, holding a shadow of sympathy in his face. He was thinking how different it was when Albus called him by his first name than when the Dark Lord did so. Voldemort, of course, knew his life, as he knew the lives of all his Death Eaters, and knew why he didn't like the name. To Albus Dumbledore, the informality it allowed him mattered far more than what Snape wanted to be called.

"What did you learn?" The man had offered him nothing to either eat or drink before he began, showing just how anxious he was.

Snape began his entirely contrived report, which attributed motives to Death Eaters they did not have and prompted the Order of the Phoenix to watch for attacks that would never happen, his eyes not moving from Albus Dumbledore's face in the meanwhile. The man was pathetic. The news of Harry's death, and thus the breaking of the prophecy, had broken him. Now they were searching frantically for someone to be the "elder" to Connor Potter. So far, Snape knew, they had found no one. Two good candidates had mysteriously died in their sleep.

Albus nodded at every third word he said, his eyes filled with old shadows. Snape felt bile like acid creep up his throat.

Merlin, how he hated this man.

He had wanted to use him to steer a path through the darkness, to show Snape his own soul. Instead, Albus had assumed that he had simply "won" Snape back from the darkness, and paraded him as a prize before the other members of the Order of the Phoenix. And, of course, he had briefly allowed Snape to go to Azkaban, simply so that he could reward his "true" allegiance later when he testified that Snape had been their loyal spy all along.

A month with Dementors, because Albus Dumbledore wanted to make himself seem more heroic.

And, on top of that, he would not use his power. At one point, he could have prevented Tom Riddle's rise. At one point, he could have made Harry Potter into the weapon that would have stopped the Dark Lord's second rise. And he had refused, and hesitated, and hid behind prophecies, and refused.

It was no wonder that Snape preferred to serve another master. It was no wonder that he wanted revenge on Albus Dumbledore—revenge hot as a knife, cold as the hand of an Inferius, sweet as clustered honey on the tongue.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Snape slowly opened his eyes. Another dream, and it tattered and flew across his mind like clouds across the moon. He thought he had been dreaming about Albus, but that was not unusual. The man still appeared in his thoughts, both past and present.

Nothing hurt this time; he had finally learned to sleep with his arms neatly folded on his chest again, instead of tangling himself in the blankets as he thrashed from a memory he had no wish to relive. He stood, and paced across the room to check on his purple poison. He had mostly made it as deadly as he could, and now amused himself with seeing how painful he might make it.

In the end, he thought it would be very painful, and would kill just quickly enough to give the person who ingested it hope that she could be saved.

Snape sighed as he cast yet another stabilizing spell on the cauldron. There were times he dearly wished Remus Lupin were here.