Severus Snape was being followed. This was not an entirely unusual state of affairs. Beyond the usual handful of mistrustful portraits and staff members lurking where they thought he wouldn't notice them, there were always students who had it out for them for their deservedly atrocious Potions marks, or who thought it would impress their peers to have pranked the Head of Slytherin. (It was a point of pride that in the past seven years, not one of them had succeeded. Honestly, compared to the heights of elaboration his and Lily's years-long prank-war with the so-called Marauders had reached, the students' efforts were positively pathetic.)
It was, however, unusual that Severus was being stalked by a bird.
He was sure of it, now — that was definitely the same crow that had been watching him at breakfast, fluttering in with the owls and perching on a vacant candle-sconce, the same crow that had swooped at him as he made his way across the Courtyard from the staff room back toward the dungeons after Dumbledore's interminable monthly staff meeting. Now it was following him out into the Forest, ostensibly to collect potions ingredients, but really because he'd noticed it yet again, lurking in the Entrance Hall after dinner, as he headed back to his office, and he'd decided to draw it out, confront the creature and find out what the hell it wanted.
Yes, he was aware, even in his own head, that that sounded insane, but it had gotten close enough when it bloody well swooped (causing an undignified stumble that at least two of his fellow staff-members had witnessed) that he'd been able to touch its mind. He'd intended to make the stupid thing fuck off, or maybe just break its neck flying into a bloody wall for embarrassing him‚ but he'd been so surprised to come into contact with a mind that most certainly did not actually belong to a bloody bird that he'd let it get away without so much as a compulsion to mistake Dumbledore's hat for a particularly nice foodlike object. (Severus wasn't entirely certain what crows ate, but it didn't really matter.)
It had to be an animagus or something. Probably some sort of contact from Avalon, albeit a much less subtle contact than he was accustomed to receiving.
He was going into his eighth year as a 'spy' now — a glorified messenger-boy, really, since Dumbledore was perfectly well aware that he was a spy when he hired him, and de Mort knew that the Light knew he was a spy — and he could count on one hand the number of times he'd been contacted (or contacted his handlers) by any method other than a perfectly normal letter (albeit letters enchanted with heavy cypher and self-destruct charms, in case they should be intercepted) or directly through the Dark Mark. And that was including the occasions he'd been asked to report to the Court in person since he'd taken his (almost entirely useless) position at Hogwarts.
Since the war had settled into its current stalemate, with New Avalon executing their takeover of Mann and subsequently fighting a purely defensive war, there hadn't really been much for Severus to do. It was easy to go days or even weeks at a time without considering the fact that he was a spy at all, outside of wondering to himself why he continued to return to such an incredibly thankless job. Oh, yes, I'm supposed to be relaying anything I might learn about that old fuckwit's plans. Right. As though Dumbledore had confided so much as his breakfast plans to Severus. He had, on occasion, attempted to push misinformation through Severus, but he was so very obvious about it — Black had done better letting him 'overhear' his plans to smuggle contraband through the Shrieking Shack when they were sixteen — no one had fallen for it.
The Light side of the war effort was conducted almost entirely out of the Ministry these days. Now that the Death Eaters weren't making offensive raids on muggleborns and their families, or even Ministry targets, much less fielding major offensive battles, the "Order of the Phoenix" didn't really have much excuse to run around playing at vigilantism. If they tried to assault Mann, with or without Ministry support, they'd be slaughtered to the last wand, and everyone knew it. Severus had been able to report that morale among the Light was suffering because the longer the 'war' went on with nothing to show for it on their part and not so much as a single martyr (aurors killed throwing themselves at entrenched Death Eater positions didn't count), the more pointless it seemed to keep up an offensive, and the more they found themselves asking, does it really matter if we let them have their stupid island?
Of course, there were Light diehards like Dumbledore and the late Bartemius Crouch who absolutely believed it mattered if the Death Eaters managed to establish a foothold for the International Dark in the middle of the Irish Sea, and a fairly large contingent of the Wizengamot was afraid that it would set a bad example, allowing a group of terrorists to get away with flouting their authority. It was true that open dissent among the Commons had grown more obvious over the past five or six years, but on the other hand, New Avalon had happily taken in all the vampires and werewolves and other "undesirables" who had "plagued" the nice upstanding humans of Magical Britain with their very existence since the Statute was implemented, if not before, and a growing minority of the Wizengamot stood behind the proposal to develop a House of Commons, allowing the lower classes to elect a certain number of representatives to give them a voice in their own government, which would almost certainly resolve public dissent.
The ICW was keeping an eye on the situation now in spite of Dumbledore's insistence that this was still an internal British matter, due to the potential danger a new, openly Dark state might pose to the Statute, but like the British, they would have a hell of a time assaulting the Death Eaters on Mann, and de Mort was willing to cooperate with maintaining the most basic tenets of the Statute in exchange for international recognition as an independent state. One of the more entertaining bits of news Severus had had to report last year was that the Old Goat was absolutely furious that the ICW had voted to acknowledge New Avalon, even if they hadn't actually applied to join the Confederation.
Blanchet, who had beaten him out as Supreme Mugwump at the last Convocation, in large part because of his poor handling of the Avalonian Secession, had had the gall to point out that if he'd asked for help putting down their little insurrection twenty years ago — or if he'd gone to the negotiating table ten years ago — Britain wouldn't be in this position today. But now New Avalon held territory. They'd sent envoys to the United Kingdom, Ireland, and France, in addition to liasing with the local muggle government on Mann, petitioning the ICW for recognition, and drafting a mutual aid treaty with Miskatonic. They'd essentially decided that if Britain wouldn't recognise them and negotiate with them, that was fine, they could just take what they wanted and start acting as though they were a legitimate state, and Britain could go collectively suck a dick.
Which was, when one thought about it, exactly how most states were founded, honestly. The intermediate step of trying to force Britain to negotiate with them and thereby recognise them as a legitimate institution had been, Severus was pretty sure, just an excuse for Bellatrix to wage a war. It clearly wasn't necessary.
Honestly, Severus was seriously questioning how necessary his position was. Yes, it was good for recruitment to have someone to funnel likely candidates toward immigrating to New Avalon after they graduated, but it was hardly as though there was a single child anywhere in Britain who wasn't aware of the new nation. He'd had nothing of any actual importance to report for years.
Most of the reason he hadn't asked to be reassigned before now was that he'd wanted to finish what he'd started with Slytherin House, but he'd done that now. He'd cut out the rot Slughorn had encouraged by shifting the ethos of the House to value excellence and personal achievement rather than established, inherited connections, and restored the primacy of internal House institutions through which the students were meant to practise governing themselves. He'd ensured that every single first-, second-, and third-year had a safe haven from their housemates as well as the rest of the world: their rooms were warded so only they (and the elves and, in emergencies or for inspections, the seventh-year prefects or Severus himself) could enter.
He'd developed new systems for choosing and training prefects, policies to address abuses of power by prefects, programmes to prepare students to deal with emergency situations, and study groups to compensate for the abysmal instruction in Defence and History (and Potions). He met with every single student at least once per term to give them a chance to discuss any concerns they might have, advising them on their school and home life when necessary, as well as discussing their performance in lessons and future plans, and his prefects reported regularly on developments among their peers (and throughout the school at large) that he ought to be aware of.
In short, he'd set to rights everything which he had despised about Slytherin House as a student, and his changes had been overwhelmingly successful. Last year's graduating class had only ever had Severus as a Head of House, and it showed in their NEWT scores as well as their first House Cup win in decades, though he personally considered the marked decrease in reported incidences of bullying within the House and the quick reporting of any abuses on the part of new Defence Professors to be a rather greater accomplishment.
It certainly wouldn't hurt his students if he stayed for another year or six, and if last year was any indication, it would be much easier without the upperclassmen attempting to thwart him at every turn simply because they recalled the days before he was their Head of House, but anyone who wasn't actively attempting to cultivate connections and curry favours with up-and-coming students, upsetting the balance of power among the students by granting exceptions to the rules and showering certain children with unearned privileges and responsibilities, should be able to maintain the House now without much effort. He wouldn't feel guilty, leaving the younger students in the care of his prefects. The fourth-years who would be prefects next year were already in training, shadowing their older counterparts, and he was fairly certain that he could count on them to perpetuate the cycle by training their successors to the same standards they were currently held, regardless of whether their next Head of House had a damn clue what he was doing or gave a single fuck about whether his students would be successful after school.
And Severus really hated teaching Potions. Defence, he might be able to stomach day in and day out, but drumming the principles of elementary and even intermediate potion-making into the heads of children with no aptitude for the subject all day, every day, without end, was slowly driving him mad. He'd been rolling the idea around in his mind since the beginning of term, and he thought he might petition the Dark Lord at Yule to relieve him of his post. There was, after all, little to gain by leaving him here, when he could be working as a researcher or healer or even training mastery students — he wouldn't mind doing that...
He was well under the trees now, out of sight of the school, with not even a single acromantula or centaur to overhear, approaching a small clearing. He could feel the 'bird', just at the very edge of his awareness, flitting from tree to tree, sometimes ahead of him, sometimes behind. It was behind him when he reached the clearing and whirled around, wand drawn, ready to stun the thing, force it back into human form, and demand to know what the hell was with the fucking swooping...until the moment it wasn't.
Where the fuck did it go?
He spun around again, casting his mind out— There! The red light of a stunner lit branches with an ominous glow as it passed, hitting nothing. Before he could get a second spell off, there was a familiar cackle behind him. He turned on his heel a third time, freezing as the tip of her blade arced toward his throat. She paused in the same moment, sharp, cold, enchanted steel bare millimetres from his skin.
Fuck! How the hell had she done that? It didn't— She didn't...
She didn't feel like a person.
What the hell? Not only did he not feel her mind there — Bellatrix's mind was unmistakable, unnaturally solid, at least externally, and completely impenetrable — but he didn't feel the heat of her body, her breath on his face...
...Was this an illusion? He reached up to gently move the knife away from his neck with a single finger (which he judged probably wouldn't get him stabbed if it was his actual Lady grinning up at him with a mad glint in her eye). His finger went straight through it, sending peels of laughter through the clearing again, as the illusion dissolved and reformed a few feet away, leaning against a tree.
Severus, with no other recourse to salvage this interaction, bowed. "My Lady. To what do I owe the honour?"
She, the illusion — was the bird a familiar? he didn't think she was an animagus... — gave him a sharp grin. One of the ones promising a quick death...if the recipient of said grin cooperated. He swallowed hard.
"It has recently come to my attention, Severus, that you have entirely neglected the care and education of your goddaughter over the past seven years."
What?! "If you're referring to Mira Black—" It wasn't as though he had any other godchildren, nor as though he could think of any other children whose upbringing Bellatrix had reason to care about, but he wanted to be sure there was no misunderstanding here. "—she's been living with James Potter since Midsummer of Eighty-One. Or some weeks before that, I suppose." Lily had been executed on the Longest Day. Severus hadn't noted the exact starting date of hers and Black's trial (he'd been rather caught up in his first revising season as a bloody professor), but presumably her daughter had been removed from her custody some time before that. "He is also a named godparent to the girl, and far more respectable among the British nobility than myself, seeing as he's one of them. I'd have a snowball's chance in hell of suing for custody of her."
Honestly, he wasn't certain whether he would, if he could. Not only would he expect any child of Lily Evans and Sirius Black to be a narcissistic little psychopath with the attention span and energy level of a sugar-high pixie — Severus had loved Lily, but he knew better than anyone that she'd never been an angel, and when they'd been children, she'd been even worse at hiding it — but Potter was a fucking noble. He had money, resources, that Severus, as a fucking spy, working as a bloody schoolteacher, simply didn't. He could give the girl a much better life, Severus suspected, in terms of material comfort and opportunity. And while James Potter might be near the top of the list of people he would expect to spoil a child rotten, he'd married Tiffany Davis. Severus didn't know her well, she'd been a Hufflepuff prefect in the class after his, but he knew the Davises were a large, tightly-knit clan (closely entwined with the Farleys and Carmichaels and Urquharts), suggesting that if she didn't know how to deal with children, she would have aunts or cousins who could teach her, and he really couldn't imagine a Hufflepuff prefect allowing her husband to spoil a child too excessively. Galling as it was, Severus suspected Lily's daughter was just fine without him in her life.
Bellatrix just stared at him for several long seconds, then let loose with a slew of what he assumed were absolutely filthy goblin curses. (The Dark Lady rarely swore in English, but according to certain purebloods who actually spoke Gobbledygook, Latin, and Welsh, she could be very creative with her profanities.) "You're lucky I believe you," she finally snapped, pointing the illusory knife threateningly in his direction.
"Believe me about what? My Lady," he added belatedly, in a hasty attempt to cover up his annoyance.
"Drop the fucking honourifics, Sev, you've been Second Circle for, what? ten fucking years?" Eight. "I'm not going to kill you for calling me Bella. Especially when I only have a fucking crow at my disposal, honestly..."
"Fine, believe me about what, Bella?" he snapped, quashing the thrill of terror at his own daring.
"About you having no fucking clue that Mimi's been living in the school, right under your nose, for the past three and a half years."
"What?!"
"Yep. And you honestly had no idea. You're a terrible spy."
"I am not! It's not my fault Malfoy suggested me, or that de Mort approved it! I told both of them that the Old Goat definitely knew where my loyalties lay, well before I left school, even!" He could only presume Dumbledore had done something to the wards to separate whatever area of the Castle the girl was in from the rest of the school, because Severus hadn't heard so much as a rumour among the students of a small child running around...
"Oh, calm down, I'm just yanking your chain."
"No! What do you mean, Mimi's been living at the school?!"
"Pretty much exactly that. Potter flipped his lid over her being a baby mind mage, like that was a surprise or something—" Oh. Shite. Well, that would be one reason for Severus to involve himself, wouldn't it... "—brought her here so you could deal with her, because, oh, wouldn't you know it, one of the kid's godfathers is also a mind mage, almost like Lily and Siri weren't completely stupid!" Severus had sort of wondered at the time how Lily had convinced Black to go along with naming him — a personal enemy, on the opposite side of a war — as a godparent, but he'd assumed it involved sexual favours, and decided he didn't really want to know. "And since apparently no one ever told you about this, I'm guessing dear Albus was afraid you might actually teach her something useful if you knew she's here. As best I can tell, he's spent the last three years and change trying half-heartedly to teach her focusing exercises and convince her that her very existence is a threat to the concept of free will."
He's been doing what?!
I'm going to kill that man... Severus thought. It wasn't until Lady– Bellatrix laughed that he realised he'd said it aloud.
"He's only still alive because he didn't manage to make her so miserable she'd rather leave than stay here."
"What?"
The illusion pouted at him. "I offered to take her back to Mann with me, but she'd rather stay here learning from the ghosts and running around more or less at her own discretion, with all the uninhabited parts of the Castle as her nursery." She gave up her show of pouting with a careless shrug. "Not that I blame her, honestly. I'd probably have done the same at her age, even if it did mean putting up with Albus fucking Dumbledore being a sanctimonious bloody bastard a few hours a week." When Severus raised an eyebrow in silent disbelief, she grinned. "I don't know if you realise this, since they're all pretty civilised by the time they come here, but it's pretty impossible for less than three normal adults to educate and supervise a small child at all times, especially if they have other duties or interests. They just can't keep up with a kid running around eighteen to twenty hours a day and getting bored after about ten seconds of not being actively engaged in doing something interesting."
Severus strongly suspected that that might be a House of Black -specific circumstance — he was fairly certain neither he nor Lily had been incapable for sitting still for more than ten seconds, and they'd definitely slept more than four hours a night — but since they were talking about a child who had likely inherited all of Sirius Black's most annoying traits (see: hyperactive narcissistic psychopath), he didn't bother attempting to explain that normal children weren't so exhausting that they required teams of multiple adults to keep up with them.
"Ghosts don't sleep, and there are dozens of them here who were teachers in life. They have literally nothing to do with their time, seeing as they're dead, so they're positively delighted when she gets bored and bothers them to teach her new things. I would have killed to have twenty or thirty adults around who were eager to teach me and available at any time when I was her age.
"Anyway, they've got most of the history and philosophy she'll need to know covered. Mundane maths and physical sciences, literature, languages, and etiquette. Dancing. Painting. Focusing exercises. Arithmancy. Even most witchcraft. They can't actually perform it anymore, but they can walk her through it. I'm going to leave Nemain here — that's the crow—" It swooped at him again, dropping out of the dark before circling around to perch on a branch beside the illusion, which giggled at his reflexive flinch. "—so I can fill in the gaps and teach her basic wizardry. Not that I can really demonstrate through Nemain, but if I isolate a memory for her, she can get a feel for how I cast things. And all of the House-specific things she'll need to know as my heir, of course. But she really does need someone to teach her mind magic, and Thom says that trying to do legilimency through Nemain through me would probably break my familiar, so congratulations, you've got the job."
Severus simply stared. He wasn't going to say no — of course he wasn't! Even if it weren't Bellatrix demanding it of him, if anyone had told him that Mira was here, he'd've volunteered to teach her in a heartbeat. But... But he'd been going to try to get out of here, damn it...
"Come on," the illusion said, crow hopping to his shoulder, its very sharp-looking beak uncomfortably close to his right ear. "I'll introduce you."
"En garde!" a young girl's voice shouted, laughing. They rounded the corner to a clanking of plate and jingle of chain, fencing foils tinging off each other as what appeared to be a possessed suit of armour advanced and retreated, the ghost inhabiting it giving the girl pointers on her footwork as they passed back and forth.
"Mimi!" the illusion called. "There's someone I want you to meet."
"Eh?" She turned on one heel, clearly before the words properly registered, midway through an exchange — suddenly enough that her ghostly opponent couldn't stop quite quickly enough. She had to duck a sharp jab to the back of the head (with a live blade, of course — why would anyone use a button when fencing with a seven-year-old? bloody Blacks...) and step aside as he stumbled, off-balance and trying not to trip over her. The girl appeared not to notice, avoiding both sword and armour with an unconscious degree of grace which reminded Severus of Black (or the mad witch whose familiar was still perched on his shoulder), though the very obviously confused expression she put on when the ghost abandoned his armour and began chiding her in a thick German accent for stopping so suddenly — looking around making a show of her surprise that anyone would care about the thing she'd just done, since no one had gotten hurt or anything, paying little attention to the lecture — was classic Lily Evans.
Her features were similarly a blend of her parents'. He might not have thought so if he hadn't had occasion to see Lily with her hair charmed dark, when they'd first started venturing out into Knockturn as teenagers, but if he'd ever made an effort to imagine what little Mira Black might look like... Well, he definitely would've recognised her if he'd happened across her out on the street, with Lily's too-green eyes and wide, expressive mouth, and the Blacks' sharp bone structure, wild hair, and black Irish colouring.
Lily's face had been narrower, and Severus recalled her being a bit taller at Mira's age, though that might be a matter of perspective. On the other hand, it might have been her grace and the quickness of her movements reminding him of the Blacks, but he suspected that Mira would grow up to be a bit dantier than Lily, whose build had been fairly average. Black had been the shortest bloke in their year, of a height with Lily when they'd graduated, and Bellatrix (whom Black strongly resembled — enough that Severus suspected that a female version of Black would pass for her twin), five-two and all of six stone and five, looked like a bloody china doll, like she'd break if you looked at her wrong, much less hit her with a bludgeoning curse. Lily had probably been taller.
She grinned, ignoring the ghost (who floated off in a huff) entirely now she'd made her little show of not caring about his concern for whether she got stabbed in the head. "Oh! Hi! I'm Mimi! You must be Sev!" She paused for the space of a heartbeat — certainly not long enough to get a word in edgewise — before adding, "Kore says hi. Also, apparently Lily's not really dead? I don't know if anyone told you, they apparently didn't think it was important to tell me, but she's not really dead because Death doesn't want her dead, so why would pushing her into the Void kill her? and she'll be back in a few years, and in the meanwhile, she's off having adventures in other universes."
She was— Lily wasn't dead?! Wha— How? Well, no, that was a stupid question, obviously Persephone didn't want her dead, the child had just said as much (it was almost as unsurprising that the girl was on casual conversational terms with Kore as it was that she'd turned out to be a mind-mage — of course Death would take an interest in Lily's daughter), but—
Before Severus could quite wrap his mind around the idea that Lily was off having adventures in other universes, the fencing ghost returned, with the Grey Lady in tow, entreating her to impress upon the impossible child the importance of not allowing herself to get stabbed in the head. (He thought. His Latin wasn't great, but the gesticulations and tone made it fairly clear.) Until this very moment, Severus had been under the impression that the Grey Lady didn't speak, but that didn't stop her hissing something at the girl with a look of extreme disappointment. Parseltongue, clearly, since the child spat something back. After a few exchanges, Bellatrix chimed in in...probably Welsh, Severus didn't know, all Celtic languages sounded the same to him, drawing the ghost into (probably?) a separate argument, after an interaction Severus interpreted as the ghost telling the child that this conversation was not over and they'd talk about it later, young lady.
"So, you're a teacher here? I guess that makes sense, I knew Uncle James wanted me to come live with you back when he brought me here, and Albus—" The odd emphasis she put on the name forced a huff of laughter from Severus: he was fairly certain she'd rather call him something rather ruder, but (if Severus had to guess) he'd asked her to call him by his given name, so now the child was simply pronouncing his name as though it was an uncomplimentary epithet. "—said no, you weren't over Lily being dead yet, even though she's not, just no one told anyone that, Kore—" She glared at nothing in particular for half a beat, before going on. "—but I didn't really know why we were talking to Albus in the first place, or what he had to do with you, but if you live here and he's like sort of the Lord of the Castle—" ("Lord Governor," Bellatrix corrected her, before carrying on her argument with the Grey Lady.) "Fine, Lord Governor, whatever, he's still in charge, so, I guess he'd need to know if someone was moving in with you, right?"
"I...suppose?"
The girl's eyes narrowed up at him. "Are you okay? Do you need to sit down? Lady Gwendolyn says it's polite to offer guests a seat anyway, even though Albus and Uncle James never wait for me to offer, because I don't, because I don't want them to stay and try to talk at me, but you feel sort of...wobbly." When he didn't answer, caught on the idea that she didn't care for Dumbledore's or Potter's company, she grabbed his hand, pulling him toward a nearby doorway. "Come on. I can make tea! Or hot cocoa, that's better than tea, tea's kind of meh. And you can tell me if I'm doing it right, 'cause Bella and the ghosts can't try it at all, and glamours don't work the same on elves."
He let her chatter away at him between conjuring (child-sized) teacups and filling them with aguamenti, and glamouring the water to taste like hot chocolate, while Severus considered the fact of her existence and her apparent enmity toward both Dumbledore and Potter. The former was not unexpected. Albus Dumbledore's sanctimonious dragonshite could try the patience of a bloody saint, and Bellatrix had mentioned he'd been attempting to teach the girl to repress her talent for mind magic. But Severus would have expected the latter to dote on his goddaughter, regardless of her father's 'betrayal' of the Light. Personally, Severus thought Black had been perfectly justified in Imperiusing Dumbledore to keep him from dragging Lily off to answer for the crime of existing. (It was hardly as though she'd gone out of her way to establish a relationship with the Powers. Persephone had been teaching her little things even before Severus met her.)
That Black had been willing to use an Unforgivable on his own leader in order to protect Lily and Mira had raised Severus's opinion of him considerably — though if it'd been Severus, he might've used the Cruciatus instead. Honestly, Black hadn't even made the Old Goat do anything, just stop fighting and lay down his wand. Severus didn't like the man, but even he thought the fact that Black was in Azkaban over what might be the least objectionable use of an Unforgivable Curse Severus had ever heard of, was completely absurd. Since Potter did like Black, he would have expected him to forgive using such a curse in a moment of desperation, to protect his wife and child, or at least find it in his heart to set aside Black's 'betrayal' enough to raise his goddaughter as his own.
Clearly, though, he hadn't.
Maybe he'd realised that little Mira's "imaginary friends" weren't so imaginary? ...Though in that case, Severus would be somewhat surprised Potter continued to visit her at all, and Dumbledore... Well, the Old Goat might actually think there was a chance she could grow out of speaking to the Powers, as though they actually were imaginary friends, or that he could convince her that she was delusional, get her on a grounding potion to reduce her awareness of external magic, and pretend she wasn't god-touched, as well as a baby legilimens.
The child obviously had plenty of interaction with the ghosts, and probably the elves and portraits as well, and the gods whispering at the back of her mind, but it sounded very much as though she was isolated from every other living human aside from Potter and the Old Goat himself. Severus was certain that, much as they might dislike him, his fellow staff would have come to him if they knew there was an untrained child legilimens trapped in the Castle, if only because they would assume that he had something to do with her (especially since she was his goddaughter) and have something to say about whether it was or was not horribly abusive to shut up a child with minimal interaction with living members of her own species and— Jesus fucking Christ, Dumbledore!
It wasn't entirely surprising that Bellatrix saw nothing wrong with the idea of leaving the girl here. Given what Severus knew of the Blacks' home lives — he'd been fairly close to Sirius's younger brother in school — no human interaction would probably be preferable. But Potter should know better. He'd been one of Severus's main practice-targets when he'd been developing his own talent with mind magic (who better to practise on than the arseholes who were most likely planning to prank him halfway to hell at any given time?), so Severus knew that he'd hated being an only child, and that was despite the fact that his parents had spoiled him terribly, and arranged for him to receive his elementary education alongside half a dozen other children from their social set, not to mention ensuring he regularly socialised with them outside of scheduled lessons.
Had it not occurred to him that locking the girl away was not in any way likely to condition her to interact normally with other people? The fact that she was a legilimens really only made it more urgent to expose her to other living people. If she was kept isolated until her gifts were fully developed, it would only be more overwhelming to be introduced to the world outside of this little gilded cage.
Dumbledore might not notice, whilst berating her about not legilimising people, but Severus could feel her tickling at the very edges of his mind, light and subtle enough that she could certainly claim it was an accident if he'd caught her and called her out immediately, but too cautious and too persistent to be anything other than intentional, poking around, trying to form an impression of his character and state of mind, as well as catch any stray thoughts he might project beyond himself. He wasn't surprised, he could feel the curiosity she was projecting as clearly as he could see it on her face.
That tickles, he thought at her experimentally. The contact vanished immediately, skittering mental probes pulling back to her own mind-space, whereupon she proceeded to pretend she hadn't been sounding him out at all. So, she'd learned that she would be in trouble for attempting to infiltrate other people's minds, but that certainly wasn't going to stop her trying, if she thought she could without being caught. He really had no doubt that in time, she would learn to undermine people's defences more subtly, and he would bet his last knut that whoever was assigned the unenviable task of reintroducing her to the outside world would have a hell of a time teaching her to respect the privacy of other people's minds. If she was half as talented as the Dark Lord, they'd have to be a master legilimens themself to even realise that she wasn't.
"What do you think?"
Albus Dumbledore is the world's biggest arse?
She let the thought pass her by, keeping herself to herself thoroughly enough she didn't notice it before it dissipated between them. "About the chocolate," she added in what must seem to be a moment of hesitation on his part.
He took another sip, actually paying attention to it this time. It wasn't bad, but...
When he hesitated again, wondering whether it was better to tell a small child they'd done something poorly, or to avoid lying to them, she sighed. "I know, it tastes like chocolate-flavoured tea. I still like it better than tea-flavoured tea, though."
It did, too thin to be actual hot chocolate, regardless of the flavour, which was actually fairly accurate. "I suspect the Charms professor would give it an acceptable." Of course, Flitwick's students wouldn't do anything like this until they were, at the very least, second-years. For a seven-year-old it was bloody amazing...it just objectively wouldn't pass for hot chocolate.
She pouted. "So, how do I do it better?"
"Well, firstly, temperature glamours are very tricky to make consistent and realistic. I would use a heating charm on the water directly. And there is a charm to adjust the viscosity of a liquid, but it's rather advanced. It's considerably easier to use glamourie to make the water seem to have the consistency of milk or cream. As a separate spell from the ones you used to impart the flavour and appearance," he specified. "That's why the flavour is slightly off, multi-sensory confusion between the taste and tactile effects — the latter currently being the warmth. There are methods to construct multi-sensory glamours using a single spell, but they're exponentially more complex the more senses are affected. Since you're anchoring the glamours to physical water, rather than a conjured or transfigured substrate, you needn't be concerned about destabilising the object by applying several distinct glamours to it, and so long as they're affecting different senses, the spells shouldn't interfere with each other."
She bit her lip. "Show me? Slow, please, so I can watch."
He did, conjuring another, more reasonably sized cup, filling it, and charming the water as slowly and precisely as he could, while she watched intensely, a couple of (likely unconscious) mental probes emerging to "watch" his intent as he cast the spells as well.
"Ooh, that is better!" she said, taking the cup for herself. "One more time?"
As soon as he finished the second cup, she cast a finishing charm on the glamours, then re-cast them before informing him, "I don't know a warming charm yet, so that one's still yours," with no apparent appreciation of how impressive it was to finish only three out of the four spells cast on an object — five, if he considered that she could easily have accidentally disrupted the conjured cup itself.
He chose not to remark upon it, instead taking a sip. "Much better."
She grinned, the expression shifting to a smirk as Bellatrix's bird fluttered into the room. "Severus told me what I was doing wrong, with the chocolate," she bragged.
The Dark Lady's illusion manifested to give him an exasperated frown. "Children don't learn anything if you tell them the answers, Severus. She was supposed to figure that out on her own."
"She's seven, Bellatrix."
"So? Dru made me work it out for myself when I was her age. Well, actually she demonstrated the integrated version she uses for coffee, with the pep charm, and then told me if I wanted to glamour my tea to taste like anything other than dirty leaf-water, I could figure out the necessary elements for myself... And then when I figured it out, Walburga told me off for glamouring the tea." The kid giggled at her indignation, which Severus was almost certain was put on, even if she had actually been told off for insulting the hospitality of whoever's tea she'd glamoured. "Sorry, Starflower, I had to concede Helena has a point. Yes, it's your fault if you get stabbed in the head, but we also don't have anyone here who can heal you if you do, and Gunter doesn't want to be responsible for you unceremoniously taking your leave from this mortal coil, so please be more obvious about the fact that you're being careful, or he'll stop teaching you, and there will be nothing any of us can do about it."
"Ugh, fine." She pulled her face into a disgusted little moue. "I still think not letting him stab me was pretty obvious, but fine."
"Good, because meditating while practising fencing exercises is a hell of a lot less boring than trying to meditate while sitting in one spot, and Nemain can't animate a suit of armour for me to practise with you."
"I know..."
"But, speaking of meditating and practising, and shite I can't do through Nemain, you're here to teach mind magic, Sev. Not tea-parlour tricks."
"I am aware of that, Bellatrix. I was attempting to establish a degree of rapport before broaching the subject, given that her only formal experience with mind magic to this point seems to have convinced her that she will be punished in some way for getting caught doing so much as sounding out the minds of those around her. Which, by the way, is perfectly normal behaviour for a legilimens, and not considered intrusive or in any way inappropriate."
"You said it tickled!"
"It does, if you do it to another legilimens or a particularly sensitive occlumens, but it's not harmful. I was only letting you know that I was aware of your presence. It won't give you substantially more information than reading someone's face if they can practise occlumency to any degree to speak of. It's akin to, oh, I don't know — your hand accidentally brushing the edge of someone else's cloak as you pass them on the street."
She hesitated. "So, it's okay, then?" Do people get annoyed if you touch their clothes in passing?
Damn you, Dumbledore... "Yes, it's okay. Perfectly acceptable. Most people won't even notice." It might be a bit odd if you make it very obvious that you're intentionally trying to touch someone's cloak in passing, but brushing against them simply because you are in close proximity to each other is unremarkable.
"Magistra Dru said I shouldn't touch anyone's mind if they didn't say I might, because if they don't know how to make me stop, I might get lost and not be able to find my way back to me."
"Magistra...Druella Rosier?" As in, Bellatrix's mother?
The girl nodded.
"I was...not aware that Magistra Rosier is a legilimens."
Mira shrugged. Bellatrix's illusion snorted. "She's not."
"May I see the memory?"
"Er...do I have to separate it like Bella does when she shows me memories? Because I don't think I can do that."
Severus raised an eyebrow at the Dark Lady's illusion.
"I've been isolating memories to show her how to cast charms or let her live through other people explaining shite to me more patiently and eloquently than I would myself, because mind magic is a great cheat, especially when I can't be there to demonstrate things in person, but I've been advised that my mind is no place for a child."
...Well if that wasn't the understatement of the century, Severus didn't know what was. "No, you don't need to isolate it, but it will be easier to find if you're thinking about it."
She nodded again, bringing a slightly fuzzy memory to the front of her mind, very neatly highlighting it, though Severus understood how it would be difficult to isolate — not only was it tightly bound to the sequence of events leading to her presence here, at Hogwarts, but it was the foundation of everything she knew about mind magic, and closely related to a whole host of memories involving the Dark ("Annie"), for whom she'd been making a Yule sacrifice at the time. "Magistra Dru" had interrupted and outed her as a mind mage, which Mira considered sort of mean, but the Magistra had also clearly expected the Potters to send her to the Dark Lord and Bellatrix, so the girl didn't hold it too harshly against her. It wasn't the Magistra's fault Uncle James had decided to bring her here instead.
She'd walked the girl through a very basic aptitude test, incidentally showing her how to establish direct contact with another mind, which she'd then quite reasonably advised the then three-year-old child to avoid doing with anyone who wasn't a legilimens.
(Somehow, it hadn't clicked earlier that the reason Mira had been brought here almost four years ago was that she'd been actively using mind magic, despite three being an absurdly young age to begin coming into the talent, especially naturally, rather than in response to some external pressure — abuse was the most common, though he'd also heard of congenitally deaf children developing mind magic to communicate, and read one case study on a pair of non-identical twins with an aptitude for mind magic who developed habitual reciprocal legilimency mimicking the soul-bond between certain sets of identical twins.)
Mira, however, hadn't really understood the difference between superficial contact and reaching into another mind, performing true legilimency. It was an instinctive talent, most legilimens required training to recognise exactly when and how their minds shifted to match their targets, so it was hardly surprising that what seemed like a very clear distinction to Druella was more of a continuous scale of making contact to Mira.
Look, this, here. He focused on the part of the memory where the older legilimens had let the child establish a connection between their minds. (She had to be a legilimens, she'd actively passed a memory-bundle of copied factual information regarding Lily and the Blacks to the girl, as well as reaching out and establishing contact herself to get Mira's attention to warn her not to make direct contact with non-legilimens.) Can you tell how your magic is mixed up in hers enough that they feel the same?
...Sort of? She hesitated, then pushed a little pulse of magic at him to make it more obvious to herself which parts of her mind (or what "looked" like her mind) she was actively controlling at the moment. Like yours is now?
Yes. That's what Magistra Rosier was referring to when she told you not to touch other minds without permission. As long as you can feel an obvious division between your mind and the other mind, or you can shift your attention to look out of your own eyes, you'll be fine. But what is this?
He poked at an odd little...bubble, of sorts, matching the background frequency of the girl's mind, but which hadn't transmitted her ping any more than the extension of Severus's mind had.
Oh, I forgot about that. I think it was in the memories of things about my parents.
Well that was bloody weird. (He'd say it was weirder she'd forgotten about it, but if she'd been distracted, she could easily have lost track of it, like a stray thought, and simply never come back to it. It did, after all, feel like it belonged here.) Lacking any better ideas of what to do with it, he attempted to extend his own probe out to assimilate it.
It was hollow, with a memory inside which had clearly been constructed for this purpose. Entering it, he found himself in a sitting room with a distinguished blonde woman, perhaps in her late twenties. She was wearing dress robes appropriate for a fancy ball, and an expression which said the matter she was about to address was deadly serious.
"If you've discovered this memory, you should know that your name is Mira Calytrix Black. My name is Druella. You are an empathic legilimens. The frequency you had to adopt to assimilate and gain access to this memory is the natural frequency of your mind, or was when we met. It should still be recognisably similar, even if it's been a few years. If you've discovered this memory, it is most likely because you've forgotten yourself, your entire consciousness adopting the frequency of another mind, making this reminder very obvious. That is, at least, my intent.
"Your family call you Mimi. When you were three years old, you had at least three imaginary friends who weren't really imaginary. You called them Katie, Cory, and Annie. On Yule of Nineteen Eighty-Three, you attempted to sacrifice a cat to the Dark. Annie showed you how to draw the necessary symbols backward, but it's the thought that counts, with rituals and presents. You were interrupted by myself; your godfather, James Potter; his wife, Tiffany; and their son, Henry." The Potters' names were accompanied by illusory-looking images and weak impressions of their magical presences. "This is when you learned that you are a mind mage, or rather, that there's a name for that kind of magic.
"Unfortunately, I've only known you for about ten minutes, so if the reminder of your name and your family have not sparked a connection, and mentioning your friends hasn't drawn their attention to assist you, your best chance of making your way back to your own memories and sense of self without external assistance is to enter this memory—" The construct gestured at a pensieve on a nearby table. "—which is a copy of mine, of the meeting in question. I showed you how to legilimise me, then legilimised you a few minutes later. It ends just before I shaped this construct and left it for you to find. If you follow along, you should be able to find the right frequency. Theoretically.
"At the very least, it can't hurt to try it. If it doesn't work, I trust the whole experience of finding such a very odd memory as this, which you have no recollection of acquiring, will be unsettling enough that you will seek help from an actual mind-healer to figure out how the hell it got here.
"If you are a mind-healer who has been enlisted to assist Miss Black in regaining her sense of self, I would advise you to bear in mind that the case of Kirkwood v. Menken established that evidence of high ritual practice before the age of reason, which is to say seven, shall not be taken into account in matters of legal concern, as the child in question cannot be reasonably expected to have known better than to engage in anathema practices; thus this memory and the related one, referencing interactions with specific Aspects of Magic, are protected under Section Three of your Healer's Vows. You may set your mind at ease knowing that the fact that the patient has come to you is itself a clear indication that she no longer holds the attention of any of the entities in question, as they did not respond to assist her.
"Fortune's favour, child."
The image of the woman vanished, leaving Severus alone with the pensieve, in what might be the single strangest mental construct he'd ever seen. Not that his experience with mind magic was particularly esoteric, but he'd never even heard of something like this. There was a part of him which really wanted to follow the memory she'd provided, but withdrawing and leaving the memory as he'd found it, intact and untouched, seemed the altogether wiser course of action, especially since he could feel the girl attempting to establish a reciprocal connection with his own mind, outside of this little constructed memory.
So what was it? she asked, as soon as he withdrew.
A reminder, in case you accidentally fall into resonance with another mind and forget yourself. I recommend you forget about it. If you ever need it, you'll remember it. He pushed it away from her immediate consciousness, letting it fade into the background of her mind, still isolated from every other memory, practically indistinguishable. As it was apparently meant to be.
...Okay, then... So, if it's okay to reach into another person's mind if I keep track of which parts are me and which parts aren't, does that mean it's okay to try to get in your mind?
He let his amusement shiver between them. Yes, but not today. My mind, like Bellatrix's, is no place for a child. I need to tidy up certain connections so you won't be drawn into anything too unpleasant. And I do need to return to the school relatively soon. My absence will eventually be missed.
Her disappointment almost made him change his mind, but only almost. He really did need to go back. It was almost impossible to keep track of time while legilimising someone, and while communicating directly from mind to mind could be much faster than speaking, legilimising someone new almost always took far longer than it felt. He didn't object when she kept trying to worm her way past his occlumency with an inarticulate sense that it was fine, she didn't care if she ran into something unpleasant, and she'd stop when he had to leave, and if he really wanted her to stop before then, he'd make her, like Bella had.
The Dark Lady raised an eyebrow at him. "So, I trust you'll continue visiting and teach her how to do mind magic properly?"
"Of course. Though I'm currently searching for a reason I shouldn't march right up to Dumbledore's office and punch him in the face for leaving her isolated here for the past three years."
"Mmm...she wants to stay?" Bellatrix reminded him. "And if the Old Goat thinks you're going to make a fuss, he'll probably just dismiss you and find some excuse to have you arrested to ensure you flee the country rather than attempt to challenge his custody, and then we'll be down one legilimency tutor and one entirely incompetent spy."
Severus glowered at her for a long moment before grinding out. "I suppose that reason will have to do."
"I suppose it will. So, find anything interesting in there?" she tipped her head toward the child, sitting cross-legged beside him on the sofa with her eyes closed.
"I didn't get far in the girl's memories before I was distracted," he admitted. "How certain are you that your mother isn't a legilimens?"
"Positive. She'd be the first to tell you that she's not."
"Well, she definitely performed true reciprocal legilimency on Mimi, as well as establishing contact a second time without the girl's assistance, and left a memory constructed in the register of the background energy of Mimi's mind to remind her who she is if she ever does go too deep and loses herself, which is strange and fascinating, and definitely not something a non-legilimens could do. Quite frankly, I'm not certain I could do it without considerably more practice. I've never heard of anything like it before."
She smirked as though she knew the next thing she was about to say would be considered completely ridiculous. "The fact that she occasionally legilimises people is completely irrelevant. She's not a legilimens. Thom just taught her legilimency back when I was...eight or nine, probably? They used to be friends." She shrugged. "You know, insofar as either of them has friends."
"You can't just teach someone legilimency, Bellatrix."
She made her illusion raise an eyebrow at him as the clock began to toll the hour. "Obviously no one ever told them that. You should go, Dumbles will get suspicious if you're late for dinner."