Launching Ships, Chapter 7

Severus Snape was emphatically not a man who was given to mischief, nor was he usually tolerant of such. Pranks and "boyish troublemaking" had been poisoned for him, as the Marauders had made it their personal business to annoy and assault him, and, if possible, blame him for their own vandalizm and pranks, and the Slytherins in his year had mostly thought that "fun" involved forcibly removing the appendages of insects and practicing nasty spells on the lower years; hence his disillusionment. Now, as a teacher, he was once again a target of (sometimes malicious) pranks, such as when Nymphadora dropped a bloody venomous tentacula on him, and it was also his distasteful duty to dispense the wrath of heaven (ehem, detentions and point losses) to the mischief-makers he flushed out.

Today, however, said Potions Master was in the unlikely position of planning mayhem to wreak on the Inner Circle, and (having been variously tortured by most of them, due to being a halfblood and one of the few Death Eaters that had no stomach for the painful games that the others enjoyed playing) he was actually, for the first time in all his life since the day he had been initiated, looking forward to being summoned. A wicked little smile played about his face the whole day, not even being shaken by a class full of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who collectively botched their calming draughts due to his inattention, and all over Hogwarts, the rumors spread that something (which must have been unpleasant, if it made the greasy git of the dungeons so happy) must have happened. The Hogwarts rumor mill went mad, speculating on what might have happened "He found an excuse to expel Potter!" "He must have found a girlfriend" "Paid someone, more like!" "Maybe he invented a new potion that includes the eyeballs of disruptive students!" There were collective shudders at that one, and Severus, who had long grown inured to the poisonous commentary (even if it did hurt, just a little), just smiled a little wider at the excuse to take large amounts of potions from rival houses for gossiping about the staff.

That evening, Fred Weasley knocked on his office door with the excuse that he wanted to know if he would be allowed to have an extra day for the paper on faery quartz that Severus had assigned the previous week (even though they both knew that he had turned it in early) and gave him several very dirty forged "love notes" written by Mr. Jordan, notes which would reveal the crude details of a supposed "affair" between Alecto Carrow and Rodolphus Lestrange. Severus only had to read over them to have a perfect idea what to do next, causing the appearance of a particular breed of smirk that, while rarely seen, promised a Slytherin sort of punishment for whomsoever he was angry at. The boy seemed incredibly thankful that it was not being levelled at him. As he should be, considering that the last time that particular smirk had made an appearance was when Severus had come up with a enticingly creative and humiliating way to make Potter and Black pay for their werewolf "prank" (which to this day Black still thought had been the work of a Hufflepuff girl who had been angry because James and Black had been using polyjuice to pretend to be her boyfriend, which was only icing on the cake from Severus's point of view). Thus Severus (after having taken the notes) shooed Weasley out, then settled back, summoning a glass of wine and his own private journal. He had some plans of his own to make; while rusty, he was too Slytherin not to know how to cause a pluperfect mess in the Dark Lord's ranks, and he certainly had reason enough to want to...

A few hours later, a particularly satisfied Slytherin reluctantly set down his journal, warded it as thoroughly as Gringotts (there were some particularly nasty and rather illegal spells and potion recipes in there; best not to make them easy to access even if some wizard were to figure out how to get into his warded chambers and the spelled and trapped drawer the journal was in) and, going to his potions cabinet, drew out a bottle of the extra potent love potion that Weasley had made. (He would have been remiss in his duties had he not skimmed a few cups of the substance off when it had been brewed; the troublemakers would no doubt only use it to embarrass their classmates. At least that was his view.) He looked at the liquid through the glass, on the off-chance it had grown cloudy with diableric mold, but it was clear, and in any case, he would not have cared too much if the wizards he was going to dose with the concoction had a nasty stomach flu, so he slipped on his sea-serpent skin potion gloves and carefully uncorked the bottle. It was only about half an hour's work to doctor the mixture with a few hairs from various Death Eaters, and the remainder of the hour was quickly spent packing several other choice concoctions for Death Eater consumption and adding them to his already formidable potion belt. Then, realizing rather too late that it was already after midnight, he put his potion belt with his hated Death Eater garb and went to bed in a rare mood of contentment, forgoing (for once) grading the enormous stack of papers on his desk.

The next day did not have a particularly auspicious start, except that it was nasty and overcast and he was overdue on his grading schedule, and several second year Gryffindors and Slytherins had to be sent to the hospital wing for roughhousing next to a particularly volatile ingredient that Severus had set up for the seventh years' use, which did not improve his already sour mood. By midday, any left-over exhilaration or even happy anticipation for the implementation of his plans had left him entirely, and even Fred and George were not safe from his wrath, losing perhaps a few too many points for making a mural with their leftover salamander blood and newt eyes. And then, that evening, he was Called.

Severus rose from his supper instantly (it would not do if the Dark Lord thought he was not prompt enough) and then, shooting off a quick patronus to Albus to explain the situation, (after he had moved out of sight of any students) he strode straight to the apparation point and disapparated. A moment later found him at the Dark Lord's base, which incidentally was Malfoy Manor, and he tightened his occlumency shields and made his way to the overly-ornate doors, maneuvering idly around one of Lucius's ludicrous white peacocks as he did so. And a few minutes more found himself in the presence of the Dark Lord and his bestial followers.

What followed was the usual combination of grandstanding, Death Eater reports, and cruciatus, and Severus (while not managing to escape a bit of torture himself) managed to use his admittedly formidable medical training to spell potions into several of the others while they were still shaking from exposure to the cruciatus. He also managed to wandlessly plant one of the dirty notes in Alecto's pocket (along with a little mental manipulation so that she would remember Rodolphus slipping it to her) before he decided that that was probably enough for now; if everything he had planned out began happening all at once, the Dark Lord would suspect foul play, and besides, he was too Slytherin to value pranks over his life. He counted it a win that the Dark Lord did not apply more than one cruciatus and that his shields held up, and escaped as quickly as he could with the excuse that he had some potions to attend to, and he could not stay long enough for the Dark Revel that occurred after the meeting. As most of the others considered him assexual and uninterested in anything except potions and teaching snot-nosed brats, the excuse held water, at least. And as he left, he absentmindedly plucked a bit of peacock down off of his cloak, and, as he was letting it go to drift away, a sudden, marvelous idea struck him, and he made a point to collect a few of the stunning white feathers which the albino creatures left behind on his way out.

He returned, drank an anti-cruciatus when Madame Pomfrey forced him to ("I don't care about your report, you need treatment! If I have to stun you, I will!") told Dumbledore the events of the meeting (minus his extracurricular activities, which he knew would either amuse the old man to no end or disappoint him due to not being part of his particular and narrow set of plans) and went straight to his rooms to complete more of the grading which he had been neglecting recently.

The Dark Lord was calling for meetings more and more frequently recently, secure in the knowledge that the Ministry of Magic was willfully ignoring his rise and gathering strength, which meshed in perfectly with Severus's plans. He gave the Gryffindor twins "detentions" as soon as feasible, too, to share with them the results of each meeting (though he kept a few things strictly to himself). The "affair" between Alecto and Rodolphus was flourishing, causing a major upheaval in the Death Eater ranks, and Bellatrix Lestrange had euthanized "that dirty beast Greyback" only last week, when the besotted werewolf had tried to force his attentions on her. Lupin, he remembered, had been almost beside himself. If he only knew...

Those were not the only events that Severus had orchestrated or perpetrated, either. The twins had literally gotten down on their knees on the floor of the potions classroom (still slimy from a mishap with gillyweed and stinksap) and kowtowed to him at the news that Lucius Malfoy had formed a rather unhealthy fascination with his peacock population, much to his wife's disgust, and they were also quite amused at the various new relationships and dynamics in the Death Eater ranks, which had caused more than one Ancient and Noble alliance to be broken up (love and lust potions, various poisons, and carefully-brewed aversion and compulsion potions could work miracles). Suddenly Severus, the reviled halfblood, the one that was only even still in the Inner Circle because the Dark Lord could find no better Potion Master, was pulling the strings of the various Lords of families who would not deign to spit on him if he were on fire (probably because they had been the perpetrators of such an event, had it occurred) and no one was more amused than the twins, although Severus was quite amused and proud himself.

There were also other, more serious matters to be taken care of, though. Nagini had to go, and the spells used to force potions directly into a wizard's stomach would not work on animals (as in, her stomach would probably implode, which would very likely tip the Dark Lord off that there was someone who wanted him dead in his Inner Circle). She would also likely not eat anything that was not alive when fed to her, or given directly to her by her master, and her preferred meals were human flesh, so that would make a potable poison implausible, since he could not just throw a student stuffed with lethal poison at her. If she was killed any other way but poison (say, avada kedavra or just straight out cutting her head off) the Dark Lord would also suspect foul play, and if he were to force-feed her poison, she could just tell her lord and master.

He was at his wits' end when he finally decided he could trust the twins enough to tell him some of what he had learned from Dumbledore. He was forbidden from telling the aurors, anyone at the ministry, anyone not in the know about the Order, and any adult that Albus had not explicitly told him he could tell, due to some idiotic reasoning that Albus had to personally vet anyone who was trustworthy enough to know the Dark Lord's darkest secrets (while there was definitely a grain of truth to that, what if Albus died without telling anyone, and Severus had to deal with it on his own?) but the twins were a loophole, because they were in the Order but not technically of age.

He got straight down to business as soon as they arrived for their "detention".

"There are some things you need to know," he began reluctantly, "but I need an oath on your magic that you will not tell anyone you do not trust with your lives and the lives of everyone you can think of, and you must not tell anyone who does not know rudimentary occlumency."

Two identical pairs of sky blue eyes widened. And then the boys raised their wands, and they swore.

"Good," Severus told them when they had finished. "Right. This is very dark, and Professor Dumbledore must not know that I told you."

The boys looked at each other, and then swore another oath that they would not let Dumbledore know without Severus so much as suggesting it. Then they turned back to him. "Go on,"

Severus hesitated. He needed help here, but the idea of burdening students, still children, with his secrets...

"Tell us, sir," said Fred, when he still was silent. "We can at least listen and try to help, if possible."

Severus sucked in a deep breath. "V-very well. Have you heard of the prophecy?"

"What prophecy?"

Well, that answered that, Severus supposed. "The prophecy which states that the Dark Lord is destined to die at Potter's hand," he confided heavily. "Or kill him."