Chapter 11: The New Recruits

October 14, 1995

Harry Potter

"The definition of subtly?" Hermione exploded, slamming the letter down in frustration. "Harry, you dolt, he saw right through you."

Harry sighed. He actually thought he'd been rather clever with his letter, but of course Lupin had to assume his reasons were of an underhanded nature. Or maybe his former DADA professor was still high off his recent 'protect-Snape' craze. Harry was certain he'd used the phrase 'for the good of the Order' and 'I just want to feel safe in my Potions classroom', but no, Lupin was as tight-lipped as ever.

"… Harry, I seem to remember telling you what I think about Professor Snape's loyalty. You don't need to know his life-story to trust him. I trust him, Dumbledore trusts him, and he saved your life. You'd do better focusing on your studies than wondering about what Professor Snape was like when he did his. When I think you are genuinely interested, and not just looking for dirt on your teacher, then I might consider telling you a few stories. …"

"Wow." Ron peered over Hermione's shoulder, regarding the letter with marked surprise. "Lupin sounds pretty cheesed with you, mate. I think it's fair to say you really don't belong in Slytherin."

'The Sorting Hat would disagree with you.' Harry thought before shrugging. "Well, the plan failed. Now what? Do we even have time for all of this?"

For, after the botched apology, Harry found himself more and more intrigued with the man behind the mask that was Professor Snape. If he hated Harry as much as he claimed, why had he gone beyond the call of duty to save him? Lupin had told Harry that he didn't know how Snape had been alerted to Mundungus's departure, but, however Snape had done it, he'd obviously been extremely vigilant. So why?

But despite Harry's renewed curiosity, none of the Trio had found the time to do any more regarding the Snape-Inspecting scheme since the conversation up in the Northern Tower the month before. Umbridge's increase in power and the establishment of Dumbledore's Army (another of Hermione's bright ideas) had left them all quite frazzled and busy. Harry hadn't even sent the letter off to Lupin until a week ago, and it was only the response that brought the subject back up.

"Of course we have time!" Hermione insisted. "Aren't you interested in this anymore?"

Harry ran his hand through his hair. "I am stillinterested, Hermione. In fact, more interested than before… but we're all so busy!"

"Yeah." Added Ron, a touch regretfully.

"Not that busy." Hermione snapped. "I've seen you two playing chess and generally jerking around when you could have been doing homework. I, however, amup-to-date, with time enough to spare to organise the D.A. And now that that's out of the way, I think it's time we put into action some of our plans."

"What plans?" Ron snorted. "Oh, like casually asking McGonagall what Snape has on his toast and following him under an invisibility cloak when he goes out to the grounds?"

"The last plan doesn't sound too bad." Harry put in, flopping himself over the back of one of the common room couches.

"Those were your ideas." Hermione huffed. "Meanwhile, I've been busy. Wait here, you too."

"Yes, highness." Ron grumbled, as Hermione leapt up and vanished into her dorm. Emerging once more, she hurried over to them, clutching a large leather-bound book.

"A book." Ron laughed. "I should have guessed there would be a book involved in your plan."

She ignored him, and merely slapped it down triumphantly on the coffee table. "I got on to this months ago. It just took some time to obtain."

"What is it?" Harry moved over to get a closer look. From what he could see, carved into the leather was the words 'Hogwarts Class of 1978'

Hermione delicately traced the book's title. "I had to ask around to find a student whose parents graduated in 1978- like Professor Snape did. They don't stock yearbooks in the library for some reason. Or if they do, Madam Pince didn't seem to want to admit it."

Ron wrinkled his nose. "A yearbook, huh? What, with photos of Snape? It's bad enough looking at him now. Who'd want to look at him when he was a teenager?"

Hermione scowled. "It's Professor Snape, Ron, and you'll find it quite interesting. Harry- "she turned to address him. "I actually obtained it by using the excuse that you wanted to see pictures of your family- that I wanted to show it to you as a Christmas present."

An electric shock of excitement ran down Harry's spine.

Stuff Snape, there were pictures of his parents in that book! How could he have forgotten that the greasy git, his mum and the Marauders were in the same year?

"Whose yearbook was it?" he quickly sat down next to her.

"Well, it wasn't easy to find someone who trusted you…" her voice faltered and Harry was forcibly reminded once again of how most of the school thought him a liar. Hermione hurried on. "But Ernie Macmillan's mother graduated in 1978, and when I asked him to, Ernie got in touch with her. We can't keep it for long, I'm afraid."

"Go on then." Said he, looking hungrily down at the book.

Hermione passed him a sad smile, and quickly flipped open the book. "Here, this is a picture of the Head Boy and the Head Girl. See, they are together."

As Harry gazed down at the picture, a peculiar sensation tugged at his chest. It was sadness… but happiness also- the feeling that he had always associated with his parents.

They stood quite close together, on the green lawn of the Hogwarts's grounds, dressed in their best uniforms with matching Head Boy and Girl badges glowing from their chests. James' hair was a mess, just like Harry's own, and although they obviously were making an attempt to keep the photo purely professional, Harry could see his dad continually flicking a glance at his mother, who was struggling to maintain composure, her lip twitching as she resolutely faced the camera. Harry could read their mutual attraction as clearly as if it were radiating off the photo in waves.

Harry let out a small sigh. They looked so proud, so happy. Yet in a few short years, they would be lying dead; they had no idea what was awaiting them post-Hogwarts bliss.

He didn't know how long he had been staring at the picture, drinking in every last line and curve of their faces. Finally, he felt Hermione place her soft hand over his, and prise in gently away from the page.

"Here's another, Harry."

It was an end of year shot of the Quidditch victors- Gryffindor had won, of course. The team were all piled together, arms and legs akimbo, and grinning fit to burst. Four of them held aloft the Quidditch Cup, which glinted in the mid-day sun. But one player in particular caught Harry's eye.

"It's-" Ron began.

"Sirius!" Harry exclaimed, shocked to see his father and Sirius, one arm wrapped around each other, and the other arm helping to support their proudly won Quidditch Cup. Sirius was so… happy. He almost seemed to glow with joy, his obvious love for life evident on his young, strikingly handsome features.

"Oh, my…" Hermione sighed. "I never would have thought he used to be so…"

"He's really fit." Ron observed, scowling enviously at the toned leg muscles and slender waist that showed the younger Sirius's Quidditch uniform off so well.

But all Harry could think of was how all that joy and beauty would be sucked away in Azkaban. That picture reminded him forcibly just how horrifically tragic Sirius's life had been.

Hermione eventually began thinking along the same lines, so moved to a new page.

"Here, this is the prefect section." She jabbed a finger at the open book, and Harry found himself staring at eight different faces, all the graduating prefect of 1978, each wearing the distinctive prefect page.

"Look, it's Remus." Harry zoomed in on his former Professor's photograph. He, like Sirius, looked vastly more healthy as a graduate, yet even then he bore the marks of someone who was no stranger to hardship. Despite the slightly timid expression in his eyes, the young werewolf looked happy, quirking a gentle but genial smile.

"I bet he was a great prefect." The worshipful tone in Hermione's voice was unmistakable.

"Oh, I'll be sure to write to Remus and tell him he's your new role-model." Harry joked.

"Huh… Snape isn't there." Ron had moved to scan the two Slytherin prefects, a young man with dark auburn hair labelled as 'Evan Rosier', and a startlingly beautiful girl called…

"It's Draco's mum!" Harry choked out.

Narcissa Black.

"I wonder if she and Snape were friends." Ron pondered, turning a little dreamy eyed as he gazed into her portrait.

"It would figure." Harry huffed. "Both stuck up Slytherins that run in Death Eater crowds."

"Hush." Hermione reproved. "No, I looked at it before, Snape wasn't a prefect. But look."

And she flipped a couple of pages until, titled within a great gilded banner were the words "Severus Snape- Merlin Standard Academic Excellence Award for the Hogwarts Class of 1978."

"First in his year." Ron poked Hermione in the side. "He your new role model too now? Gee, what a skinny little creep he was back then."

"But there is something so… different about him, isn't there?" Hermione said, her tone ponderous.

Harry squinted down at the page from behind his glasses. As far as he could see, 17 year old Severus Snape, though being twice as young as his present-day counterpart, still had many of the same recognisable qualities- long greasy hair hanging flatly around a narrow, pale face characterized by a sharp nose and intelligent black eyes. His skin was whiter and smoother, of course, and his features less angular, but Hermione never bothered pointing out superficialities.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"Look at his eyes."

"Wow, you're right. He actually looks like a human in that picture." Ron marvelled.

Finally, Harry also saw it. Gone were the empty black tunnelled eyes, cold and flat, like the eyes of a fish. There was expression in this boy's eyes. Sullenness, anger, perhaps a hint of pride at his achievement. And also something else that, for some strange reason, caused Harry to feel a faint jolt of recognition. There was something in that boy that Harry felt he could relate to...

Relate to Snape? He shook the idea from his head. Nonsense.

"I wonder what twenty years did to change his expression so much." Hermione stared clinically down at the photo. "Anyway, that's it. He wasn't in the sports teams, or the study groups… not in the Wizard Chess Club. He seems to have even escaped from the random surprise photos."

Ron shrugged. "Guess he was anti-social, though that ought to have been obvious. Or perhaps no one could bring themselves to photograph him if they didn't have to."

"I don't see how this has got us anywhere." Harry huffed, sudden irritation prickling through him. "So he has different eyes. What now? I mean, what are we even looking for?"

"Isn't that the question of life?" piped up an uninvited voice. The two Weasley twins had just bounded into the common room, smelling, for some strange reason, of something comparative to turpentine.

"You kiddies studying philosophy on your break?" Fred's twin joined in. "Hermione, what are you doing to the poor boys?"

"Lower your voices." Hermione hissed. "Most of the actual 'kiddies' have gone to bed."

"Okay, okay!" Fred raised his hands in a mock-placating gesture and lowered his voice to an exaggerated degree. "So what are you 'senior kiddies doing, then?"

Without waiting for an answer, he strolled up to the little side-table and plucked up the album.

Looking over his shoulder, George barked, "Merlin's balls! Is that Snape?"

"It is." Fred said wonderingly, casting his eyes curiously towards the trio. "What's that all about then? Just adding him to the family album, I 'spose?

"No, we were just looking at pictures of Harry's parents." Hermione said quickly.

Harry could tell Fred was just twitching to make another joke, but being that James and Lily Potter were a rather touchy subject for the Boy-Who-Lived, the ginger seventh-year made a visible effort to restrain himself.

"And you just came upon the greasy git by happenchance, I 'spose. Look, George. Wasn't he such a little swot?"

"Prime target for hazing." George chuckled lightly.

"I hope that was a joke." Hermione said sternly.

"Of course, Hermione." Fred assured her with an innocent, wide-eyed expression fixed plasticly onto his face. "What do you think we are, bullies?"

"It was merely a historical observation on the school culture of the times." George pouted.

Intrigued, Hermione leaned forward. "Wait, are you serious…? Do you really think that hazing was a common occurrence back then?"

"More common back then, for sure." Fred assented. "You can ask my Dad about some of the things that went down in his day."

Hermione pursed her lips and cast her eyes off to an eaved corner of the common room roof. "Do you think Snape would have been the hazer or the hazed in his schooldays?"

"It's Snape. Whatd'you think?" Ron snorted, but his older brothers paid him no heed- something else had caught their attention.

"What's this, Hermione? Why so interested in Snape?" The question was flippant, but Harry could see the twins very carefully watching Hermione's reaction.

Predictably, she flushed. "I'm not. I was just wondering."

"Ooooh, it's like that is it?" cooed George with an immature grin.

"Like what, exactly?" Hermione flared up. "Either go away or stop being ridiculous."

Predictably, the twins began having a great deal of fun winding her up, and Hermione seemed completely set against letting the cocky set into any of the scheme. Meanwhile, however, Harry and Ron were glancing from each other to the twins with speculation, the unspoken notion set in both their heads. Obviously, since their plans were going nowhere, they needed some 'new blood', some new ideas… and the Weasley twins were definitely creative enough to come up with something to aid their investigation.

"We should just tell 'em." Ron finally said with his characteristic bluntness. "Hermione, let's tell them… maybe they can help."

The glare she sent Ron could have singed his eyebrows off if they didn't adhere to the laws of reality. "RON!"

Of course, this really got the twins interested, and the clamouring and noise went on for some time until Harry deemed it wise to get involved.

"I agree, 'Mione. We are all out of ideas and we've barely even started."

Hermione looked rather pained. Her feelings were understandable; it had all been her idea in the first place, and Harry knew she felt that the twins would likely twist any information on Snape into a negative.

"Come on, Hermione…" George said, his voice suddenly serious. "You can trust us, however hard that may be to believe."

"You might even distract us from poisoning the first-years." Fred joked, making up for his twin's momentary sobriety.

Harry could see Hermione's hesitancy, and for a moment she seemed to teeter on the edge of the decision before she finally huffed out an impatient breath and told the twins the whole story.

"So….. you want to investigate Snape- sorry, Professor Snape, because you think some of the things he's done are slightly more on the spectrum of human than gargoyle?" Fred's voice was pungent with scepticism as he flung himself into a crimson-upholstered armchair and crossed one lanky leg over the other.

"Are you kidding?" Hermione bristled in a way that reminded Harry uncomfortably of her cat Crookshanks. "He has saved our lives on more than one occasion in very brave ways. How can you-"

"Cool it, 'Mione." George said, his pale, freckled brow crinkled with perplexity. "He's just kidding. But to be honest, I personally don't understand the point of this 'investigation'…. I mean, what's it going to prove? It's not as if you'll uncover Snape to be actually demonic spawn, and nor is he likely to be a secret Druid anytime soon. He's just a grumpy teacher who happens to fight for the Order. It doesn't have to be anymore complex than that."

Even Fred turned astonished eyes on George. "Go on, pull the other one." He jeered. "If Snape isn't complex than I'm a grindylow."

"Everyone's complex." George argued. "And it's no one's business if they are or not."

"Of course it's our business." Harry finally interjected. "We might not be allowed to be officially part of the Order, but you know that we're going to end up even more involved in this war than anyone else. Snape could be extremely dangerous to us… we just have to find out if he is or not. He's got a strange game going on… he's a Death Eater but he keeps saving us. Is he just throwing us off track, getting ready to do something terrible?"

"Of course not." Hermione began.

"But seriously," Harry rail-roaded on, "Does anyone here believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt that Snape stands for the side of the Light, and not with his pure-blood Slytherin friends? Even you, Hermione, can you honestly say you don't doubt him one small bit?"

There was a silence, in which even Hermione seemed momentarily spooked.

"But his Patronus…" she ventured.

"Not enough." Harry determined. "It's not going to work anymore to just sit around and just insist that he is on one side or the other without having any proof…"

Slowly, George nodded his head. "I know we don't know just how in Snape is with the Big Snake Man, but if you think about it, Snape's loyalty could decide which way the fight goes."

"Victory or defeat." Hermione whispered.

A dark sense of foreboding settled over the whole party.

"Right." Fred finally said, hauling himself off the couch and cracking his knuckles. "Down to business than. First we need to know about his school life. You kids have really got nowhere. What's a few photos going to tell you? That he used to look like an oily little ally-cat as opposed to a greasy bat? Big fat surprise, I think not… no, what you want to know is what kind of tricks did he pull, what kind of fights did he get in? Did he mouth off teachers? Who did he spend detentions with as his partners in Slytherin skunk-ery?"

"Definitely." George grinned. "You can tell more about a man by the contents of his detention records than by the contents of his grades."

Hermione snorted. "Well, you can when their names are Fred and George Weasley."

Ignoring the somewhat unjust dig, Fred continued. "We know that Filch keeps a record of the disciplinary files in some dusty cabinet of his… me and George had a cracking bit of fun last year reading all about some of the downright shameful things Mum and Dad got up to in 7th year… X-Rated, I think, is the Muggle terminology."

"Fred!" Ron was scandalised, and Harry quickly directed his mind off that uncomfortable track.

"Detention records… that's worth a shot." He mused aloud. "If Snape has any."

"If." Snorted Fred, grabbing the photo album and shoving it in Harry's face. "Look at that squirt. Do you really think Filch would be able to resist stringing him up by his toes?"

The mental image was so funny that for a moment everyone dissolved into giggles. (Hermione gulping hers down in an attempt to retain the moral high ground.)

"And we should check medical files too." George determined after that interlude. "Pomfrey keeps hers in a book… they date back for centuries, she once told me."

"Are we allowed to read them?" Hermione said anxiously.

"What d'you think?" Fred scoffed. "Why would we suggest it if we were? No, we're going to have to sneak in there and take them."

"Oh, but-" Hermione began, but Harry impatiently cut her off.

"Do you seriously think that Sherlock obeyed the laws a hundred percent of the time?"

"Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette." Fred added cheerily.

And with that they began to make their plans. It was determined that Fred and Harry would take the invisibility cloak out one night to steal Snape's detention records, and that later, George would go with Harry under the cloak to find the medical records. George owned a camera that would come in handy, since they couldn't exactly swipe the pages from Pompfry's medical records.

"Even if Snape turns out to have had the most boring school-life known to wizardkind, it'll be worth it just knowing that Hermione Granger has consented to theft of school property." Ron had to smugly add before the league of sleuths turned in for the night.

October 19, 1995

Severus Snape

It was a few weeks after the werewolf incursion into his quarters, and Snape was not feeling (or looking) any better. Although on some level he welcomed the change of pace that the spying and Operation Obsequiousness were casting on his hitherto monotone existence, he often felt as if he were re-living the grim time period between 1980 and '81, for only then had he experienced such a level of stress. At times, when exhaustion had taxed him of his mental barriers, he found himself recalling brief, snatched memories of that time, memories that would stab fresh pain into old wounds.

'Old man.' He'd snort contemptuously at himself, and then would try and ignore the stinging in his belly.

But like glass under one's skin, some things were impossible to ignore. The mysterious deaths reported in the Muggle newspapers, the wary excitement of the Sytherin students, the Order's expressions of distrust and the twitching of his Dark Mark… it all mirrored so eerily the events of some decade and a half ago… at moments Snape was struck by the utter sameness of it all. It seemed so terrible that they had fought so hard the first time and lost so much… and it was doomed to all begin again. But Snape's pessimistic ruminations were only thought during the scant moments when he had his thoughts to himself. For he had other problems.

* (Note. I have written a few long and boring paragraphs about spell detection, but so as to not interrupt the narrative's flow, they are attached as an addendum to the chapter if you care to interpret this meaningless sawdust filler jargon.)

He'd run into a brick wall with his Imperious detector. Despite pondering it's tonal quality for years, calculating and re-calculating it all out… he had been so certain that could isolate the magical frequency. When he finally discovered the most vital element, the signum of the Imperious curse, he was so elated that he actually whooped a most un-Snape-like victory cry. But despite the extraordinary achievement of the discovery, he found that when attempting the detection charm on the Imperious, each casting yielding a different reading… sending all his calculations into disarray, and planting him back firmly at square one. He calculated it again and again… but his detecting device still would not work. At first he thought it was an error with the charm work, and the engineering of the device, but eventually he discovered that what was hindering his work was the spell's assescula. Signum or no signum, with the assescula so deeply woven into the fabric of the curse Snape despaired of being able to complete his task. The challenge Snape now faced was in discovering how to section the assescula off from the spell's signum without unravelling the whole spell during its detection.

And therein lay the dilemma.

'I have taken on too ambitious a project to use in this feeble game of brinksmanship.' So thought Snape with a violent surge of frustration.

He was suddenly conscious of a dull ache pulsing through the back of his head, and with a faint flicker of surprise, he realised he'd been feeling that pain for the last few weeks. A shiver beginning at the base of his belly ran its way up his spine and through his body, and for a moment the world spun into a miasma of darkness, white stars, rainbow bands. For despite Dumbledore's order, Snape had ill attended to his health, so earnest had his desire been to solve the Imperious puzzle. And now? All for nothing. He was right back at the begining!

Snape flung his research into the bottom of his desk and swirled out of his chambers to menace the midnight schoolgrounds. He then spent the next few days merely venting his frustration on the students, and he found himself quite proud in the knowledge that he had personally reduced at least two students to tears.

But on the third day, he was called into the presence of the Dark Lord, and his experience there returned him to his research the following morning with a renewed sense of purpose.

It had just been him there that evening, a fact for which he was grateful. The typical meeting was spent masked and cloaked, the Death Eaters forming a druidic circle around the Dark Lord, who spent much to the evening brandishing his terrifying oratory skills in the direction of Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers. The air would be thick with the stench of hatred, bloodlust and tinged with furtive ambition as each Death Eater looked around for the chance to tear down on of their 'brothers'. And fear was also present… even more now than in the last war. One only had to look at their Dark Lord to see that he had embraced the demonic forces of magic to the point of insanity… an insanity that was brilliant yet as volatile and unpredictable as a stirring volcano.

The Lord had taken to hiding in a forest just outside of Ireland, for he felt that Riddle House had been compromised after the Potter boy had fled the scene. Why he didn't take up residency in one of his pure-blood followers' mansions was not a question anyone dared ask, but Snape privately believed it was because the Dark Lord was not yet confident enough in his power base to trust his sleeping form to anyone but Nagini and Wormtail.

Ever the one for pomp and gravitas, the Dark Lord had carved a throne out of a dark, gnarly oak tree, and manipulated its yawning branches to curve down and frame the seat. Snakelike creature that he was, the Dark Lord didn't seem to feel the cold, and though his inky robes were lank with dampness, he had made no attempt to construct a shelter. Off to one side, twitching and snuffling like the rat he was, Wormtail looked positively blue with cold. True to form, the Dark Lord didn't deign to notice.

"Ssseverus, welcome." He hissed through his slit nose. "Set the potions down and make your report."

The difference between a report made to the Dark Lord and a report made to Dumbledore was that Dumbledore trusted Snape's word…. Oh he might now and then request to see the events himself, but never did he force himself upon Snape… as was the Dark Lord's routine practice.

So again with the carefully layered memories, balanced perfectly in his mind, only allowing the Dark Lord to see specific scenes… it was always a terrifying experience, no less so tonight.

But when the ordeal was finally over, the Dark Lord gestured to a stump next to his twisted oaken throne. "Sit, Severus, I have a matter to discuss with you."

Snape dropped into a carefully simulated pure-blood bow. "You honour me, my Lord." He sat down.

"Now, Severus, as the matter stands right now, we are safe in that the Ministry is unaware of my return… and while I trust that this remain the situation for a good many months to come, the Boy-Who-Lived and that old man are certainly making things more difficult."

"But the Ministry have made them into a laughing stock." Snape pointed out, flavouring his tone with just enough servility to mollify the Dark Lord, while also making sure not to irritate him by sounding sycophantic. That was Lucius's job. "Isn't it better this way? Dumbledore's powerbase is shrinking because everyone believes he is an old fool living in the glory days of yore, and slipping into power should be easier with Dumbledore's Ministry men being dropped from the ranks like hot potatoes."

Disagreeing with the Dark Lord, even for the purpose of making him feel better, was never a riskless venture. Snape's breath hitched when a flare of irritation appeared in Voldemort's bloody eyes, but as quickly as it appeared, so too did it subside, and in its place, Voldemort crooked a horrific smile.

"Of course, Ssseverus." He purred. "Although it may not have been in keeping with my original plan, I have always been adept at using the undesirable, and moulding them to my purpose. Which brings me to my point."

A crease now formed between his hairless brows. "Should the Ministry decide to acknowledge my return, we will find ourselves outnumbered… and I cannot reinforce my army without publicising my return… publicization that would reach the ears of the Ministry faster than Nagini can strike at a man's jugular." Metaphor cleverly in place, Voldemort looked contemplatively off to the side before speaking once more. "It is vital that we bolster our forces in anticipation of war. Of course, the most desirable course of action would be to simply infiltrate the Ministry and seize power before anyone is aware of what is going on, but I do not make the mistake of underestimating Dumbledore's cunning, wily old fool that he is."

Snape stayed silent. He had never before heard Voldemort give the old wizard the credit of being a worthy foe, for in the past, the whispered smear that Dumbledore was the only man Voldemort feared had sent the Dark Lord into frenzied rages where he would castigate Dumbledore as an 'impotent, wrinkled drag-queen'. And then, much to the Dark Lord's dismay, upon his return, the notion had been so oft repeated that his fear of Dumbledore had become fact. As it indeed was… but never had Snape heard his Lord acknowledge it.

Perhaps realising his lapse, Voldemort turned to Snape, eying him prospectively. "You think many things, don't you, Severus? But you say little. That's always been your way."

Snape felt his belly constrict, and opened his mouth, unsure- terrified, actually, of how to respond.

"I perhaps did not put you to good enough use last time. Of course I knew you were clever, very clever, with spells and potions. I have always looked at you as a useful resource. But you waited so very long with that old man… and if it was for my sake, it shows a cunning and a gamesmanship of calculated restraint. So that had led me to wonder if there was something in you before that I did not see…"

His ghastly face now inches away from Snape's, he whispered in his serpentine rasp, "Tell me, Severusss, what do you see as your role in our great endeavour? And please, say it in factual nouns, as your scientific brain would describe it."

Heart thumping, but keeping his face smooth and inscrutable, Snape enunciated three words. "Inventor and spy."

"Very factual, but hardly ambitious, Head of Slytherin." Voldemort laughed. "Come, you are capable of more than that." His eyes narrowing, the Dark Lord bent his long neck down until he was staring eye to eye with Snape, so close that Snape struggled not to let his nostrils flare at the rank scent of carrion that Voldemort emanated. "I sense a capability for strategy, the makings for a great lieutenant. A lieutenant with capabilities deserving to his Great General."

"I… appreciate your faith, my lord." Snape said slowly. He was already one of the Dark Lord's top lieutenants, but this he had assumed was more due to lack of numbers and recognised talent than any conscious choice on the Dark Lord's behalf. But now the Dark Lord was inviting him to partake in strategical planning… something from which he had always been swotted away from in the last war.

"Faith… I wouldn't call it that. More… venture capitalism. I will invest in you, my dear Severus, my new lieutenant… if you promise to yield results."

No pressure, at all, right?

"I will serve you to the nth of my capacity." Snape didn't even need to falsify a stammer. The terror in his voice did not require a mask, but the core of iron determination held within his tone was something that held an alternate meaning.

"Then let us do a little test, Ssseverus. What do you see as the solution to our greatest weakness?" Voldemort's gaze was challenging and sardonic, but the faint set of his jaw betrayed his eagerness to hear his servant's response.

The question was two-fold, of course. The problem was, while one of them had a definitive answer that if guessed correctly could incur the Dark Lord's approval, the second response would be the determination of his promotion, as relying on his strategic acumen, creativity, and ruthlessness.

Internally groaning, Snape knew what he had to do.

Delicately arranging his robes, Snape slowly smiled. "My lord, our immediate weakness is our lack of numbers… of course, our lack of loyal followers only compounds the problem. So we must go to the only place where the most loyal of your original followers remain… Azkaban."

The smile that stretched across Volemort's elastane face was enough to tell Snape that he had gained the stripe. But at such a price? While he knew that Voldemort had already intended on taking this action, the knowledge that he himself would now be technically responsible for the horrors bound to follow filled Snape with cold dread. 'I have just used an established situation to my own advantage.' He told himself firmly, but he wondered just how firmly he would be able to repeat that line to Dumbledore.

"Exxxcellent, my clever Potionmaster. And tell me, how are we to go about releasing my loyal followers?"

And so the strategizing began, general and lieutenant plotting together in a dark Irish forest.

*To state it in a grossly simple manner, a spell is primarily made up of two parts- the signum and the assescula. As an atom has a nucleus at the centre, and is then surrounded by neutrons and eloctrons, a spell has a signum at its centre, and is then surrounded by the assescula. Though sometimes called its core, heart, or power engine, the centre of a spell was academically termed as the signum and was a unique frequency that indicated a spell's main function. It also dictated the wand movement, incantation, sensory aspects of the spell, and its pertinent counter-curse. The assescula were sometimes unjustly thought of as a spell's secondary and insignificant qualities- they were the magical signature of the spell caster, the power-level of the spell caster, and the spell caster's intent and emotional state at the moment of casting. The assescula were what made every cast spell as unique as a snowflake, for no intent or emotion in the casting of a spell could ever be perfectly replicated a second time. Therefore, in binding the assescula of a spell closely to its signum, a spell could be rendered virtually impossible to detect.

Snape understood this very well.

For many years spell-detectors and spell-crafters had vastly underestimated the importance of the assescula, focusing their attention solely on the signum. As the signum of a spell was difficult enough to isolate, and considered a profound achievement when it was, the assescula were deemed an impossible ambitious reach. When a well-crafted or powerful spell's signum was unable to be interpreted, the scholars would merely assume it was because of its complexity, and they would therefore give up. In the end, it was only the simple spells that detection methods were used on.

Always efficient with the small things and blind in the areas of truly great progress, the Ministry began the use of spell detection with the Underage Wizard Magical Limitations Act of 1876. After one too many spell-happy adolescent pyromaniacs had set lemonade stands on fire, the Ministry decided that something must be done to stop them. Therefore, a vast catalogue of simple to mid-complex spells were analysed right down their signum, and like Muggle traffic cameras, spell detectors were set up around all houses that had underage wizards living without adult wizards. Whenever some young hoyden would take it into their heads engage in some target practise, the Ministry would come down on them like a ton of bricks- sometimes quite literally, depending on the decided method of judicial sentence (the Ministry used to be quite creative with punishments before Azkaban became the default method.). After a few well publicised expulsions, the entire wizarding community were instilled with holy fear of their government's all-seeing powers. However, despite that breakthrough, the Ministry's Unspeakables were unable to work out how to detect whose wand was using which spell, and therefore the near-sightedness of the Ministry's 'all-seeing eye' became a closely guarded secret. It was in the Ministry's interest to obscure the fact that a spell's assescula put so many limitations on detection, and thus they propagated the idea that the more complex a spell was, the more complex was the signum- a concept that wasn't at all a lie, but wasn't the whole truth, either.

It was only in the last few years of Snape's studies that he had fallen upon the writings of a curse-breaker who, several weeks after writing the article, had an unfortunate accident with a flesh-melting curse that resulted in his death. That aside, the curse-breaker wrote about how the assescula of dark spells in particular were likely to be very tightly bound to their signum, and how making a study of the assescula would likely be of eminent benefit to detecting power and wand signatures within the body of a spell's discharge.

Author's Note;

*Deep breath*

Hey. Um. What can I say? I'm back? Yeah, after a year. Um. Sorry. Well…

Life happened. I wasn't in the place where I could write before. I am now. So…

Moving on.

I want to dedicate this to Schattenjagt. I was going to dedicate the next chapter to them anyway, as a reader who would constantly give me detailed reviews that would send spark up my brain and my ego. But they have now more than a thousand times earned this pathetic little tribute, as for an entire year they have routinely been reviewing and messaging me, asking me to come back… I don't really quite understand what they saw in this story, but it's really thanks to them that I'm back… so I appreciate you, Schattenjagt. Thank you.

Although some of the credit has to go Snape, my old friend. Glad the connection is still solid.

~Crimson