Antidotes and dancing.

"The Dark lord has a snake called Nagini," Arun told Severus over dinner in the three broomsticks. "He found her in Albania."

"How do you know that?" Severus asked, a piece of chicken poised on his fork hovered in front of his mouth, momentarily forgotten.

"Nagini has a potent venom that stops blood from clotting. She bit me once, look," Arun pulled her sleeve up and showed Severus two puncture marks on her arm. Snape leaned in to study them, dropping his chicken back on the plate.

"I didn't know…" he started, he looked a little pale. "He is dead, isn't he Arun?"

"I don't know, but the snake isn't."

"Where's the snake?"

"Albania still I imagine, though she may still be in England."

He finally put the chicken in his mouth and chewed slowly. Arun had once watched Tobias eat a chicken leg, there was grease all over his chin and he chewed with his mouth open. Severus' table manners were, thankfully, inherited from his mother. "What kind of snake?"

"She's huge, body as thick as a man's thigh. She's intelligent too, the conversations He had with her were detailed, he listened to her council above his closest advisors."

"A snake?"

Arun nodded. "A snake with a potent venom." she leaned in, "I'm immune though."

Snape rolled his eyes and started to cut up a potato, "really?"

"On His orders, I made him immune. He was worried she would bite him and he would bleed to death. I had to milk her venom and I created both an antidote and also a potion to immunize for good."

Now Severus was listening.

"I started with a hognose- a snake with a mild venom, and I perfected the potions. Then I looked at animals with a similar anticoagulant profile and I tested the formula with the different venom, it worked, and so I used Nagini's. I took it to Him and he told her to attack, knowing that I would have tested it on myself before. She bit me on my arm, and though I was bleeding it was not unnatural. My blood clotting formula was very very good. A few drops on the wound site and it closed in seconds. If it's a bad bite Episkey spell variants work to aid the recovery."

"Can you still make it?"

Arun nodded, "I'll show you if you want?"

"I'd be honoured."

"It can be a birthday present."

Snape blinked. He'd forgotten that his birthday was just a few weeks away. "I hate this time of year," he muttered. "Everything gets so fake." His eyes turned up to the decorations in the Three Broomsticks. Huge fern trees were lit with floating candles and baubles that looked like magic balls. Some of the people in the pub were wearing festive jumpers. Severus was not.

"You're such a Scrooge," she giggled. "Bah humbug I am determined to hate everything."

Severus raised an eyebrow and then went back to his meal, "Are you going to the Yule Ball?" he asked as he pressed a carrot onto his fork along with half a brussel sprout.

"I was invited."

"I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to go."

Arun sat back in her seat and studied the last centimetre of Butterbeer in her glass. She'd finished her own food a while ago, she ate quickly like it was a race but Severus took his time the way only children do when they have never had to compete with their older, bigger, siblings to get the best food. "Are you going or are you just doing the potions thing after?"

"I'm head of Slytherin house," he said, as if it were answer enough.

"Maybe I'll see you there then, sir."

Severus didn't seem to know how to respond to that, he actually looked a bit creeped out by the idea of Arun pretending to be a student. She supposed that was a good thing. "Will you dance with me?"

His lip curled, "I do not dance."

"Not even in private?"

"No."

"So who teaches your students?"

"I get a tutor for them. Private instruction."

Arun snorted a laugh. "And you will stand in the ball watching with your arms crossed and a frown on your face, breaking up students who are getting too amorous and snapping at anybody who tells you to 'loosen up'"

"That's exactly what I intend to do. I'll give out some week-long detentions too because I have a stack of caldrons that need cleaning," he leaned in closer to her. "And then I'll serve up potions that make stupid children levitate a few feet off the ground or blow blue spit bubbles and then I'll get the hell out of that depressing nightmare."

"Quit."

"Quit?" he echoed.

"You don't like teaching, you don't like the students, you don't like the work. Quit."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

Severus tilted his head up and his jaw clenched. Arun saw what he was doing, trying to avoid giving her an answer that she would not like.

"Lily?" she asked.

Snape ran a hand through his hair and nodded.

"But the Dark Lord asked you to take up the job?"

"Yes, and now I must stay because of her and because of a promise I made."

"To whom? Him or Dumbledore?"

"Both."

Arun pouted and sat back with her arms crossed.

"Don't do that, you know I work here for a reason. You do too and I've heard so many different versions of your true intentions that I can only guess at which one is real."

The students were all talking excitedly about the Yule celebrations. It was all they wanted to talk about in Aruns Creature Club's (which were continuing through the holidays). The students sat training Nifflers and cleaning out the Squadumps talking about their partners, their outfits, the music and the food. They speculated who would ask who and what their responses might be. They paired teachers up too, Arun caught one group talking about McGonagall and Dumbledore, but another student speculated that Flitwick might be more her type. That produced quite an amusing amount of speculation which Arun put a, somewhat delayed, end to with a flick of her hand to take away their voices.

"What about you?" Griffin asked. "Will you go with Professor Snape?"

"I think he'll be a little too busy keeping an eye on his Students," Arun said, but the last thing she wanted was a rumour. "What makes you think I would go with him?"

"You like him."

Arun frowned, "Like?" she asked. "What on earth do you mean?"

"He doesn't have many friends does he, Professor?"

"He's well respected."

"Respect isn't liked."

"Griffin," Arun pinched the bridge of her nose. "Your ability to talk to me about anything other than your work is astounding and your obsession with the nature of my relationship with Snape must end."

She went a little red, "Yes, professor. But-"

"Your Squadump is escaping."

Arun swept away from her table, but as soon as she walked away Griffin started to whisper to a friend. A quick curse and she was able to hear what was being said, but the content of it was more surprising than she expected.

"She suspects him too. She must do. Think about it, the vaults have been silent for weeks now, Rab. She suspects. She thinks it's an Artifact, something cursed, and I'm sure she's staying close to him because he's a death eater. He's after whatever is down there."

Her friend, Rab, a Gryffindor, didn't look convinced. "I asked my dad about her. He said she was undeclared in the last war. That the ministry and You-know-who's supporters both contracted her. Somebody like that could be working with Snape."

"That's why Dumbledore would have given her the job. Because somebody like that would be trusted by somebody like Snape!"

Arun's attention was taken away by a rogue Niffler but for the rest of the lesson, she fretted about Griffin and her friends. They were children, snooping around and likely to cause issues for her in the long run, but at least they weren't going to go around spreading amorous rumours.

Hagrid had decorated his beard with baubles and somebody, possibly himself, had kitted him a huge green jumper with red cuffs. Arun wore a black dress with long sleeves which went past her hands to her fingers. She looked amazing, and the sideways glances from the male teachers only proved a fact she already knew. Only Severus didn't pay her any attention, not publicly at least. He'd chosen the dress for her, and he'd buttoned her up in it after they had spent the morning together. He had said she was exquisite. Even now she blushed and pretended it was the wine.

There were not that many students left at Hogwarts over the winter holidays. Only around a hundred from each house. Instead of sitting scattered across the four tables Dumbledore had created a horseshoe and the students mingled together. Above them, the enchanted ceiling snowed and the thousands of candles flickered like lighthouse beacons in the blizzard. Arun had turkey, stuffing, sprouts and bread sauce, roast parsnips and carrots, peas and swede mash. Christmas cake, cheese and crackers. By her third glass of red, she felt like she'd taken a sleeping draft, but they still had the dance to look forward to.

"How are you settling in Miss Granville?" Dumbledore asked.

She had slumped in her seat, trying to let her food settle down into her stomach, and she was not as guarded as usual. "Fine, I wasn't expecting it to be such hard work. Even three days a week is exhausting."

A number of teachers listening to her smirked.

"I thought I'd come in and just, well, teach. I didn't expect the planning, the preparation, the marking, the parent owls, the crying students and the continuous vigilance I'd need to do this."

"It seems you are doing wonderfully though. Professor Snape burns his parent owls, I use them as a darts board. Have you heard of the muggle game darts?"

"No."

"Very sharp pieces of metal which you throw," he mimicked the motion. "Wonderfully soothing."

"Are you saying I shouldn't reply?"

"Do as you see fit, just know that Hogwarts is not in the business of keeping students closeted from the realities of our world."

"Forewarned is forearmed," Arun muttered and picked up her glass again.

"Exactly professor. How are we to combat the darkest forces of this world if we are content to wallow in our own ignorant bliss?"

That seemed a little pointed, but Arun was too sedated to overthink his words. Severus looked across her to the headmaster, his eyes narrowed.

"It's time, is it not, headmaster?"

"Oh? Yes, I do believe it is Severus," Dumbledore stood up to address the crowd of students below. Whilst he spoke Snape kicked Arun under the table.

"Stop drinking," he told her. "You're not paying attention."

"To what?" Arun asked. "Dumbledore's dumb double-entendres?" she sniggered at her alliteration. Severus didn't. "Fine," she sighed and sat up a little straighter. "I'm paying attention."

"Somebody went into my personal cupboard and took the ingredients to make the death suspension draft."

Arun's head snapped around, her lips formed the shape of a question but then a sobering thought crossed her mind and she looked down at the group of students, where were Griffin, Rab and the younger one, Jacob?

"It's lethal if it's not brewed properly. Why would somebody even contemplate being so foolish as to make it? More to the point, what would they use it for?"

Arundel continued to hunt the room but she couldn't see the trio in the hall, "What was the time frame between the first attack in the dungeons and the second one?"

"About a month, why?"

"How long's it been since you were attacked?"

"Again, a month," Snape spoke slowly, dwelling on her words. "This is the first time I have had items stolen."

Arun ran a hand over the back of her neck as she racked her brains to work out what three children could want a Death Suspension Draft. "Tell me about the draft, my heads too full to be objective."

Severus leaned forward so they could whisper. "The death suspension draft holds a person in a balance between life and death, all functions paused. Those who have taken the draft report that they are able to leave their bodies and travel as a ghost, that they have seen dead relatives and communicated with spirits, they say they have seen into the spirit world. However, many more don't come back and those who do are reported to be tainted from the experience, they spend the rest of their life like they are haunted. I saw a report from the twenties, of Jack Kunnings the serial killer, who was captured four years after his killing spree began, he went to Azkaban but the Dementors wouldn't go near him. There are reports that the people who have taken the Draft are found wandering in the full moon, and that they are inexplicably drawn to graveyards."

"Ghosting," Arun muttered. "That's what it's called."

"I've heard that too."

"Why would somebody want to…" she trailed off, what was she missing.

A bell started to toll. Arun looked up, not comprehending what was happening, but Severus went very pale. Dumbledore broke off his speech and turned to look at Snape, the shock on his face turned Arundel cold. Before she could ask, Sev was on his feet and striding down out of the hall. Arun ran after him, uncaring how many teachers and students saw her go. He did not go to the vaults, he made his way up to the hospital wing on the first floor.

"What's happened?" he asked as he strode into the room. Filch was standing in the corner, Griffin and Jacob cowered when they saw Snape. On the bed Rab's skin looked pale and his dark hair had turned from black to white.

"Merlin's Beard," Arun muttered as she caught up with him.

"They've just brought him in professor." Madam Pomfrey told Snape. "They say they found him like this, I… I don't think he's with us any longer."

Snape looked over his shoulder, his eyes glinted and with a sneer he said, "I find it very hard to believe that they just 'found' him." he walked over to the bed and pulled back Rab's eyelid. His eye was misted over, the pupil no longer distinguishable, but when Snape blew on his open eye Rab's lid fluttered and closed. "He's not dead,"

Madam Pomfrey rushed to his side, "How do you know? He has no pulse and he isn't breathing."

Arun didn't listen to them any more, she turned and motioned for Griffin and Jacob to follow her. "Quickly now," she said. "Take me to the place you 'found' him."

Griffin wanted to talk but Arun didn't give her a chance to until they were standing at the entrance to the vaults. "So?" she asked.

"Are we going to get expelled?"

"That depends on your actions tonight miss Griffin." Arun told her. "Professor Snape would see you gone purely for breaking into his personal stores, so you best have a good reason for doing it."

"We…" Griffin started.

"We don't know what you are talking about," Jacob cut across. Arun studied him, she didn't have to ask anything else, when she locked eyes with him she could see exactly what happened.

She saw them huddling in a broom cupboard brewing the potion, with Griffin taking the lead, one of the restricted section books open on the ground next to a small fire ring and caldron. Griffin said, "Crush the ingredients rather than chop them and let's simmer it slower that way it will be better."

Arun wanted to shout at her, the foolish girl.

"Once I'm under what happens?"

"You have to get past the hauntings in the vault. You have to work out what the artefact is, and then you need to come back to us and tell us. The artefact can't hurt you if you're a ghost."

"I still don't see why we couldn't ask Sir Nick or one of the other ghosts to help us," Jacob muttered as he stirred.

"They won't come down here, not since…." A noise startled them. All three went quiet.

The memory faded, a new one replaced it, this time she saw through Jacobs' eyes how Griffin fed the potion to Rab. "the book says it's gentle, like falling asleep. It says…"

But Rab flopped onto his side and started to convulse, he let out a piercing scream and then stopped moving. Freya Griffin and Jacob clutched each other as they watched their friend, out of his mouth a small white light appeared, shimmered in the air and then shot away from them at speed. Freya started to swear and she thumbed back through the book whilst Jacob jibbered.

Arun blinked, she exited his memories and her mouth made a hard line. "If he's trying to get back to his body he'll come here to find it, he's not about to go wandering, ghosts are forgetful of corporeal things. Jacob go and tell Professor Snape to bring the body back down here."

Jacob nodded and ran, Arun stopped Griffin from leaving too. "He did this to himself, you understand? He'd heard you talking about Ghosting and he thought it would be fun to play tricks. If he wakes up he'll never be the same anyway so I doubt he'll mind being expelled."

Freya started to cry.

"There's no point sobbing about it now Freya, you brewed a precise potion too strong and you didn't research it well enough. You're in way over your head but you are a promising witch. Don't throw away a chance to make it right by being the noble one, owning up and having all your chances taken from you."

"Why are you helping me?" Freya sobbed.

"I honestly don't know."

Honesty perhaps, wasn't the best option, she cried more, and when Snape and Dumbledore appeared with the levitating body of Rab to place back into position Dumbledore took the children to his office. Arun knew he would divine everything Arun had said to Freya. She felt sick at what he would think of her, but she told herself that she didn't much care for his regard. She was more concerned with Rab. They placed his body down and then Arun and Snape sat either side of it, staring into the darkness of the unlit corridor leading down to the vaults.

"The foolishness of children never ceases to astound me," Severus muttered, his face shrouded in gloom.

"We were children once."

"And we were fools too."

"I wasn't," Arun told him with mock surety.

"What was school like for you?" Severus asked. He seemed genuinely interested, even though there was only a few years difference, and they had been in the same house.

Arun shook her head, "Honestly?"

"Yes, honestly. We pretend our childhood doesn't shape us, but it does."

"My childhood was very odd," Arun told him. "My mother is a Riddle, the only daughter ending a long line of Riddles. A distant relation to our very own dark lord. When she was at school she helped him set up the first iteration of his following, she recruited Avery and Lestrange and she travelled with him when he was recruiting abroad. Then she started to write anthroposophical stuff studying bloodlines, she married my father who was not...not a follower, but, not…." she shrugged. "He was just motivated by his own things and he loved learning. A historian and a scholar with a fascination for old magic. The Dark Lord found him fascinating in turn, and was good enough to leave him alone. I suppose the fact that he was one of the sacred twenty-eight helped. I grew up in Egypt, Albania, Moscow and Syria. We were always travelling. My mother spewed her vitriol into pages and pages of books that were snapped up by blood supremacist sympathisers. My sister hates my mother, my own relationship with her is fine as long as we don't get into politics. I grew up navigating people who had fundamental differences in their morals and simply no time for children." She looked down into the gloom of the vault corridor, but she was remembering the earliest years of her childhood, before Hogwarts. "I remember sitting on Uncle Tom's knee talking to him in Parseltongue, does that seem strange? Nobody even calls him Tom any more, it would be unthinkable."

Severus had gone very quiet, she wondered if it was jealousy or fear or perhaps sympathy he felt for her. Whatever it was she decided she didn't want to find out, and so she moved the story on. "As I got older my parents travelled apart, my father spent a lot of time in the middle east and Africa and my mother spent time in Europe. The ministry banned her books and my sister started Hogwarts, it was very hard for her there because of it. She was a Ravenclaw, she grew to detest my mother, and only spoke to father whose views were more temperate. She got the top grades in all her subjects and then followed him into his line of work."

"What are your views?" Severus asked. "I've always wondered; they seem to change depending on who you are with."

"What's interesting," Arun told Severus, pressing ahead like he had never asked the question, "Is that my mothers writing over the decade has argued for mixing mudblood and pure blood to avoid inbreeding, but she isn't advocating us sleeping with muggles. She's even started to look at muggle science, recessive and dominant genes and studies done by muggles into dog breeding." Arun paused. "My mother doesn't really see people as anything other than interesting experiments, a trait she shares with my distant relation."

"And what about you?" Severus asked again.

"I see people not blood. I see good in both sides but I think both sides are profoundly hypocritical. What my uncle fails to grasp is the fact that should he be successful his morals and ideals will become greyed as soon as he is responsible for the whole of the wizarding world. He will realise that to be powerful he must harnice all of the resources at his disposal, including mudbloods and muggles and in doing so he must compromise himself and become just another politician swamped in bureaucracy and financial constraint. Therefore he destroys himself. The Ministry is already at that point, and by aiding my uncle in his struggle, I force them to review their own grey practices and to consider what moral and just society should look like. I see myself as having a very important function in this war. I stop people from feeling complacency is justified. I create monsters so I can create angels."

"So you aid the Dark Lord to further the morality of Society?" Severus laughed. "That's the biggest crock of shit you've ever said."

Arun started to laugh and was about to start telling Severus about her time at Hogwarts as a child when Rab took a sharp and painful intake of breath. He moved like a man possessed, and moved around in his body like it was a screwed up jumper. He turned to face them and in a rattling breath, he began to whisper.

"And on the seventh day of the seventh month, the horseman shall ride again and the world will be cracked asunder."

Three times he repeated it, before he collapsed down, breathing slowly and said no more.

On Christmas day Rab was taken to St Mungo's Hospital, Severus and Arun were called to Dumbledore's office and here they sat like naughty school children looking up at the paintings of all those headmasters who came before as they waited for him. Just as they looked up the ancient portraits looked down at them, amused and curious and indignant.

"Did you know an anagram for Albus Dumbledore is 'male bods rule bud'" Arun sniggered. One of the paintings tutted. Severus gave her a long hard look down his hooked nose and said nothing.

"Oh, don't be like that...it is funny."

Voices came closer, Arun turned in her seat and heard McGonagle moaning, "Headmaster, don't you think it's prudent to send her away?"

"Come now Minvera, this is hardly the time for knee-jerk reactions to imagined threats."

"Hardly imagined when-" Minerva McGonagall stopped talking.

"Ah Miss Granville, Severus, thank you for waiting. Most good of you to come. Minerva, would you stay?"

Minerva looked down her nose at Arun and hovered by the stairs. Dumbledore moved to his office chair and sat down with a sigh, slapping his hands down on the chair sides. "You will be relieved to know that Rab is in the safe care of the St Mungo's team, surrounded by his family. As Miss Griffin was helpful enough to explain what he foolishly tried to do his family have accepted it as an accident and are not concerned with further complaints. They have offered to compensate for the loss of your personal stores Severus." Dumbledore's gaze settled on Arundel. "Quick thinking on your part to move him back to the Vaults, without his body returned it is doubtful he would have found his way back."

"Has he spoken since?" Arun asked.

"Very little I'm afraid."

Arun locked eyes with Dumbledore, and saw a flash of a hospital bed, a child surrounded by family and a whispered word, "the horseshoe." Dumbledore didn't force her out, he was showing her his memory on purpose.

Are you telling me to find it or are you telling me to leave it be? Arun asked.

Dumbledore made a show of searching for something in his draws as he answered What you choose to do is your choice, miss Granville. I haven't the faintest notion about which you speak. But should you be considering action, you will find there are more than just cursed objects in the vaults. Some forgotten things are surprisingly helpful in tackling the forces of darkness.

"It's doubtful that he will be well enough to attend for a long while, perhaps even the next year. Griffin and Jacob however, supported him down this path, and though they are undoubtedly blameless they must learn that to support a fool is to be foolish, and so they have been given a number of detentions. Professor Snape and Miss Granville will host them, Griffin will, of course, assist professor Snape in his administrations of the Potions rooms and Jacob will be allocated to Miss Granville, who will begin cataloguing the vault items in sixteen B. A week should do it don't you think?"

"As you wish professor," Snape muttered, clearly put out that his holiday was now going to be spent caretaking a student. Arun, however, felt like she had been given a Christmas present.

"I do believe that's all," Dumbledore smiled, "Do have a good Christmas. Minerva, would you sit with me for a while, I need your help with my crossword."