Disclaimer: implied swearing

The knock came on the door at 6:59 on Friday evening. Snape reflected back to a few days earlier...

Plotting

Snape smacked the button on his alarm clock and instantly fell back to sleep. Twenty minutes later he flung the annoying thing at the wall. He'd fix it with his wand once he was more awake.

Groggily, he stumbled to his kitchenette and poured himself a mug of coffee. Being a spy did not mean he was naturally a morning person. Snape groaned and lay his head on the table as he recalled all the problems that had been dropped in his lap.

James Bond never had these kinds of problems. 007 always had an evil villain to fight, an enemy's camp to infiltrate. Snape thrived on such activities. He'd even found himself playing the music in his head from time to time when he went on missions for whichever master he was working for at the time.

But where was the enemy? The challenge of sneaking about without being caught?

He needed to come up with a plan.

Some may think that Snape thought in words, what with the eloquence of his voice, but in reality he was a picture man. Agent 009 (AKA Severus Snape) needed to take in every object, every action, every face in a room instantly. How was he to catch and remember all those details without a photographic memory? Even a pensive would not due on its own, for it is what the observer notices and uses that is important.

Snatching the levitated quill and parchment from the air, Agent 009 got down to business.

Sometime later a sketch lay before him, it was to be the first of many, to be charmed to be seen only by him.

The first picture was of the castle. Students were being ushered through the front door to the carriages pulled by the winged death seers. Flitwick was cheerfully waving them off. Minerva was pestering this one and that to be more observant of their surroundings and not leave their belongings scattered on the grounds. Snape himself was cheerfully hammering a sign into the ground that read, "School Closed. No students allowed." It is always best to start a plan with your goals in mind.

Snape accioed his paints, which he had brewed himself. He started to fill in the details of different people in the scene. Blessed there were a lot of red heads in the school. All Weasley kin no doubt. Molly and Arthur weren't the only ones in that clan that bred like stray cats. It seemed like every year there was a new litter of them.

Agent 009 smirked. He knew just how to clear out the school. A few notes played out in his head, Duh, dun dun dun, duh, du dun du duh, duh duhn du.

Why wasn't the school already empty? Teenagers do not relinquish freedom easily. A boarding school provided much more freedom than their home. Proportionally, there were far fewer adults at school to monitor their activities. They lived with their friends and could spend day after day socializing. What teenager was going to give that up by notifying a parent that their classmates were being petrified? There were a few parents who had heard of course, but primarily those were the snootiest of the pure bloods and they believed that the monster would never harm their children. But if a protective, less arrogant parent found out...

As these thoughts went through his head he sketched out the plan for how to make it happen. He cast drying and concealment charms on it, then moved on to goal two.

An image of a ghost in front of a class of sleeping students started to take form on the paper. In walked the thespian, defense poser, fumbling his wand as he grinned, claiming to be able to rid the room of evil spirits. Unconsciously he began to draw himself berating students. Snape frowned. He wasn't supposed to be part of this portrait. Was he?

He was the most brilliant potioner in Europe. He'd created potions that woke people from comas, potions that tamed wild beast, potions that kept hair from going gray and falling out. He'd created potions that could exude fumes that burned only muggles. Potions that made people hear a constant scream that wasn't there. He could almost feel his tattoo...pulse. The bastard was still out there somewhere. Snape threw up his barriers, then looked down at what he had drawn.

It showed him showing the little buggers how to properly, dice, chop and measure; and there was the know-it-all teaching her fellow students how to use Post-It notes to hide all but the current line of the recipe. "Sigh. Perhaps I should change a few things about how I teach. But if they want me to be nice they can just stuff it. And I'm not change how I give or take points," decided Snape.

Now, how to get rid of the other two? He flipped to a new page and drew. Duh, dun dun dun, duh, du dun du music picked up again in his brain as Agent 009 sketched a talking envelope, a finish line, a scroll with a seal and a newspaper heading that read, "Grand Prize valued at 30,000 Galleons!" Snape smirked. Wouldn't they be surprised when they found out what the prize was?

Now for the one he'd been dreading: how to improve Potter's home life. As usual he felt torn in two. His best friend and his worst enemy. He wanted to help one and harm the other, but they were both sharing the same body in their child. Doing anything to help a Potter made him feel ill. Doing anything to harm Lily made him feel equally ill. The number of calming draughts and stomach soothers he'd taken over the past few years to deal with the situation was absurd.

Despite this, Snape sketched out a house, a closet full of clothes, a full refrigerator, a debit card and even a sketch of Potter hanging out with a neighbor child. His plan also contained pictures of potion vials.

Snape cast drying and concealment charms on all of his work, then capped his inks and paints. He had a potions class in ten minutes, and the first part of his plans to put in place.