Chris Carter and 1013 Productions own the X-Files. JK Rowling, Warner Brothers and Scholastic own Harry Potter. All I own is this story line, every Harry Potter DVD and a complete collection of X-Files DVD's. I wish I owned Fox Mulder.

A/N This story is set anytime during Sorcerers Stone through Prisoner of Azkaban of HP (although it contains information in all the books) and after X-Files episode "Emily", but before "Requiem".

Tempus nascendi et tempus moriendi...

GREAT HALL

BREAKFAST

"I don't know how you get used to eating like this, on display," Scully murmured to Snape under her breath as she buttered a piece of toast.

He shrugged. "It's part of the job."

Looking past Snape, she noticed that Mulder and Hagrid were having an urgent, low-voiced conversation with Dumbledore, who was frowning. When Mulder saw her looking, he said, "We need to talk, Scully--right after breakfast."

As the students milled out to attend their classes, she caught Mulder up at the foot of the dais. Hagrid was standing with him, looking nervous and almost guilty.

"Scully, we need you to come take a look at something," Mulder started.

But Hagrid broke in. "I prob'ly should 'a sent for you sooner, but I didn't think i' was anything out of the ordin'ry. After all, animals die all the time--they grow old, they get eaten by other animals..."

"You've seen an increase in animal deaths?" She asked him.

He nodded. "I didn' see a pattern at firs'..."

This time it was Mulder who interrupted. "We better just go down and see. Scully, when do you think you can get away?"

She turned to Dumbledore, who was standing right behind her. "Sir?"

"Yes, go..."

She looked over to the door where Snape was waiting for her. She pointed to Hagrid and mouthed I'm going with them. Snape nodded and swept out of the Great Hall.

xXxXxXx

"Sorry you're missing Potions," Mulder said casually as they walked down the slope towards Hagrid's hut.

"Why should you be sorry? If there's something suspicious happening on this campus, we're supposed to go investigate."

It was a careful, casual answer. Mulder looked at her sideways and lowered his voice so Hagrid, who had wound up several paces ahead of them due to his enormous stride, couldn't hear. "We've only been here a few weeks, but it almost seems like a lifetime."

Scully shrugged. "That shouldn't be surprising. Nearly everything here is completely unfamiliar and we had so much to learn in a short time. It's only natural that it should play tricks on our time perception."

"I suppose. But Scully," he pressed. "Do you remember when we started this assignment--the way we all used to gather in the faculty lounge after supper? That seems like a long time ago."

"Well, that was before the attacks started. That had to change."

"You never join us anymore."

"Of course not, Mulder. Professor Snape has been kind enough to take me along on his rounds."

"The teachers here take turns with rounds. Nobody has to do it every night."

"Fine. Do you want to know what the big mystery is? Last night he showed me a potion he was working on. It's called Veritaserum. It's supposed to make people tell the truth."

They walked on in silence. How ironic that the potion should be to induce truth-telling. Mulder was certain Scully had told part of the truth, but he was equally certain that she was withholding things, too. After a moment he ventured to speak. "You know, this isn't our world, Scully. In fact, there are a lot of wizards who don't even want us here. And we won't be here forever in any case."

"No kidding."

He found her curt sarcasm a bit off-putting, but he was almost certain that he knew what the reason was that he'd barely seen her over the last week and a half--or rather, who the reason was. He tried again.

"If something's going on or you need to talk or something...well...you know I'm here for you..." he said lamely, his voice trailing off as she rolled her eyes.

"I don't know what you're driving at, Mulder, but okay. I know you're here if I need you." It was another abrupt answer, but she softened it with a little smile--although she did walk on a little bit ahead of him to signal that she decided the conversation was over.

Of course, all he had were suspicions. Despite working with Scully for years, despite everything they had been through together, as much as they knew about each other, there were still things about her that were a mystery to him.

When they arrived at the hut, Hagrid led them to the specimens he'd found. They were out back on a long table. Hagrid had put them in little cages to protect them from postmortem predation. To her surprise she saw a wren, a squirrel and a fox.

"Why Hagid, these are normal animals!" She exclaimed.

"Normal?" Asked Mulder, grinning.

"Well...you know what I mean." She threw a placating glance at the gamekeeper.

"It's allrigh', Agent Scully," said Hagrid.

"But not very politically correct," Mulder muttered at her, enjoying her discomfiture.

"What I meant was..." She paused. Mulder had a point. Maybe the term normal was not the best one to use. After all, these were people who thought bowtruckles and delivery owls were normal animals. "Non-magical? Conventional?"

"Whatever you like, Agent Scully," Hagrid said. He didn't know why Agent Mulder was teasing her, but he no desire to join in.

She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and picked up the cage with the wren in it. She carried it to a sunny part of the yard and examined it carefully. Then she shook her head.

"What is it?" Asked Mulder, serious now.

Scully looked at him, troubled. "It's the same electrical burn pattern we saw on the other victims. Now he's attacking animals."

OLD TRANSFIGURATION ROOM

LATER THAT NIGHT

"I'm going to show you how to play wizard chess," Snape announced to Scully as they took a break from patrolling. He would have to make rounds once more that night, but now they were passing the time away in an abandoned classroom off the main part of the castle. He was showing it to her to satisfy her curiosity.

She nodded her head.

"You have played muggle chess, haven't you?"

"Of course."

"The rules are the same," he said as he placed the pieces out on the board. "But the difference is you tell the pieces where to move, rather than touch them."

Scully perched herself on the desk so she could get a better view. "What would happen if I did move them by hand?"

"See for yourself."

Scully picked up a pawn--gently, so she thought--by the shoulders, but jumped when it squirmed in her hand and gave a most unearthly shriek.

"Careful," Snape said, cupping his hand under hers.

"Don't worry. I'm on it." And she gingerly replaced it on the board. As she stared, the pawn muttered invective at her for a short while before it settled down grumpily.

"You go first," Snape urged. "Remember to tell the pieces where you want to move."

Scully made her move, Snape counter-moved and Scully moved a piece again, but her mind was not entirely on strategy. She wanted to examine the chess piece more closely and try to find the microphone. She was sure they moved by some speech recognition technology and she wanted to see it for herself. But she had to admit that this was far more sophisticated than any voice-activated product she'd ever seen before. And because she was too busy thinking about how the pieces worked, rather than where the pieces were, it was not long before the inevitable happened.

"Watch what happens when you get captured," Snape told her. She watched as his capturing piece knocked her opposing piece out and dragged it off the board.

She didn't like being the first player to lose a piece, and she tried to keep her focus on the game. But despite the novelty of playing wizard chess, Scully found her mind wandering again, mulling over the events of the previous nine days. She felt like there was something she wasn't getting, some larger pattern she wasn't seeing, some mysterious way all the evidence would fit if only she could...

"Your move," he broke in.

Scully snapped out of her reverie. Not only was Snape staring at her, the pieces were shouting at her, trying to offer advice. Her thoughts whirled around her mind, and she tried to concentrate. She moved her rook forward, realized how foolish a move that was and threw up her hands amid groans from her pieces and cheers from Snape's as she watched the poor rook dragged off the board. She had to stifle the foolish urge to apologize to it.

"I give up," she said.

"Hmm?"

Scully swung her legs off the desk, slid off and stretched a little. She started to pace, frowning. She said, "None of this makes any sense."

"I presume you're not talking about chess."

She shook her head impatiently. "Look at the evidence, Severus. First, there's a serious attack on a student, but not fatal and no lasting wound. Second, there's a fatal attack on a house-elf. Third, attacks on magical creatures. And finally attacks on conventional animals. It's too unusual--you would expect the violence to escalate up the evolutionary ladder. Not the other way."

Snape ordered the chess pieces back into the box, then turned to watch her pace.

"The way I see it," she said, "Either something has happened to weaken him, and therefore he's attacking animals and not people. Or, maybe he's trying to come back through an animal...But that doesn't seem in keeping with his personality--to come back as a mere animal...Maybe...he's toying with us." She walked over and stood in front of him. "Do you think he knows we're here? Mulder and I?"

"That's hard to say. Hogwarts is under protective enchantments, but nothing's foolproof. Not to mention we don't know what form he's taking."

"Or if he possesses knowledge and consciousness the way we do." She thought for a moment. "Of course, it's not exactly a secret we're here." She leaned forward and took his hands. She spoke steadily but quietly, as if testing the waters. "Did you know him, in the time before? I mean, actually meet him?"

"Yes, that's how it worked." He had a sharp edge to his voice although he didn't pull his hands away. He was uneasy at how casually the muggle agents talked about You-Know-Who. They were professional, never deviated from proper protocol, never mentioned him by name, but they did not have the same fear the wizards had. Of course, she hadn't been here in the days of the War. She had probably been in med school at the time, learning how to save lives, all oblivious to devastation and upheaval that touched every wizard life, while he, on the other hand...All the same, he was unable to control the harshness in his voice.

Scully raised her eyebrow at his tone, but continued, in the same quiet voice, "He didn't--doesn't like muggles. There's a possibility he's angry we're here." She let go his hands and resumed her pacing. "Maybe he's trying to provoke us..."

She stopped and turned to look at Snape, her arms crossed. She paused for a moment, looking at him, thinking out loud. "In our muggle world, if we want to catch somebody who's been eluding capture we might set a trap. What do you think would make him come out of hiding and show himself?"

He looked at her intensely. "What exactly do you think you're going to see?"

"We'd find out when he showed himself."

"You seem very sure he can show himself. But you're forgetting that the student who was attacked never saw his attacker."

"But there must still be a way to lure him out into the open so he can be captured or stopped, however your people do these things. You must have some wizardy way to catch him then."

He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. "You're talking about an ambush."

"In a manner of speaking--of course, you would need bait. Something he wants badly, to lure him out of hiding..." She was pacing again.

"Surely you must know how dangerous...?"

"He seems obsessed with Hogwarts, with this whole area. What does he want badly from here? Besides Harry Potter, but he's underage, so it's out of the question using him..."

"Dana, you seem to be forgetting, we haven't proven absolutely that it's You Know Who..."

"Dumbledore thinks it is," she answered, but absently, more to herself than to him.

Snape stood up and strode over to intercept her pacing. She stopped in front of him, although her mind was racing, and she was acting as if she wasn't even aware he was there. But then she seemed to come to, and placed her hand on his arm. Looking straight into his eyes, she said, "What would be the most obnoxious thing a muggle could do that he could not resist reacting to?"

Snape grabbed her upper arms and said, "Stop it right now! You don't know what you're talking about. You weren't brought here to fight the Dark Lord. You were only to help with the investigations and learn enough about this threat to help your own people. The Headmaster thinks You Know Who is contacting his followers somehow, maybe doing some form of recruiting. However, we don't know how many wizards he could be bringing over to his side--if that's even the correct theory at all. But there's something you need to know about...

"You asked if I knew him in the time before. I did know him. In fact I knew him rather well. You see, if he were in trouble, he could summon assistance in an instant. Come here."

He pulled her under one of the burning torches, where the lighting was strongest. He unbuttoned his sleeve and pushed it up to show her something on his arm. She touched it curiously, lightly. "A tattoo?"

"No, Dana, this is the Dark Mark. In those days, we Death Eaters were all marked with this sign. If he touched the Mark of any individual, the rest of us would feel it and were to Apparate to him instantly to give assistance. Not all the former Death Eaters are in Azkaban, you know. Some went back to their private lives. It's near impossible to say where some people's loyalties lie. But, I promise you that you would not want to face a mob of angry Dark wizards." He pushed his sleeve down without buttoning it and put his arm around her loosely. "You really don't know what we're dealing with--after all, how could you? But why do you think Dumbledore is moving so cautiously? Defeating You-Know-Who will not be easy or bloodless. Just the same, he wants to keep the casualty count as low as possible. Don't suggest baiting, or ambush or anything rash like that. Keep on the way you have been, but don't put yourself in a position where you have no chance of surviving. Death at the hands of a Death Eater or You-Know-Who is not something to be wished on anyone."

xXxXxXx

Scully was quiet, thinking about the Dark Mark, as Snape walked her back to her quarters late that night. It was rather grotesque, really--a skull that seemed to be vomiting a serpent. Her rational mind still resisted the idea that Voldemort had really been able to summon his followers merely by touching the Mark. But then Snape had no reason to lie about such a thing to her. Besides, when she realized how many things she had learned to accept in her brief weeks at Hogwarts--things she could never accept in "her world". For even if she held to the idea that Snape's people possessed a different type of technology than she was accustomed to, it still lead to the uncomfortable questions of how and where they obtained it.

Lately, every time she pondered the source of wizard technology, she was overwhelmed by a powerful urge to surrender---but to what she wasn't sure. Surrender to the belief in wizarding magic? That would mean to throw away her belief in the power of science to solve all the mysteries of the universe--at least in theory. Or was it merely a temptation to surrender to the exotic allure of Hogwarts? For long stretches--hours at a time--she was able to forget her life before this assignment. She would get that same giddy sensation she first had when she passed through the pillar at King's Cross Station, that feeling of disorientation that had made her so uncomfortable when she first experienced it, but now felt like sinking into a soft downy feather bed. She could forget her mother, the FBI, even her quiet sorrow over Emily...

And there was something else she could forget. More and more frequently these days, she could go so far as to forget her secret, confused and repressed feelings for Mulder. Especially because Dumbledore had split them up and she saw so little of him now, really...

But the Dark Mark--a skull, a serpent...

Skulls and serpents were common enough symbols. The skull and crossbones to symbolize poison, for instance. Then there was the snake to symbolize the devil. And on the other hand, the snake on the caduceus, the symbol of the medical profession, of healing...something seemed to be just out of her reach--

"Wait," Scully said abruptly, and she turned to him. "Let me see that again." To his surprise, she unbuttoned his sleeve and pushed it up. "I've seen this before."

"Impossible." He struggled to pull his arm away from her as she held on more tightly.

"Possible. But let me think."

He stopped struggling, resigned himself to her examination. Finally, she looked up at him. "I believe I've seen this before. But it was awhile ago--on a different case." She frowned. "I don't have any of the records with me...I just bet there's a connection."

"And if there is?"

"I'll know when I find it."