See Ch. 1 for disclaimer.

Apologies for the late update. I had AP testing... and then I hit a case of writer's block with the last scene. However, this chapter introduces another OC that I rather like. So, thanks to my reviewers, and read on. :)

Chapter 15

The Ministry lunchroom was clean—painfully so. The walls were stark white, the tables a gleaming black marble. An astonishing amount of money had been spent on the lunchroom, thought Percy, all for the supposed purpose of making employees comfortable while they ate lunch.

It was still doubtful to Percy if they had succeeded in their purpose.

The sterile air, oddly enough, smelled of lemon juice (Percy wondered where that factored into the equation) and the almost sickening scent of some powerful disinfectant. Odours were practically absent from the large canteen, as some Ministry workers called it. Percy did not usually eat in the canteen—he considered the food served there sadly lacking in taste and flavour, not at all suitable to his palate. However, he knew that most workers, especially the gossipy ones, stayed to eat at the Ministry. And gossip, while annoying in itself, occasionally contained a kernel of truth.

He wrinkled his nose in distaste as he grabbed a lunch tray from the stack at the beginning of the line, sharp brown eyes picking out a small spot of grease that had been left unwashed. He pulled out his wand and discreetly gave it a little jab of Scourgify. A few floridly pink soap bubbles trickled out of the end of his wand and raced over the spot of grease. As he made the soap bubbles vanish, he noted with approval the now gleaming lunch tray.

"You there," said the person standing behind him. "Move it!"

"Sorry," said Percy, although his voice sounded as though he weren't sorry at all. He pushed his tray under the serving tools of the first canteen worker, who dumped a slice of sad-looking roast beef on his tray, looking extremely bored with the whole process. Percy continued down the line, receiving a spoonful of mashed potatoes, a small tin bowl of rather watery vegetable soup, and a plate heaped with salad. He wondered how old the lettuce might be, then decided it was better not to think of all the possible things that could have happened to spoil or contaminate the food. I suppose it's best to just shovel it down with my eyes closed, thought Percy in resignation. He poked at his just received muffin and inwardly despaired at how depressingly hard it seemed to be. Mum's cooking was so much better than this. I wish I could be back at the Burrow. Of course, family issues kept him from doing exactly that, and sitting down to a huge, traditional English lunch, as Mum passed around his favourite dish, her own homemade, absolutely mouth watering concoction of Yorkshire pudding…

Stop it, stop it, stop it! You do not need to be thinking about Mum's food right now. Only it was late October, and Halloween was coming up soon, and he could not help but think of the sumptuous Hogwarts feasts with fondness.

He passed over tea for coffee—it would keep him alert, despite its nasty taste (how the Yanks could take it he didn't have a clue)—and gave his card to the person waiting to ring up lunches. The squat man tapped the card with his wand, checked the ribbon which unfurled in the air in front of him, nodded in approval, and handed it back to Percy. "Fourteen Galleons, ten Sickles, and three Knuts left," the man said, and turned to the next person in line.

Percy carried his lunch tray away, and surveyed the lunchroom critically. He spotted an interesting prospect: a group of talking Aurors, sitting in the far left corner of the lunchroom. There was an empty table right next to them. Percy adopted the appearance of looking hesitant and unsure, and zigzagged his way to the table, just as conveniently choosing to come to the spot closest to the Aurors, and took his seat.

He unobtrusively slid the tip of his wand out of his robes, and manoeuvred it to point toward the Aurors' table, casting an eavesdropping charm. At once, the Aurors' conversation became much clearer—and they hadn't noticed a thing. Percy remembered Snape sneering at the Aurors and complaining about how their standards were going downhill. He was beginning to think Snape was right. After all, Percy wasn't even trained, and here he was, having managed to situate himself right next to the Aurors and eavesdrop without them noticing. Honestly, the state of the government these days…

They all seemed to be younger Aurors—novices—the ones that hadn't fought during the war with Voldemort so many years ago (Then again, most of the current Aurors were; most of the former Aurors from the first war had not survived.). One of them, a good-looking man, his brown hair casually pulled back in a ponytail, plucked at a stray thread of his horribly flashy red robes and said, "Hey, you hear we've got to guard Azkaban now for an entire year?"

"What d'you mean?" mumbled another Auror through a crunchy biscuit. He wiped at his mouth, and crumbs fell onto the table. Grimacing, the Auror—a placid, broad-faced man—cast a spell that quickly cleansed the sleeves of his robes.

"Guard," said the Auror in red robes. "The entire year. Auror Morgenstern told me."

"You mean Dagny the Dagger?"

"Yeah."

There was a collective groan rising from the small group of four. "Oh, Jack, what a tragedy," said another Auror (Percy sensed a touch of sarcasm.). His face was very pale and he never smiled. Instead, he always frowned. "Isn't Scrimgeour just a little paranoid?"

"Not as bad as Mad-Eye," said the last one derisively. " 'Constant vigilance!'" he mock-shouted, mimicking Moody's voice. They snorted into their glasses of pumpkin juice.

Percy sipped slowly at his coffee, his face looking rather bored. Inside, however, he was not amused. Moody might be paranoid, but he certainly had the right idea in these times. What were the Aurors thinking, trying to dismiss the veteran fighter who was famous (infamous?) for capturing all those Death Eaters so long ago? Constant vigilance (of the sensible variety) was a perfectly good idea by which to live, provided you didn't possess Moody's almost ridiculous paranoia as well.

The pale-faced man continued, "I've been there several months already, and I don't want to spend any more time there than necessary. And we're told to go there so… arbitrarily. Why do we have to go there? Why not Hogwarts? And why have they finally assigned us there so late?"

"Says there aren't enough Aurors," said the other in red robes. "Haven't been any through the training program for a while. And Hogwarts already got its detail, so most of us are stuck with Azkaban or the Ministry. So maybe not all of us have to go. And Robards was arguing with Scrimgeour, so that's what delayed a fully assigned group of Aurors there. I hear that's why they've just been picking Aurors at random to stand guard for now. But we can all blame the shortage on Fudge."

Amen to that, Percy thought.

The one who had mimicked Moody looked up from his pumpkin juice after a pause, during which they had all taken the time to eat their food. "Hey, Jack, how's your luck with Tonks?" he said casually to the red-robed man.

Percy thought quickly. Tonks… yes, Nymphadora Tonks. The Auror who was a Metamorphmagus and a disowned scion of the Black family. And a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Percy knew of her vaguely. Yeah, he groused to himself, this really is a waste of my time. I'm not about to spend an entire lunchtime listening to the smutty lives of the Aurors.

Unfortunately, Percy couldn't exactly communicate his thoughts to the Aurors, so he sighed in exasperation to himself and pulled out a sheet of parchment, scribbling his afternoon schedule on it. In actuality, he already knew what he was going to do that afternoon, and writing down his schedule was only something he decided to do while he waited for the Aurors to say something even remotely interesting.

Merlin, this spying business was getting boring.

Jack Williamson's attempts to chat up Nymphadora Tonks were most certainly not helpful. Feeling very irritated, Percy made a note to himself that sometime after this was all over, he would demand compensation, monetary and otherwise, from the MLE for subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment.

"—Merlin, she's good looking when she wants to be. So I'm like, hey, Tonks, could you try changing your hair to blonde? You know she's got that pink thing right now. So she looks at me all funny and says, all right. And then I say to her, that's great. Could you change your eye colour to blue? I mean, really, the purple just doesn't match all that well."

Oh Merlin, yes, this is definitely very much cruel and unusual punishment. Does it matter if they do it unknowingly?

No, I should think not.

"Uh huh, Jack," said the mimicker. The pale-faced man rolled his eyes, looking annoyed with the whole situation. The man who had been munching on the biscuit said jovially, "Well, don't you think that a little obvious…?"

Williamson looked highly offended. "No!"

Biscuit-man looked just as highly sceptical, but shrugged and said, "Go on." He bit into another biscuit and chewed loudly, his mouth open. Percy did not want to see the spectacle of crushed biscuit mixed with saliva (manners! thought Percy stiffly), and inconspicuously averted his eyes to Williamson, whose story was steadily growing more amusing.

"And she looked like a goddess—like Aphrodite, in that painting by Botticelli, except she still had her clothes on—" Percy suppressed a frown of distaste at that moment. He had always been a proper Weasley boy as his mother had wanted him to be, and had never thought lewd thoughts quite as lascivious as Williamson's. "So I look at her, and I say, Tonks, you're really looking good—"

"Don't you usually say that to yourself, Williamson?" murmured Pale-face under his breath. The others evidently had not heard, because Williamson inexorably continued. "—and I say, you want to eat with me tonight? I know a great French place, and then we can go to my apartment for a while."

"I wonder why?" said Mimicker, wagging his eyebrows up and down.

Williamson was shameless. "And she stares at me and says, what? So I say, you want to come out with me to eat? And I've got a great place, you can come look. I mean, she'd like that, wouldn't she?" Here, Williamson appealed to his friends. Mimicker snorted, Biscuit-man took another bite out of his biscuit and absent-mindedly said, "Yes, yes," while Pale-face rolled his eyes again and said, "Oh, yes, I'm sure."

All Percy could think was that this was a total waste of time.

"But she didn't! I don't know why, she marches right up to me an' says, you goddamn idiot, and stomps on my foot." Williamson paused; the pain in his voice intensified. "It still hurts, man! I don't get it—I mean, I'm handsome, smart, talented—"

"Extremely egotistical," muttered Pale-face, and Percy wondered if Pale-face had been unfortunately roped into the small group by chance. Certainly, he looked very annoyed with the entire situation. Of course, Percy could not agree more with a well-said statement. He scraped the bottom of his tin bowl of vegetable soup, and looked mournfully at the only food he had left: the bits of carrots in the soup that he had abandoned because they were hard and crunchy. Percy was quite sure that carrots in soup were supposed to be soft. These idiotic Ministry cooks…

The Aurors had switched from the topic of their romantic lives to their actual jobs, and were comparing their assignments. From what Percy heard of the conversation, Williamson was conducting surveillance on known Death Eater families (in his case, it was the Malfoys), Biscuit-man was participating in raids, Mimicker was relegated to deskwork and writing up reports (Percy wondered why—probably insubordination), and Pale-face had been assigned to guard Azkaban for some time since the Dementors' desertion. No wonder he's so grumpy, Percy thought. The Dementors may be gone, but Azkaban's still as gloomy as they get.

He prodded the carrots in the tin bowl with his fork.

Pale-face was saying, "My God, Azkaban's a right ruddy place. I'm in the outer rings of the prison, so I don't have the Death Eaters to guard, but still… You-Know-Who could attack any day, Warden Roth is a coward… Roder, you've got the best of it. Sitting pretty at your desk—"

Mimicker, or Roder, bristled. "What're you trying to say by that, Bleme?"

Pale-face, or Bleme, bristled back. "You're a lucky bastard, that's what."

And all you lucky bastards are being annoying, Percy thought with annoyance. Coming to the conclusion that as younger Aurors they wouldn't know so much about… anything in particular, he got to his feet. He deposited the trash in the rubbish bin and his lunch tray on top of the stack of dirty trays, which teetered dangerously, looking as though it was on the verge of collapse. Then he quickly made off for his office. He had a lot of papers to go through, after all.

oOo

Even after the Dementors had left—deserted—Azkaban, the feared wizarding prison still retained about it a sense of frigidness, of barely suppressed fear, of a dark, black feeling that pressed down upon them as though it would like to drown them all in despair. Beckett thought of his little sister Alix. The Dementors had left, true, but their imprint had lingered.

The prow of the boat nudged gently into the dock, coming up next to the pier. The wood seemed as though it were rotten to the core, as though the flimsy support would collapse at any moment. Nearby, another boat occupied by Aurors was bobbing, the wind-churned waters whipping at its moorings, and the Aurors quickly got off the boat. Beckett gripped the edges and jumped over the side onto the dock; he was the last one in the boat to do so. The others were standing around; they were waiting for the prison warden to come down and open the padlocked gates.

Beckett glanced around at his new companions. He still could not quite figure out why Scrimgeour had ordered the old Auror squads scrambled up; there was no rational line of reasoning that he could see in the action. But now, the closely knit teams of Aurors had been taken apart and put back together haphazardly, against Gawain Robards's protests. He knew two of them, at least. Owen Zanar, who was gazing up at the ominous looking structure, seemed pensive, biting down on his lower lip and his frame tense. Jacqueline Asterbury, whose short, light brown hair was mussed by the wind. She saw Beckett looking at her, and gave him a strained smile.

Beckett had heard of the other two, but he wasn't very well acquainted with them. They were both considered veterans among the Aurors. Henry Wyatt, the squad leader, was an extraordinarily fit man in his mid-forties, one of the older Aurors in the department. He had a jaunty personality, although now even he seemed more sober than usual. The other… Dagny Morgenstern had a bit of a reputation among the Aurors. Behind her back (although Beckett was sure that she knew it, anyway; there was not much that she ever missed), they called her Dagny the Dagger. She had a certain mantra: when wands were not available, use knives. They were never quite sure where she hid them, but they knew that she could quickly draw them in a fight, if need be. She was nearly Henry Wyatt's opposite in personality; in her late thirties, she was a taciturn, reserved person, a woman of few words.

"It's so dreary here," someone said behind him. Beckett blinked and turned around. Jacqueline Asterbury came up next to him, her Auror robes drawn closely around her.

Beckett nearly smiled. "Understatement of the year."

"Understatement of the century," said Owen gloomily. The three of them glanced over at Wyatt and Morgenstern, who were conversing with each other in low, serious tones. "And we're going to be here for a long, long time."

There was a moment of suspended silence. It was broken by a sudden outburst of laughter; several feet away, Fitzwilliam McKay was making jokes. The other Aurors looked amused, but then—Beckett listened more closely and heard the undercurrent of nervousness and fear in the jocularity.

Azkaban, he thought. The place where there is no joy. Admission price: your happiness. Priceless.

At that moment, the gates creaked open, just enough for the Aurors to come in. This was probably the only time they would actually go through the gate; the purpose of going by boat was so that the Aurors who had not been to Azkaban before (after all, the Dementors had been here, so few Aurors had been actually there as guards) could familiarise themselves with the prison from the outside. Their usual mode of transportation would be by Portkey. A thin, balding man dressed in ashen grey robes shut the gate behind them. "Aurors," he said in a surprisingly low voice, rather at odds with his appearance, "I am Gatekeeper Maurice Boynton. Warden Roth is waiting for you."

And the Aurors went.

oOo

Of all the shifts that their squad could have drawn, it would have to be the night shift, in the high-security level of Azkaban prison itself. Seven in the evening to seven in the morning.

Dagny Morgenstern drew her cloak around her, trying to shield herself from the pervasive cold that seemed to seep into every bit of her being. She stood outside the door which was the entrance into the high-security area. As she turned her head back to look behind her, she saw Henry Wyatt tap his wand to the torches lining the walls. Flames sprang to life, lighting up the corridor. It was almost worse that way, Dagny thought; there were more menacing shadows dancing around them.

The prison had an odd structure; circular rings spread out from one centre, forming concentric bands. The outer rings held the low-security prisoners, the petty thieves and such; as one went deeper into Azkaban, the cells were more likely to be filled with those who had committed worse, more severe crimes; they were murderers, rogue Dark wizards. The very inner ring had an odd shape; instead of actually following the circumference of a circle, thick walls of stone separated the would-be circular ring into two semi-circles, curling around the centre, with two small corridors intersecting at the middle of the circle before leading out into the outer rings.

Of all the shifts that their squad could have drawn, it would have to be the night shift, in the high-security level of Azkaban prison itself. And of all the shifts that their squad could have drawn, it would have to be the section of the high-security level that housed the captured Death Eaters. Dagny did not like it.

"Is everyone here?" asked Wyatt sternly. Dagny's eyes flicked around the corridor. The others were… yes, they were here, all of them. Five of them, for Section A; another team of five Aurors, on the other side, in the other semi-circular ring that was called Section B. She nodded, and stepped to one side. "Everyone in the squad, place your hand here"—she indicated a smoothed slab of stone that was resting on a wooden pedestal next to her—"and wait for the wards to recognise your magical signature." She put her left hand on the slab. A faint blue light sprang up around her hand, and Dagny watched silently as it spiralled up her arm and then around her body. Then it briefly flashed a shimmering silver, and then faded away into transient sparkles around her.

"Is that one of those recognition devices?" Owen Zanar said. "To only allow access to us? Just clarifying," he added quickly. Dagny was the kind of person who disliked superfluous words.

"Yes," said Dagny.

Wyatt continued, "It links into wards based on runes. First of all, you have to be voluntarily allowed into this specific area by the warden himself," and he shot a vaguely disgusted look at the end of the corridor, where they had last caught a glimpse of the portly Warden Roth; Roth, his face somewhat pale, had hastily directed them there himself before leaving the group to their own work, still trembling slightly. "Then, when you place your hand on the slab, it automatically scans your magical signature and matches it up with the Auror records to check and confirm everything. After that, you can pass in and out without much trouble."

"That sounds interesting," said Beckett Sumner without much enthusiasm.

In fact, none of them looked very enthusiastic.

Dagny wondered how in the world Rufus Scrimgeour hoped to accomplish anything this way. Kingsley Shacklebolt, before being sent off to his post in the Muggle Prime Minister's office, had in a rather disgruntled way told her about how he had been called to Scrimgeour's office, and rather than listening to Shacklebolt, the Minister had spent the better part of an hour talking about his own plans. Rufus Scrimgeour had once been a good Auror. But he had not been an Auror in the field for a while, and Dagny sometimes felt that it was because of his lack of connection with them now that his policies grated against the Aurors' own preferences. She would have preferred to remove the criminals to somewhere unknown, not a place as well publicised as Azkaban. Not to mention the fact that there had already been two breakouts from the prison within the past few years.

There were only six occupants of Section A, separated from each other by empty cells between them (Azkaban's maximum high-security level was not to full capacity; it had been fully devoted to the imprisonment of the Death Eaters.). Five other Death Eaters were incarcerated in Section B; and all together, they added up to the eleven Death Eaters caught at the Ministry. Malfoy, Dolohov, Rodolphus Lestrange, Macnair, Rookwood, and Mulciber. (Dagny didn't think the poor sods thrown in Section B counted as Death Eaters.)

Zanar cleared his throat nervously. "Will we be in there all the time?" he asked.

Wyatt shook his head. "No. Not all the time," he said. "Did you notice that door off to the right? That's where we'll be staying, usually. Robards said there's a magical watching device we can use to make sure they don't get up to anything in there. But we'll have to physically check the cells every half hour, and watch the wards and such. And someone has to stand guard at the door—we'll be swapping every now and then over the course of the night." He motioned to the door on the right, and they went in.

Dagny's first impression of the cramped room was that the layers of dust on the furniture—crooked table, chairs with splayed legs, untidy bookshelves—must be several inches thick. Her second impression was that the room must have not been used for some time. Her third impression was, Auror squad turned housecleaning detail. How… fun.

Dagny walked over to the only thing that seemed clean in the musty room: a large, silvery mirror that reached from the ceiling to the floor, framed in simple bronze and wood. Its surface was smoothed glass, which felt cool to her touch. "I recognise this," she said almost absent mindedly. "A Burleigh classic surveillance from 1956, I believe."

"1956?" asked Sumner, looking astonished. "That sounds ridiculously outdated! Especially if we're to use it—"

Wyatt coughed. "The 1956 Burleigh is actually better than most nowadays," he said curtly. "I'm surprised the department didn't appropriate it earlier to be used elsewhere."

Zanar waved his hands vaguely and said, "Yes, well, bureaucracy's like that. All that paperwork."

Wyatt gave a meaningful cough. "Anyway," he said pointedly, "the activation phrase…" He pointed his wand at the mirror. "Seon elles hwaer, Azkaban prison Section A cells."

The smooth, reflective surface of the mirror rippled like the waters of an ocean suddenly disturbed by the wind. A series of undulations swelled up and spread outward, distorting the surface and creating odd shapes in the mirror. As the mirror's surface faded back to its former serenity, a picture of the Section A corridor and cells took form within its depths, colours and blurs coalescing into a fully formed picture. The other Aurors came up to look more closely at the tableau which unfolded before their eyes; it was rather like looking down upon the prisoners from a bird's eye view.

Dagny examined the scenario with a critical eye. Section A was not very crowded; the six Death Eaters in their cells were separated from each other not only by the cell walls, but by more cells in between. There were numerous wards around the cells, so as to prevent them communicating with each other and such.

"Look, at least we finally got Macnair," Wyatt said, jabbing a finger at a figure in a cell. Walden Macnair sat in the left back corner, slumped against the wall and gazing—or rather, Dagny thought he was glaring—at nothing in particular. "Knew that Imperius defence was a hoax."

Macnair suddenly stood up and savagely punched the wall with his bare right fist in a fit of anger. He stumbled back, clutching at his bleeding hand. Dagny wasn't surprised; Walden Macnair was addicted to violence, self-inflicted though it might be. "That's got to hurt," said Jacqueline Asterbury, her voice sounding sympathetic—but her blue eyes did not so much as flicker at Macnair's actions and subsequent injuries. "Not very smart of him."

Zanar said, "Well, of course the Imperius defence could be seen as flimsy. There—you see Lucius Malfoy?" He jerked her head toward a blond man who was standing in another cell. Dagny wondered why he did not sit. Then she realised that Malfoy was the type of person who felt that standing was more intimidating than sitting. "He and—well, I'll bet most of the subordinates in his particular Death Eater cell all used the same defence. Suspicious, of course, but it worked. They all got off scot free, and none of his subordinates could betray him. Quick on the uptake, eh?"

Dagny straightened and walked over to one of the chairs, clearing the dust with a flick of her wand. "I thought it was foolish of him to lead that expedition into the Ministry," she said, leaning down to adjust the legs of the chair. "Not particularly…" she paused, casting about for the right description, and, oddly enough, thought of an old memory, a very old memory. "Not very Slytherin." Her lips twitched ever so slightly, but whether in amusement or bitter remembrance, or both, she could not be sure.

Henry Wyatt raised an eyebrow at that, but he said, "Well, we'd better organise our turns to guard the door. Who wants to go first…?"

"I will," said Dagny. "Call me back when my turn's over."

"Sure, Morgenstern."

Dagny stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her, and the rustling of her colleagues' robes in the room (as they began cleaning it up) was abruptly silenced. She stood in the cold corridor, leaning against the wall, watching the torches flicker in the darkness. The atmosphere was utterly still, and if Dagny didn't move and slowed her breathing, she could hear the far off pitter patter of dripping water upon the stones.

Not particularly… Not very Slytherin. The words in her mind seemed to echo in the corridor, although she had not said it aloud there. It seemed to grow and expand to great proportions; it weighed upon her, stifling her movement.

"You're not very Slytherin, are you?" Cold grey eyes. She was sitting in one of the chairs, and she suppressed the urge to stiffen and go for her wand. It wouldn't have helped, anyway, since she didn't know much in the way of hexes. She was a first-year, just two days in Slytherin, and they already called her dirty because her parents were both Muggle-born (Mudbloods), and he was seventh-year and arrogantly pureblood. As though blood spoke for everything, she thought.

The common room seemed to quiet down, and a strange hush fell upon the students. There was still conversation, but to Dagny it seemed strangely muted.

He came into view, the fiery flames from the fireplace glinting off his long blond hair. "Did you hear me?" Impatience in his voice now.

She weighed the pros and cons. Decided to go for a cunning retort, because cowering would make them feel nothing but disdain for her, and crude manoeuvers solved nothing, especially when applied ineffectively, and would make them contemptuous of her, and the consequences would be the same. Outright defiance, on the other hand… So she decided and thought, Words are everything. She said, archly, "I heard you, perhaps, but it doesn't mean I have to reply."

Lucius Malfoy cocked his head to one side and gave her an assessing look. "Not so bad after all," he murmured. "Somewhat… impertinent, though," and he said it as though it were a diagnosis for cancer. "You'd do well to remember where your place is." There was no distasteful expression on his face; his voice said everything he wanted her to hear.

He glided away, and the common room suddenly seemed just as it had been a moment ago. Had it been reality or her imagination? Two fifth-years played wizarding chess against each other, and in the corner a third-year glanced at her and then looked away, quill scratching on parchment (an essay, perhaps?).

Not very Slytherin, he said.

And yet she had been put in Slytherin. If not for what she had learned there, she might not have made it in the Aurors, especially during the first war—not at a time when Aurors more often died than survived.

Then again, she could've died while at school.

The dark-haired boy smiled without mirth. His eyes were not at all amused. "You're lucky, you know, that I had the antidote for a common adder's poison," he said. "Do you know who might have set it on you?"

Dagny looked at him, her face dry and her coolness somewhat lost. She recalled seeing Lucius Malfoy in the Hogwarts corridors, along with Bellatrix Black, to visit his betrothed, seventh-year Narcissa. Recalled seeing him glance around and meet her eyes and give her a cold, sharp smile.

There was no evidence. But.

Yes, she knew.

"No, I don't," she said. She was a second-year; she was twelve; and she was not stupid. An accusation would lead to an investigation and, undoubtedly, considering Malfoy's influence (honest or dishonest), an exoneration, and the House would be more resentful of her than ever for it.

Slytherins. Snakes.

Yet even then she felt a slight trembling in her body, still shivering from the attack, and remembered the sudden pain in her leg and the small writhing adder that had so savagely bitten her.

The boy with the antidote narrowed his eyes, and gave her a piercing look. "Are you afraid?" he asked, and his voice held all the scorn in the world. Strangely enough, he sounded almost angry.

Dagny wondered if he knew who had done it as well.

She shook her head. "No, I'm not," she said.

Yes, I am.

Pitter patter went the dripping water, on the cold stones of Azkaban.

oOo

Percy was working through a load of papers describing books confiscated from the captured Death Eaters' homes. He stopped, and read the report on a book from the Crabbe family library again. And again. Then he took out a notebook from his pocket and flipped it open, looking back and forth between the report and the notebook.

He pressed his lips tightly together and took out his wand, putting up a quick Muffliato (handy spell, wherever Snape had got it). "Expecto Patronum," he said quietly, and a silver mole shot out of his wand onto his desk, where it turned around to look at him, nose twitching in the air. Percy smiled and leaned forward. "Cominitiare Missus," he said clearly. "I have something that you might find of interest, sir. Ende."

The silver mole shuffled its forepaws, and looked up.

Percy blinked. "Oh. Yes. Sorry, I forgot that part. Sendan Recipient, Snape."

As his Patronus quickly scurried off, Percy sat back in his chair and looked at the pile of papers in front of him with an expression that seemed to say the papers—detailing investigations and raids and a ridiculous amount of reports he had to sift through before summarising them and then giving those to Minister Scrimgeour—were almost beginning to become his bête noire, to his own surprise.

At least the caldron bottoms under Barty Crouch hadn't required so much paperwork. And created so many headaches.

oOo

"A Burleigh classic surveillance from 1956…" Burleigh is a reference to Burleigh and Stronginthearm's, an arms shop in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. (And which is hilarious.)

"Seon elles hwaer" is Old English cobbled together for "see elsewhere."

JKR has always been somewhat ambiguous on the years in the HP universe. She herself has admitted that she isn't the best at maths. So when, according to the Black family tapestry released earlier in 2006, Bellatrix Black was born in '51… well, the only way Severus Snape could have been part of the "gang of Slytherins" Sirius Black mentions in GoF (which included the married Lestranges) is if he and the Marauders were born in 1957 to '58 instead of '60, as the HP Lexicon used to claim; Bellatrix being born late in 1951, and thus one of the older ones in her year (much like Hermione with her September birthday). Thus, he would be a first-year while Bellatrix Black would be a 7th year. Snape's year would have started Hogwarts in the autumn of '69 and finished with the class of '76. Lucius Malfoy would be a 5th year when Snape started Hogwarts. I have placed Dagny Morgenstern two years below Snape, so, during the year in which her first memory took place, Snape was in 3rd year while Malfoy was in 7th year. I do not know of anything in the books that contradicts this reading (yet).

"Cominitiare" is vulgar Latin for "commence," and "missus" is rough Latin relating to "message." "Ende" is Old English for "end," and "Sendan" is Old English for "send."

"Bête noire" is French, a literary term for "pet hate." There's only so much you can take of paperwork, day after day. Or so I imagine. :) And did anyone catch the pun on Percy's Patronus?

Once again, sorry for the wait. Please review!

Talriga