{Disclaimer:  The Harry Potter World was created by J.K. Rowling and rights are owned by, but not limited to, Scholastic Books and Warner Brothers.  I, therefore, own no parts of this, save for the figments of my imagination, including Andromeda McGee and Wyvern the cat.}

Chapter 14

Reoccurring Conundrums

**Tell me why you gotta be so cold/ How'd you get so high/ Why you're keeping me low/ You don't know, you don't know, don't know/ And tell me how we're gonna make it last/ You're ready to fly/ I'm ready to crash/ Don't go, don't go away. Cold Matchbox 20**

Severus Snape paced restlessly through his living quarters.  It was barely day break; he should have been sleeping for a few hours yet, but found that he couldn't.  Voldemort's directions still hung heavily upon his conscious even though they had been given to him nearly five months before.  He knew that his Lord and Master required, no, desperately wanted, Andy to join his forces, just because Andy was one of the best and he only would use the finest wizards in his plan for world domination.  Snape knew that he would have to bring it up with her eventually, but wasn't exactly certain how to break the news to her.

He was never much of a conversationalist.  He had never wooed any ladies with the smooth tenderness of his tongue.  He had never ensorcelled audiences with magnificent speeches full of wonderment and awe inspiring sentence.  Instead, Snape was prone to getting straight to the exact point, no matter how gruesome it was.  For him, sugar coating did not exist. 

Severus had procrastinated too long with speaking to her.  It was already nearing Christmas.  The beginning of the school semester had passed with a blur now that he was teaching the subject that he favored.  Andy had barely talked with him except in passing and the occasional conversations in hallways or during rain storms.  She had been busy and so had he.

Snape stopped his pacing in front of the exit from his lair.  "It's either now or never," he spoke rhetorically to himself.  "She ought to know what's going on, especially if it deals with Voldemort."  He licked his parched lips and walked out the door, black cloak billowing behind him for the eviler effect. 

He strode the familiar staircases to the potions dungeon, feeling small pangs of regret that he was no longer residing down in the dark, cool lower levels.  The tinges of emotion were brushed away as he approached Andy's door.  The familiar painting of the six creatures was still hanging there, though the wards had long ago disappeared.  He rapped sharply on the wood and waited.

There was no answer.  He had figured that Andy should have been up by now.  She never had been one to sleep late and more that once, she tended to spend weekends without sleeping, spending entire nights working on whatever project she conceived for herself.  He knocked again and thought about if she would be in her quarters or some place else.  If she was working, as he had suspected, then she would have been in her laboratory, not in her room.

As he turned to check the other rooms, the door slowly creaked open and a disheveled head poked itself out.  The head turned, eying the corridor with half cracked lids until the gaze rested on Snape.  The body connected to it stepped out the door.  It blinked hard only once before speaking.  "I am not even going ask if you know what time it is.  I assume you do not or else you would not be knocking at my door.  It is FOUR o'clock in the bloody morning, Sev!  What the hell are you doing at my door?"

Snape had the right to look chagrined.  He hadn't checked the time when he should have done so.  He swallowed, knowing that a disgruntled Andy was not going to be fun to deal with.  It would be best to lay things out straight.  "We need to talk, McGee."

"Can't this wait until a decent hour?"

"No, I'm afraid not."

Andy glared menacingly at him, or at least as menacingly as she could while being half asleep.  "What makes you think that I will let you say what is so important that you had to wake me out of a sound sleep?"

Snape thought fast on his feet and muttered "Orchideous," under his breath.  A bouquet of tiger lilies, mums, and astromeria popped out of the end of the wand hiding behind his back.  He presented them to Andy with a bow.  "Will flowers do?"

The tension let out of her shoulders as she accepted the bouquet with a slight grin.  "I suppose they will have to do for now.  Come on in, Sev."  She raked her fingers through her still short hair and shut the door behind him.  "Have a seat.  Let me put water on for tea and put these pretty things in a vase."  She disappeared into the kitchen and Severus seated himself in an over-stuffed red leather armchair.

Andy reappeared a few moments later with a blue vase containing the flowers that he had used to pacify her.  His ploy had apparently worked, he noticed pleased with his accomplishment as she set it on the end table.  She flopped onto the end cushion of the couch matching his chair.  "So what's so important that you had to wake me from the beauty sleep that I really need right now?"

Severus thought for a moment before he began.  "I am not certain where to begin with this, McGee.  I'm not sure that I can explain everything properly, but I shall attempt to do so."

"Then shoot, Sev," Andy yawned, resting her chin in the palm of her hand. She gazed at him with her dark eyes questioning his purpose enough to concentrate on staying awake long enough to hear the information.

"Back in August, I was summoned to Lord Voldemort's Castle.  It was the same day that a Muggle village was destroyed by my fellow Death Eaters.  We demolished the entire place, taking no prisoners, killing, murdering everyone we cast our eyes on, even the ones that were still asleep in their beds.  Women were raped, children murdered in cold blood.  I came only at the end of it, but still it happened.  There was nothing that I could have done," Snape paused, took a breath, and continued.

"Lord Voldemort held me behind before the revel began.  He had a special task for me, something only I could do for him.  He never said it would be this difficult, but then again he never thinks about those consequences.  He just wants everything done now, not tomorrow," he trailed off, not wanting to tell her the fate that his Master had bestowed upon her.

Andy climbed off the couch, standing in front him, now fully alert.  If this something had been bothering the infallible Severus Snape, then something was definitely up.  She was not certain if she really, truly wanted to know what was going on, but she knew that Snape felt it was important.  She lifted up his chin to force his black eyes to meet her stare.  "What is it, Sev?  What did he order you to do?"

He said nothing.

"You came to tell me what ever this is, Sev.  Tell me.  What ever it is, I can take it," Andy tried to coax him into speaking once more.

He still did not speak.

"Fine, if this is how you are going to be, just leave now.  I still plan on sleeping for a bit yet."

Without removing his eyes from hers, he began to speak in a lifeless monotone.  "He remembers what you did for him last year, McGee.  He still hasn't figured it out that the potion did not work on him.  He's still convinced that he is omniscient."

"What does that have to do with me?"

Severus tore his gaze away from her, springing up onto his feet, almost knocking her over.  "Do you see what I am getting at, McGee?  Don't you see where this is heading?"

Andy pondered what he had said for a moment.  "No, I'm sorry, I am afraid that I do not.  I am not fully awake; you woke me from an extremely sound sleep.  I do not comprehend completely what you are saying."

"Lord Voldemort wants you to join his forces, McGee, and he will do everything in his power to get you on his side."

The room turned silent.  The only noise was the chirping of the crickets and the hiss of the tea pot.  Andy stood in shock for a moment, letting what had been said register in her mind.  She shuffled limply to the kitchen, preparing the tea in utter silence.  Two mugs were prepared: mint for her, English Breakfast for him.  She returned to the den, placing the mugs on the table before she spoke.

"Voldemort wants me to become a Death Eater."  She said it as a matter of fact, more questioning if she had heard it correctly than the actual truth of it.

"Yes, McGee, I am afraid that is what I came to tell you."  Snape picked up the mug of tea and took a sip.  At least she had remembered what he preferred in the morning, though he did not know how she knew. 

"That's all he wants of me?"

"Yes."

"You mean he doesn't want an obscure potion that no one else has ever heard of or some sort of something that only I am capable of doing, just me, myself, at his beck and call until he dies?"

"Yes, McGee."

"Can't I just tell him that I refuse to accept his invitation?"

"He would not accept that, McGee.  You should know that by now.  The Dark Lord does not accept 'no' for an answer very often."

Andy looked to the hard wood floor for answers to her unasked questions.  There were none found there.  She took a deep breath.  "Damn.  That's not good, is it?"

"I would not think it so."

There was a long pause before Andy voiced a major concern.  "Will I die if I refuse?" she asked, trembling.

"It is highly likely that you would either be tortured until you do agree or killed if you still refuse."

Tears welled up in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks.  "I can't do it, Sev.  I'm not meant to be a Death Eater.  I'm on the good side.  After all that he did to me, why does he think that I would do anything differently now?  Why is he convinced that I would give him assistance in his plan for world domination when I have never helped him in the past?"

"Actually you did help him, McGee.  He is still convinced that he is omnipotent, remember?"

"I don't care.  I hate him for all that he's done to me, to Sirius, to James and Lily and Harry, and to you…" she sobbed.

Snape barely believed what he had just heard.  Did she actually feel pity for him for all that he had gone through?  He reached up and took her hands, guiding her on to his lap.  He cradled her in his arms like a child as she cried on his shoulder.  "It'll be alright, McGee."

"No, it won't be alright!  It never is alright!  Everything always goes wrong and then some one gets killed and this time it's probably going to be me!  I don't want to end up like Sirius and Remus!"

"McGee, listen to me.  There are other ways of doing this that may not get you killed."

"No, there aren't!  I'm going to die!"

Snape sighed.  Why did Gryffindors always have to be stubborn beyond all given reason?  "McGee, you will not be killed.  You are not going to die.  You are not going to end up missing like your Gryffindor comrades."

"How do you know?" she shot back through the tears that fell from her eyes.  "How do you know that I won't?"

"I have lasted about twenty years in the Death Eater ranks without dying.  Most of those years, as you know, I worked for Dumbledore as a spy.  I had a larger chance of my death occurring sooner than I wanted it to than anyone else."

"So what?"

"What I am suggesting to you is that you obey Voldemort's summoning and speak with Dumbledore about what you are being forced to do, especially that your life may be at stake."

"Would he listen to me?"

"Dumbledore?  Yes, he would listen to you.  He knows you better than you know yourself, McGee.  He will understand.  Speak with him before you make your decision."

There were a few more sniffles into Snape's right shoulder before she spoke again.  "Does he already know?"

"No, McGee, he does not.  I have kept this secret since Voldemort gave me the orders.  In the Death Eater ranks, it is usually best to keep things secret.  That is the only thing that has prevented me in being discovered after all these years."

Andy snuggled into him, deciding that in the lack of her own, he made a good pillow.  His robes were soft with use and smelled like fresh soap mixed with spices.  She felt her eyes slowly begin to close as her mind drifted back into the dream world.  She remembered to mumble one last thing before returning to sleep.  "Thanks, Sev." 

It took Snape a few moments of silence to realize that she had fallen asleep in his arms.  Readjusting her position, he stood up and carried her back to her room.  Gently he laid her in the rumpled sheets, pulling the lumpy quilt back over her sleeping form.  He smoothed back the hair from her forehead, letting his hand rest there for a second.  "Good night, McGee.  I'm sorry I had to tell you all this."  In a black blur, he exited her dormitory and returned to his own.

{Author's Note:  Well, that took less than a month this time to write and post, mainly because I decided to skip the details and go onto what I had planned to begin with instead of going into unimportant details.  WOO-HOO!  Everybody celebrate!  School is out and I am bogged down with Driver's Ed at least four days a week, sometimes five, marching band starts next week, and on top of that I am now baby-sitting the 20 month old girl that lives across the street.  Next week, I get all four of my wisdom teeth out.  Summer Vacation is an oxymoron.  The part about Snape giving Andy flowers is a mention of something my boyfriend did for me.  My mom and I had been on vacation for a week and the day we got back, my wonderful guy decided to stop over just to deliver a bouquet of flowers for me.  Needless to say, I was almost in tears from the complete shock.  He's going to be kept for a while longer yet.

Anna Black:  I know the dialogue was a bit dry.  That would be for two reasons.  Sparring usually takes all the air out of you from the constant motion of it and I was still having writer's block. 

Sora: Yes, the chapter formatting is screwed up because it was posted under a word document instead of HTML.  That was because I had to get my boyfriend to post the chapter and saved it wrong before the post.

Lily Skylo:  I try to keep things as interesting as I can make them.

Peace, Love, and Flowers, Nataly Ravenlock}