Friday, 24 September 1993

Severus Snape's Office

Hermione

Hermione gave her potion one last counterclockwise stir and killed the flame beneath the cauldron before turning to her reference text. She was fairly certain that she had done everything correctly, but it never hurt to double-check the final stage against the appendix to make sure it was exactly the right color. Before she could open the book to the correct table, a silky voice whispered in her ear: "See me after class, Miss Granger."

She startled fiercely as the professor swept away, then frowned at herself. She really ought to be used to Snape's habit of sneaking up on people by this point, but somehow she never expected it. It wasn't fair. No one so much taller than her should be able to move around so unnoticeably.

"Yes, sir," she said after a moment, refusing to look up from her potions manual. Whatever could he want to see her for after class? She hadn't done anything lately! And how would this affect her schedule? Bother. She was beginning to think that time travel might be more trouble than it was worth, even if she did have a marvelous amount of free time now.

Several minutes later, the class was dismissed. Hermione lingered, waving for Padma and Morag to go on without her. They had been keeping close since the big fight with Elizabeth and Lilian, and even closer since she had come back from the Mabon ritual so subdued. She sighed, regretting that her thoughts were already back on this familiar track, not five minutes after the need to concentrate fully on her potion had passed.

She was certain that she had seen one of the worst possible things she could imagine: Her mother, finding out she was pregnant, and immediately looking up abortion clinics. Her father had come home and talked her out of it – that had to be what he had been saying, because obviously she hadn't gone through with it – but it was still gut-wrenching, almost literally, to realize that she had been unwanted. She still hadn't decided whether to write her mother about it, or talked to anyone else. This wasn't the first time a holiday ritual had severely unsettled her, but this time, Elizabeth and Lilian were so wrapped up in Lilian's vision – realizing that she and Aerin had been responsible for their brother Connor's death – that they hadn't realized that Hermione was hurting, too.

Hermione didn't blame them, really, for focusing on Lilian. Even she had enough tact not to bring up something that obviously hadn't happened in the face of something so awful that had. She just didn't know what to do, for Lilian or herself. She had thrown herself into working fifty-plus hours a day since then, trying to distance herself, both from Lilian's situation and her own vision, but it was hard.

She swallowed the urge to go find a nice quiet place to feel sorry for herself as she finished packing up her books and supplies, focusing on the here and now.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" she asked politely.

"Not here. My office. Come." The potions master, billowing and mysterious as ever, led the way out of the classroom and down the hall.

When they were seated – Hermione in one of the uncomfortable student chairs, and Snape behind the massive desk, already covered in stacks of paperwork – he pinned her in place with a pointed gaze and said, "Hand over the time turner."

Hermione was certain her eyes grew large, but she did her best to pretend she had no idea what he was talking about. "Sir? Time turner?"

"Don't play stupid, Miss Granger. It doesn't suit you."

She sighed and handed over the little hourglass on its golden chain.

Much to her surprise, Snape pulled out his wand and pointed it at the artefact. "Chronarios," he said calmly. A string of glowing red numbers appeared: 1.42; 2.96; 2.54; 1.21; 1.16; 1.21

The professor smirked. "Have you any idea of the meaning of these numbers, Miss Granger?"

"No, sir."

"They signify the Kairos to Cronos ratio. The amount of time that this device experiences as compared to each full, 24-hour day, beginning at midnight." He raised an eyebrow in her direction and she hunched in her chair as he said, "I see you lasted not even a month before you caved to the temptation to use this little bobble to its full potential. Sinistra will be so disappointed. She bet that you would make it to at least Samhain. You've just lost her five galleons," he explained lightly, before casting a series of what had to be some kind of diagnostic charms on the time turner and its chain.

Hermione sat quietly, wondering what the bloody hell was going on, as diagrams of whirling lights appeared and complex arithmantic formulas scrawled themselves in the air. Snape copied several of these into a notebook before casting even more spells. "Interesting…" he muttered to himself.

"Sorry, sir," she finally asked, unable to stand it any longer, "but what's interesting?"

"They've fixed the maximum duplications to three, and limited the intervals to the hour, but they've managed to orphan the array limiting forward travel while they were trying to fix the extended momentum issue," he answered idly, still scribbling.

If Hermione had not already been curious, that would have done it. "You, erm, know a lot about time turners, sir?"

He gave a snort which, from anyone else, she might have considered almost a laugh. "You could say that."

He frowned at the little hourglass, suspended in its golden rings, for a brief moment, and then pulled what looked like a stylus of some sort and a freestanding magnifying glass from a drawer. He looked at the time turner again, checked a reference book, and scribbled a few more lines. Finally he set the stylus against the glass, but before he could do whatever he was planning to do, Hermione interrupted.

"What are you doing? I have to give that back at the end of the year!" she snapped, her concern for the time-travelling necklace overwhelming her fear of Professor Snape. "Um. Sir," she added belatedly.

He lifted the stylus carefully and sneered at her. "1981, fifth-year Slytherin Martin Fitzhowe flipped his hourglass forward instead of back. He lost one hour, and condensed the time-stream, displacing seventy-three versions of himself from alternate timelines which failed to develop in his absence into our own. 1982, third-year Ravenclaw Adelaide Pendergast, tripped on the main staircase, shattered her time turner, and cut herself, allowing the Sand into her bloodstream. Her blood – all of it – was transported three heartbeats into the past, causing the fall in the first place. 1984, sixth-year Ravenclaw Peter Charleston went back every ten minutes for eight hours, because he was bored and wanted to see if he could. He created an inconsistency. The mental strain on reversion to normalcy nearly killed him, and took three years to fully reverse. 1986, seventh-year Ravenclaw Tobias Smythe attempted to replicate a time turner. The magical backlash nearly leveled the Arithmancy tower. 1991, fifth-year Gryffindor Percy Weasley had his time turner stolen by the simple and effective method of summoning it strongly enough to break the chain. I had to deal with four Weasley twins for an entire day. Just last year, Amelia Arrowgate, fourth-year Ravenclaw, flipped hers back four-hundred and fifty-six times the first day she had it, and crash-landed in the middle of July in the Great Hall.

"Quite aside from the secrecy issue, there are plenty of reasons not to allow students to muck about with time travel. I will not have you accidentally filling the castle with dozens of yourself due to some inane confluence of poor arithmancy on the part of whatever moron Kister has in charge of enchanting these damned things and a slip of the finger on the part of your obnoxiously overachieving self." He flicked the notebook across the desk at her. "The first formula is a ward to physically prevent the hourglass from spinning in the forward direction, to counteract the incompetency of ministry enchanters. The second will alert me at once if you so much as cast an inquiry charm on this thing, because I will NOT have you and those Weasley menaces pulling a Smythe, or worse. The last is an anti-summoning ward." He snatched the book back and began inscribing tiny, precise symbols on the glass and the gold of the artefact. "If I had been consulted, I would never have approved your having this at all, given the complete disregard for the rules you demonstrated last year, but I most unfortunately was not. Equally unfortunately, I am not authorized to interfere in the Department of Mysteries Mentee program by confiscating the device from those I deem unsuitable, despite the fact that I, and not any of Kister's bloody Unspeakables, will undoubtedly be called upon to reverse or mitigate whatever horrors you manage to inflict upon the castle this year. These precautions are merely intended to limit the range of possible disasters by eliminating any which have already occurred from possibly occurring again."

Hermione briefly considered trying to defend herself, but decided that there was no point. She likely would have fallen to the temptation to try to figure out how the thing worked over the course of the school year, especially now that she was already convinced to break the rules, and had as many hours of free time as she wanted. Snape would know she was lying if she tried to say that she would never have done such a thing. And she was grateful that he had caught the forward-turning issue. Unspeakable Santiago and Professor McGonagall had assured her that turning the dial forward would do nothing at all, and she hadn't intended to test that claim, but she could easily imagine an accident, and shuddered to think of all the timelines she might have inadvertently destroyed. She had a better question, anyway.

"Why would you have to fix things and not Unspeakable Santiago or one of the others from the Time Room?"

He briefly stopped his work and looked up as he responded. "In the event that it has escaped your notice over the course of the past two years' adventures, I am routinely assigned to deal with resolving the most esoteric problems which occur in this castle, from exorcising the Dark Lord's shade to tracking down missing children and Defense instructors, analyzing dark objects, and reversing unauthorized memory modifications. I doubtless would have been called upon to slay the basilisk as well, had those infuriating idiots not gotten there first."

"Well, yes, I had rather noticed that… but… why?"

Snape sighed, and returned to his runework. "Partly, I suspect, because the universe, and specifically our illustrious Headmaster are punishing me for the mistakes of my youth. Partly because I do have more experience with the more obscure arts than anyone else at this school, which more often than not makes me the most appropriate person for the job." Hermione thought he might have smiled slightly as he spoke. "For example, how much do you know about the history of time travel research?"

"Oh!" She had read up on it the first week back to school, in fact. "Time turners were developed in the 1970s. A wizard called Norbert McPherson came up with the first one in 1978. He said –"

"He said he traveled back from the future, taught himself how to make a time turner, and then looped around again," Snape cut her off. "Rubbish. Absolute tripe. Less factual than Gilderoy Lockhart's most recent autobiography."

He was definitely smiling, and that was decidedly odd. Snape didn't smile. "But…"

"The Sand of Time was invented in 1954 by a mad old German alchemist called Waldheim von Helmsthal. He was trying, like all alchemists, to invent a Philosopher's Stone, and thought the key was in negating aging entirely. He met the Dark Lord sometime in the early 1960s, and joined him back when the Death Eaters were still the Knights of Walpurgis. The Sandstone Project was eventually declared a failure and he worked on other things until 1968 or '69, when Bella Black re-discovered his notes on the Sand and started fiddling around with the cross-planar arithmantic implications. She did the arithmancy, the Dark Lord did the enchanting, and they managed to make the first working prototype in 1971, just as the War was kicking off. They didn't manage to move a target or anything other than the hourglass itself for years. Liam Rosier, who was a transfiguration prodigy, is credited with managing to link the field to a target in '77. They moved onto human trials just before I joined the Death Eaters in '78. Development progress was more or less halted following Mabon of that year. McPherson stole a working prototype early in '79 and defected, thinking that he could trade it for amnesty. The Unspeakables were amenable, but Bellatrix managed to track him down and kill him within months, despite their protections."

Hermione realized her mouth was hanging open. She shut it, teeth clicking together audibly. Snape looked up from his engraving again. "You're telling me Death Eaters made the first time turner? That You Know Who was one of the first time travelers?"

"No need to sound so surprised. The ratio of confirmed geniuses has always been weighted on the side of the Dark. And there have been time travelers since the concept of time was formalized. Fewer dilettantes, of course, but there have always been those with a knack for falling out of time."

"But all the books say -"

"You mustn't trust everything you read, Miss Granger," the professor said sharply, turning back to his enchanting. "Some things are written by madmen. Some are meant to mislead. And, of course, the books you've read are approved by the Ministry, and with those, oftentimes it is both."

Hermione had never been so insulted. If nothing else, she considered herself well-read. "Well what should I be reading, then?" she snapped without thinking.

Snape looked up again, fixing her with a terrifyingly evaluating look before turning to his bookshelves. He selected a slim volume, bound in unmarked black leather, and slid it across the desk. "The record of all the time travel accidents I have been called upon to reverse or ameliorate since 1981. You may find it illuminating."

Hermione reached toward the book tentatively. His record? She could barely believe he would allow her to see even excerpts from his personal journals. He couldn't be serious. "May I?" she squeaked.

"You may. In detention this evening. Three hours, beginning at seven. Though I will not object if you prefer to serve them simultaneously," he added, with an expressive eye-roll. "I do have better things to do than supervise you for three of my hours."

"I, erm, that is… I thought I wasn't to interact with my former selves."

The professor waved a dismissive hand. "It's perfectly safe so long as you don't try to change what you remember happening. Staying away from your former selves is intended more to prevent suspicion on the part of observers than to prevent a collapsed loop, and even then, with only two potential duplications in play, the worst that is likely to happen is an inexplicable three-day migraine.

Hermione was certain her face was burning. She had intentionally caused a paradox the first day she had the time turner, just to see what would happen. Migraine might have been an understatement, but he was right, nothing truly bad had happened. That could make things so much easier. "Yes, sir," she said aloud.

"Very well, then," he said, moving back around the desk, and handing the chain back to her. "Two turns, if you please."

"Erm… what?" Silently, Hermione cursed herself. She was certain she never sounded so inarticulate around other professors.

"Much as I despise these contraptions, I did have a full schedule today even before I spent an hour child-proofing this bloody inconvenience, so, if you would, two turns, Miss Granger."

"Ah, yes, sir." She stood and moved away from the chair, just in case it had been moved some time in the last two hours, and turned the hourglass back twice.

There was the already-familiar sensation of flying backwards, very quickly, the world blurring around them as Professor Snape clung to the chain around her neck, his face fixed in a stoic expression, which quickly gave way to nausea as the room re-solidified around them.

"Every time I say never again," the man grumbled, "and every time, I find I've lied to myself. Tempus."

The proper time, halfway through Potions class, appeared in glowing red numbers, suspended in the air, and he re-set his watch.

"What on Earth are you still doing here, Miss Granger?"

Hermione gave an involuntary eep, having been caught watching Professor Snape experiencing a rare moment of humanity, and followed it up with, "Nothing sir. See you at seven," before running (mostly figuratively) for the corridor.

Had she thought of it, she would have been grateful not to have been thinking about her mother, but she was, for the first time since the ritual, blissfully distracted, considering what else the Death Eaters must have come up with, and wondering if Professor Snape had access to any of their research notes, and whether she dared ask him.

Saturday, 25 September 1993

Hogwarts' Library, Restricted Section

Severus

Occasionally, Severus Snape had second, fifth, or even seventh-year students tell him that, when they grew up, they would like to be a Hogwarts Professor. They invariably saw the attractive summers off, the benefits of food and lodging included, and the advantages of having access to both the best library in Magical Britain and eager young minds, practically begging to be molded in one's own image.

What they didn't see, ever, was the fact that only the least-burdened professors worked a mere forty hours per week. The elective professors, in fact, taught only twenty-four hours, but updating lesson plans, marking, supervising student organizations, Hogsmeade weekends, and the occasional remedial lesson, attending staff meetings and Quidditch matches, patrolling the corridors evenings and weekends, and supervising the occasional detention easily made up the other sixteen hours.

The core subject professors had thirty-six hours of teaching, plus all their other duties, and the Heads of House were supposed to meet with their new students regularly over their first term, in addition to second, fifth, and seventh-years in the spring for career counselling, and the year-round duties of training prefects and holding office hours. Severus himself went above and beyond in giving his third-years an extra weekly lesson in survival skills, but he was hardly the only one to have additional, self-inflicted duties. Filius supervised the Charms Club, and Pomona the Herbology Club. Minerva had fobbed the Transfiguration Club off onto Septima, but that was only fair, seeing as she also covered more than half of Dumbledore's administrative duties, as well as the Deputy Head position. No student had yet dared ask Severus to supervise a Potions Club, and he meant to keep it that way.

The last time he had tried counting up all the hours he spent on his official duties, it had hovered around seventy-five, and that was before including the irregular commitments, like spying on Quirrellmort, hunting for the Monster of Slytherin, brewing Wolfsbane for one of his least-favorite werewolves (which was saying rather a lot, given that he had met most of Greyback's pack), maintaining the more advanced stores for the Hospital Wing, and generally cleaning up whatever other messes Dumbledore didn't want to deal with.

It was also before the last two incoming classes had arrived, each larger than the last. Accidents were up, even with his stricter-than-usual insistence on seriousness in the Potions Labs, and marking for the first and second-years was taking four times as long as it had done three years before. And of course both Minerva and Dumbledore were too busy to address his demands to hire additional core staff to address the post-war baby-boom. They needed at least two professors for each of the core subjects.

He had to be mad to have assigned the Veritaserum Conspiracy a hundred hours of unofficial detentions, Severus thought, dragging himself out of bed at the crack of noon on the only day of the week that he got more than four hours of sleep. It was true that there were no questions, this way, about exactly what they had done, and no oversight of the punishments he assigned, but if he had made them official hours, he could have thrown them in Filch's lap, or Babbling's – she was excellent at supervising lines. But he was absolutely certain that no one else would drum the lesson he was trying to teach into those particular children's thick skulls, and he was bound and determined not to graduate a pack of Hogwarts-educated future felons in three to five years' time.

And in any case, there was no backing out now. After Suggestivity Solution, Legal Copying, and Puppy Dissections, they were already a quarter of the way done. Today would make it a third. He was planning to send them to the library to research alternative truth serums and charms they could have used instead of Veritaserum, and have them write an essay on the topic.

If there was one thing he had learned from the Death Eaters, it was that a person could get used to anything. The pain of two minutes' Cruciatus was no different than ten seconds' (though the curse did have worse and longer-lasting side-effects the longer it was held). If the students were actually to learn from the experience of their detentions, they could not be allowed to become complacent, thoughtlessly performing the motions of the detention, whether it was scrubbing cauldrons, shelling beetles, or copying lines. For lessons be truly effective, the students must be engaged. Thus: one detention bordering on cruelty; followed by one where they were bored to tears; one where they honed their technical skills and drove home that they were not experts in his field, since part of their trespass was brewing unsupervised; followed by one where they explicitly learned a lesson about why their actions were ethically unacceptable. He could only hope that three months of this treatment would be sufficient.

Other benefits of giving the students a written task every other week included that he could use the time for his own marking, as well. He would have to read their essays, but without correcting them to hand back, he figured he would still come out about six hours ahead, compared to a week where he had to supervise them closely the whole time. And this particular task would irritate Irma, which was always amusing. Some days he wasn't sure which of them the students were more frightened of.

After lunch, he informed the librarian that his remedial potions class required access to the restricted section, and herded the children through the mostly-empty stacks. It was, still, only September. The library would not become a popular destination for most students until at least Easter. He informed his detainees of their task, settled in at his favorite library desk (invisible to anyone outside of the restricted section, and conveniently far from a floo, through which Dumbledore might summon him with some horrible new assignment) with a freshly sharpened quill and a bottle of red ink, cast a supersensory charm on himself so he would hear any whispers not related to the task at hand, and proceeded to appear to ignore the students until such time as he caught the reprehensible Weasleys or the insufferable Granger straying to look at more interesting tomes.

Four hours, eight reprimands, and all of the fifth and seventh-year essays later, he was interrupted by a House Elf, delivering a note from Filius.

Dear Severus,
I realize that this is inconveniently short notice, but it appears I shall require your assistance after all in addressing the Lovegood issue. Tea will be served at the Rookery tomorrow at four. Please do come, a Potions Master's expert opinion is always invaluable in this sort of meeting.
Filius

Severus sighed. So much for being six hours ahead at the end of this weekend.

Severus Snape's Office

Mary

Slytherin House as a whole had become a curious stew of subdued introspection and anxious edginess in the wake of the Mabon ceremony. While the atmosphere led Mary, like most of her housemates, to be rather tense, she also found that their preoccupation with the secrets that had been revealed to them meant they were less interested in Dave. Consequently there had been no more confrontations about her sponsoring the first Slytherin muggleborn since the 1930s.

Instead, she had been helplessly fluttering around the edges of the Moon Family Drama, as Lilian first raged at her brother for never telling her what had happened to Connor, and then endlessly debated whether she ought to tell Aerin, whose vision had been one of their parents arguing over whether the girls should be allowed to work with the dogs. Sean said no – that there was a reason he had kept the secret all these years. The girls had been seven and eight, it was an accident, they didn't need to carry the weight of guilt when it was his fault and their mother's as much as anyone's: they should have been watching more closely. Lilian clearly still felt guilty about it, and about keeping it from Aerin, but she didn't want her sister, whom she had always looked out for (despite the fact that Aerin was older) to suffer through the pain and guilt she was going through.

The only good thing, she said, with caustic, black humor, was that she was now certain Sean would never reject her, given his reaction all those years ago, and how he had protected her since.

Mary thought she was with Sean on this one. Aerin didn't need to know – obviously their parents had thought so, or they would never have allowed the girls to be obliviated in the first place. But there was nothing she could do to ease Lilian's pain, other than offer a shoulder to cry on and a listening ear, and try to keep her distracted. She had hardly seen Hermione at all, which was a shame, because she would have liked to talk to someone about her own vision and what it might mean, and the mysterious and disturbing book she had been sent, but she couldn't justify abandoning Lilian in what was obviously a time of need.

She felt bad enough leaving her in the Common Room after their detention – this one a pain in her writing hand, but thankfully less awful than the previous. She had even found out why they hadn't used that cool Venetian Truth Charm the prefects had used in her little mock-trial: it could be fooled by fairly low-level Occlumency skills, and was NEWT-standard difficulty to cast. It was impressive that Chess had managed to master it so early into his fifth year. None of their Conspiracy Cabal would have been able to manage it, and those who knew of truth charms had had every reason to suspect that the Heir of Slytherin would be able to resist it. Still, she needed to talk to Snape in private, and this was his official Office Hour.

Snape's door was, as usual, mostly closed, so as to discourage casual visitors, but not latched. She knocked tentatively, and then again, more firmly.

"Enter," Snape called.

Mary did so, closing the door fully behind her.

"Mary Elizabeth?" he looked up from the scroll he was reading, obviously surprised to see her after just having let her out of an eight-hour detention.

"Good evening, sir," she said politely, and took a seat, uninvited.

The Potions Master fixed a put-upon look in place. "What is it?"

The girl placed the mysterious book gingerly on the desk, and slid it toward him. "Someone sent this to me on Mabon, from the Americas via France, according to the post-marks."

Snape flipped idly through the first few pages, raising an eyebrow at the title and author. "So your fame has spread across the pond?"

"I hope not," she said seriously. "I just – look at the notes, at the back." When she had finally gotten around to reading the rest of the packet of English notes, she had at first been struck by how very helpful they seemed. It was not until she began reading through them a second time that she realized they seemed to have been written specifically for her, and moreover, that they were phrased specifically as advice from one Speaker to another.

Snape caught on much more quickly, his expression growing darker as he skimmed what equated to a twenty-page letter from, she suspected, the only other English-speaking Parselmouth she knew of. After perhaps five minutes, he closed his eyes, set the papers down on top of the book, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I think I understand why you have brought this problem to me," he said, after another long moment. "And I must unfortunately confirm your suspicions. It does seem more likely that this so-called gift originated with the other heir of Slytherin than, for example, one of the Najari in India or one of the Native American Snake-Speakers."

"But it could be someone else?" she asked hopefully.

The wizard shook his head impatiently. "Look at the dedication: To the First Daughter of the House of Slytherin, on the occasion of her thirteenth birthday. This is, indubitably, a gift from one who considers himself the Acting Head of a House to his Heir." Mary wilted. "On the positive side, this does suggest that it was sent by the younger reincarnation of Tom Riddle rather than some pawn of Voldemort's shade. We have no reason to suspect that the latter knows of your familial connection, though with a sample of your blood, it appears the former has confirmed it."

Mary rubbed the scar on her wrist self-consciously. "So what do you think it means?"

Snape hmm'd, and cast a series of brightly-colored charms at the book and the notes before laying his hands upon them gently. A whisper of power, cold and tingling, brushed through the office, though only for a moment. "Perhaps nothing. There is no hint of magic here, dark or otherwise, aside from the preservation enchantments on the book, let alone anything malicious."

"So… it's just a present, then? Harmless?"

"It appears so, yes. Parchment, leather, ink, knowledge. No curses or port-keys to unknown locations, and you may rest assured that unlike the diary, this book has never been used as a horcrux."

"But why would he send me a gift?" the thirteen-year-old nearly wailed in frustration.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Because he recognizes the potential power you hold and wishes to gain your favor and alliance? Because he always aspired to be a lord among wizards? He has implied here that he is the Head of Slytherin's line, a lofty claim indeed, which alliance with you might support. Perhaps even because he was an orphan, and you are, in some tenuous way, the only thing like family he has ever had? Do you not recall in the Chamber? He told you he quite liked the theory that you were his granddaughter. The Dark Lord I knew intended to live forever, but a powerful legacy is nothing to sneer at."

Mary took a deep breath, and found that she was biting her lip nervously. "So we think it's a good-faith gesture. What do I do?"

The wizard on the other side of the desk shrugged. "Read the book. Learn from it. Knowledge is power, and you must not spurn any possible advantage. If there was no return address, no note or name, he cannot be expecting thanks. If I were you… yes, I think I should expect further gifts, building a foundation of good rapport before he admits that it was he who sent them – though this is nothing if not a large hint. He is most likely… preparing the ground, so to speak."

The young witch felt an evil smirk blossom on her face. "So we're a step ahead, because we know it's him, and he won't think we know?"

The Potions Master nodded. "Mind you bring any more such mysterious gifts to me as well – just because the first was not cursed is no reason to suspect future packages will not be."

"False sense of security," Mary nodded. That made sense.

"Indeed. And you would be well-served to keep the packaging, next time. It may hold some clue as to a more specific location, should we need to track him down."

"Why would we want to do that?"

"Have you never heard the phrase, 'keep your friends close, and your enemies closer'?" Snape asked, probably rhetorically, shaking his head. "Riddle is an unknown quantity, and as such, any information on him would be a boon. Where he has gone to ground may say a good deal about his intentions toward you specifically and the magical world in general."

The girl nodded, suitably chastened. She clearly still had a lot to learn about this business of having potential enemies lurking in the shadows. She wished she could tell Catherine about it and get her opinion. Perhaps she would, leaving out the Evil, Undead Grandfather angle. The older girl already knew about the kidnapping, after all. And the Grangers might have some insight, too.

"Okay. Thank you, sir," she said, rising from her seat.

"Of course, Mary Elizabeth," the professor answered. He watched, silently, as she left, more reassured than she had expected by the meeting.

She hadn't even considered that the book might be a horcrux or a portkey, or that it might be an attempt to soften her up before a second, more harmful gift arrived, and she was infinitely glad that she had someone on her side who would think of things like that. Even if she didn't fully trust him, anymore, she did believe that he was every bit as wary of the Dark Lord as she was.

She smiled as she made her way upstairs. She had just enough time left before curfew to check in with the kitchen elves, and make sure that the cake she had requested would be ready for Hermione's party the following afternoon. If that didn't cheer everyone up a bit (or at least provide a suitable distraction), she didn't know what would.