Chapter 3 Interrogation

"Well," said Taal, "I know that you can't lick your elbow with your tongue." She hissed slightly under her breath, but it really wasn't that hard for her to resist the potion. Her biology was even more different from humans than the Doctor was. She was frankly surprised that it had worked at all on her. But she needed to keep up the appearance that she was actually resisting it, as supposed to simply ignoring its little nagging urge, so that she could lie to them.

"Impertinence!" cried Snape, and slapped her across her face hard enough that her head whipped around and she saw stars for a moment. "Who are you?"

That was simple enough. She could give them plenty of information on that without having to be creative. "My name is Lynsing Maria Taal, ex-Major in fighter squadron seven-one-nine."

"Why do you appear as a cat?" said Snape, peering into her eyes. "Did you take a mistaken polyjuice potion? Or are you a muggle under the same problem?"

"I am not a wizard. I am not a muggle in the strictest sense of the word. I have never taken a polyjuice potion in my life." Taal tried to keep her answers as simple as possible. She didn't want to get them angry, and she didn't want to make anything up just yet. She was lucky that she had thought to leave out the mention of New Earth in her naming of herself. She didn't need them knowing that she was not from this Earth. Not yet, anyway.

"Then why do you look like that?" asked Snape, still staring directly into her eyes, his face mere inches away from hers. She fought to keep her expression impassive as she answered.

"I was born this way." She said.

"Alright." Said Snape, obviously figuring that he wasn't going to get anything else out of her about herself. "What do you know about Barty Crouch Junior?"

Taal thought back to reading the fourth Harry Potter book, and tried to remember all that she could. She couldn't say too much, or she could ruin the timeline of how this was supposed to go. "Barty Crouch Junior is the son of Barty Crouch, the man you have accused my companion-" she heard the Doctor snort slightly- technically she was his companion, but she was the one telling the story here. "- of murdering. He joined the Death Eaters at a relatively young age, and, along with the… Lestranges, I believe, took part in the torturing and murder of the Longbottoms- Neville Longbottom's parents."

She paused here, wondering how much more she could say without spoilers. "He was put into Azkaban by his own father. I can't remember who actually tipped them off, but I seem to remember Karkaroff saying something about it at his trial. But that might be wrong, there are several versions of the story out there… it's said that it destroyed Barty to put his son in prison, and his wife died soon after."

She refocused her eyes, now that her mind wasn't focused inwards. "I'm afraid that that's all I know, sir." It galled her to call Snape 'sir.' She had read the last book, knew that he was a good guy, but frankly, having his greasy hair swinging within inches of her face didn't improve her opinion of him.

"Where is Barty Crouch Jr. now?" asked Snape, the expression on his face betraying how much he wanted her to trip up and reveal some crucial information.

"He's dead, isn't he? He died in Azkaban." Said Taal, parroting the last of what she considered the 'safe' information from the book.

"Then you deny that this man is Barty Crouch Junior?" said Snape. He knew that she could still answer 'yes,' if the Doctor had not gone by Barty, but he guessed that he would have.

"Yes, of course I deny it. I've seen his arm loads of times. He hasn't got a Dark Mark tattoo… brand… whatever you call them." She looked pointedly at Snape's arm, hoping to get him to back off a little. His hand automatically went to his arm, and he swept away to the other side of the room to the Doctor.

"Oh, good." Said the Doctor. "I was beginning to think that you'd forgotten about me, Severus Snape." He smiled slightly. "I'd bare my arm myself, but as you can see," he shrugged, "I'm a bit tied up at the moment."

Snape used his wand to sever enough of the ropes, and re-bind others, so that the Doctor's left arm was bared, but the rest of his body seemed to be bound even tighter. Snape roughly grabbed the sleeve of the Doctor's suit, and, after a pause, yanked it up roughly. The skin beneath was pale and slightly freckly, with several small white scars criss-crossing them- mementos of times when he hadn't been quite fast enough- but was utterly bare of anything else.

"Well, what do you know, Taal." He said, smirking slightly. "I haven't got a Dark Mark. I'm not a Death Eater. If my hands were free, I'd be leaning back with my hands behind my head, happy after another day's work."

Taal snorted too, seemingly snapping out of the influence of the Veritaserum. "You would. You would be doing that in a dungeon with four people that I think that you've forgotten are here. And guess what, Doctor. They're armed. We're tied up. I think that you should shut up."

Snape walked back around, his wand pointed almost leisurely at Taal. One tap would have knocked it out of his grasp, but Taal didn't have anything to tap it with. "I've never seen anyone throw off the effects of my Veritaserum so quickly. Was all that you just told me… lies? Because it is a very bad idea to lie to me." He pointed the wand directly at her, this time keeping the point mere centimeters from her forehead. "Let's find out, shall we?"

The Doctor squirmed in his bonds even more. "Let her go! LET HER GO! You have no right to do this! By section twelve, subsection thirty-seven of the Shadow Proclamation, I ORDER YOU to stop this inhuman treatment and let her go!"

Snape ignored the Doctor, and spoke the final, terrible word. "Legillimens!"