A/N- Thanks for the interest, and I'd be extremely grateful for the reviews and feedback which any of you may have to offer. This chapter got a bit long, and caught in the mire somewhat- really had to struggle through writer's block to get this posted. Unlike the last chapter, there was a suitable place to break it apart, so I did- the second part'll be coming soon enough, don't worry. Oh, and since I haven't already said this, the world and all the characters of the Harry Potter franchise are the intellectual property of J.K. Rowling. A toast, to her master-work- may its legacy continue to inspire us for generations to come.
Chapter 2: Rude Awakening
Late to bed, and easy to rise, made a man a sleep-deprived insomniac, but it wasn't as though he'd had a choice. After the apocalyptically catastrophic events of the day before- the Dark Lord's return back from his little spell in purgatory to the land of the living, followed by last night's palaver with Karkaroff, both of which would clearly have a severe and profound impact on his life for the foreseeable future- it was a wonder that he'd managed to get any shut-eye at all. In the end, he'd had to make do with barely two hours' worth in total, no more than forty minutes' unbroken sleep at most. All thanks to a host of uninvited intruders who just wouldn't leave him alone. This was the fourth time now, and it'd certainly be the last- there was no point in bothering to try and go back to sleep again now, not at quarter-to-six in the morning. But he was still going to take it out on whoever had been unfortunate enough to raise his ire. In his nightgown, Severus snatched his wand out from under his pillow, rose from his bed, willed the lighting orb on, and strode towards the door of his en-suite bathroom with a purpose.
Barely managing to avoid blasting it off its hinges, he lashed out with a swipe of his wand to fling it open, watching it slam into the wall with a satisfyingly loud bang- even louder than the bang with which his unwanted visitor had made its entry. But not nearly as loud as the unbearably high-pitched screech which it- no, she, that much was deafeningly apparent- let out upon being discovered, diving behind the bath curtain. Grinding his teeth together, Severus waved his wand again to swish the bath curtain open, wincing as it drew yet another startled squeal from the visibly frightened House Elf, leaping at least seven feet up into the air into the far top corner of the room, pressing herself up against the ceiling.
"EEEK! P-p-please, M-master Snapes, please... Winky is so sorry, she is not meaning to..."
"To wake me up from my peaceful slumber, for the fourth time this night? To invade my personal space, trying and clean and clear a room which you should have known full well was already spotless, just to satisfy your own selfish desire to 'be a really useful elf'...?"
Cowering and quivering more and more with each scathing word, the House Elf wailed loudly, huddling herself up into a little ball. With her over-large eyes glowing like red orbs in the reflected light coming in from the bedroom, and with her grossly disproportionate ears flapping away so hard by now that he could actually see the drawn curtain getting caught in the breeze, anyone would have thought from looking at her that they were looking some desperate, cornered albino bat, held aloft by those flapping wings alone. "Winky is a bad elf, a bad, bad elf... Please, Master, forgive her, she is..."
"Winky, is it? Tell me, Winky, what do you think would be a suitable puni..." Snape cut himself off, forced himself to take a long, deep breath, and reminded himself that it wasn't this Elf's fault. On any other night, he'd have had his silencing wards up, to keep out any noises which could potentially disturb his sleep from penetrating into his bedroom, enabling her to carry out her duty and keep everything spick and span like a good little servant. But after the ignominity of having been caught off guard, and ambushed in his own sanctuary, he wasn't about to let it happen again. He'd deliberately taken them down last night, and left them down, to ensure that he'd be able to get the drop on anyone or anything else that managed to breach his serpents lair, and that he'd be in a position to strike first against any potential threat. And while he might have been rudely awoken for the fourth time this night, it had almost certainly been a different House Elf each time.
The other three guilty parties were already long gone, leaving only this one, Winky, the unlucky last arrival, in the line of fire to take all of the flak herself, even though she'd been the quietest of the lot. It wasn't at all fair on her- though that wasn't the issue. No-one had ever accused him of being fair or impartial. On the other hand, plenty of people did accuse him of being vicious and sadistic, on a fairly regular basis. But looking at the House Elf, with so many tears streaming from her face and splashing down onto the tiles below that it looked and sounded for all the world as though the shower nozzle had been left open, he couldn't bring himself to derive even the slightest bit of pleasure or satisfaction from her pain or distress. Watching the pitiful little thing as she huddled up tighter and tighter, her joints audibly starting to creak, crackle and pop from the strain, it was apparent that this one was highly strung and emotional even by Elvish standards.
Last night, he'd ended up convincing Karkaroff to choose death, inadvertently killed off the man's will to fight or take flight, by spouting off instead of knowing when to hold his tongue. If he'd finished asking that question, he wouldn't have been surprised if she'd decided to punish herself in the much the same manner as the Blacks' elves had reputedly been fond of doing, once they felt that they'd outlived their usefulness. Ending her own life by committing the Elvish equivalent of Seppuku- by slicing her own head off, blowing herself to kingdom come, or something else along those lines. And even if it would only have been just another lowly House Elf this time, he certainly wasn't in any mood to take any risks which could make him directly responsible for yet another death so soon after the last.
"Just, get gone, and leave me in peace. You will not harm yourself for this, you will not punish yourself for this- I alone will decide what punishment is fitting, and I alone will assign you that punishment, as and when I see fit, not before. Is that understood?"
Whimpering, the house elf nodded tearfully, then apparated away with one last sharp crack. Which, on the second time of hearing it, wasn't particularly loud after all. "Still plenty loud enough," he grouchily muttered to himself, groggily rubbing his eyes. He still felt like complete and utter shite, and taking a glance at himself in the mirror, he looked even worse than he felt, with the black bags under his eyes standing out even more prominently than his eyebrows. Thanks to those Elves repeatedly interrupting his sleep, all to satisfy that infuriating obsessive compulsion of theirs to clean, clean, clean, he'd probably have felt more rested if he hadn't slept at all. But there was no way to keep them away. They had free run of the entire castle, and there wasn't any known ward in existence which could keep a House-Elf out in a place which it had been assigned to tend to. The little blighters went everywhere...
Everywhere, that was, with the sole apparent exception of Gryffindor Tower, since the start of this year, courtesy of Miss Granger's amusingly misguided efforts to single-handedly liberate all of Hogwarts' House Elves whether they wanted to be freed or not. Perhaps he should take a leaf out of Miss Granger's book, Severus mused, and start scattering his stray socks all over the place. That'd get them to steer clear of his quarters, and leave him well alone. But then again, that'd mean that he'd have do the house-chores himself, and that would be tedious. He'd been really looking forward to watching the Gryffindors suffer, being forced to either wallow in their own filth or to actually have to clear up after themselves, clearing up all of the messes that they were so fond of making wherever they went. But alas, Dumbledore had seen it coming, contracted that addled mercenary House-Elf which had once belonged to the Malfoys to do the job and fill in for the rest of the affronted House Elves, and ended the crisis before it had even had a chance to become one. Heaven forbid that his precious Gryffindors' free spirits be tamed by the revelation that bold and impulsive actions could actually have consequences...
But enough hoohaa about all of that, and about missing out on his twenty winks. He had far more pressing concerns to be bothered about right now- stuff to do, places to get to, stuff to sort out. His wand still in hand, Snape started his regular routine of silently casting the Tergeo Charm, repeatedly and systematically; first tapping each item of clothing he was wearing with his wand, then his skin, before wrapping it up by running it over each and every tooth in his mouth in rapid succession, cleansing himself of all of the dead skin, sweat, plaque, dust and anything else which may have built up overnight in a matter of seconds. Looking back at the massive, newly vacated bath, following the splash patterns and the trail of Winky's spectacular waterworks, the last few lingering drops of which were still trickling down toward the plughole even now, he suddenly realized that this was the first time in almost a decade, since the first day that he'd moved in here to take up his teaching post at Hogwarts, that it had actually gotten wet.
For someone like himself, who'd completely mastered casting the Tergeo Charm by the age of fourteen by necessity, having been forced to use it on almost a daily basis during his years at Hogwarts, thanks largely to James Potter and his band of Marauders' favourite hobby of flinging the nastiest shit that they could get their hands on at him- Sirius Black in particular, who'd taken it down a notch to truly disgusting depths once he'd acquired the ability to literally pull dog turds out of his arse- it was completely redundant. He hadn't used that tub once in all the time that he'd occupied these teaching quarters. And given that that bathtub had been a custom fixture, ordered and installed by the last man who'd occupied these quarters, he had no intention of ever doing so.
Old Horny Slug had waxed lyrical about his marvelous tub, spoken of how he'd taken a good long soak in it every morning and every night without fail for the entirety of his tenure, over fifty years in total. And how he'd shown several lovely ladies the time of their lives, had "a whaling good time" with them in his tub, back in his younger years. Shuddering in spite of himself, Severus cursed his overly vivid imagination as he battled to purge the graphic images of that morbidly obese old lech wallowing around in here with them from his mind, images which were far more unsettling, nauseating and horrific than anything that he'd ever witnessed at any of the Death Eaters' revels. Turning away quickly, refusing point-blank to touch it with his hands knowing what had happened behind it, he closed the curtain, strode out of the bathroom and slammed it shut behind him.
Summoning his robes from the wardrobe, Snape swiftly got dressed, pondering how to make the most of his early start to the day as he went through the motions. Come to think it, he should be grateful for having received the opportune wake-up call when he had. Given the enormity of yesterday's events, this was likely to be the single most hectic, congested and stressful day he'd ever have to deal with in all his years at Hogwarts, and he'd need every spare moment he could get to do what needed to be done. Heading out, on his way through his study, he spared a glance for Bartemius Crouch Jnr's conveniently bequeathed casket, where the deceased Durmstrang Headmaster's not-so-warm any more corpse had been laid to rest for the time being, awaiting its proper send-off to The Dark Lord with bells and whistles attached. He had left the magically expanded chest sitting there in the middle of the room, but it gave him a bit of a start when he realised that it had been moved from the place where he'd put it last night.
Now, the chest sat straight and flush against the wall, back behind his desk. And it looked as though it had even been polished to boot. Clearly, one of those blasted Elves from earlier had been busy in here. But thankfully, the Elves' brand of magic, as irritatingly powerful as it was, wasn't capable of breaking through the runic seals which kept it sealed tight; the incriminating contents which he'd stowed inside it would be just as safe from their prying eyes as Crouch Jnr's had been. Mildly mollified, but still on edge, Severus locked his study behind him, making sure to use the most powerful wards he could muster and overlay them with a few nasty, debilitating curses on the door for good measure, before heading off through the dungeons.
That delivery could wait. The Dark Lord had always been impatient and demanding, even back in his prime, and given how much more unstable and unhinged he appeared to have become since then, courtesy of those fourteen years he'd spent in a state of incorporeal purgatory, going uninvited and unannounced like some Gryffindor glory-seeker to take it to Him could all too easily backfire. No, it would be better to be prudent, waiting until The Dark Lord summoned him through his Dark Mark to invite him back into His presence, and take it along with him then. Turning down one of the darker corridors, tweaking the sting in the gargoyle manticore's tail in the proper combination of directions to open up the adjacent entrance to one of the several secret passages in and out of the castle, Severus walked though the opening into the damp and dank passage he'd re-entered Hogwarts through last night, muttering "Lumos" to light the way in the pitch darkness as the entrance sealed itself shut behind him.
He had other matters to attend to, here and now. Two of them in particular, massive responsibilities which Igor had entrusted to him with his dying breath, and which he'd now have to deal with for the foreseeable future. And the first of them was lying in wait for him in one of the Dorm Rooms aboard the Durmstrang Institute's Fluyt, moored out there on the Great Lake, just a short distance away from the secluded lakeside inlet which this passage led out to. He imagined that the girl would either still be fast asleep, blissfully ignorant as to the night's events, or still wide awake, having stayed up all night waiting for her father-in-law to return. But her sole guardian, her patriarch, the man who'd been her father in all but blood, wouldn't be coming back. Not now, not ever. At the very least, she, Natalia, and all of the other Durmstrang students, had the right to know that much. Someone had to tell them, and tell them in the right way- and since that wouldn't be Albus, that someone would have to be him...