"Mr. Safer," Snape greeted him. "I did not realize I would see you this afternoon."

"Mr. Krum asked me to deliver a message to you," the young man said. "Here it is. I believe he said it was from his family."

"Thank you," Snape nodded, accepting the letter. He looked at it, a plain brownish envelope with a dark red seal on it.

"Were there any more interviews you would like me to set up?" he asked helpfully.

"I think for now I am waiting on other information," Snape told him. "I will let you know if I need you."

"Then I hope that letter contains what you need," Tolga told him in a friendly voice.

Running his finger over the seal, Snape suddenly realized that the seal was loose instead of broken. He knew that only happened when someone pried it off with a hot knife and then attempted to re-affix it. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck.

Reacting to instinct that had kept him alive through countless battles, Snape reached for his wand just as a stunning spell hit him, knocking his wand out of his hand. A Petrificus Totalis followed, and Snape quickly found himself completely frozen and helpless. He could of course cast wandlessly, but not when petrified. He fought down his rising panic with strict occlumency, panicking now would help nobody. He had been frozen at the mercy of madmen before, but he had no idea what sort of madman held him now.

"Would you like me to tell you what the letter says, Professor?" Tolga Safer asked in a slightly mocking tone. "Since this is all of such interest to you that you could leave nothing alone."

Snape blinked in answer, but with a swoop of the other man's wand he found that he could answer.

"I'm guessing that the letter says that the brother of the boy that Viktor Krum accidently killed is named Tolga Safer."

"It was not an accident!" the man flared. "And he will be held responsible."

"I see," Snape agreed, his spy instincts kicking in. "So this is an elaborate plan to make him pay for his crimes." Though it nearly gagged him to flatter this trumped-up upstart, he knew that while he was frozen that was the smartest course of action. Perhaps he could even convince him to let him go if he were good enough.

"Of course!" he bragged, sounding smug. "Of course! Why would I go simply for Krum? It is far more painful to lose someone you love. It took me a few months to determine whom would pain Krum the most, and to tell you the truth I almost had to go for that bushy-haird Hogwarts girl. But, when when I realized who Mir actually was to him, the rest was easy."

"Then why frame Potter?" Snape asked.

"He seemed convenient," Tolga shrugged. "He would have motivation because of the tournament. That worked until I was convinced otherwise."

"I see," Snape answered, knowing better than to ask him who had convinced him. If he felt like he was being interrogated then he would stop talking. "So then you exonerated him."

"I had you guessing," he smirked. "Everyone thinks that they are so clever and nobody sees me, hidden in plain sight."

"You certainly had us fooled," Snape agreed. "Everyone thought that it was Karkaroff."

"Fools!" Tolga snorted. "Like he would actually do anything to annoy or endanger his little golden boy. He took that blood money and used it to his advantage to force Krum to his school."

"If Karkaroff were at Hogwarts he would be a Slytherin," Snape told him. "He uses circumstances to his advantage."

"That was my brother he bartered!" Tolga spat. "The fact that he is blamed for this is an unexpected side benefit."

"I am fortunate that your attempt to exonerate Potter failed," Snape mused. "I could have been killed."

"If I could poison a Potions Master than he doesn't deserve his title!" Tolga snapped back. "And Dumbledore is an old man, I can hardly be blamed for causing his death. Besides, there are people that I . . . respect that wish Dumbledore gone. I did them a favor."

"I see, you a courting friends," Snape nodded. "That is very smart of you."

"But you are right," Tolga continued. "I am not sure what to do with you."

"You could trust me," Snape suggested. "But we both know that you will not. Perhaps Obliviate?"

"But you will still be a thorn in my side," Tolga considered. "But we are four days until the contest, so I cannot have you here making trouble either. But another body would complicate matters as well. What to do with you?"

"I could be unexpectedly missing," Snape suggested. "Perhaps I could send a note to Dumbledore that I was called away urgently, he is likely to think that it is something Potions related and would not question much. Then you may lock me away wherever you wish."

"That could work," Tolga reasoned, but then they both jumped as the door opened.

"Professor, we're sorry to bother you, but I had a question about . . . " Ron started, but then himself was hit with a spell.

"Stupify!" he heard Hermione command, and Snape used the distraction to wandlessly summon his wand to himself. Tolga shielded himself from Hermione, but jumped as part of the stunning spell Snape fired at him got through his shields. Throwing a shield over the unconscious Ron, Snape circled around to try and use the advantage he had over the young wizard. His relief at having his wand again was of course mitigated by his strong belief that he should never underestimate anybody, particularly not someone whose grip on reality seemed as tenuous as Tolga's did. He had had years of practice flattering and complying with a madman, and now he was going to fight one.

"You will not defeat me!" Tolga screamed at them, casting fast and furious. He saw Hermione dodge what he thought might be a cruciatus, but was impressed how she kept her head about her. Wait, did she really just fire a jelly legs curse at him? What was she, a sniveling first year? Perhaps the slug curse or the bat-bogey curse would be next.

Snape, taking the unexpected advantage by the girl's curse actually hitting Tolga and making him unsteady, fired a full-force blasting curse at Tolga's chest. Tolga, distracted by the Jelly Legs curse, was barely able to shield and felt the hit from Snape's curse. He cried something indeterminate out in a mixture of pain and fury.

"Expelliarmus!" Hermione then called out, and Tolga's wand was knocked out of his hand at the same time that Snape fired a Petrificus Totalis at the young man. The man, who had been turning to see where his wand went, was stuck in that position as the icy sheen of the spell spread over his body.

Snape continued to hold his wand aloft, trying to decide if the danger was over or if Tolga would get up. Slowly, he realized that his enemy had been defeated with little injury to others. He glanced at the girl, and she looked shocked and as if she were trying to make sense of what had happened.

"I think he's down, Professor," he heard Hermione state in some measure of calm though her breathing was heavier. "That last one finished it. He's frozen solid."

"I . . . appreciate your assistance, Miss Granger," he told her, calming his own heart rate.

"Was it, was it him?" Hermione asked, hesitating. "I mean, he always seemed so nice. It's hard to believe that he was the murderer."

"Indeed, it was him," Snape told her with a nod. "I have pieced together some of his motivation, but I confess myself surprised as well."

"Was he on your list of suspects?"

"Far down the list," Snape admitted. "However, I believe that I have fulfilled my end of the bargain that we struck. The killer is unmasked and Mr. Potter will no longer be the focus of inquiry. Now, is Mr. Weasley well?"

"What?" he heard Ron ask as he sleepily sat up. "What happened?"

"Stunning spell," Hermione explained. "We walked in on Tolga Safer holding Professor Snape hostage."

"We saved Professor Snape?" Ron asked, confused.

"You were an excellent distraction," Snape clarified, clearly rankled by the idea of Ron Weasley saving him. "With excellent timing. However, I saved myself."

"You just think that you can't whack us if we saved you," Ron smiled sleepily.

"Brave actions now doesn't mitigate your rule-breaking before," Snape snapped at him, his eyes narrowing. He limited himself and made no specific threats, however, it was clear the boy wasn't entirely sensible after that spell hit him.

"Tolga Safer?" Ron asked, confused. "Is that the Hufflepuff with the lip thing?"

"He's Karkaroff's aide," Hermione swiftly explained. "This has obviously been a plot, and he was likely going to kill Professor Snape. We were very lucky today."

"Some luck," Ron said, rubbing the back of his head. "Blimey, that bugger caught me completely off guard. I didn't even have my wand out."

"He caught me off guard as well," Snape admitted. "All of us had some luck today in that we survived."

"We need to call the headmistress and the aurors," Snape told them. "I'm sure they will be taking our statements for some time to come and finding a . . . comfortable place for our attacker."

"Should be get our stories straight?" Ron asked, still a bit dazed.

"Ron, we did nothing wrong," Hermione told him. "There's nothing to get straight. We just tell them what happened."

"Miss Granger is correct," Snape told them, a little disconcerted at how casually they were discussing what felt like lying to the aurors. Perhaps cunning was not simply a Slytherin trait. "Just tell the truth as best you remember it."

"All I remember is a bloody blast from that wand," Ron grimaced, rubbing his head again.

"Why did you come back in?" Snape asked the two, curious.

"Hermione saw that Tolga had a message for you," Ron admitted. "We wanted to see if you would tell us what it said."

"Insatiable curiosity," he drawled with sarcasm, and then looked down. "And that curiosity saved my life. Thank you."

"Did we really just get thanked by Snape?" Ron asked himself incredulously.

"Don't get used to it," Snape snapped at him, but both students felt there was no bite in his words. "But I recognize when I owe someone thanks."

"And thank you professor for protecting us," Hermione said. "I saw you cast to protect Ron, and I know you were trying to draw his fire to you."

"Your efforts and . . . interesting choices of curses worked surprisingly well," he answered the girl, mollified that she had recognized his strategies.

"They were the first thing that came to mind," Hermione admitted. "He's lucky I didn't use the bat-bogey curse, Ginny's been teaching me that one."

"I will call the aurors now," Snape told them. "And if I were perhaps Dumbledore or McGonagall, these moments of working together to defeat a common enemy would make me so sloppishly sentimental that I would cancel our agreement and your punishment. But let me remind you that am I neither of those people."

"We didn't expect you to be," Hermione told him honestly. "We are perfectly prepared to keep our end of the bargain."

"Then I will see you both as well as Mr. Potter tomorrow evening as per our agreement. Would seven thirty be a good time for you?"

"Tomorrow evening at seven-thirty," Hermione nodded, agreeing as if she were going to show up for extra homework help.

And with that, Snape called the aurors.

AN: Let me know what you think of our villain! I hope I surprised at least people but that there were enough clues that Tolga made sense. It's such a balance between not giving it away but also not making it impossible to guess. I had a few people PM me with the right guess J. There will be two more chapters in this story, and I will get them done as quick as I can. This is such a busy time of year! Thanks for your patience.

AN 2 trivia edition (which really just shows what a big nerd I am): Though Karkaroff's aide is a canon character both in the books and movie, he is never named. So, I gave him the name of the actor that plays him in the movie – Tolga Safer. From what I read this actor was trying for the part of Viktor Krum, and was given the aide's role instead.