Posted: 11/24/15

Beta: the artful scribbler

Portrait of a Headmaster

4th June, 1998
9:15 pm

Severus was fuming.

He walked swiftly through the empty halls of Hogwarts, made his way toward his office on the seventh floor. His head was swirling in a tumultuous cesspool of questions and accusations. He absolutely could not believe what he had just witnessed. A child. The magnificent, most honourable Dumbledore was using a child to spy on the Dark Lord. Severus so befuddled with fury and pique that he walked straight past the gargoyles which guarded his door and then had to turn back when he realized his error.

Once he was up the revolving staircase, he practically sprinted to the portrait of his mentor and only confidante. Dumbledore had his head leaned back on the wing chair in which he was painted, dozing, with his mouth and eyes slightly ajar.

"Wake up!"

Dumbledore immediately roused from his slumber, closed his mouth, and sat up looking around in a hazy manner. "Has something happened?"

Severus could only spit two words at him. "Jane. Wellington."

Dumbledore's eyes widened and he adjusted his position, fidgeting, and he began to rub his left hand over the end of the armrest. "He knows about her?"

"He has her," Severus corrected.

Dumbledore started rubbing his thin fingers across his brow as he contemplated this most unpleasant revelation.

"Is she okay?" was his first question.

"Why the hell-! How could you-! I don't even know-!" Severus was blustering incomprehensibly, too angry for cogency.

"Severus, calm yourself," Dumbledore chided softly.

"She's a child!"

"She is...not everything that she seems, Severus. I assure you," Dumbledore said, attempting to soothe him.

"You are saying that she is not a twelve year old girl? Because she certainly looked like one after the Dark Lord had her stripped. Naked," Severus said, his breath ragged.

Dumbledore's eyes darkened at this.

"Has he hurt her?" Dumbledore asked again. "Or has he restrained himself to humiliating her?"

"Are you saying that she isn't a child?" Severus repeated, refusing to be deterred.

"I am saying...her eyes are open, Severus," he stated simply. "But I need you to help her. Protect her as much as is within your power."

"Oh, that's bloody great," Severus responded, his dark, depthless eyes getting deeper. "Sure, why not? I'm already doing everything I can to protect the students of Hogwarts! And gallivanting around the countryside leaving ancient swords in icy ponds for Potter! And keeping my thoughts secret from the Dark Lord while trying to advise him without giving myself away! Why not just add one more burden to my shoulders, for Christ's sake? I suppose at this point it doesn't matter?

"And, by the way, thanks for telling me about her when I was getting tortured every other day, because the Dark Lord couldn't figure out where you were getting all of your information from, and since I was the closest one to you, he just assumed that I must be spilling his secrets! Do you have any idea how close he came to seeing the truth a- about her, when he was ripping through my thoughts?"

Dumbledore patiently listened to Severus ranting, allowing him to vent his anger.

"That's exactly why I couldn't tell you and you know it," Dumbledore gently reminded him. Then he asked Severus for a third time, "Has Voldemort hurt her?"

Hearing his master's name was as tempering as a swift dip in a glacial pond and, as if it had sapped his anger, Severus deflated slightly, went to his desk, and seated himself in the high-backed chair. He conjured himself some tea and then related the afternoon's events to Dumbledore.

"So he told all the other Death Eaters that she wasn't to be harmed without his permission," he finished.

Dumbledore and Severus sat in silence for moment, each engrossed in their private thoughts.

"Does she know about me?" Severus asked, his eyes on the cup of tea he was slowly stirring.

"She knows where your true allegiances lie, yes. She doesn't know why."

"Can she help the Dark Lord find Potter?" was his next query.

"I doubt it," was his reply. Not very reassuring in the least.

"Are you saying you doubt that she can or you doubt that she will?" Severus asked. For it seemed such a crucial distinction, though Severus knew many might not immediately grasp it.

Dumbledore didn't answer for a moment. "Jane can not find Potter as long as she has not seen him. And even if that happens...she understands what's at stake."

"I suppose you filled her head with the same rubbish you have been spouting to me all these years. You told her he was the 'Chosen One'?"

Severus's and Dumbledore's eyes locked in a momentary battle of wills. Severus looked away first. He always did.

"Did you ever give her any poisonous potions?"

"Of course not. I was curious, though."

"How can she-" he couldn't finish.

"Yes. Amazing isn't she," Dumbledore said, smiling a little.

"Amazing," Severus repeated the word, clearly confounded by the idea of her. "How long did it take you to figure out that she's impervious to magic?"

"Well," Dumbledore began, raising his hands in front of his chest and aligning his fingertips. "I discovered that I couldn't Apparate with her the first night I met her. I was baffled by it, but didn't immediately assume that she was immune to all magic, of course. It was just little things all adding up, to begin with. I only knew for sure when I gave her some potions to help heal her leg.

"She was upset about that. She thought her leg would at last be restored. Poor girl. I, however, was intrigued," Dumbledore explained, his eyes alight with the thrill of it. It was clear to Severus that Dumbledore had been longing to share this with someone – anyone - for ages. "I asked her if she would mind me doing a few harmless spells on her. She wasn't opposed to it at all in the beginning. I think magic completely fascinated her. She asked me-," he stopped.

"What?" Severus prompted.

"Well, suffice it to say that I got a bit carried away with it all. I mean she was bored to tears sometimes, so I tried not overtax her patience. But I couldn't put it aside. Not for the life of me. I tried hundreds of spells on her over the two years she was under my care, and hundreds of potions. I always assumed that she would be impervious to everything, but there were certain things I couldn't bring myself to try. I was scared, you see. What if there are exceptions? Other than a few hundred minor hexes and jinxes...well, I could never bring myself to try any curses of course."

Severus laughed in spite of himself.

"Only a few hundred hexes and jinxes?" he said laughing harder.

Dumbledore chuckled sheepishly.

"Minor ones," he emphasized.

"And she was fine with it?" Severus asked, his voice heavy with skepticism.

"For the most part. Like I said, she was just bored by it a lot of the time. But she...trusted me." Dumbledore rubbed his brow again. "She knew I would stop if she wished it."

"If she was so bored why didn't she?"

"Well, she could see how important it was to me. She is...kind-hearted."

"Oh, well, that's wonderful. Do you suppose she'll just lay herself down when the Dark Lord tells her he's going to dissect her?"

Dumbledore's brow furrowed and he said, "Please do not make such callous jokes about that, Severus. I can not bear it."

Severus just shook his head, his greasy black locks swaying with the motion of it. He could feel his anger with Dumbledore heating his chest and heart again. How could he? She was so...helpless.

"Severus, you have to help her," Dumbledore pleaded with him, his voice deepening with his emotions.

"How?"

"Voldemort trusts you. He trusts your judgment. And he has not had to deal with anything in a non-magical manner for decades," Dumbledore said urgently, leaning forward in his chair. "Plus, he knows about your Muggle upbringing. He'll consult you. You just have to convince him that the benefits of having her spy for him outweigh the ones of hurting her for the sake of experimentation."

"He can't have both?"

"No. She can not spy when she is in any sort of physical pain, or even emotionally overwrought. That is the long and the short of it. As long as Voldemort is convinced of her worth as a tool for helping him investigate his enemies, he will have to reign in his compulsions to torture or maim her."

Severus, for the millionth time, thought that Dumbledore was asking too much from him. But he couldn't refrain from trying, though he was loath to promise Dumbledore this out of sheer spite. He couldn't pry out of his mind the image of her frail naked body flying into the air after Macnair pounded her. God, what had Dumbledore been thinking?

"How does she do it?"

"Spy? I have no idea, old friend," Dumbledore said, shaking his head a little, clearly flummoxed by the idea of it. "I asked her dozens of questions about it and could never make knuts or galleons of it. It is just a unique power that she was born with."

"In addition to being impervious to magic," Severus said.

"Or perhaps because of it," Dumbledore said.

Severus gave him a quizzical look. "You think it is connected."

"Mind you, this is just a theory I began to entertain after I knew her for a while," Dumbledore said, attempting to clarify his meaning, "because she has this...strange ability to detach a cognitive part of herself at will. It is as though she was born with a vital piece of herself...loosened, so to speak. I have often wondered if this has not changed her...basic structure, on a minutely physical level, and this somehow prevents magic from having a hold on her." (If scientific words existed in either wizard's vocabulary, the terms cellular or microscopic might have substituted minutely physical.)

"Interesting," Severus replied.

He was fascinated by her. He had never once imagined there could be a person in the world who could not be affected by magic. It affected everything. Animals, objects, fire, air. Everything. But apparently not this girl. How?

Severus rubbed his temples and forehead. He was exhausted.

"She must be very scared," Dumbledore said quietly.

"And whose fault is that?" Severus snapped.

"You will try to help her, yes?" Dumbledore asked again.

"I will try, Dumbledore. But I don't have as much faith in my abilities as you do. And this is... For the Dark Lord to be presented with something this...young and a Muggle, and she is clearly so ignorant...and her leg! I believe everything about her serves to incense him. I just can not fathom what you were thinking when you decided to allow her to help against The Dark Lord."

"I can not explain all of my reasons to you, Severus. Suffice it to say, I had a good many of them. Please, just bear in mind that she is more than she appears."

"I will try to keep it mind. Not so the Dark Lord can see, of course. She just seems so...stupid."

Severus saw the barest glimmer of a smile in the late headmaster's eyes. "Good."