Yo! Thank you to all readers so far!

"He's got Padfoot! He's got Padfoot at the place where it's hidden!"

Severus didn't falter when he heard the desperate words, but he felt a lurch in his gut.

Potter had collapsed, screaming and clawing at her forehead in the middle of double potions. He approached her immediately, fully aware that this couldn't be good, but he hadn't expected her to look at him, watery green eyes filled with desperation and agony and say those words.

But he couldn't say anything. They were in the classrooms with all of the fifth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins. He couldn't risk it. Instead, he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up, catching her when he fell into him, unable to hold herself up.

"Granger, Weasley, Malfoy, Parkinson, watch the class. No one is to leave until I return or the bell rings!" he barked. They were Prefects, the four of them, and while Draco and Parkinson were sure to antagonize the Gryffindors, and Weasley the Slytherins, he hoped Granger at least had the sense to keep the peace.

But when he looked at Draco and saw his face, he realized maybe Granger wouldn't be alone in taking charge. Draco looked shaken. Good. He needed to be. He was under too many delusions thanks to his Housemates. Lucius wasn't helping matters much either.

Without another word, Severus lifted Potter up, noting with some surprise that she barely weighed a thing. Strange. But he had more important things to worry about. Her face was flushed and streaked with tears that continued to fall. She'd shut her eyes tight and was still clawing at the scar on her forehead. He could see blood.

Severus should have taken her to the hospital wing, but he didn't bother. There was nothing Poppy was going to manage to do for the girl. He brought her to his office next to the classroom instead and sat her down in the chair across his desk.

"What did you see, Potter?"

And so, she told him about her vision. What she didn't know was the Hall of Prophecies in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry. Black kneeling between two of the shelves as the Dark Lord tortured him with the cruciatus curse.

There was a good chance this was a trap, Severus knew, but he also couldn't put it past Black to have left Order Headquarters. He'd been irritatingly restless the last few months and that restlessness had only grown worse by the week. If he'd given in and left, he may have gotten captured and taken to the Ministry to draw Potter out.

It would be a trap for Potter either way.

He couldn't contact Dumbledore-he had no clue where the Headmaster had gone after being forced out of the castle by the Ministry, so he contacted Order Headquarters directly (Umbridge trusted him, so his floo wasn't being monitored the way the others in the castle were), calling out Black's name.

"Severus? Is everything alright?"

It was Lupin who appeared instead, but that was better than nothing. "Is Black there?" he asked.

"Sirius? Yes, he's just in the other room," said Lupin.

"He has not left?"

"No?" Lupin looked at him curiously. "What's this about, Severus?"

"Potter had a vision. She claims the Dark Lord is torturing Black where the prophecy is being kept."

Lupin's eyes widened. "He must have sent her that vision to lure her there," he said slowly. "Sirius hasn't left in months."

"You are sure he is there?"

"Yes, I can hear him. Buckbeak's been injured and he's tending to his wing."

Severus nodded, satisfied. "Do not tell him about this. He'll rush off either to the Ministry or to Hogwarts if he learns of it."

Lupin nodded in turn. "You're right. It's for the best. How's Violet?"

"She'll live," was all he said before he broke the connection and returned to the girl. She'd stopped crying, but she was still grabbing at her scar.

"What happened? Is Sirius okay!?" she asked the instant she saw him.

"According to Lupin, Black is safe and sound at Order Headquarters," said Severus curtly. "The Dark Lord has, no doubt, sent you the vision to draw you to that room."

"Because of the prophecy?" said Potter curiously.

Severus' eyes narrowed. "Where did you hear that?" But when the girl didn't answer, he scowled. Well, no matter. At least she'd told him about it rather than run off to the Ministry alone. Noticing blood on her forehead again, he knelt before her. "Move your hand."

Potter hesitated but obeyed, lowering her hand out of the way, allowing him to see her head. She'd left small scratches around the scar from clawing at it, and the scar itself looked to have opened and bled a little. It seemed to have stopped now, leaving the wound somewhat inflamed.

"Why were you not occluding your mind?" he asked as he stood, moving to fetch a potion or two.

"I was!" Potter protested. "Or...I thought I was. I usually get a bit of a warning because my scar starts to hurt before anything else happens. And I've never gotten a vision during the day either. It hit out of nowhere! I tried to occlude as soon as it started, but it hurt too much to focus."

Severus didn't know whether the Dark Lord knew he'd been teaching Potter occlumency. It had never been mentioned if he did. But there had to be a reason he'd chosen to send the vision during the day instead of at night, as he typically did. Had he grown tired of waiting? Had he become desperate enough that he simply didn't care to wait?

The Dark Lord's obsession with Potter had only grown worse over the past year, and Severus thought it was very possible that he was right. There was a good chance the Dark Lord no longer wished to slowly and patiently draw Potter to the prophecy. Sending her a vision of him torturing Black in that room in the middle of the day was a plan that reeked of desperation.

But when Severus turned to Potter, he saw something else. She'd reached up to rub at her forehead again, this time with her left hand, and there he spotted something he'd never noticed before. Something that had no business being there.

"What have you done to your hand, Potter?"

Eyes wide, Potter immediately hid her left hand behind her back. "Nothing."

"Show me your hand."

"I'd rather not, thanks."

"Potter!"

She recoiled slightly when he raised his voice, and he almost felt guilty about it. Eyes downcast, she slowly brought her hand out from behind her back and held it out. There, on the back of her left hand, scarred into her skin, were the words, 'I must not tell lies'.

"This is the phrase you said Umbridge made you write during your detentions with her," said Severus. "Why have you carved it into your hand? Did she tell you to do it?"

Still not looking at him, Potter licked at dry lips. "She didn't...tell me to do it, exactly."

"Then?"

"It-it was the quill she made me write lines with," said Potter, voice hoarse. "It didn't use ink. And-and when I wrote, the words appeared on my hand. They-they would heal right away, at first. But after-after a while, they just stopped healing. Hermione thinks it's because I had so many detentions with her, my hand didn't get the chance to heal properly, so the words just ended up staying there."

"...A blood quill? She's been using a blood quill on all of you?"

Quickly, Potter shook her head. "Not on everyone else, just me. Something about me being 'Undesirable Number One' or something dumb like that."

Well, that was something, at least. It wasn't good the blood quill had been used on Potter, of course, but better one student than all of them, even if that one was one too many.

Kneeling again, Severus took Potter's left hand to get a better look at the words carved into her skin, and his thumb brushed over the letters. They had been cut in surprisingly deep. There was no chance of the scars fading on their own anytime soon, and since blood quills were dark magic, regular spells, potions, and salves weren't going to help either.

"When did you last have detention with Umbridge?" he asked.

"Oh, er, four days ago, I think? Maybe five."

He'd thought as much judging by the scabs. "And how long do these detentions typically last? An hour?" Most of them only had hour-long detentions because they had better things to do with their lives.

"It was almost always four hours," said Potter a little cautiously. "Eight until midnight."

"She forced you to write with a blood quill for four hours straight nearly every night?"

"Yeah."

Severus grit his teeth. He was angry. Angry, furious, seething with rage, but he forced himself to push that anger down and rose. "Murtlap essence will help with the pain and swelling," he said, but to his surprise, Potter nodded. "Are you already aware of that?"

"Hermione."

"Ah." He went to get some anyway. In the storeroom, away from Potter's eyes, he paused to take a breath and reinforce his own mental shields. He would get angry later.

Returning to Potter after a moment, he soaked a small towel in the murtlap essence and pressed it over the back of the girl's hand, a little relieved when she relaxed. "Why did you not tell anyone about this?"

"...I tried to tell Professor McGonagall," said Potter after a beat of silence, "but she didn't let me get to the point and just told me to keep my head down."

Severus scowled. How typical. McGonagall wasn't as bad as some of the other staff in the castle, and though she cared about her Gryffindors fiercely, she also had to be in the mood for it. If she was caught on a bad day, it was difficult to get her to care. And with the number of detentions Potter had been getting, she'd come across as a true 'problem child', a title Severus loathed.

The Ministry being involved didn't help matters either. The staff didn't want to get on Umbridge's bad side due to her link at the Ministry and more specifically, her link to the Minister. So, telling Potter to keep her head down was safer than interfering and risking Umbridge's attention and wrath.

Still, he was going to have to tell Dumbledore about this. Blood quills were highly illegal. Just the possession of one meant a lifetime sentence in Azkaban. The Headmaster was going to have to do something about this.

But he didn't get the chance.

Severus hadn't even turned before his Dark Mark began to burn and at the same moment, Potter gasped, wet towel falling to the stone floor as she pressed both hands to the scar on her forehead.

"He-he was spotted!" Potter choked out. "At the-at the Ministry!"

And barely an hour later, everyone else found out about it as well. The evening edition of the Daily Prophet featured the Dark Lord on the front page. He was standing in the atrium at the Ministry, and there were at least a hundred Ministry workers there to witness it.

Which meant the vision he'd sent to Potter about Black was a trap.

If the Dark Lord had been at the Ministry after sending Potter the vision, then Severus had no doubt he'd been expecting Potter to rush over to rescue her godfather. She would have been ambushed then, either by the Dark Lord himself or some of the Inner Circle Death Eaters.

It was fortunate that Potter had had that vision during his lesson.

After sending Potter off to Gryffindor Tower with more murtlap essence, Severus headed for the Headmaster's office and was unsurprised to find Dumbledore was already there.

Before Dumbledore could speak, Severus told him about Potter's vision in class, his Dark Mark hurting afterwards, and Potter's second vision that happened at the same moment. And he also told him about Umbridge's blood quill and the words that had been permanently carved into the back of Potter's hand.

Fortunately, Dumbledore seemed quite angry about Umbridge, and the woman was removed from the castle within minutes, much to the celebration of the students (and a good deal of the staff as well).

For once, things appeared to be going well. Umbridge was gone, the general public was aware the Dark Lord had returned, and the Ministry was being forced to take action. Potter was safe as well.

But of course, the more Severus thought things were improving, the more he began to dread they would only get worse. Because they always did. Without fail.

And exactly as expected, Summer for Severus began painfully. The Dark Lord was furious that Potter didn't fall for his ploy and as had become normal now, he took his anger out on his followers. Severus had become disgustingly used to the cruciatus curse and he hated it.

For once he wanted term to start up again so he wouldn't have to worry about being summoned. The Dark Lord valued his position in the castle and tended to avoid summoning him during the school term unless absolutely necessary.

Severus thought the public becoming more aware of the Dark Lord's return would have meant the Order would be more active, but somehow, they were doing even less now.

Lupin was again sent to recruit werewolves, and Bill Weasley was told to attempt to convince the goblins at Gringotts to join their side. Shacklebolt and Tonks were told to find new Order members at the Ministry as well, but other than that no one was doing much of anything. Even Potter's guard had been removed, though Severus wasn't told why.

The decision made little sense to him. Wasn't Potter in more danger now? Especially considering the Dark Lord's anger regarding his recent failure.

The only good thing about it was that the Dark Lord didn't know where Potter lived. He hadn't asked Severus about it yet, and he was glad for that because he didn't know the answer either. Dumbledore had never told him Potter's address. Was that on purpose, Severus wondered?

Dumbledore was hiding something as well. Or hiding something new, at least. Severus knew he was always hiding things from the rest of them. He was disappearing for days at a time, but whenever he was asked where he was going, he would only change the subject. He did the same if he was asked why he kept leaving.

Severus' Dark Mark hurt him more often than it didn't, but to his relief, his soulmark remained painless. He wasn't expecting Potter to be in any danger-she was at home, after all, and he'd been told that she had learned about the blood wards keeping her safe from the Dark Lord, which meant it was unlikely that she would leave the property.

But he still worried and he was past telling himself he needed to deny it. He knew he would never act on that concern-Potter deserved far better than him in every way, after all, but denying everything was beginning to become exhausting.

Even then, he could never let her know the truth. It was incredibly selfish of him, but he'd done plenty of selfish things throughout his life. He'd hidden many things from Potter as well. What was one more?

But Severus wasn't the only one hiding things.

That's it for now. Looking forward to reviews! Laterz!