xlvii. bury your secrets
Severus was going to kill Harriet Potter.
Dawn sat heavy upon the horizon, thick and as yellow as Dumbledore's perduring lemon sherbets, the heat already seeping into the earth and into Severus' covered shoulders. The sleepless night and several rapid Apparitions across the isle left the Potions Master somewhat listless; he paused in his hike through the desolate wood to catch his breath, glaring at the sprig of evergreen tied together with Potter's hair floating at eye-level. It continued on, and Severus jerked his cloak out of the leaves, stomping forward.
If he found Potter before the Headmaster, she was going to wish she'd never been born.
The Locater Effigy was, technically, Dark magic—albeit Dark magic Dumbledore turned a blind-eye to if it meant finding Potter before somebody less savory did, though Severus imagined he'd be receiving a rather harsh and tedious lecture later that evening. Breaking and entering, threatening Muggles, performing Dark spells—Severus felt sixteen again, terrified of what the Headmaster would do after he'd gone too far and hexed James Potter's nose off the bastard's fat face. Once the urgency passed, Albus would think upon his punishment, and Severus knew it'd be decidedly unpleasant.
Hugging a Weasley, he thought, dredging up the most ridiculous situations he could to keep his mind busy. Becoming chapter president of a Longbottom fan club. Tea with Trelawney—oh, hell, I'd pitch myself off the Astronomy Tower first.
Dumbledore had more concerning issues to attend to at the moment than Severus' misdemeanors. When the Potions Master had barged into the older wizard's office at an ungodly hour when any sane man would've been fast asleep, he found the Headmaster awake and reading—and surprised to see Severus. That surprise twisted into shock, then anger, then fear as Severus relayed his false tip about Potter possibly being targeted by his past associates and his subsequent trip to Privet Drive. Upon hearing the blood-wards had failed, Dumbledore soared to one of his shelves and pulled forward a silver instrument gone silent, dark, and dusty.
A branch caught the hem of his cloak and Severus slid on the leaves, grunting. What is the brat doing out here? Bantiaumyrddin was fourteen kilometers to the west, but had the girl been there, the Effigy would have brought Severus to the village, not here, not to the middle of the bloody forest with nothing around aside from a Muggle town roughly six kilometers behind him. The Vow let him know she'd escaped danger and yet lived, otherwise Severus would think someone had murdered the girl and dumped her body out here.
Severus was well and truly fuming by the time he crested the rise and stepped into a clearing, prepared to drag Potter back to Hogwarts by the ear if he had to. Slytherin would, hopefully, be preoccupied with some nefarious, long-winded project bent on corrupting impressionable youths, else Severus would have to bring her somewhere else, possibly the old Dumbledore cottage in Godric's Hollow, or—Merlin forbid—Spinner's End.
A tent resided in the clearing's middle. The Locater Effigy lazily drifted closer and closer, until the Charm ceased and dropped onto the canvas with a slight plop. A tent, Severus thought. The girl who survived the Dark Lord's Killing Curse not once, but twice, is living in a tent. Marvelous.
He brought his feet down hard on the ground, breaking leaves and twigs beneath his boots to announce his presence. The tent's flap fluttered in the warm air.
"Potter!" Severus shouted, cursing himself for a fool when his voice echoed, and he glanced about the empty woods. "Miss Potter, present yourself, now."
With no answer forthcoming, Severus kicked the flap aside, stepped into the expanded space beyond—and found himself staring at a dead man.
He would have known the wizard sprawled on the floor was dead by the smell alone and didn't need to see the blood pooled beneath his leg and backside, nor the ghastly, mottled pallor of his swollen face. Wand in hand, Severus took two cautious steps forward and checked the area, finding no sign of a wayward Slytherin girl. Her possessions lay scattered about the tent: books and used clothes, an open package of Every Flavor Beans, a glass cauldron filled to the brim with rare Mermaid's Tears—though he had no bloody idea where she'd gotten that. A Girding Potion sat off to the side, congealing in the open air, and Severus glanced down at the summer essay he'd assigned half-completed on the floor.
Frowning, he crouched and laid the backs of his fingers against the cauldron, gauging the iron's temperature. "Cold," he murmured, glancing at the dead man. She'd been gone for hours at the least, and Severus guessed the wizard was the cause of the Vow's reaction last night. He must have threatened Potter, and the girl's Horned Serpent took care of the rest. "And she walks around with it like it's a scarf, insolent little fool."
Severus straightened, crossed the space, and used his foot to angle the wizard's face toward the morning light. He didn't recognize the man, but the crest on the front pocket and the robes were clearly Ministry issue. The man's wand rested in his rigid hand, which further proved he'd threatened the girl, and she'd been so terrified—or simply scared stupid—she left behind everything she owned and ran. Not that she would've been able to take the tent; legal Expansion Charms wouldn't close upon human bodies, living or dead. In fact, they were specifically engineered not to so kidnappers and killers couldn't go about lugging people about in bloody coin purses. He couldn't quite picture Potter dragging a dead man outside without the use of her wand.
Severus pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
Footsteps moving through the underbrush without discretion jerked his eye's toward the loose flap where. Severus quickly Disillusioned himself and stepped back into the shadows, confident the dead body on the floor would distract from any discerning shimmers left in the air. Moments later, the flap again open—ripped aside, hanging by a few loose filaments—and another wizard entered the tent.
He was initially dressed as a Muggle, but with a muttered incantation, his navy robes fell past his knees and the hat on his dark head disappeared. "Morgana's knickers," he cursed upon seeing the dead man, and with a suspicious glance over his shoulder, the man turned his profile toward the light. Severus froze. He froze because he recognized the wizard.
Cloyd Dogbane had never been much of a Death Eater—though, he had managed to impress the Dark Lord enough to be branded, which, contrary to popular belief, was not a simple feat to attain. Dogbane had flitted through the various Dark social spheres, too stupid to be a researcher like Severus, too impure to follow Lucius, and not fanatical enough for the likes of the Lestranges. In the wake of Voldemort's downfall, schisms formed between the ranks, the old guard chasing Slytherin, those with a lust for influence falling into Gaunt's camp, while the sycophantic stood by their defeated Dark Lord—and mostly went to Azkaban.
Severus didn't think he'd ever spared a thought for Cloyd Dogbane, not even when he gave the man's name to Dumbledore a dozen years ago. It figured he became a low-level Ministry grunt.
Lifting his wand, Severus summoned forth his will and hissed, "Imperio."
Yellow mist seeped into Dogbane's ears, freezing the wizard, who slowly turned to face a Disillusioned Severus.
"Why are you here?" he asked in an undertone, and though Dogbane opened his mouth to answer, the Potions Master disregarded whatever drivel he'd been about to spill and peered into his eyes. Dogbane's mind proved just as scattered as Petunia's, if not more so, scarred by Dark magic and the man's own perverse ideologies, throwing Severus from image to image like one of those Muggle pinball machines. No concrete reason for being in the middle of Oxfordshire existed in his head, only brief flashes of a familiar, dreaded silhouette barking orders that Dogbane was not to question. Those orders had led him—and the lout on the floor—to the tent, but not because of the locale.
Severus sucked air through his teeth as he freed himself from Dogbane's pitiful brain and stared at the wizard's listless, blank eyes. The dread that'd been twisting his stomach for hours intensified. He resisted the urge to be sick and drew upon his Occlusion, shutting his unease behind water and ice, letting the edges blur in the murky undertow.
"Obliviate," he muttered, flicking his wand by Dogbane's temple. The spell took, erasing the past several minutes from the wizard's head, leaving his consciousness soft and malleable. "You discovered nothing in these woods. You could not find your compatriot and wonder if he's decided to leave the country and abandon the Ministry. Having no success in finding Harriet Potter, you have the unquestionable urge to return home and drink yourself insouciant. When you awaken, you will make your report to your master."
Severus took a step to the side and Dogbane swayed for an instant, then shook his head as the Imperius dissolved, leaving the man disoriented and compelled to do as ordered. Severus sneered as Dogbane turned and headed out of the tent. He remembered little of the man, but he did recall Dogbane's proclivity for drink; the best compulsions centered upon objects, events, and scenarios the cursed person in question found pleasurable. Dogbane gave the dead man and the tent little thought, so focused on getting pissed, he Apparated from one step to the next.
Severus waited. A minute passed, then another, and he exhaled, letting the Disillusionment fall, appearing once more—dark, disheveled, and exhausted—in Potter's tent. He considered what he'd seen in Dogbane's thoughts as he lifted his wand, silver light flooding the space as a watery Patronus took form. "Headmaster. The girl's been attacked and has fled, leaving…matters for me to attend. Gaunt sent out a pair of wizards to find her." Severus paused. "Someone has informed him of what occurred in June. He is…intrigued."
The Patronus bounded through the canvas wall, taking the colorless light with it. Again, Severus waited with his arms crossed and his back stiff, listening to the birds sing and the breeze whisper, until silver light again blossomed into being, and a radiant phoenix burst through the wall, the sight just as ostentatious and eye-searing as its caster. "I believe I know where she has gone," the phoenix echoed. "Return to the castle so we may proceed."
Muttering about demanding old men, Severus dismissed the Headmaster's summons and turned his attention instead to the wizard upon the floor. Pitiful. Defeated by a scared twelve-year-old and a snake. Wrinkling his nose against the smell, the Potions Master crouched and used his wand to slice the wizard's left sleeve down to the elbow. Parting the fabric revealed the anticipated Dark Mark, glamored to be inconspicuous unless a person knew it was there.
How does Gaunt know about her? How does he know what happened last term? Who told him?
A silent mobilicorpus sent the body outside, Severus scouring the bloody stains left behind until the floor was somewhat clean, or would at least pass Ministry inspection. Spotting the trunk left at the foot of the bed, he opened it and performed a cursory search for the Invisibility Cloak, releasing a breath when he failed to turn anything up. Either the girl had hidden it well or she'd had enough sense to take it with her.
Another flick of the wand sent Potter's possessions soaring into the trunk before he sealed it, lock clattering home, the Girding Potion vanishing and her essay—with her bloody name on it, left at the scene of a murder for Merlin's sake—was tucked into Severus' pocket. He followed the trunk out of the tent, and once standing in the open wood again, collapsed the structure and shrunk both it and the trunk so he could swipe them off the forest floor and stuff them into a cloak pocket.
Severus found it indicative of his life's wretched state that he knew the proper spells for digging a grave and had practiced them enough over the years to be proficient. He exhumed six feet of earth and levered the Death Eater into the new hole, the body falling down with a heavy, dull thump, before Severus muttered an incantation and purple flames consumed the dead man.
The smokeless inferno writhed above the grave's edges, the color reflected in Severus' blank, tired stare as he watched, his mind roving far from that quiet clearing and the morning-clad forest. He'd buried, burned, dismembered, and destroyed more than one body at the behest of the Dark Lord—be it Voldemort or Slytherin—or Dumbledore. He'd killed as well, though not with the same frequency, and those faces still haunted his unsuspecting thoughts from time to time.
The Wizarding community as a whole mistakenly assumed Death Eaters came into the Dark Lord's service under the assumption of being racists, kidnappers, rapists, and murderers. Had that been true, the Dark Lord would have had very few followers indeed, aside from maybe Bellatrix, the mad bint. The Dark Lord appealed to a man, or woman's, desires, and like a compulsion, he found all that was malleable in a person's mind, in their very soul, until he created something useful to him. He preyed upon pure-blooded fear of Muggle incursion, on a savage man's need to dominate, on a scholar's wish to learn. The Dark Lord could twist even those with the purest of hearts into his pawns.
Not that Severus considered himself pure of heart. He snorted at the very idea as the fire simmered and began to disperse. No, even as an angry, idiot teenager, he'd not been naive enough to mistake the Dark Lord for a man of good intentions. However, if Severus had known poison research and Potions mastery would turn into disposing of the bodies of families ruined by the Dark Lord's more brutal servants, he liked to think he wouldn't have been fucking stupid enough to kneel at the bastard's feet. Reality rarely matched expectations, which Severus learned well when he found himself ankle-deep in human viscera, sicking up his own guts, a hair's breadth away from being tortured mad if he didn't stop "disappointing" his master. The Dark Lord had no patience for those who disappointed him.
Severus shook himself. Exhaustion plagued him, dredging up pointless memories, which he dismissed and drowned in Occlusion as he rubbed his dry eyes and poured dirt into the grave. The fire died beneath the earth and what dirt the body displaced swiftly dispersed, leaving an innocuous stretch of ground in the forest Severus covered with kicked leaves and twigs.
"Appare Vestigium," he said, and blotches of color came into view, highlighting the traces of magic and residual human presence—the very same residue the Locater Effigy had followed to the clearing in the first place, drawn to the most potent resonance of Potter's being. Severus lifted his gaze and traced the footsteps leading from the site back toward the Muggle town. Potter had gone that way. At least he knew she wasn't lost in the countryside somewhere.
The Potions Master went about obliterating the traces, hiding the grave and clearing from both magical detection and mundane sight. When finished, he tucked his wand away and exhaled. I've buried bodies for Death Eaters, for the Order, and now for Harriet Potter, Severus thought. Merlin save Lily's daughter if it's not the last.
With a final step, the darkly clad wizard Disapparated. Nothing remained but a lingering smell of burning flesh, and even that disappeared into the rising wind.
A/N: just to be safe, there were two chapters updated, both xlvi. and xlvii. Make sure you read both!