AN: I'm editing this chapter on the app, as I'm away on vacation, so hopefully the formatting is right. As always, thank you for reading!

Chapter 7: Animae Miscentur

Hermione's transfigured boots clicked satisfyingly over the cobblestones of Knockturn Alley. She fought to keep her steps slow and measured, even as the excitement and nerves of going on some secret excursion made her want to skip along the alley. How ridiculous would that look, though? An old lady dancing along behind Professor Snape? She hid her smile, biting the inside of her lip, though she knew the hood over her head covered her face completely, and rushed with her short steps to catch up to Professor Snape.

In stark contrast to her, he strode down Knockturn Alley as if he owned the place. While he did not strut in a way reminiscent of Lucius Malfoy, he held his head up, and she was sure that even as his eyes darted across their surroundings, he didn't make eye contact with anyone, giving off the distinct aura of having a job to do and no time to be parted from it. A woman huddled in a doorway jerked upright as they passed, and something wriggling on the tray she held jumped with her movements, landing with a heavy, wet splat on the dirty ground. A pair of boys, barely old enough to go to Hogwarts, surely, practically leapt out of the way as she and Snape passed Borgin and Burkes.

The day was sunny when she'd stepped out of Grimmauld Place, so warm that she had regretted her choice of clothing, but the moment they'd arrived in Knockturn Alley, the shadows and slight breeze swirling down the street kept her cool.

Probably some weird spell, she thought to herself. Knockturn Alley would cast spells to increase its own spookiness.

Snape took a sharp left after the antique shop and Hermione found herself following him through a low doorway that Snape had to stoop for. The door shut automatically behind them and she glanced around. She felt a momentary flash of surprise, followed by a mellowing disappointment.

"Potions ingredients? That is the mission?" she whispered.

A barely audible, but caustic "Hush!" pierced her ear, and then Snape was gliding to the back counter where the proprietor stood. Wispy white hair settled around his head like a cloudy halo, and he had a small brass eye loupe pressed to his left eye as he examined a pile of newt scales he was sorting.

"Just a mo'," he said in a somewhat high pitched sing-song voice.

He carefully extracted a brilliant gold scale from the pile with a pair of tweezers and dropped it into a glass jar on the counter where a dozen other metallic scales lay at the bottom. He removed the eye loupe and looked up at them both. His brilliant green eyes, which exactly matched the color of his vest, lit up and he stepped down from the counter, shrinking by a head.

"Ah, Master Snape. I've got your order ready in the back."

"There is a modification, Fawley," Snape interjected before he could disappear. He withdrew a scroll of parchment from his robes and pushed it across the counter. Fawley unrolled it and scanned down the list.

"Hmm… Yes, we should have enough… Just got more yesterday…" Fawley said. "This will take me several minutes to put together. And it will be–"

Snape set a coin purse onto the counter, which Fawley hefted in one hand, still examining the list and tilting his head from side to side. "Yes, this should quite cover it." He jerked his head to the side as he turned. "Help yourselves."

Hermione followed as Severus withdrew, approaching a nook where the counter met the wall and a gleaming tea set began pouring out drinks for them both. A small pitcher of milk poured a few splashes into her cup before it floated to her.

"How did it–?" she whispered.

"Goblin-made," he muttered, taking his own cup of black tea. "Imbued with charms to suit the drinker's preference."

"But how does that work? Is it some sort of…legilimency or…"

Snape shook his head. "Legilimency requires a mind. You could never charm an object by such a method."

"Then how–?"

"Think about it," he said shortly and sipped his tea.

She thought it over, but by the time she finished her cup, she still had no answer she hadn't also managed to rule out. Her eyes had taken to wandering the shelves. While the apothecary was dimly lit, it was immaculately clean and well-organized. No, the aesthetic didn't bother her. What did bother her were the ingredients themselves. She stepped closer to one of the shelves and began reading the labels.

"Fetal pig heart," she said. "Pickled mermaid ear. What potions require these ingredients?"

"None that you'll find in this year's curriculum," he muttered.

Hermione stepped closer to a small vial filled with dark red liquid. Her eyes widened as she read the label. Her lips twisted, and she was grateful that she'd already finished her tea.

"Is this really—?"

"All of Fawley's ingredients are authentic. Now stop asking questions," he snapped.

She jumped a little at his tone, and then peered at him from under her heavy hood. He allowed the teapot to refill his cup, and she noticed that his fingers gripped it a little too tightly. His face was as pale as ever, but it looked as if his skin was stretched over his bones. It had the same dry, lifeless look her father's had gotten when Grandpa Granger was dying and all his affairs had to be put in order. Mum had tried to help, but what with taking on more of the practice in dad's absence and Uncle Roger dying when she was just a baby, dad had had to handle everything himself.

At the sound of footsteps, she returned dutifully to Snape's side as Fawley reappeared from the back, two large paper bags in his hands. They made heavy twin thunks as he set them on the counter. Fawley reached into his pocket, withdrawing the coin purse Snape had given him, and plucking two gold coins from it.

"I only had fourteen ounces of powdered thestral hoof," he said.

"Keep it," Snape interrupted, tapping the bags in turn and shrinking them down until they fit in his pocket. "I will send my assistant to collect the last ten ounces."

Fawley's eyes swept over Hermione's form, and she was grateful yet again for the hood over her head as she felt her face redden under his attention. She had the queer sensation she was being evaluated by an eleventy-one year old Bilbo Baggins.

"Master Snape," he said, wispy eyebrows raised. "I've never heard of you taking on an apprentice."

Hermione would have missed it if she weren't already watching Snape's face. His eyebrow twitched as if in alar , and then his face settled.

"And no one else will," he replied, matter-of-fact. And then he was pushing a stack of gold coins, which appeared so suddenly that Hermione wouldn't have been surprised if he had used magic to pull them from his sleeves, across the counter.

Fawley nodded, pocketing the gold deftly and picking up his eye loupe once again. "I'll owl when it's ready."

Snape nodded in reply and turned abruptly, leaving Hermione to scramble after him, a tangled knot of questions half-formed in her head.

A bell chimed after them as they left. Clouds had begun to gather, and a blustery wind swirled through the street, sending her cloak and skirt rippling into the air. She instantly felt grateful for the transfigured boots on her feet. Tennis shoes would have stood out like…well, tennis shoes…in a place like this.

"I don't understand. Why did he say–oof!"

Snape had stopped abruptly in front of her and she had run into him and stumbled. There was a muffled swear and a tinkering of metal. She felt a tug on the sleeve of her robes even as Snape settled himself more firmly between her and what she realized was the cause of their stopping. A man even shorter than she was half-crouched in the street, picking up all manner of metal objects off the cobblestones.

"Fletcher," Snape said in a cool, seemingly unaffected tone.

Years of acquaintance with Snape had given her some familiarity with his tones. There was the "I see you really are as much of a dunderhead as I supposed" tone which he used with Neville right after preventing an explosion in potions class. There was the "I am delighted to make a bad day for Mr. Potter become a very bad day" tone which he employed as often as possible. But the one she dreaded most was the "So, you thought you could get away with it. What a pity" tone when he swooped upon students at the worst moments.

The latter was the tone he used now.

The man dropped half the objects in his hands, stumbling over them as he tried to stand up straight.

"Snape!" he said in a surprisingly high pitched tone.

Hermione caught sight of him around Snape's shoulder. He was dressed in somewhat flamboyant robes, but they looked as if they had seen better days, perhaps a couple decades ago. Even at a distance, she could pick up the smell of stale tobacco smoke wafting through the side street. His brown eyes were wide and blinking behind his shaggy ginger hair. Those eyes darted to her, then back to Snape.

"What…er…brings you to Knockturn Alley on a day like this?" he asked. His voice was lower now, and Hermione knew that his confusion, though still present, lost some of its nerves.

Snape crossed his arms. "I could ask the same of you," he said, and looked pointedly down at the pile of silver objects on the cobblestones. "You seem rather in a rush. Need a hand, Mundungus?"

"No!" Mundungus (What kind of name is Mundungus? Hermione wondered) said a little too loudly and a little too quickly. He cast a glance back toward the main street, then turned back. "No, no. I'm just out for a bit of shopping."

"A bit of selling is what it looks like."

The man scowled and raised a finger. "Now, listen here, Snape–"

Snape moved fast. One moment he was standing inches in front of Hermione, and the next, he had Mundungus pressed against the wall. Hermione squeaked and took a step back, grateful for the shadows they stood in, but still worried that anyone could come along at any moment.

"No," Snape whispered, and venom dripped from his tongue. "You listen. You're supposed to be working, not selling a bunch of junk."

Mundungus opened his mouth, but Snape's wand was suddenly pressed against the man's neck. Hermione swallowed a gasp and felt goosebumps erupt over her skin as something heavy and electric filled the space around them. She stared wide-eyed at the two of them. What was happening?

"Furthermore, you do not question me. If you can't do your job properly–"

"N-no, I…I can–" Mundungus stuttered, droopy eyes fully alert and straining to look at the spot where Snape's wand dug into his neck.

"Good," Snape said, and he stepped away abruptly, leaving Mundungus to collapse onto the dirty ground. He stowed his wand back into his robes and smoothed them out. He turned his head, just barely, over his shoulder. "Come," he commanded.

Hermione spared one more alarmed look at the pile of limbs and crumpled velvet that was Mundungus Fletcher, then hurried after Snape out to the main street.

Snape's grip was so tight upon her arm as he side-alonged her back to Headquarters that she immediately brought her hand up to massage it the moment he let go. He pushed open the door, not looking at her, and shut it behind them quickly. Then he staked down the passageway to the stairs leading to the basement. Bewildered and wincing slightly, Hermione followed him, only seeing the hem of his cloak at the bottom of the stairs, the end of the hall, and the door to the potions lab. Almost gasping in her rush, she collapsed onto a work stool as the door snapped shut.

Snape was stood at the work counter, hands braced at the ledge and staring down at its surface. Hermione watched his shoulders rise and fall with measured, impossibly slow breaths. His eyes were closed. A long silence passed.

"Sir…?"

"Wait."

Hermione sat through another long silence, trying not to squirm impatiently in her seat as Snape's breaths slowed so much that she thought maybe he had fallen asleep. Finally, he straightened up and let go of his grip on the table. His face was smooth, his eyes distant.

"Stay here."

With that, he disappeared from the room. Hermione slouched in her seat.

What on earth is the matter with him? she wondered.

She replayed the scene from the Alley in her head. She had never heard of the man Mundungus Fletcher, and judging by his attire and his activities–for she suspected him of doing something illicit–she probably wouldn't want to be acquainted with him. But why had Professor Snape reacted so strongly to him? One moment he was speaking to the man as if he was a student caught out of bounds, and the next he looked ready to curse him in an alleyway.

This is Snape you're talking about, she could imagine Ron saying.

Yeah, Harry would add. Since when has he been the nice, cuddly type?

Slimy git, more like, Ron's voice added.

"Shut up," Hermione whispered, and then shook her head at herself.

Whatever had happened between the two men, it clearly was too far under the surface for her to understand. She wasn't Harry. She needn't drive herself crazy wondering about it. In the meantime, she decided, she could try to make herself useful upon Snape's return.

Hopping down from her stool, she walked over to the potions ingredients. They were all neatly labeled and in alphabetical order. Not even a speck of dust surrounded the vials or coated the tops of their stoppers. The large square sink at the back of the room was empty of all equipment. Even the completed potions from her other visit were gone. She frowned.

Well then, what was she supposed to do? As she turned to go back to her stool, however, she spied an open notebook in the back corner of the room. Curiously, she looked down at the black ink that covered the pages, blinked, then peered even closer.

Surely, she was looking at research. The characteristic spiky handwriting gave away the owner, even if she didn't know Professor Snape worked down in this lab. His writing was miniscule but neat in perfectly straight rows which had to stop and start again around diagrams of potions ingredients. Some things were underlined. One section of text had a heavy black box drawn around it.

Sloth brain mucus, dragon liver, fluxweed, and lionfish spine were all ingredients used in healing potions. But Hermione didn't recognize alihotsy from any healing potions. She raised a hand. Her fingers barely brushed the crisp parchment page, ready to turn it…

"What do you think you are doing?"

She jumped and whirled around. Snape had returned, a scowl just beginning to carve itself into his features as he stared at her from the door.

"Nothing, I–"

"I truly can't leave you alone for five minutes without you putting your nose where it doesn't belong, Miss Granger?" he demanded, striding toward her.

She took a half step back. "I wasn't–it was open already–"

"Yes," he snapped, seizing the book. "I suppose that means 'Please, come peruse me as if I belonged to you' in Gryffindor."

Hermione swallowed and took another half step back. "No, of course it doesn't, I–"

"But then, why should I be surprised?" he snarled, bearing down upon her. "The great Gryffindor bookworm couldn't resist an open book, could she?"

"Sir, please," Hermione said, and she took another step back, abruptly bumping into the sink. Her heart pounded in her chest. She took a breath and tried to force calm into her voice. "I didn't intend to be sneaky or nosy–"

"And yet!" Snape interrupted, brandishing the book in the air.

"Yet I was," Hermione said quickly. She clasped her hands in front of her. "I apologize, sir."

There was a silence, during which Snape lowered his arm and examined her, scanning her face as if searching for a lie. After a moment, he huffed and waved his hand wordlessly over her face. She felt a cool sting across her cheeks and forehead and reached a hand up to her hair, pulling a perfectly normal brown curl into her vision, and she knew the work she'd done to disguise her face had been undone. Snape peered at her, as if now he might better read her expression, but then he turned and sat on a pulled out stool. Hermione blinked, staring after him, then slowly walked around the table to resume her old seat.

"You have reached your question quota," he said, eyes resolutely focused on the book lying on the table between them. "Nevertheless, I don't imagine we will get much more work done unless you are prevented from exploding from keeping your questions back. Therefore–" He raised his eyes to hers, cool black meeting warm brown. "I will allow you…one."

Hermione's stomach, which had just lurched hopefully, twisted. Only one? she wanted to ask. If he saw the frustration in her face, he didn't react to it. He only looked at her blankly, waiting.

Hermione leaned back slightly and stared at her hands clasped on the table. On the one hand, she'd give a great deal of the savings she had stored in her Gringotts vault to, as he put it, peruse more of the journal. Whatever Snape was working on looked complex, and that was only the one page. In a way not too dissimilar from her experience sitting under the Sorting Hat, her first instinct was to choose knowledge.

On the other hand, though, she didn't know what to make of the scene in the Alley. While it wasn't terribly outlandish to see Snape swoop down upon someone, she'd never seen a reaction this intense. She could barely remember him drawing his wand upon finding her, Harry and Ron in the Shrieking Shack with Sirius Black. And to hold someone up against a wall with one arm… It was so…muggle. Somehow the event conjured two puzzle pieces of Professor Snape that didn't quite fit together.

And–she exhaled a laugh through her nose–how insignificant it seemed now in comparison, but she was still curious about that tea set.

She glanced up at Snape. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

Right, she thought, straightening up.

"I'd like to know," she said slowly. "About Mundungus Fletcher, sir."

He merely stared at her and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. What was wrong with what I said? she wondered. And then it hit her. She felt both a little foolish and a little exasperated: for the second time, she wasn't being sneaky on purpose.

"Would you tell me about Mundungus Fletcher, pease, sir?" she asked.

Snape nodded once, shortly.

"Mundungus Fletcher is a member of the Order of the Phoenix," he said blandly, as if reciting something he'd memorized. "What?" he asked when she recoiled. "Ah, you wonder at my treatment of him if so. Well–"

"No. Sorry, sir," she added. "It's just…I just didn't think someone like–well, someone like him would be in the Order."

"Why not?" he asked. It was not rude, or even particularly sharp. It seemed as if he really did just want to know her reasoning.

"Well…" she said slowly. "He was sneaking around Knockturn Alley."

"As someone who has proven her sneakiness on several occasions and who was also in Knockturn Alley at the time, I fail to quite understand your point," Snape said, addressing a spot somewhere above her head.

"True," she said, eyes narrowed at him. Did his mouth twitch? "But he was behaving much more sneaky than I was."

"True," Snape said, and this time there was definitely a hint of a smirk.

"And," she went on, encouraged by his response. "For someone doing sneaky things around Knockturn Alley, he was doing rather a poor job of it. He looked suspicious even to me."

Snape muttered something that sounded like "And that is saying something." but he continued aloud. "While Mundungus Fletcher does spend his free time engaged in…dubious affairs…he is a valued member of the Order. Can you think why?"

Hermione planted her elbows on the table and looked up at him with raised brows. She was supposed to make such a prediction without even knowing the man? Snape tilted his head at her, observing her almost politely.

So, she thought. That must mean there's some chance of me guessing right. She quickly ran back through everything she knew about Fletcher. Not very well kept, certainly sneaking around doing… What had he been doing? Hermione remembered the metallic clang of objects. A jewelry box, a brooch, a candlestick.

"Selling, more like," Snape had said.

She saw him again, stooping hastily to gather the objects into his arms. If he were merely selling things, she could see him scrambling so if they were highly valuable. But if they were worth so much, why would he carry them in his arms? Surely a bag or, better yet, a case would have been more appropriate.

She now recalled the way his eyes had darted around the alley, almost as if he expected to be caught at any moment. With a jolt, she realized what was so familiar about it: Peter Pettigrew had cast the same anxious glances around the bedroom of the Shrieking Shack that night at the end of third year.

He could be in hiding. It would explain the outdated clothes. But surely he wouldn't have greeted Snape if that were so, nor would he be attempting to sell his goods. So it came back to the objects themselves. What was so important about them?

And then she knew. They were stolen.

With a huff, she slumped. But that didn't explain it at all! Why would the Order align itself with a thief?

"You're getting close," Snape said, and she hopped a little in her seat.

"How did you—?"

"Keep thinking," he said.

As if that was easy to do with him squinting at her.

As if he knew what she'd thought, he raised his eyes once more to a spot on the wall above her head.

Fine. What advantage does making allies with a thief have?

"I may be a burglar," came the line, unbidden, to her head in her father's voice. "But I'm an honest one, I hope, more or less."

Suddenly it was like she was eight years old again, delighting in fantasy stories and hoping against hope that the strange things that happened around her–like her classmate Mary Anne's hair turning green after she teased Hermione; or books floating down to her from the top shelf; or the car mysteriously refusing to start when her parents tried to take her to her doctor appointment–were actually caused by her because she wished it.

That night after the car failed to start, she'd heard her mother say to her father behind their closed bedroom door: "Maybe you shouldn't read her that story."

"Nonsense, Helen," he'd said. "What harm could reading a story do?"

But the damage had already been done. Somehow, the magic had been there long before her father had ever read to her about elves and goblins, hobbits and wizards.

Wizards.

She shook herself, coming back to the present. Thieves were not to be trusted, except by those who needed their help.

"He has other connections," she said, looking up into Snape's face. He kept his eyes fixed on the spot behind her, but she examined him as she talked, looking for a sign of her being on the right track. "While he wouldn't be very trustworthy on his own, it's his connections that make him valuable, connections to…well, the other side."

His eyes were only just averted, as if she were looking at him in three-quarter profile. The thought encouraged her to scan the rest of his face. His large, beak-like nose seemed to tilt upwards, whether in a nod or not, she wasn't sure. The movement emphasized the height of his cheekbones. She followed down the line of one into the hollow of his cheek, across his strong jaw to the point of his chin. His neck was long.

"Still, there must be something there," she said. "Something that makes him trusted by the Order, some way he's proven his loyalty. Or maybe he has no other option, no one else he can trust. He's almost like a–"

Snape's neck shuddered as he swallowed, and his dark eyes flashed to hers. The word "spy" died in her dry throat. The look on his face–something trapped between anger, suspicion, and alarm–gave her the experience, for the first time in her life, of being afraid that she had just stumbled upon the correct answer. She felt her eyes widen.

Snape's face worked, his cheeks sucking inwards and his mouth twisting, for a moment before speech was possible.

"Mundungus Fletcher," he said, and only the slightest tremble differentiated it from his previously bored lecture. "Is, indeed, a thief. He is a liar and a cheat. He would sell his own friend if the price were right. The only caution he takes, however, is not to cut any ties unless he must, and he does have the good sense to know that certain loyalties given are retained…by the right person. His main flaw is that he is a little too obvious." The corner of his mouth curled wryly. "Then again, appearing obvious and being obvious are two different things."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. Aside from her first potions class in her first year, she wasn't sure she'd heard Snape speak at length without insulting someone. Because, she could tell, him calling Fletcher a thief and a liar wasn't an insult: it was a fact. Her brow furrowed as she scanned over his lines, wondering how many of them contained double meanings.

"So," she finally said, willing herself not to turn from his fixed gaze. "How do we know he's on our side?"

The room felt heavy again, except this time, there was no sense of electricity in the air. Instead, there was pressure, as if the air had grown too thin, or as if a bubble surrounded them in the room. She wouldn't have been surprised to see a Protego flare around them. Snape's gaze somehow grew deeper, as if she were being pulled into a long tunnel created by his eyes.

His voice when he spoke came out as a whisper. Goosebumps crawled up her arms.

"During the first wizarding war, no one knew who to trust…"

As he spoke, images arose in Hermione's mind as if she were watching them being projected upon a screen. Diagon Alley so dark that it looked like Knockturn Alley. People almost sprinting from one shop to the next. Daily Prophet articles taped to the windows, proclaiming another attack, another family killed, another Dark Mark in the air. A blur of light and shadow, and then a circle of people standing in black cloaks.

"People were disappearing, if not being outright murdered in their homes. The Ministry was chaos: no one knew whether their once trusted coworker was an ally or not. Why rule with force when you can rule with fear? It suited…his strategies well."

Figures whispering in the corners of the Leaky Cauldron, casting glances over their shoulders when the floo activated. Mothers clutching their children's hands with white knuckles. The heady electric buzz of wards around the perimeters of properties in Hogsmeade.

"No one was safe. No family was spared."

Hermione blinked and the images dissolved.

"Mundungus Fletcher," Snape was saying. "Lost every family member he possessed by seventy-eight. It wasn't a mystery who did it. And it wasn't a wonder that, when Dumbledore cornered him in the Hog's Head, he agreed to add information to the wares he was buying and selling."

"Then why were you angry with him?" Hermione asked, when it looked like Snape would say no more. "If he was selling–"

"Fletcher has another job to do these days," Snape said. "One that takes priority over–"

But then he stopped, and with a muffled cry, he grasped his left forearm. He stood, knocking down his stool. Hermione jumped up, too.

"Sir, what's wrong?" She looked at his arm. "Is it–is he–?"

"Go back to your room," Snape bit out. "Tell no one of the Alley. Tell no one of this." He jerked his head down to his arm.

"I–"

"Your word, Miss Granger,"

"My…" she faltered. "Yes, okay. My word, sir."

Snape nodded stiffly, then he turned and tore out of the room.