A Merry Little Christmas
       He stayed up until 1am, about the time the rest of the castle was finally settling down for the night. It had taken him until midnight to prepare the pewter vials. Then he'd returned to his quarters to pack a rucksack with the few items he wished to take with ... his silk dressing gown, Minerva's photo of the quidditch team, the cards the Slytherins had made him over the years. He dropped the lumpy canvas bag beside his writing desk and returned to his bedroom for a nap.
       At 4am he rose, picked up the rucksack, and slipped quietly into the passageway. There was something forlorn about strolling the hushed, dim-lit corridors of the school at this hour, he realized. It did not feel like staying up late or getting up early. Still, he moved steadily until he reached the front door of the castle where he found a morose, silvery specter waiting for him. Gazing at the Baron, Snape knew his only moment of regret.
       "Goodbye, Severus," the spirit murmured.
       "Goodbye, Baron."
       He slipped out the front doors and walked briskly across the lawn to disappear into the night.
       It took all day to reach Annabel's house, a few kilometers beyond Hogsmeade. He had no broom; he'd never been able to afford one as a child and he hadn't cared to acquire one as an adult. He might have apparated, but he preferred to walk, reveling in the crisp fresh air, sunshine and blue skies. Freedom made it all so sweet that his throat ached every time he raised his eyes to look about.
       He avoided the town itself, taking the long way round, slipping into invisibility whenever a fellow traveler approached from the opposite direction. If there were two or more, invariably they were discussing the previous day's events and bubbling with anticipation about the future. Overhead, owls bearing glad tidings soared across the sky.
       The sun had just begun to set when he raised a fist to knock on the door of Annabel's modest two-story abode. When she opened it, he saw she was glowing with happiness, as were so many of the people he had passed that day. "Severus!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. She gave him a fierce hug and he slipped his arms around her waist to squeeze her gently back, gazing over her shoulder at the comfortable domesticity within. Something meaty and delicious was roasting in the oven. A pile of notes, no doubt delivered by some of the owls he'd seen flying all day, littered the fireplace mantle. Her table was neatly set for one and a teapot was bubbling on the hearth. "I made a pie with the last of the rhubarb," she told him. "Bit of a celebration!" She beamed at him, then took him by the hand to lead him into the house. "I'm so proud of you, Severus," she praised after closing the door behind him and taking both of his hands in hers. "And I'm so pleased to see you!"
       "I need someplace to spend the night," Snape told her.
       Annabel smiled. "Would you like a bath before dinner?" Snape nodded and she led him upstairs to the lavatory.
       She opened the taps for him, smiling again as she added a generous quantity of sudsing syrup to the water filling the tub, then left him to go down and set another place at the table. When she returned, she found him reclining contentedly in a small sea of bubbles, his eyes shut, his face serene.
       "Shall I do your back?" she offered, and he opened one eye to glance at her before sitting up to hug his knees. She scrubbed his back and then filled her palm with soap to wash his hair, as she'd done so many times before. But this time, when she pressed her fingertips to his scalp, he flinched. Annabel frowned.
       "All right, Severus?" she inquired gently.
       His jaw twitched but after a moment, he nodded.
       She lathered his hair and rinsed it, then hugged him around the neck and kissed him on the cheek before departing. After a few more moments of luxurious soaking, he climbed out of the tub, dried himself off, and slipped into his Slytherin-green dressing gown. Then he stood before the steamy mirror, staring at himself.
       He could barely make out the shape of his body in the watery film that covered the reflective surface. So he reached out with one hand to wipe a space clean, staring at himself for a long time. Then he took his wand in hand and, after a brief hesitation, touched it gently to the tip of one black lock, drew a deep breath, and whispered the incantation to dry his hair.
       *****
      
      
      
       "I heard something funny today."
       Violet looked down from the high window ledge in the Slytherin common room where she'd been watching the snow fall on the last Friday evening in November. Malfoy's announcement came as something of a surprise; humor was rare in the stone cold corridors of the castle these days.
       In the four weeks since Snape had disappeared, an unshakable malaise had gripped the school. The citizens of Hogwarts were divided by his departure into three camps: those who ached, those who resented, and those who thought they understood. The resentful grumbled and occasionally lashed out with verbal potshots intended to pre-empt any consideration of culpability. The heartsick, loyal to the progress of recent months, refrained from developing new grudges and responded instead with quick, brutal sucker punches that cleared the air but did nothing to dispel the overall gloom.
       In an effort to reduce the corridor fisticuffs, Dumbledore cut short the week-long celebration of Voldemort's defeat and ordered everybody back to class, canceling Potions and Defense in favor of extra lessons in the subjects they'd been neglecting for so many months. But the instructors were unable to generate much enthusiasm for their lessons. McGonagall, especially, dragged about the castle as if she were still battling her head cold.
       The headmaster hid his reaction to Snape's departure behind the stone gargoyles that guarded his spiral staircase, retreating to his office to fill roll after roll of parchment with appeals for more supplies. The school's population would double when the absent children returned after Christmas and so far, he'd been unable to arrange for more food.
       "I thought things would ease up after Voldemort's defeat," Warrington had observed of the continuing shortages one Saturday morning in the common room.
       "Granger says the people behind the sanctions are mad about losing money," Malfoy had informed him. "They had deals with Voldemort's people on one level or another."
       "Oh, for crying out loud!" Millicent had exploded. "Where does the fact that he was a thousand times more villainous than we've ever been fit into their thinking?"
       "It doesn't," Malfoy had reminded her. "Remember what McGonagall said at choir practice last month? They lie to themselves about us."
       They weren't having choir practice anymore. Neville Longbottom had suggested making the group a capella but McGonagall had refused. For some reason, Hermione had glared at the Slytherins for that.
       No one was angrier with Snape for leaving than Granger. The Slytherins found this particularly difficult to stomach, seeing as how the Head Girl had benefited enormously from their housemaster's departure. A search of Snape's desk had revealed a letter to Hermione explaining that Snape had set up an account for her at Gringotts. He'd been depositing and would continue to deposit one third of the proceeds from Lupin's Remedy. Harry and Ron had peeked over her shoulder at the note, which she had read at breakfast in the Great Hall, and Ron had whistled at the account balance to date. "Who knew there were so many werewolves in the world!" he'd breathed.
       "I did," Hermione had replied. "There are about 2,000 werewolves taking a dose of Lupin's Remedy each month, and Snape earns half a galleon per dose. It's not enough to make a person rich, but it will certainly keep each of us afloat, and I suppose the number of werewolves will only increase."
       Violet shifted on the window ledge to draw her robe more tightly around her and sniffed at the memory of Hermione's ingratitude. That Gryffindor cow! She hadn't even told them about Peter Pettigrew; they'd had to hear about it from Ginny Weasley.
       "Executed," the red-head had breathed, showing them the copy of the DAILY PROPHET she'd smuggled out of Hermione's dormitory. "Someone tracked him down and destroyed him in his lair."
       There'd been a long silence, after which Ginny had suggested softly, "Maybe Snape will come back now."
       But Snape had not returned.
       Now Malfoy stood up so they could all see him. "Justin Finch-Fletchley was walking to the Great Hall with Hannah Abbott," he recounted for his housemates. "You know how gloomy he and most of the Hufflepuffs have been since Snape left."
       The Slytherins nodded. They'd found it endearing, actually, the number of times Malfoy had had to pull Justin off petulant students making snide remarks about guilt-mongering instructors.
       "He heaved a bit of a sigh," Malfoy went on, "and said to Hannah, 'Well, at least we don't have to worry about him flogging our entire house on Christmas Eve.'"
       The blonde Slytherin had captured Justin's somber, tragic style perfectly, but the Slytherins didn't even smirk. Malfoy rolled his eyes, then put his hands on his hips and thrust his pelvis to one side before assuming Hannah's earnest, feminine lilt.
       "'Do you think we were next, Justin?'" he quoted the Hufflepuff girl. Then he folded his arms across his chest in an approximation of Justin's pretentious seriousness and concluded,
       "'Oh, I'm sure of it.'"
       He dropped his arms to his sides with a grin and waited for his housemates' response. The Slytherins stared. Then, silently, they bent their heads and returned to the listless thumbing of their spellbooks or stared vacantly into space.
       "Oh, come on!" Malfoy scolded. "This has to stop." He climbed on top of the coffee table in front of the fire and clapped his hands twice.
       "You're out of line, you know," he lectured when all eyes had turned to him. "Instructors come and go all the time!"
       Michael stuck his hand in the air and Malfoy waved him off. "Yes, of course, except for Professor Binns," he nodded. "But use your heads. There are seven years at Hogwarts. Only one class can be first years when a teacher arrives, and only one class can be seventh years when a teacher leaves." He folded his arms across his chest. "No matter how much you like someone, it's not physically possible for him to be here the entire time for every class."
       Violet reached inside her robe to squeeze the pewter vial she wore on a chain around her neck. Easy for you to talk, Malfoy, she thought as she clutched the little container. Her housemaster had filled it with Instant External Pain Relief and Healing Potion, a fact that made Violet smile every time she thought of it. But now she gave the Head Boy what she hoped was a withering glare before returning her attention to the window.
       The sheets of snow coating the grounds reminded her of her first Christmas Eve at Hogwarts. How long ago that seemed! She clutched the vial tighter, enjoying the way it grew warm in her hand. That's what we're all doing, she realized as she stroked the smooth metal surface with her thumb. We're all clutching, hanging on until...
       Until what, Violet wondered. What were they waiting for, the morose occupants of this castle? A Christmas miracle?
       The child snorted. Yes, she realized. That's precisely what they were waiting for. They were hanging on until Christmas, hoping the holidays and their trips home would work some sort of magic to dispel the gloomy cloud that hung over their lives. No one wanted to acknowledge the truth brought home by Snape's departure: Voldemort's death hadn't changed a thing. So long as the sins of the past carried on, the darkness would continue.
       Besides, Violet thought, giving the hem of her robe a belligerent little kick, how would Christmas help the Slytherins? We've got the largest percentage of orphans at Hogwarts! We've got no homes and now no housemaster! What's to become of us?
       She ran the phrase through her mind a few times. What's to become of us? It reminded her of Rachel's letter, and that reminded her of Hermione Granger. She clutched her knees to her chest and scowled ferociously at the falling snow.
      
      
      
       "Isn't it awful?"
       Hermione walked up to Harry Potter who was sitting in a Gryffindor Tower window seat, staring out at the snowy night. Probably wishing he could be out flying, the girl realized. Harry did a lot of that these days. It was hard to pin him down for a good talk.
       In truth, Harry didn't want to talk to people. He especially did not want to talk to Hermione. He didn't want to fight with her about Snape.
       The man had tricked him into committing murder. But he'd also risked his life to save Harry's... again. And he'd killed Peter Pettigrew. Harry was sure of it. But more than that...
       'Thank you, Potter. For the rest of my life. '
       Harry had given those words a great deal of thought. Eventually, he'd come to realize that, for Snape, Hogwarts was a lot like the Dursleys'. He couldn't begrudge the man a chance to finally get away.
       But he didn't want to fight with his friend. So he shrugged.
       "I don't know, Hermione," he said softly. He nodded at the dark, snowy night. "I rather like thinking of him out there... free at last."
       He turned calm green eyes to his friend's troubled face. "Sometimes I imagine bumping into him," he confided. "He's fine..." The boy hesitated, then turned to the window again. "...and so am I," he finished quietly.
       Hermione was not moved by the fantasy. She squinted out the window as if trying to see the fictitious encounter for herself and asked, "How's Professor McGonagall?"
       Harry groaned and dropped his head backwards against the cold stones. Rumor had it this would be Dumbledore's last year at Hogwarts. The boy was sorry he and McGonagall were in pain, that Dumbledore's last months at Hogwarts might be marred by lingering regrets. But he couldn't blame Snape for leaving.
       Still, he did not want to fight with Hermione. So he climbed down from the window seat and headed for the portrait of the Fat Lady.
       Stubborn Hermione followed him out of the common room so he headed straight for Slytherin. Even that did not deter the Head Girl. She followed him right through the door that Michael opened in response to Harry's knock, in spite of the glares from several Slytherins. She even spoke first.
       "Did you know?" she demanded, marching right up to Malfoy, who was once again seated before the fire. "Did you know he would do this?"
       Malfoy did not stand or invite the Gryffindors to sit down. "I'd forgotten," he said off-handedly. "But yes. He told me the morning I learned about Lupin's Remedy."
       The Slytherins sat up in surprise. Hermione put her hands on her hips. "You didn't tell us," she accused. "You didn't give us a chance to talk him out of it!"
       "That would have been wrong," Malfoy drawled with a slight lift of one eyebrow.
       "Snape's leaving was wrong!" Hermione shouted back. "He only did it to punish us, to punish Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall!"
       Malfoy smiled coolly at the girl. "What makes you think so?" he murmured. Hermione fell back a step, as if Draco's question had caught her in some sort of trap, and the Head Boy snapped his fingers imperiously, as if to summon a servant. "Violet!" he called to his younger housemate. "Fetch Rachel's letter."
       The third year did as she was told, returning promptly with the parchment in hand. She climbed up to sit cross-legged on a table near the fire and read the missive aloud. When she'd finished, she turned to Malfoy and demanded, "Tell them about Snape's 4th year."
       Malfoy, who'd been listening with his hands clasped behind his head, shook it at the girl. "That's not what she was writing about, Violet," he insisted. "And Dumbledore and McGonagall are not the reasons Snape left." He started to say more but Violet interrupted, springing to her feet to jump up and down on the tabletop.
       "Tell them!" she demanded, waving clenched fists, "or I will!"
       Malfoy rolled his eyes and nodded at Crabbe, who hauled Violet down from the table. He invited the Gryffindors to take a seat, stretching his own long legs before him and crossing them comfortably at the ankles.
       "After my dad and his friends left Hogwarts," he began "life got pretty tough for Snape. It was four against one, after all, and the marauders were popular, so a lot of other students followed their example."
       He unclasped his hands from behind his head and rested them on the arms of his chair. "At the end of his third year," he went on, "Snape got an idea. He borrowed a broom from my dad and spent the summer developing the Severus Twist. His plan was to join the house quidditch team and surprise James with the twist during Slytherin's match against Gryffindor. If he could help the Slytherin quidditch team beat the great James Potter, he thought, maybe the other kids would leave him alone."
       Hermione broke in. "Then how come nobody ever..."
       "I'm coming to that, Granger." Malfoy waved away Hermione's interruption as if it were an irritating insect. "In those days," he explained, "quidditch try-outs were public. They were supervised by the flying instructor and everybody came to watch. When Snape mounted his broom, James Potter..."
       Harry winced. He seemed to know what was coming.
       "...hit it with a hex," Malfoy confirmed. "The broom began to buck and heave and Snape..." The teenager shook his head. "Snape didn't make the team," he finished simply.
       It was clear from the looks on the two Gryffindors' faces that they'd already guessed as much.
       "The instructor told him..." Malfoy assumed the gentle tone he imagined the teacher had used. "...that he just didn't fly well enough to play quidditch safely."
       Harry winced again. A few Slytherins moaned but Malfoy ignored them, turning instead to look at Potter. "No one suspected your father," he assured the Gryffindor, "not even the other Slytherins, because Snape had never been a strong flyer. You see..." He folded his arms across his chest. "He wasn't given the ability..." Malfoy put a particularly strong accent on the word, "...and he'd never owned a broom, so he couldn't practice."
       "Once a week," Violet muttered sadly. Marybeth jabbed her with an elbow to hush her.
       "Snape decided not to tell," Malfoy continued. "Instead, he bided his time until the match between our houses. Then..."
       Malfoy paused for effect, then shrugged and nodded at Harry.
       "He knocked your father off his broom."
       Hermione's mouth dropped open. Malfoy, still watching Harry, saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and smirked at her.
       "Not from a great height, mind you," he drawled. "That would have only added to James' reputation, had he survived, and somebody..." His smirk disappeared as suddenly as if he had swallowed it. "Somebody always seems to see to it that Gryffindor students survive."
       Hermione snapped her mouth shut.
       "He cursed him from a low height," Malfoy explained, "so James would be thoroughly humiliated. And he did it well. He was good at the dark arts, after all. Not even James knew the fall wasn't his fault. He'd have gotten away with it, if it weren't for...."
       Harry nodded. "McGonagall," he whispered. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder just exactly when his father had developed his much ballyhooed distaste for the dark arts.
       "You could hear her shrieking all over the pitch," Malfoy was saying. "'James Potter would never fall off his broom! Never! Never!' She shouted it over and over. She insisted Dumbledore perform a prior incantato on every wand in the school until he found the culprit."
       At this, Hermione leapt to her feet. "Why didn't Snape?" she demanded, incensed. "Why didn't Snape insist on a prior incantato after his try-out?"
       Draco shook his head at such foolishness. "Granger," he replied with an especially patronizing tone, "don't you know what happens to kids like Snape who tattle on kids like James?"
       Hermione sat back down.
       "Their punishment," Draco revealed, "was to forbid Snape to ever play quidditch at Hogwarts. People thought he got off easy, that he should have been expelled." The Slytherin broke off for a moment, and when he continued, he spoke so softly his audience had to strain to hear him. "The way Snape was treated after that," he murmured, "he would have been better off."
       There was a long silence. Then Malfoy bounced his eyebrows at Harry, who was looking more than a little nauseous. "Never mind, Potter," he drawled. "That's only one of a hundred stories. And..." He turned emphatically to Violet. "It is NOT what Rachel was writing about!"
       "What, then?" Hermione demanded.
       Malfoy hesitated. He sat up, leaning slowly towards Hermione.
       "You're a clever girl, Granger," he reminded her, resting his elbows on his knees. "You're good at speculation. That's why Snape chose you to help with Lupin's Remedy." He narrowed his eyes and asked the Head Girl, "Why do you think Snape joined the Death Eaters?"
       Hermione blinked, surprised. Then she frowned and turned away. "I have to admit," she replied softly, "it never made sense to me."
       Malfoy's eyebrows sprang up. "Good for you!" he nodded in a rare display of approval. "Most people are too thick to realize that individuals like Snape don't join the likes of Voldemort."
       Harry frowned. "Then why did he?" he asked, and Draco answered him as simply as Snape had answered Draco.
       "To kill him."
       Hermione gasped but Harry shook his head.
       "How do you know?" the Gryffindor wondered. Malfoy told him briefly about the conversation in Snape's parlor. Harry shook his head again.
       "You have only Snape's word for it," he pointed out.
       "Wrong," Draco countered. "I've got his conduct. So do you. So does Granger and everybody else. And so did Dumbledore and McGonagall. Of course..." He leaned back in his chair again. "You have to be honest about it."
       The Gryffindors made no response. Malfoy nodded.
       "Now," he said softly, and everybody leaned a little closer. "I want you to imagine something, all of you. I want you to imagine... what it was like to be Snape. Imagine that last year at Hogwarts, those years with the Death Eaters, and all those years after he returned to this school."
       The teenager stood up and walked to the fireplace, standing with his back to his audience while he stared into the flames.
       "Imagine watching Dumbledore and McGonagall grow to venerate James Potter," he whispered, "while they and everyone considered decent holds you in ever-increasing contempt. Imagine every harm he's ever inflicted disregarded... and all your hard work forgotten."
       He paused to let them think about that. An ember popped and several listeners jumped but Malfoy didn't even flinch. "Now you're gone," he went on. "You're with the Death Eaters, where every moment is lived in fear..."
       Marybeth whimpered. Violet jabbed her with an elbow to hush her.
       "You live in constant terror, tormented, tortured, never knowing a moment's peace, searching desperately for an opportunity to destroy a butchering madman who would kill you in a heartbeat. James, meanwhile, fights from a distance, surrounded by family and friends and allies. He isn't alone. But he's the one they herald. He's the one they call brave. And then..."
       The teenager turned to stare at them over his shoulder. "The realization comes," he told his audience. "You can't defeat him. You can't prevail." He shook his head, his grey eyes dimming as he tried to imagine living with the realization Snape had finally reached. "You've made a fatal mistake."
       He gazed at them without really seeing them. Nobody moved. Eventually, Malfoy took a deep breath and turned back to the fire.
       "There's no escape," he went on. "You're trapped. They..." His voice grew snide. "...will never pay for their bad choices. Only their right choices will be remembered. But you..." His voice dropped so low his listeners had to hold their breath. "You're doomed," he finished tonelessly. He shook his head and fell silent.
       He stared at the flames for so long that when he suddenly spoke again, his audience started. "Now you're back at Hogwarts," he announced, "and it just goes on and on. You've risked your life for the side of good, but no one credits you unless forced to do so. You've sacrificed your future to make amends for your past, but transgressions against you are minimalized or disregarded. Your life is threatened again and again. Your good deeds are ignored again and again. Your successes are villainized... again and again."
       "But Draco..."
       All eyes turned in surprise to Hermione Granger at her use of her nemesis' Christian name.
       "What about now?" she insisted. "What about... lately?"
       Malfoy shoved his hands in his pockets and took a few steps in her direction.
       "Did you know," he asked the perpetually well-informed Head Girl, "that if you obliviate a person's memory, his personality remains unchanged?"
       Hermione, remembering Lockhart, nodded vaguely.
       "That's because you can't undo the past and its effects," Malfoy explained. "You can only use tools like forgiveness to try and survive the future." His glanced about the room, including them all in the directive he was about to deliver.
       "Every step Snape takes through the corridors of this castle is agony," he insisted. "Let him go."
       Nobody said anything for a long time. Then Violet gave a loud sniff and Hermione leapt to her feet, scowling
       "I just figured something out," she announced with a toss of her bushy hair. "I just figured out why Snape spanks you." She folded her arms across her chest and waited for a Slytherin to ask why. When no one did, she let out an impatient breath.
       "He's sending a message to McGonagall and Dumbledore," she informed them. "Every time he spanks you, he's telling them..." She drew herself up to her full height and spat, "'I am not like you!'"
       She waited for an outcry, but the Slytherins made no response. They just sat there, mulling this over, and eventually they began to nod.
       "You may be right," Malfoy agreed, causing Hermione to whirl around and march to the door in a huff.
       "This isn't over!" she shouted as she jerked the door open. "It's not over for Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall, and it's not over for me!" She shoved her annoying hair out of her face and urged her housemate, "Come on, Harry."
       Harry stood up, but he didn't leave. He stared at Malfoy, a memory stirring in his head. It was something the blonde boy had said to him on Christmas night a year ago. If Snape didn't want to be like Dumbledore and McGonagall, did it follow that the Slytherins...
       "Is that why we'll never be friends?" he asked Malfoy. "Because you don't want to be like us?"
       Draco's eyebrows sprang up in surprise. Harry snorted. "Too bad, then," he pointed out, taking care to glance around the entire room so that every Slytherin would appreciate the repercussions of what he was about to say... "...that Snape's gone."
       He sauntered over to Hermione and held the door for her before exiting himself, leaving the children of Salazar's house thunderstruck. Several moments passed before Malfoy summed up their reaction to the idea of being raised by Albus Dumbledore in a single horrified word.
       "Bugger."
      
      
      
       "What's that?" Minerva asked upon entering the headmaster's office. Dumbledore was seated at his desk, studying a somewhat decrepit piece of parchment.
       "It's Severus' Defense OWL," he told her after inviting her to sit down. He held the exam paper across the desk for her to take.
       "How did you get it?" she breathed, eagerly scanning the contents.
       "Headmaster's privilege," Dumbledore twinkled. "He applied for the position."
       Minerva readjusted her glasses and squinted as she read the cramped, spidery writing. It was all there... Snape's concern about Voldemort and his influence over the children of Slytherin, a pledge to use the insights he'd gained from an infatuation with the dark arts to develop new defense techniques, a thorough demonstration of his knowledge of defense, some brilliant new theories, and finally, a plea for the Ministry to interfere on behalf of his friends, the children of prominent wizarding families who were falling under Voldemort's spell.
       By the time she reached the end of the paper, the deputy headmistress had sagged visibly. She held up the document and pointed silently to the mediocre grade. Dumbledore shrugged.
       "He named names," the headmaster reminded her. "You can't expect an examiner hired by the Ministry to give high marks to a paper that names names."
       Minerva snorted. She set the parchment down on the desk, resting her hand on top of it as if to shield it from further abuse. After a moment, she looked up and asked Dumbledore, "How did he do on his NEWT?"
       "He didn't take it."
       The Transfigurations teacher sat up sharply. "Severus didn't take a NEWT in Defense?" she repeated.
       Dumbledore shrugged again. "I suppose," the old man observed coyly, "he didn't see the point."
       "Oh, Albus." Minerva shook her head. She clasped her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, and said what she'd come to say.
       "I do not want to follow in your footsteps, Albus, without Severus by my side."
       Dumbledore shook his head. "I'm sure either Professor Flitwick or Professor Sprout..."
       "I want Severus!" Minerva shouted, slamming a palm down on his desk. Fawkes squawked in surprise and bolted from his perch to fly around the room.
       His eyes twinkling, Dumbledore rose and crossed the office to soothe his pet. "Be practical, Minerva," he beseeched as he coaxed Fawkes back onto his perch and stroked his flaming red feathers. "This isn't about forgiveness, after all. It's about awareness."
       He tilted his head to study the bird as it preened its ruffled feathers. "At Hogwarts," he mused, "Severus learned just how bad 'good' people can be. Once you show an idealistic person how..." He searched for a delicate term. "...inconsistent... most individuals are, you can never take that knowledge away."
       He reached in his pocket and produced a bit of biscuit which he offered Fawkes. The bird took it grudgingly, crumbling it in his beak while he turned a disdainful eye upon McGonagall. Dumbledore returned to his desk and sat down.
       "I never quite understood," he murmured as he picked up a quill and toyed with it, "how James Potter could pride himself on opposing the Dark Arts without realizing that hexing people who don't deserve it... is dark magic at its simplest."
       Minerva snorted. "He outgrew that!" she protested. But Dumbledore shook his head.
       "Did he?" the old man wondered. "James had so many gifts, Minerva, but he never used them for good unless there was something in it for him... my esteem, Lily's affections, the admiration of others..."
       "Perhaps we should dig up his corpse," Minerva interrupted tartly, "and whip him naked through the corridors of the dungeon."
       Dumbledore indulged himself in a brief chuckle. "The point I am making," he continued mildly, "is that Severus believes in altruism. He relishes nobility and will doubtless spend the rest of his life serving those in need. But I can't think of anything under the sun that would compel him to return to Hogwarts, because people like Severus..."
       He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "People like Severus," he whispered, tenting his fingertips above his long silver beard, "will never be happy unless they are allowed to be ...apart."
       For a long time there was no sound but the crunching of Fawkes' biscuit. When Dumbledore opened his eyes, he found McGonagall staring out a darkened window.
       "We can't win them all, Minerva," he reminded her gently. "We defeated Voldemort. That's the important thing. Severus..." He took a deep breath and turned once more to his bird. "Severus," he concluded, his half-moon glasses reflecting Fawkes' gentle gaze, "may simply have to go down in the loss column."
       The deputy headmistress pressed her lips together, hard. Easy for you to say, old man, she fumed. Dumbledore was twice her age. He had more to look back on. He had not been of an age to... He didn't see how... She gave herself a little shake, wishing she could cast aside the pain that tugged mercilessly at her heart. After the death of Lupin, Snape had been all that remained of a generation that had seemed like...
       "The children," she spoke up sharply. She cleared her throat and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, blowing her nose loudly. "We're making no headway with them," she insisted as she tucked the handkerchief away again, "and they've been away from their families for so long. Perhaps we could send them home for Christmas a bit early. Start fresh in the new year."
       Dumbledore, relieved by the change of subject, leaned forward to consider it.
       "Right now," Minerva reviewed, "we're scheduled to send them home on Wednesday, Christmas Eve. What if we cancelled classes Monday and Tuesday and sent them home Saturday instead?"
       The headmaster shook his head. "Several parents have made plans to be away that weekend on shopping expeditions," he told McGonagall. "Holiday gifts and food items are proving difficult to come by."
       "Surely they could arrange..." Minerva began, but Dumbledore cut her off.
       "With muggle-wizard relations so..." He chose the word carefully. "...strained... these days, I'd prefer not to send the children home to anyone but their parents. However..." He smiled at her, his eyes twinkling again. "We could certainly cancel classes on Monday and Tuesday and send the children home Monday."
       "Thank you." McGonagall rose and wished him a pleasant evening before heading for the door. As she opened it, Dumbledore called,
       "Minerva?"
       "Yes, Albus?"
       The old man rose and crossed once more to his phoenix. "With so many orphans remaining at Hogwarts over Christmas," he began, offering Fawkes his arm. The large red bird stepped carefully aboard and both creatures turned lively eyes to the deputy headmistress. "I think it would be unwise, " Dumbledore nodded, "for both of us to go looking for Severus at the same time."
       The Transfigurations teacher froze. Then she tossed her head, despite the blush creeping up her cheeks. "Certainly," she agreed, hurrying out the door so she would not have to endure one of the headmaster's twinkly smiles at her predictability.
      
      
      
       She returned to her office to draw up the notices and delivered copies to Sprout and Flitwick yet that evening. The next morning, because the Slytherins had no head of house, she let herself into their common room before breakfast to post a copy on their notice board.
       The room was empty except for the Baron, who sat on a sofa near the fire. He gazed morosely at McGonagall, following her every move with those vacant, staring eyes. The deputy headmistress found his behavior most annoying. After tacking up the piece of parchment, she strode briskly over to him and announced,
       "We're sending the children home early. Until then, perhaps you would be good enough to meet with me each week, to keep me apprised of how the Slytherins are managing."
       The Baron just stared at her, his eyes blank yet menacing. The silence in Slytherin House went on and on, pressing in on McGonagall, who felt her face begin to flame. Too close to the fire, she decided, and she took a step to the left. Why do they build it up so in the morning? Of course, this was Saturday. The Slytherins would not be going to class.
       Then she noticed that the fire was not really large. It just seemed that way because the popping timbers echoed so loudly in the quiet room. To fill the silence, McGonagall told the Baron sternly, "I am waiting for your answer!"
       The Baron nodded. He glanced at the archway to the girls' corridor and then at the entrance to the boys' corridor. Then he told McGonagall,
       "I don't think that will be necessary."
       The deputy headmistress paled. Oh, no, she thought, unconsciously clenching her fists. Not now. Not after everything else!
       She dashed across the room and down the girls' corridor, flinging wide one cell door after another. Then she hurried to the boys' corridor and did the same to their rooms, banging each door against the stone wall as she rushed to the next cell. The Baron counted the bangs; when the last door had been wrenched open, he turned his vacant eyes to the boys' corridor entrance.
       It was a long time before McGonagall reentered the common room. When she did, her face was still and her gait halting. She staggered uncertainly across the room and reached up with one trembling hand to remove the parchment she'd just posted on the Slytherins' message board. As she did, her eyes fell on something shiny stuck in one corner.
       It was Draco Malfoy's head boy badge.
       McGonagall clenched the parchment notice, crumpling it into a ball as she slowly lowered her hand, never taking her eyes off the badge. Her breath heaved in and out of her chest and the color rose in her cheeks. She turned slowly back towards the fireplace, her eyes darting uncertainly around the room, her head bobbing slightly. When she spoke, it was in a whisper, and she stammered, as if experimenting with a word she felt certain was appropriate but didn't know how to pronounce.
       "Dammit."
       The Baron rose and hovered just above the sofa, unsure whether to approach the deputy headmistress or flee. When she spun around and suddenly wrenched the notice board from the wall, he made up his mind. He flew for the door as fast as he could go and sailed through it just as McGonagall flung the board across the room.
       "Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!" she cried.
       *****
      
      
      
       Dammit, dammit, dammit, Malfoy thought as he surveyed the mess surrounding him. Would you look at this place?
       He cataloged the dilapidation that extended as far as the eye could see. Broken windows. Peeling stucco. Cracks in the foundation. A front door hanging crooked on rusty hinges. Overturned benches. Overgrown shrubs. Chipped statuary in the mossy water fountain. Dead grass sticking up through the snow. He glanced at the Slytherins who stood clumped behind him. They looked even more appalled than he. This, the boy realized with a shake of his head, may have been a huge mistake.
       It had been cold flying, all night through the snow. Even with the team equipment, there had not been enough brooms to go around, so the Slytherins had had to double up. As a result, they'd had to leave many of their possessions behind. "We'll go back for the rest at Christmas," Malfoy had promised, "when fewer people are around." Now he deeply regretted the cavalier way they had cast aside their Dumbledorian long underwear. Even beneath a blanket of new snow, the squire's house and surrounding grounds looked hopelessly decrepit, a woeful disappointment to the cold, weary Slytherins.
       "You didn't tell us it was this bad," he whispered fiercely to Goyle.
       "It wasn't this bad," his housemate hissed back. "Maybe his house elf died."
       The front door banged open and Pansy screamed.
       "About time!" shouted a scruffy looking wizard in tattered green robes. He shook a walking stick at them. "I've been writing that agency for months!" he complained before turning around to hobble grumpily back inside, his cane banging the floor with every step. The Slytherins exchanged confused looks.
       "Is it because half of us have matching cloaks?" Millicent wondered, bewildered as to how the old man could mistake a group of schoolchildren for employees from a cleaning agency. Malfoy shrugged.
       "Whatever gets us in the door," he replied, and he led his housemates inside.
      
      
      
       Twelve hours later, the Slytherins sat huddled in a ragged circle in the squire's parlor, cold and weary and now hungry and dirty to boot. They'd slaved all day in this room, where they planned to sleep until they could clean some bedrooms, but they'd barely made a dent in the filth. They hadn't even begun on the kitchen and their stomachs were gnawing in protest.
       Malfoy pointed his wand at his sleeve to scourgify his grimy cuff and wound up burning a hole in his shirt, stinging his wrist. "Ow!" he snarled, and Millicent reminded him,
       "You have to hold the wand farther away."
       "I know that!" he snapped back.
       Violet sighed. "Maybe the squire could help us," she murmured. The old man had retreated to his room and showed no signs of emerging. Given the current state of his residence, Malfoy doubted the senile wizard would be of much help.
       "We need an elf," Pansy insisted. "Can we afford an elf?"
       Malfoy scowled. "I don't even know how to get one," he confessed. Thanks to Dumbledore and Granger, he wasn't sure it was even possible anymore. Besides, his money had to last... well, who knew how long it had to last?
       He shook his head at their ignorance. If only they hadn't been assigned yard work last summer! Now none of them knew how to clean and manage a household using magic. The purebloods all came from homes that had boasted house-elves and the half-bloods, every last one of them, had grown up in homes where muggles had done the housework, using electrical appliances unheard of in the wizarding world.
       "I'm sure the nuns would help us, Malfoy," Millicent pointed out, but the boy shook his head.
       "Without magic," he reminded her, "it'll take 12 hours a day or more to keep this place running. When are we supposed to have time for a school?"
       Crabbe and Goyle returned with bad news from their exploratory trip to the kitchen. "The cupboards," Goyle announced, "are bare." The Slytherins groaned.
       Malfoy, fearing they would soon be reduced to eating the pet owls that had flown so valiantly alongside them through the night, glanced at the handful of children who had living, non-Death Eater parents. "Maybe you should go home," he murmured.
       His suggestion brought an immediately storm of protest. Go home? What for? To be sent back to Hogwarts and absorbed into other houses? No way! We're all in this together, his housemates insisted.
       That gave him an idea.
       *****
      
      
      
       No one thought much of it when, two and a half weeks later, Violet didn't queue up for a bath on Thursday night. She certainly needed one. They all did. But after twelve hours of hard labor, the Slytherin girls standing in a row outside the lavatory door were just too tired to care.
       Every day, the Slytherins had to hunt down, levitate, and diffendo enough wood to fuel fireplaces in their parlor, the kitchen stove, the squire's bedroom, and the four bedrooms they'd managed to reclaim so far. They'd tried accioing wood with horrendous results: windows had been broken, walls had been smashed, and the Slytherins had run screaming through the snow to escape the onslaught of flying wooden furniture. "Accio firewood" had proven even more disastrous without a school nurse on hand to heal their burns.
       Hauling the wood inside made the floors filthy. Their scourgify spells only cleaned a few inches of carpet at a time; they tracked up faster than they could clean. This, along with cooking their meager meals and keeping themselves tidy, took a solid twelve hours per day.
       They'd considered writing to the less affluent citizens of Hogsmeade for housekeeping instructions but had decided against it. If word got back to the families of the few Slytherins who still had parents that their children were living in impoverished filth, this little experiment, they knew, would come to a rapid halt. Correspondence between the non-orphans and their families had revealed that the only reason the parents were putting up with this was because they knew their children would simply run away again if dragged home or, worse, sent back to Hogwarts.
       They were still wearing their Hogwarts uniforms. They'd discussed it just before leaving and had decided that, Hogwarts or no Hogwarts, they were still Slytherins. Besides, the uniforms were the warmest clothes they had. But keeping them clean was their biggest chore of all.
       The garments were suffering mightily under current conditions, but scourgifying charms were too hard on the clothes; they thinned and weakened the fabric. So the Slytherins were forced to launder by hand, and while the squire had indoor plumbing, the water came out of the taps icy cold. No one could figure out why.
       Then one day, Violet had accidentally dropped her illuminated wand into a cauldron of water she was using to scrub the fireplace grate beneath the parlor chimney. She'd let out a squeal of delight when, upon fishing it out, she'd discovered that the light had warmed the cauldron water a few degrees. After that, they could heat water without burning up precious fuel or monopolizing one of the few bluebell flames they could find a home for among the squire's limited glassware. But it was a time-consuming process. At night, with so many people to bathe in just two tubs, baths had to be limited to a woefully unsatisfying three minutes in two inches of tepid water.
       That was why, on this particular Thursday night, Violet was foregoing her turn in the lavatory to conduct an experiment in the bedroom she shared with Marybeth, Jennifer, Millicent, Pansy and Tracey. She placed her cauldron in the center of the room between the two beds and the fainting couch, aimed her wand, and cried "Engorgio!" taking care not to be heard by her housemates down the hall. Malfoy had a rule about 'no underaged magic except for chores.' Her cauldron increased in size and Violet repeated the charm until it was large enough to meet her needs.
       Next she slid open the window and leaned out to levitate the buckets of snow waiting below. One by one, she dumped them into her cauldron, fired up her lumos light, thrust it into the cauldron, and hummed happily to herself as the snow melted and steamed. When Millicent entered the room a short while later, wrapped up in her Slytherin warming cloak after her lukewarm soak and chilly trip down the corridor, she found Violet up to her shoulders in toasty warm water, singing happily as she scrubbed. "I'd like to be... under the sea... in an octopus's garden... in the shade..."
       "Violet!"
       The youngster tossed the older girl a cheeky grin, confident her brilliant idea would make a big splash with her housemates. She lifted one foot to scrub between her toes, singing at the top of her lungs, "Mr. Bubble in the tub'll... getcha squeaky clean!"
       As she sang, a wave of water washed up her nose and Violet sat up sharply, coughing and sputtering. How had that happened? she wondered. She glanced down in confusion. "Millicent," she called, unable to believe the evidence of her eyes. "Is the water in this cauldron... rising?"
       Even as she spoke, the water inched up her neck and began spilling over the sides. Millicent flew across the room and yanked her out of the bath just in time; the cauldron shrank in violent spasms, sending gallons of soapy water sloshing across the floor as it reverted to its original size.
       Violet, goose-pimpled with horror, fumbled for her Slytherin cloak hanging on a chair nearby. "Millicent," she squeaked as she pulled the garment on. "Would it have eaten me?"
       Millicent shook her head with a snort. "Look at this mess!" she snarled. She pulled out her wand and was just about to evanesco the nearest puddle when a strange sound made her stop.
       "What's that?" she asked, listening hard. Violet pricked up her ears and the two girls stood very still. There was a trickling noise from the water cascading down through the floorboards to the kitchen below. But it was the strange sizzling sound which came after that puzzled them.
       Then Malfoy's voice rang out loud and clear.
       "Dammit!"
       He stormed upstairs, cleaned up the mess with a drought charm, ordered Millicent out of the room, and hauled Violet across his knee to spank her soundly. Then he sent her to bed and returned to the first floor to inform the Slytherins that her impromptu flood had rained down on the stove, spoiling their supper.
       As his housemates filed miserably out of the kitchen, Malfoy sank into the nearest chair and dropped his head onto his arms to contemplate this latest disaster. "I didn't know the charm wouldn't hold!" Violet had protested as he'd reddened her bottom. Well, that was the trouble, wasn't it? They didn't seem to know much at all!
       They worked so hard, all of them. But they were so bloody ignorant, they had to slave all day just to keep body and soul together. Still, they were never really clean, never really warm, and never really full. When were they supposed to find time to organize a school, much less run it?
       Malfoy lifted his head to gaze at the mess splattered all over the stove. It hadn't been much of a meal Violet had ruined, just a large kettle of mash he'd made from the flakes Adrian Pucey had provided. His former teammate had sent several boxes after Malfoy had written for help his first night at the manor. Marcus Flint had sent a few packages of dried vegetables, tea, and copies of the Daily Prophet.
       They were lucky to have any food at all, but the Slytherins still complained about the carefully-rationed fare. And tomorrow, no doubt, Jennifer and Marybeth, who shared Violet's bed, would grumble that she'd tossed and turned all night from her sore rear end, and Violet would pout for two days because he'd spanked her, all of which annoyed the hell out of him. But the quarrelling was even worse.
       The last time he'd spanked Jennifer, there'd been a terrible row between the third year girls and the seventh years who shared their bedroom. The third years thought Millicent should give up her fainting couch and sleep with Pansy and Tracey whenever someone got spanked so the tossing and turning wouldn't keep the others awake; the older girls had insisted they were too big to sleep three in a bed. "If you little kids would stop messing about so much..." Millicent had snarled, and Malfoy had had to rush in before the hexes flew.
       They wouldn't accept his authority, he fumed. That was the problem. The little kids were cheerful enough, more tolerant of manor's squalor than their older counterparts. Malfoy had hoped that putting them into bedrooms with the seventh years (the 4th, 5th and 6th years shared the other two rooms) would keep them on their best behavior. But they got up to mischief nevertheless, making messes, breaking things, and worst of all, plaguing the poor, befuddled old squire. "You'd have gotten far worse from Snape," Malfoy had reminded them when they'd glowered at him for paddling them after they'd hidden their pet snakes in the squire's bed. "Now behave yourselves, or I'll turn those reptiles into a stew!"
       The teenager climbed to his feet, brushing splotches of mashed potato off his robe. He was so tired of these grimy Hogwarts uniforms! As the outfits grew shabbier and smellier, Draco found himself thinking constantly about his father's clothing, just waiting for him in the armoires of the Malfoy estate. How he would love to augment these weary rags with the occasional silk shirt or pair of linen trousers. But the Slytherins wouldn't let him leave.
       "You'd be gone too long," Millicent protested every time he brought it up. "This house isn't on the floo system, and it's not like you can apparate. We can't spare you for the amount of time it would take you to fly there and back."
       Malfoy had tried to persuade them with promises of the luxuries he could gather up and bring back. But Tracey had hooted, pointing out that the estate had probably been looted a dozen times by now, which had only increased his desperation to visit.
       The squire was no help whatsoever. He blundered into their presence occasionally to rant and rave but never backed Malfoy up. The teenager wasn't sure the old man even knew who they were.
       Christmas is a week away, he thought as he pulled out his wand to scourgify the stove, and it''ll probably be the worst one of our lives. He wondered if he should send the non-orphans home. He wondered how they were going to survive the winter.
       He wondered if anybody cared.
       *****
      
      
      
       Madam Rosmerta shook her head at the spectacle before her. Harry Potter sat alone in the otherwise empty pub, staring vacantly at the empty goblets littering his table, drunk for the first time in his life. I should have cut him off sooner, the sensible tavern-mistress lamented, knowing full well she'd have had no chance of that the way her eager customers had mobbed the boy all evening.
       They'd fought for the privilege of buying him one drink after another, never mind that 1) this was a Thursday night, not a Hogsmeade Weekend, and 2) the boy was obviously distressed. His unresponsiveness had been no deterrent; they'd filled the uneasy pauses with more claps on the back and cries of "Thatta boy!" and "Drink up, Potter, drink up!" Only when he'd grown tipsy and belligerent had they backed off, slipping out the door into the snowy December evening or creeping upstairs to bed.
       "Feeling better, Mr. Potter?" Rosie called to the miserable young man across the room as she wiped the last of the glasses and put them away. "Drowned your sorrows, have you?"
       Harry tried to lift his eyes and his head swam. Don't scold, he begged the barmaid silently. Please.
       Rosmerta put down her towel and walked over to Harry's table. There was no way, she realized, that she could send him back to Hogwarts in this condition. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders to help him to his feet.
       "Let's find you a bed," she murmured as she led him to the stairs. "You can creep back to Hogwarts at first light. You don't want anyone seeing you like this!"
       She helped him up the steps and through the nearest door into a dark, sparsely furnished room, the last one she had available. As she eased him onto the bed, he collapsed, falling deeply asleep. The experienced barmaid tugged off his shoes and placed them at the edge of the bed, then fished his wand out of his pocket and removed his glasses so he wouldn't roll on them in his sleep. She placed them in the top drawer of a bureau beneath the window opposite the bed and, taking one last look to be sure his robe was covering him adequately, slipped quietly from the room.
       Harry woke several hours later with a raging thirst and a mouth as dry as floo powder. The unfamiliar darkness startled him; for a moment he thought he was drowning. He thrashed about his bed, trying to figure out where he was. Then it came to him. He was at the Three Broomsticks. He'd left Hogwarts in a temper and had come to town to, well... to get drunk, he supposed.
       It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
       He'd marched right out the front door of the castle and across the lawn, daring anyone to try and stop him. "You found me sneaking out?" he'd wanted to snarl. "Why don't you try finding the Slytherins?! It's been nearly 3 weeks!" But no one had noticed his angry departure, so he'd proceeded into town... and apparently had proceeded to get quite tipsy as well.
       Someone must have put him to bed.
       He groped in the murk for a nightstand next to the bed but found none. Brilliant, he snarled to himself. How was he supposed to find a candle, or his wand or glasses for that matter? The first thing I'm going to do when I get back to Hogwarts, he decided as he slid his legs over the edge of the bed, is ask Professor Flitwick to teach me how to accio without a wand... so I can accio my damn wand!
       He sat quietly in the darkness for a moment, overcome by thirst. "Water," he croaked. Would it be too pathetic to call for help? He squinted at the faint light shining beneath the door, then climbed off the bed and stumbled towards it, tripping over his shoes in the process. The room lurched and his head swam. Why were his legs so wobbly? He banged into the door and cursed his clumsiness. His mouth was so dry he couldn't even "ssh" himself.
       He patted the door with his palms until he found the knob and opened it, stepping as quietly as possible into the veranda-like hallway overlooking the drinking area. He squinted to make out Madam Rosmerta sitting at a table below with her back to him. He was just about to call for assistance when she moved a bit to her right and he spied a child sitting across from her, silhouetted in the glow of the fire burning in the fireplace behind him. Quickly Harry dropped to a crouch, grabbing the banister to steady himself as he peeked through the spokes. It would not do to have a Hogwarts student see him like this.
       No. Wait. He shook his head and tried to swallow as he struggled to make sense of the situation. Why would a Hogwarts student be downstairs with Madam Rosmerta in the middle of the night? He squeezed the banister with both hands, intending to pulling himself up again, and that's when the street door opened and a man hurried inside.
       There was power in his stride and his dark cloak billowed around him as he shook the dampness from his black hair. Harry shoved his face between two spokes. My God, he thought as he struggled to make out the scene below. Could it be? He squinted as hard as he could. No, it couldn't be. The hair wasn't right, somehow.
       But then Madam Rosmerta climbed eagerly to her feet and hurried over to the man, slipping her arms around his waist. "Severus!" she beamed as she squeezed him.
       The man did not hug her back. He couldn't, because he carried two bundles, one a bit more carefully than the other, it seemed to Harry. Rosmerta released him and he set both bundles down on the table as he nodded at the boy.
       "Have you flown before?" he asked the child, and though the tone was not as curt as Harry was used to, he would have known the voice anywhere. It was Snape.
       "No, sir," the child replied.
       "The broom's a bit twitchy," Snape told him. "You'll have to hold on tight."
       Since when does Snape have a broom? Harry wondered. Perhaps he'd been spending his Remedy money. 'Twitchy' sounds used, the boy speculated. He wondered if new brooms were in short supply these days.
       Madam Rosmerta brushed some debris from Snape's cloak. "Loreli is bringing another youngster on Monday," she told him.
       Snape turned to her, apparently displeased by the news.
       "Damn muggles!" he hissed. "They're killing more of us than Voldemort ever did!"
       Rosmerta fetched him a cup of coffee, addressing Snape over her shoulder as she poured. "Don't exaggerate, Severus," she protested, and Harry couldn't tell if she was lecturing or pleading. "It's just the shallow ones who cause all the trouble."
       She brought him the cup and he accepted it with an appreciative sigh, savoring its aroma. "You don't have to tell me," he continued more quietly. He nodded at the larger bundle and Rosmerta turned to it, cutting off Harry's view. He leaned sideways, trying to see what Snape had brought.
       Rosmerta unwrapped the bundle and let out a loud gasp. The boy on the opposite side of the table rose and leaned over to look.
       "Just don't ask me what they did to the mother," was all Snape had to say.
       For a few moments they just stood there, gazing silently at the infant Snape had brought. Then Madam Rosmerta murmured, "There are rumors..."
       She stopped.
       "Yes?" Snape prompted her.
       Rosmerta shook her head. "There are rumors," she began again, so softly Harry had to strain to hear, "that muggles have located Hogsmeade, that they lurk in the woods outside of town and..."
       The baby whimpered and Madam Rosmerta gave herself a little shake. "It needs a nappie," she said briskly, removing the soiled newspaper Snape had made do with. "I'll fetch something." She hurried away and Harry got a clear view of the naked baby on the table. The infant continued to whimper, working up to a wail.
       "Hush, child!" Snape scolded. "People are sleeping!"
       "She's cold, Severus," Rosmerta called from the bar where she was dampening a soft cloth.
       "Oh." Snape unbuttoned his cloak and the shirt beneath it. He picked up the infant and tucked her inside his shirt, pressing her against his skin. The baby quieted immediately.
       Rosmerta returned with the damp rag and a scrap of cloth to clean and diaper the baby. "You may open the other bundle," she told the boy across the table as she tended to the infant, once again obscuring Harry's view of the table. The boy opened the smaller parcel and Rosmerta gasped again, this time with delight.
       "Oh, Severus!" she cried as she cradled the infant. "How wonderful!"
       Snape finished his coffee and set down the cup. "Send some of it to the castle, would you?" he requested, and Rosmerta frowned.
       "Severus," she murmured, laying a hand on his arm. "You know about the Slytherins, don't you?"
       Harry couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw Snape's back-lit profile smile.
       "Yes," the man replied silkily. "I know about the Slytherins."
       His attitude perplexed the barmaid. "What's so funny?" she demanded, but Snape shook his head.
       "We need to leave," he said instead. "It's best to arrive in the dark. Can you fashion some sort of satchel? I'll take the infant on my back and the boy in front."
       "Will the sisters take a child so young?" Madam Rosmerta wondered, handing Snape the baby.
       "This will be the youngest yet," the man admitted. Then it was Madam Rosmerta's turn to chuckle, and Snape's to ask, "What's so funny?" as if the sight of him holding an infant weren't explanation enough.
       The barmaid shook her head, smiling a bit as she did. "I rather miss the little beggars," she confessed. "How are they getting on?"
       Harry nearly gasped out loud. In that instant, he knew where Snape had gotten the broom.
       Snape shrugged. "They're hard-working, the sisters tell me. And bright. The older ones know charms I've never seen."
       "And the little ones?" Rosmerta teased, patting the baby on the back. The dark-haired wizard frowned at her.
       "What about them?"
       "I'm told they cry whenever you leave!" Madam Rosmerta giggled, and the boy across the table quickly ducked his head. Snape gave Rosmerta's backside a sharp swat with his free hand.
       Harry watched, his eyes smarting, as Rosmerta fetched a shawl and strapped the baby to Snape's back beneath his cloak. Then she accompanied the three travelers outside. Harry imagined her fastening Snape's cloak more snuggly around the trio after they mounted Snape's used broom. Eventually she came back inside, extinguished the candles in the drinking area, and headed for the stairs.
       Harry rose and slipped quickly back into his room before she could spot him. He stood next to the door, listening to her footsteps, which seemed to pause briefly outside his room before continuing down the hall. A door opened and closed. Then... quiet.
       The boy leaned against the door, sighing without realizing it. He slid to the floor, landing on his rump with a soft thud.
       Snape was helping the forest orphans. That's how he'd gotten a broom. He'd taken them to shelter, was visiting them regularly, and continued to bring other children to them.
       For some reason, this knowledge made Harry's chest hurt. He reached up to massage it to no avail. Why had Snape left Hogwarts, he wondered, just to be of service to other children?
       He forgot what he knew about painful places and yielded to the belligerent thoughts filling his mind. Hogwarts has orphans, he nodded to himself. Hogwarts has children damaged by war. What makes them more worthy? He clenched his teeth against another stab of heartache. Snape didn't even seem to be worried about the Slytherins!
       As he seethed, a plan began to form in his mind. He would return to Hogwarts immediately, he decided. He would wake Professor McGonagall and tell her everything he'd heard. She could apparate to wherever Snape was flying and confront him, maybe drag him bodily back to Hogwarts and make him account for his behavior before the entire school. Maybe she'd even box his ears! That would be brilliant! Harry grinned to himself.
       But where was Snape going? Where had he taken the forest orphans? His plan was useless, Harry knew, unless he could figure that out. He pressed his fingertips to his throbbing temples and tried to think.
       'Will the sisters take a child so young?' Madam Rosmerta had asked. What had she meant by that? Nuns? Did Harry know anything about Snape that connected him to cloistered females in matching black outfits?
       Pansy's pretty face flitted across his mind, followed closely by images of Tracey Davis and Millicent Bulstrode. Not them! he scolded his mind, pushing aside the thoughts of Slytherin girls in matching black school robes. But Pansy persisted, smiling, winking, pursing her silly lips...
       Oh! Harry raised his head so suddenly he banged it against the door. Furious with himself for making a noise, he froze, listening for any sound of movement from the corridor. No one came to investigate the thump. Greatly relieved, he reached up to rub the sore spot as he grinned in the darkness. He had it.
       Goyle had written Malfoy at the Dursleys while Pansy had been visiting the summer before last. He and Crabbe had been staying at a country estate in Ely bordering a convent where Snape had stashed Millicent and Tracey. That must be where Snape had taken the forest orphans! And if he wasn't too worried about the Slytherins, it must be because he knew where they were... at the country estate right next door!
       Harry wondered if the Slytherins knew about Snape. He would owl them, he decided, right after he talked to Professor McGonagall. But first he had to get out of here, as unobtrusively as possible. If Madam Rosmerta discovered he was leaving, she would no doubt try to stop him. 'There are rumors,' she'd told Snape...
       He climbed to his feet and took a few eager steps to the right, stubbing his toe on a small table in the process. "Dammit!" he hissed, even as he explored the table's top. It held a pitcher of water and a tumbler. Harry poured himself one glassful after another until his thirst was thoroughly quenched. Then he made his way to the bed where he put on his shoes to avoid any more toe-stubbing. He felt his way around the room in the dark until he discovered the dresser by the window.
       He jerked open the top drawer and reached in with both hands, quickly finding a smooth shaft of wood to the right and his glasses to the left. His fingers closed gratefully over the slender rod, which he stowed in his pocket before reaching up to shove his glasses onto his face. Then he hurried towards the light coming from beneath the door.
       The faint, warm glow of the fire below was perfect for creeping downstairs. Harry paused just long enough to retrieve his warm, dry cloak from the hook nearest the fire, then let himself out the door into the cold December night.
       He considered firing up his lumos light and decided against it. Someone might be peeping out a window. He hurried through the village and onto the path to Hogwarts, his mind on nothing but a possible confrontation between McGonagall and Snape. What would she say to him, he wondered. Then another thought occurred to him.
       What if she decided not to go? What if she thought the orphans needed him more than the students of Hogwarts did?
       What about that package, the one that had made Madam Rosmerta so happy? What was in it? Had Snape become some sort of smuggler? Was he of more use to the wizarding world away from Hogwarts?
       Harry decided not to tell Professor McGonagall about the package.
       He looked up and discovered he was far enough from town to ignite his lumos light, so he reached into his pocket and...
       Snap! A sound from a nearby stand of trees made him stop in his tracks. An animal, he wondered as he squinted over his shoulder, stepping on a twig? He listened hard but could hear nothing apart from his own breathing.
       'There are rumors that muggles have located Hogsmeade....'
       Harry looked quickly in every direction. He was alone, approximately halfway between Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. But it didn't matter, he realized. He was not afraid. He'd grown up in the home of Dudley Dursley, after all, and he had defeated the darkest wizard known to mankind! He was NOT afraid of some bullying muggle gits. So he pulled out his wand, thrust it sharply in the direction of the snapping sound, and barked, "Lumos!"
       Nothing happened.
       *****
      
      
      
       "What in blazes are you doing?"
       Violet ignored the threatening tone in Malfoy's voice and gave the 'garland' she was hanging in the entryway a slight twist. "Another box of broccoli arrived from Marcus," she informed the former head boy, "so we're decorating for Christmas."
       She climbed down from the chair she'd been standing on and stood back with Jennifer, Michael and Marybeth to admire her work. The strung broccoli was a bit limp but at least it was green. She smiled at the effect as the front door opened and closed behind her; the Slytherins, well-used to housemates bringing in wood all day, ignored it.
       Malfoy walked over to Violet and shook his head, staring up at the garland. "I can't believe you'd waste food the morning after you ruined dinner," he observed, and Violet was just about to move her backside out of reach when a smooth voice called,
       "Are you being difficult, Miss Guilford?"
       The Slytherins spun around. There stood Snape, leaning against the doorframe, a satisfied little smile on his face. "Professor Snape!" Violet shrieked, and as she flew across the room to leap into his arms, voices behind her shouted to the rest of the house, "It's Professor Snape! Professor Snape is here!"
       Footsteps thundered down corridors and staircases as the Slytherins poured downstairs and surrounded their housemaster. Violet, her legs wrapped in a death grip around his waist, hugged his neck and covered his cheek with kisses. Then she pulled back for a good look at him and frowned. She turned to her housemates who could only stare in bewilderment. Turning back to Snape, she voiced the question on all their minds.
       "What's wrong with your hair, sir?"
       Snape looked wonderful. He really did. Gone were the billowing black robes of his teaching days. Instead, he wore a dashing cloak over a white shirt and dark trousers. His hair was soft, shiny, and as silky as his voice; it bounced whenever he moved. There were blooms in his cheeks and a light in his eyes.
       He looked ten years younger.
       Suddenly, the Slytherins weren't so sure they were glad to see him.
       Violet took in her housemates' dimming faces and released Snape's neck to fold her arms across her chest.
       "You left us!" she accused.
       "So I did," Snape nodded. "But I'm here now..." He put Violet down and glanced about the room, his eyes coming to rest on Malfoy's face, "...and I will help you. If you wish."
       He stepped around Violet and made his way to the parlor, taking in the filthy carpets, the piles of wood, and the slovenly uniforms and pinched faces of the Slytherins who followed close behind. "Having a bit of difficulty, Malfoy?" he asked the blonde teenager. Malfoy scowled and Snape chuckled.
       "Never mind, Draco," he said softly. He gave the boy a shrewd nod and added, "Think what a mess the four founders made of things."
       That made Draco smile. The Slytherins crowded around Snape and began bombarding him with questions. Where had he been? What had he been doing? How long could he stay? Snape shook his head and held up one hand. "Aren't you going to offer me a cup of tea?" he wondered.
       The children exchanged sheepish looks.
       "Right," Snape nodded. "We'll begin in the kitchen."
       Before anyone could move, the squire wandered into the room. He thrust his hands on his hips at the sight of Snape, nearly poking Crabbe in the eye with his walking stick, and demanded, "Who in blazes are you?"
       Snape gave the man a small bow. "I'm Severus Snape, sir," he replied politely. "Do you remember me?"
       At that moment, the Slytherins realized who their senile host must be.
       The squire looked Snape up and down. "Show off!" he muttered. Then he turned on his heel and marched right back out of the room. As Snape watched him go, Violet shoved her way to the front of the crowd surrounding him and tugged on his sleeve.
       "Did he ever cane you?" she asked breathlessly.
       Snape raised an eyebrow. "I assure you, Miss Guilford, my conduct was above reproach."
       "Or at least your discretion," Malfoy corrected, and as the Slytherins laughed, Snape jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen and set off. His students followed eagerly. Only Violet lagged behind, watching them go, her brow furrowed with a new thought. She stood even as laughter and happy shouts began to ring from the kitchen. Then she nodded to herself and hurried away to join her housemates.
       Snape knew exactly how to make the most of the meager ingredients in the pantry and soon a tummy-filling meal was bubbling on the stove. While it cooked, he showed them how to organize the cupboards, dishware and cooking supplies for the fastest meal preparation and how to maintain sanitary conditions in a less than opulent cooking environment. He enlarged their table so they could all sit around it at once, then ordered the girls to bring him the withered remains of the neglected window boxes so he could show them which dried leaves, when ground up and added to batter or mash, would enhanced the flavor of their meals.
       "I'll write down a recipe for a vitamin potion you can add to your drinking water," he promised as they sat down to a savory repast of spicy broth and potato flake pancakes. "The ingredients are fairly inexpensive."
       "Malfoy has money," Millicent piped up, "but we've been afraid to order anything for fear of giving away our location."
       Snape smiled as he helped himself to a single pancake and passed the chipped platter to Goyle. "A substantial number of you are underaged wizards performing magic away from Hogwarts," he reminded them. "As soon as the Ministry finds the time, they'll be on you like owls on a field mouse. Perhaps you should focus on security."
       The mention of Dumbledore's school brought an awkward pause to the conversation. Marybeth looked up timidly from her bowl of soup and voiced the question that was on many of their minds.
       "Are you here to send us back, sir?"
       Snape, who'd been raising a glass of water to his lips, put it down again without drinking. He thought for a few moments. Then he told his former students, "I want what is best for you... for all of you." He nodded and added, "That may include returning to Hogwarts. But I don't see how I can send you, Miss Montague, as I...." He picked up the glass again. "...am not going back."
       "Well, neither are we," Malfoy declared, raising a glass to join Snape, "because we hate Hogwarts as much as you do!" The Slytherins drank heartily to that, smacking their glasses back down on the table with authoritative bangs that made several of the younger kids giggle. Their giddiness reminded Malfoy of the half dozen former first year Slytherins scheduled to return to Hogwarts after the holidays. What would happen to them, he wondered. He was just about to ask Snape when Violet piped up.
       "He wasn't a very good one, was he?"
       All conversation stopped as the Slytherins turned curiously to her. Snape frowned. "Who wasn't a very good what, Miss Guilford?" he demanded.
       "The squire!" Violet reminded them. "He wasn't a very good head of house, was he?"
       The Slytherins stared at her, then turned with one motion to Snape, who narrowed his eyes at Violet. "No," he finally admitted, a coolness creeping into his voice. "He wasn't."
       He focused steely eyes upon the girl who smiled sweetly back at him before bowing her head over her bowl.
       "A good head of house is important," she told her soup.
       Malfoy bit back a smile. He turned to Snape, who glowered for several seconds at Violet's coyly-bowed head before admitting with a curl of his lip,
       "Indeed."
      
      
      
       He stayed for three days, teaching them everything they needed to know to manage the house properly. "Your heating charm needs to be renewed once a year," he explained after hunting down the spot where the plumbing split into hot and cold pipes.
       Most of the carpets, he pointed out, were cheap or worthless. "You should keep the expensive ones," he advised, "but evanesco the others. Hardwood is easier to scourgify."
       He showed them how to construct and set traps to catch small wildlife for stews and encouraged Malfoy to visit neighboring farms posing as the squire's agent to contract for fuel. "It shouldn't be hard to find someone who makes his living cutting wood," Snape assured them.
       On Sunday afternoon, he went looking for Malfoy among the upstairs bedrooms. The door was open to Violet's room where he found the girl standing near a wall, staring at Marybeth's drawings of himself and Lupin that she'd hung near the window.
       "Who sleeps in the middle?" he asked, nodding at the bed she shared with Jennifer and Marybeth.
       "We take turns," Violet told him. She glanced at him briefly before returning her attention to the drawings. "It's the warmest spot but it's not easy if you have to get up in the night."
       Snape came to stand beside the child and joined her in studying the sketches. Lupin's showed the warm-hearted young werewolf smiling with joy, his head tilted to one side, his hair blowing in the breeze, as if Marybeth had caught him assisting with Jump School or participating in calisthenics on the lawn. "It's a fine likeness," Snape had to admit.
       Violet followed his gaze to Lupin's image. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized that this was the perfect moment to ask Snape if he'd killed Peter Pettigrew. She took a deep breath... and chickened out.
       "So's yours," she blurted instead, and Snape, who was scowling sternly at the viewer in his drawing, turned a sour face to the nitwit beside him and inquired icily,
       "Have you any idea where I might find Malfoy?"
       Violet gasped. "The wood!" she cried. She snatched up her cloak and hurried from the room without a backwards glance.
       Snape found Malfoy on his hands and knees in a dusty little room near the back of the house, casting reparo charms at a burn hole in the floorboards. "Did someone leave a bluebell flame unattended?" he inquired from the doorway.
       Malfoy climbed to his feet with a scowl. He'd ordered some younger kids to clean up in here so he could use the room as a study. What they'd actually gotten up to, he couldn't imagine. "If I keep a list," he asked Snape, "will you come back once a week and cane everybody on it?"
       Snape chuckled. He pulled out his wand and scourgified a section of the floor for the two of them to sit on. "I must tell you, Malfoy," he confessed as he eased himself to the floor, "I suspect your chances of one day heading Slytherin House have all but evaporated in light of recent events."
       Malfoy threw back his head and raised his hands to heaven. "Hallelujah!" he cried. Then he dropped to a sitting position opposite his former teacher.
       "Do you remember," he asked Snape, "the time you told me certain honors weren't worth having anymore?"
       Snape nodded.
       "I learned from Voldemort," the boy went on, "that power doesn't last without good leadership. Now I'm starting to wonder..." He glanced out the window, where a handful of younger kids he'd told to gather wood were actively engaged in a snowball fight instead. "I'm starting to wonder," he repeated with a sigh, "if power is worth having at all."
       Snape climbed to his feet. "You mustn't confuse power with notoriety," he told the boy. "A truly powerful person can make enormous differences from the most obscure of positions or locations." He opened the window and shouted at the youngsters battling in the snow, "Get back to work this instant or I'll flog the lot of you!"
       The Slytherins dropped their snowballs and ran for the woods as fast as they could go. Snape closed the window and sat back down.
       "The night I interviewed the Gryffindors," he went on as he arranged his cloak more comfortably about him, "Miss Granger asked me a question. Can you guess what it was?"
       Malfoy snorted. "She requested help with her NEWTs, no doubt."
       Snape shook his head. "She asked me how the Slytherins and I managed to avoid romantic entanglements."
       Malfoy's eyebrows flew up in surprise. "Poor old Weasley! " he grinned. "What did you tell her?"
       "I told her," Snape replied archly, "not to make assumptions about 'poor old Weasley.' After all..." He shooed away a spider that had descended from the ceiling to land on his shoulder. "None of the older brothers has chosen marriage yet."
       He glanced out the window where the younger Slytherins were emerging from the woods levitating bundles of fuel. "I think," he mused, "that your generation may be deciding there are a number of things that aren't really..." He turned back to Malfoy. "... worth it."
       "Maybe we're like you," Malfoy suggested. "Maybe we'd rather be free. Except..." He shook his head with disgust. "I'm not like you," he confessed to his teacher. "Not enough, anyway." He jerked his head at the formerly disobedient children now trudging dutifully past the window. "That's the problem, I think. I need to be more like you."
       "Maybe the problem..." Snape began gently. He paused, casting about for the right words. "Malfoy, are you sure you know why you're here? Because when people do things for the wrong reasons..."
       "We're here because of you!" Malfoy interrupted. "We couldn't stay in that godawful school another minute! Not if we want to turn out like you!" He turned away, embarrassment staining his cheeks a blotchy red. Snape studied the boy a moment, then lowered his gaze to stare at the spider who was now making his way down Snape's dark trouser leg towards his shoe.
       Malfoy climbed to his feet and opened the window. He thrust his upper body outside to feel the cool air against his burning cheeks. To his right, the last of the young Slytherins were making their way around the corner of the house, heading for the front door. He studied them for a moment, then leaned back inside and closed the window.
       "They know me too well," the teenager murmured as he watched the last of the Slytherins disappear around the corner. "That's why they don't want to mind me. They know all the rotten stuff I've done and how I've only looked out for them to get more power in the house. But you, on the other hand..."
       He turned back to his housemaster, folding his arms across his chest. "You told us not to be jealous of Potter for being the Chosen One of the prophecy," he reminded Snape, "because God often picks bums to do His bidding. Well, that may be true for tasks, but it's not true for people." He nodded, a sour certainty filling his face. "Only good people can make more good people," he informed his housemaster.
       He unfolded his arms and thrust his hands into his pockets to warm them. "You have to be better than other people before you can judge or discipline them successfully," he went on. "You have to have a cleaner slate. Only good people can turn bums...
       "Excuse me." He broke off and smiled broadly at Snape as he prepared to quote his teacher. "Only good people can turn pleasant people into more good people... and there aren't very many good people!"
       Snape shook his head. You have no idea, he thought as he pulled himself to his feet. "Malfoy," he said firmly, dusting himself off as he sidestepped the spider that had just fallen off his shoe, "...it is never too late to start cleaning your slate."
      
      
      
       The Slytherins crowded around him in the vestibule that evening as he prepared to take his leave. "Will you come back for Christmas Eve, sir?" they begged. "Please?"
       Snape hesitated. "I have important business," he told them, "but perhaps...." He looked around at the faces staring up at him. "Perhaps I can finish up sooner," he nodded before disapparating with a pop.
       After he'd gone, the Slytherins gathered in the squire's parlor. They made a rather dispirited bunch, Malfoy thought, despite their full bellies and warm fire.
       "I'll start visiting farms tomorrow morning," he promised, "and find a supplier of wood."
       "I'll go with you," called Goyle, who was sitting near the fire with Violet at his feet.
       Malfoy nodded his thanks. "I think, tomorrow morning," he added carefully, "the non-orphans should head for home. We can manage without you for a few days and your parents will worry if you don't visit soon."
       Millicent waved at him from across the room.
       "We'll have barely half our brooms here if they all go at once," she warned Malfoy. The boy shrugged.
       "We'll be fine," he insisted. "We'll just settle in for a quiet, cozy Christmas."
       He surveyed the gloomy faces around him. "We'll see Snape again," he reminded them. "If not Christmas Eve, then after that, and often. It's almost as if he came with us!"
       His housemates were not convinced. Malfoy nodded at Jennifer Rosich, who slid over on the couch to make room for him. "Violet," he called as he propped his feet up on an ottoman, "why don't you tell us a story?"
       The girl frowned. "What sort of story?"
       "Tell us about that song we sang in choir," Crabbe suggested. "What was the movie about?"
       Violet grinned. "It takes place in St. Louis," she began, "about a hundred years ago."
       "Where's St. Louis?" Marybeth asked, and Violet explained how it was roughly in the middle of America.
       "It's autumn," she set the scene, "and this family is very excited because the World Fair is coming to their town."
       "When do they sing the song?" Pansy asked, rising and walking across the room to plop down in Malfoy's lap. The boy put his arms around her waist.
       "It's Christmastime," Violet remembered, "and the family is getting ready to move to New York City."
       "Cool!" Crabbe exclaimed.
       Violet shook her head. "No," she corrected him. "That's what the father thought, too. But the kids are upset, because they love their home. It really matters to them. They feel like... like..." She hunted for the words. "They feel like they've made something wonderful out of it, and they don't want to give it up."
       A long silence followed this bit of exposition. Marybeth, sitting next to Violet, raised one hand surreptitiously to wipe away a tear. Her housemates noticed the gesture, however, and Violet pointed to her in surprise as Goyle reached down to draw the girl into his chair.
       "That's what happens in the movie!" Violet exclaimed. "The little girl cries, and her big sister sings the song to her on Christmas Eve."
       Almost unconsciously, Millicent began to hum.
       Uh oh, Malfoy thought. Better put a stop to this. He gave Pansy a pat on the bottom to shoo her out of his lap but the girl refused to take the hint. Instead, she joined humming. Violet stood up, putting an arm around Marybeth's shoulder as she added her wobbly treble to Crabbe's and Goyle's rumbling baritones.
       Doo doo doo doo, doo-doo-doo-doo doo doo...
       "That's enough!" Malfoy stood up, dumping Pansy unceremoniously to the floor. "Go to bed," he insisted. "We have a big day tomorrow."
       The Slytherins dispersed. But a short while later, as Malfoy was crawling beneath his covers, he heard low voices resonating throughout the house.

"Once again as in olden days,
happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
will be near to us once more.
Some day soon we all will be together
if the fates allow..."

       A package arrived the next morning as they were eating breakfast. Violet scurried past the brooms lined up neatly in the vestibule for the non-orphans' trips home to open the door and admit Malfoy's eagle owl and Spellwad carrying a wicker basket between them. It was from Marcus Flint and contained dried figs, for a change, and Saturday's issue of the Daily Prophet. Violet popped a fig into her mouth and unfolded the paper as she walked back to the kitchen. When she saw the headline, she stopped dead, spitting out the fig to scream, "Malfoy!"
       The Slytherins came running. They took one look at Violet's face and gathered quickly around her, reading over her shoulder.

Harry Potter Missing

Ministry officials announced last night that the heroic young man who saved humanity from Tom Riddle (aka Voldemort) has disappeared. Foul play is suspected and the boy's friends and teachers at Hogwarts are deeply concerned as Mr. Potter was apparently unarmed at the time of his disappearance.

Madam Rosmerta of the Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade, reports that the teenager spent Thursday night at her establishment but apparently left some time before dawn. Before departing Mr. Potter retrieved his glasses from a guest room bureau along with a dowel rod Rosmerta keeps to prop open a nearby window during summer months. Potter's wand was left behind and has been turned over to Albus Dumbledore.

       "What could have happened?" Millicent cried when the Slytherins had finished the article.
       "He's got money," Violet piped up. "Maybe somebody kidnapped him."
       Malfoy thought of the stories they'd heard at Hogwarts about muggle and even wizard opposition to the fight against Voldemort. He shook his head. "There are richer people," he insisted, "easier to kidnap. How could they have known he'd accidentally leave his wand in a drawer?"
       "Could he have run away?" Tracey suggested, but again, Malfoy didn't think so.
       "If he had his invisibility cloak with him," the boy pointed out, "he'd have gone back for his wand, and why would he run away without his cloak?"
       "Why would he run away at all?" Millicent agreed. "He's not a baby. He could just leave, like we did."
       The Slytherins fell silent. Then Malfoy nodded.
       "We have to go back," he decided. "This is Monday. The students go home Wednesday. They'll be making plans to look for him. We have to help them." He nodded again. "Get your cloaks," he ordered.
       Before they could disperse, Crabbe stuck his hand into the air. "Do we have to fly?" he wondered, eyeing the row of brooms warily. "It's so cold!"
       The Slytherins nodded, remembering their miserable flight to the manor. Millicent glanced out the nearest window and added, "It looks like it could snow."
       "What else are we going to do?" Malfoy snapped. "We're not on the floo system and we can't apparate!"
       "We could fly to London," Jennifer suggested. Malfoy turned to her in disgust.
       "That's the wrong direction!"
       "Yes," Jennifer admitted, "but it's much closer, and..." She gave him a sly little grin. "That's where the Hogwarts Express is."
       The former head boy froze. Jennifer nodded.
       "They'll be preparing it for the trip," she reminded her housemates. She gave them all the patented Malfoy eyebrow bounce and asserted, "I'm sure I can drive it."
       "How cool would that be!" Crabbe breathed, nudging Goyle in the ribs, "to arrive on the Hogwarts Express!"
       It couldn't hurt to try, Malfoy thought. If we have to, we can make our way to Diagon Alley and floo from there. He didn't like the idea of splitting up through the floo system, but it was so quick...
       "I hate to burst your bubble," Millicent spoke up, "but we can't just fly to London in broad daylight. There are rules, remember? How are we supposed to get to King's Cross without being seen?"
       She had a point, the Slytherins realized. Malfoy looked out the window she'd checked a moment ago. "Can anybody perform a disillusionment charm?" he asked. The Slytherins shook their heads and Malfoy shrugged. "We can fly above the clouds," he pointed out. "We'll wait a few hours so that it will be dark when we arrive. That way it won't be so difficult to land without being seen."
       Jennifer nodded happily. "Better that way," she agreed. "There'll be fewer people at Platform 9 3/4 we'll have to stun to hijack the train."
       Oy, Malfoy thought.
      
      
      
       They landed one at a time in an area rich with trees a few blocks east of King's Cross. "Hide your brooms!" Malfoy hissed, and the Slytherins who were carrying them quickly tucked them beneath their cloaks. Still, Malfoy feared, it would be painfully obviously, in their cloaks and school robes, that they were wizards. "Stick together," he ordered. "Hands on your wands."
       They made their way to the nearest large thoroughfare. "Where are we?" Crabbe wondered.
       Tracey consulted the signs. "Pentonville and Cumming," she reported. People on the street and in passing cars stared at them. Many looked wary. Some looked hostile.
       "All right." Malfoy squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. "If we get separated, meet back..." He stopped. No, that wouldn't do. If things between wizards and muggles were really that bad, it would not be safe to have Slytherins wandering London alone or in small groups. Should he tell them to return to the manor? He shuddered at the thought of the younger ones on their own for hours or even days. "Meet back at Hogwarts," he decided, and the Slytherins nodded. Pansy stuck her wand in the air.
       "What are you doing?" Malfoy hissed. "Put that away before someone sees it!"
       "I wanted to see if the Knight Bus was back in business."
       The Slytherins looked up and down the street but no triple-decker bus appeared.
       "Come on," Malfoy muttered. He turned west towards the station. The Slytherins followed close behind.
       As they passed Caledonia, he paused and looked over his shoulder at the group. "Break up a bit," he suggested. "Maybe it won't be so obvious what we are."
       By the time they reached the station, they were divided into about a dozen groups of 3 or 4 students. It took a couple of minutes for all of them to make their way inside. Malfoy, who was standing the farthest from the doors with Crabbe and Goyle, waited until all 40 Slytherins were accounted for before turning to head down the concrete walkway.
       He walked briskly towards Platform 9 3/4, stopping short about 20 yards from the barrier. The Slytherins stopped with him, unconsciously clumping up again. Malfoy frowned at the sight before him.
       About fifty young men were loitering in front of the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. They were thuggish-looking, dressed in shades and accessories clearly intended to intimidate. Some were leaning against the wall smoking, despite the signs forbidding this activity. Some were talking together in low voices. Their pockets bulged with blunt instruments which they occasionally squeezed or stroked as if verifying their solidness.
       "Who are they?" Malfoy whispered warily to Goyle. Millicent slipped away from Violet and Marybeth to draw closer to the three boys.
       "They look like they're waiting to thump someone," Goyle observed with an expert's eye. Crabbe nodded.
       Malfoy took a quick look around the area and leaned over to Millicent.
       "Where are the muggle...?" He tried to remember the word Rita Skeeter had used in her article about Moody and the trash bins. Millicent seemed to know what he meant. She shook her head.
       "What are they waiting for?" she wondered as she eyed the thugs. "Even if they know about Platform 9 3/4, this isn't the right day for the Hogwarts students to return."
       Millicent's words made Malfoy's heart beat faster. Was she right? Were these people waiting to attack Hogwarts children returning home for the holiday?
       "What do they do," he whispered to Crabbe and Goyle, "wait here 24 hours a day hoping someone will walk through?" He palmed his wand inside his pocket.
       "Maybe they're coming home early," Crabbe suggested.
       The Slytherins turned to him with a jolt. That was so brilliant they couldn't believe Crabbe had suggested it With the shortages and all that had happened, Dumbledore might very well have sent the Hogwarts students home early! "The kids who still have parents haven't seen them in nearly a year and a half," Crabbe reminded everybody.
       Malfoy snapped his fingers. "Their folks!" he realized, turning around to face his housemates. "They can't be coming home today or we'd have seen their folks heading for the barrier to pick them up!"
       The Slytherins took a quick look around the station. There was no sign of the Weasleys, the Boneses, the Browns, or any other wizarding adults they knew. They had just breathed a collective sigh of relief when...
       "There's one!"
       The Slytherins whirled around to see one of the thugs pointing a truncheon he'd pulled from his pocket at Hannah Abbott. She was dressed in muggle clothes and seemed to be wearing 2 or 3 jumpers in place of her school cloak. Almost immediately, Hermione Granger came through the barrier with Ron and Ginny Weasley. The Weasleys, too, had on several layers of jumpers or sweatshirts, and Granger was wearing a muggle coat. There was something else odd about them, Malfoy thought. In an instant he realized what it was.
       They had no luggage.
       "Get them!" cried another thug. "Don't let anyone back through!" And as the unsuspecting Hogwarts students poured through the barrier, the well-armed thugs jumped them before they could even draw their wands.
       Malfoy hesitated just long enough to notice that the spectators and innocent by-standers did nothing but move out of the way. Then he drew his wand and charged the Slytherins, "Attack!"
       It took less than 30 seconds to discover that wands were useless in hand-to-hand combat; the spells hit wizards as often as muggles. But they made great poking and whacking sticks. Brooms were even better... until the thugs snatched them away and started bludgeoning back or worse, snapped them in two.
       "Should we stone?" cried Crabbe as all around them, the melee grew more violent.
       "No!" Hermione shrieked, genuine terror in her voice, and Malfoy, imagining the consequences of such action, could understand why. There was no telling what muggles, panicked by seeing their fellows turned to stone, might do.
       Muggles had ways of killing, too.
       We'll win, Malfoy insisted to himself as he threw a curved punch into the jaw of the thug who'd snatched his broom and stomped on it, splitting it in half. At least seventy Hogwarts students, all the kids who still had parents, had poured through the barrier, and there were 40 Slytherins besides. They outnumbered their assailants more than 2 to 1. He kicked the thug he'd knocked out in the ribs before whirling on the man who was trying to throttle Violet while Marybeth whacked him repeatedly with her broom.
       A shrill whistle split the air and everyone looked up to see a contingent of uniformed muggle... Oh, yeah! Malfoy remembered, police! ... approaching fast, truncheons held high over their heads, determination in their eyes.
       Thank God, Malfoy breathed as the man strangling Violet let her go. But when the thug folded his arms across his chest and grinned confidently, Malfoy's heart sank.
       "Scatter!" he screamed as the first officer reached Ron Weasley and grabbed him by the arm, raising his nightstick to club the young wizard into submission. Malfoy leapt across the room in a single bound, landing on the officer's back and grabbing his arm before he could bash Ron. Ron tore loose, Malfoy jumped down, and the two long-legged teenagers raced for the doors as all across the station, witches and wizards leapt and bound away from their tormentors and spilled out into the cold, dark night.
      
      
      
       Ron and Malfoy found Violet a short distance from the station, huddled beside a parked car, glancing frantically in every direction.
       "Did you see where the others went?" Malfoy demanded.
       "Which others?"
       "Anybody!" Ron snapped, and Violet shook her head.
       "How are we going to get to Hogwarts?" she asked Malfoy. "Marybeth's gone and she had the broom."
       Ron turned curiously to Malfoy at this, but the blonde teenager ignored him.
       "We're not going to Hogwarts," he told Violet shortly.
       "But you said if we got separated..."
       "We were going back to help the others look for Potter," Malfoy reminded her. "Well, they're here now, and they've come to look for Potter..." He turned to Ron. "...isn't that right? That's why you're all wearing muggle clothes and you've got no luggage. You left it on the platform so you could search for Potter."
       Before Ron could reply, a shout rang out from the other side of Euston Road. "There's some!" a rough voice cried. The trio looked up to see a group of thugs sprinting towards them from the opposite side of the street.
       "Get ready to stone," Malfoy hissed, reaching into his pocket for his wand.
       "We can't!" Ron shot back. "It's defense against the dark arts, not defense against muggles! We'll be up before the Ministry!"
       He grabbed Violet by the hand. The thugs were gaining on them. "Run!" he shouted.
       Malfoy took Violet's other hand and the three of them raced around the east side of the station, heading north as fast as they could go.
      
      
      
       Marybeth fled south, running steadily until she'd crossed St. Chad's and found herself on a sort of footpath between two avenues of trees. Here she slowed, glancing constantly over her shoulder as she wheezed to catch her breath. She was lucky, she realized. She still had a broom. She could take flight from this park, provided no one had followed her.
       At that, she snorted. Why should she care if anyone saw her take off, she thought. It was obvious a large number of muggles now knew about wizards. Why should the Ministry punish wizards for using magic in front of them anymore?
       Of course, there was the question of her age.
       "And it's dark," she murmured to herself as she pulled her cloak more tightly around her. She'd made the trip from King's Cross to Hogwarts by broom before, even in bad weather. But could she find the school flying through the dark? Maybe she should find a spot to hunker down for the night and leave in the...
       "What have we here?"
       Marybeth jumped. A lanky boy had just stepped in front of her, emerging from behind one of the trees further up the path. Immediately, several more people did likewise, stepping out from behind trees to surround Marybeth. They were teenagers, she saw, around sixteen or seventeen, boys and girls, dressed in similar clothing. Their outfits and the skin on their cheeks and the backs of their hands were decorated with strange symbols, circles and stars and peering eyes. The young Slytherin palmed her wand in the pocket of her robe.
       "None of that, now!" the lanky boy jeered, and he reached out to yank the cloak from Marybeth's shoulders so his gang could see what she was doing.
       "My cloak!" Marybeth shrieked as the lanky boy tossed it to the girl nearest him. It was the young Slytherin's most prized possession. Snape had given it to her. But before she could make a move to retrieve it, another boy grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides.
       The girl who'd caught the cloak, a pale creature with a sour face, gave a nasty snicker and pulled it on, luxuriating in the feel of the material. She reached up to fasten the top clasp and froze with a gasp.
       "What is it?" the lanky boy demanded, glancing briefly in the girl's direction before returning his ugly, narrow-eyed gaze to Marybeth. He looked ready to destroy her if the cloak had somehow harmed his friend. But the girl just laughed, rather maniacally, Marybeth thought.
       "Warm!" she cried, snuggling herself deeper into the cloak's embrace. "It's warm!"
       Marybeth jerked one arm free and held out the broom she was still clutching to the crazy girl. "Here!" she cried, hoping the girl wouldn't know brooms didn't fly for muggles. "You can have this! But please, give me back my cloak."
       The lanky boy chuckled and the rest of the gang joined in. The cloaked girl fixed Marybeth with a stare that was supposed to be penetrating and hissed dramatically, "The magic is strong with you."
       At that, Marybeth almost giggled. Who were these twits, she wondered. But when the girl whirled around, making the green cloak billow, her throat tightened painfully. My cloak! she thought, fighting back tears. Professor Snape gave me that cloak!
       "The wand!" the sour girl hissed to the lanky boy, and he reached out carefully to retrieve the item from Marybeth's pocket. He seemed afraid of it, holding it gingerly by the handle as he carried it to the girl. The gang surrounding Marybeth backed away a few feet. But the girl snatched the wand, giving it a vicious swipe through the air as she glared at her cowardly comrades. Then she thrust the wand into the air and threw back her head back to exhort the darkened skies:
       "Hear me, great and powerful Dark Lord! Show favor to your servant. Bless us, o master, our eternal Lord Voldermort!"
       Marybeth's knees buckled. The boy holding her nearly dropped her as she went limp.
       "You can make me worthy!" the girl in the green cloak beseeched the night sky. "Hear me, Dark Lord! Change me from this wretched state into what I would be for you!"
       A wave of nausea broke over Marybeth and she feared she might be sick. It can't be! she thought as she struggled against the dizzying sense of unreality threatening to overwhelm her. They're muggles! It can't be. It can't be!
       The muggles waited, their faces turned to the sky, their breath steaming out of their mouths as they watched for a sign. None came. The girl in the green cloak lowered Marybeth's wand and gazed contemptuously from the wooden rod to its rightful owner.
       "It's contaminated," she spat. "It must have been used to oppose our lord and master." She grasped the wand by both ends and raised it above her head before bringing it down to snap in two across her knee. Then she tossed the pieces aside and reached out to snatch Marybeth's broom.
       "Hold her steady," she ordered the unseen boy still pinning Marybeth's arms to her sides. The cloaked girl drew back the broom and swung it around full force to bash Marybeth across the head. The Slytherin slumped to the ground, unconscious.
       "Hide her," the girl ordered. "Over there."
       The lanky boy scooped Marybeth up and carried her to the far row of trees where he dumped her. The gang regrouped around their green-cloaked leader who led them out of the park, swinging her new broom like a club.
       In the darkness beneath the far row of trees, Marybeth lay motionless. The heavy clouds hanging low over the darkened city opened at last and snow began to fall, enshrouding the park and all within it beneath a gentle layer of white.
      
      
      
       "Brilliant!"
       Millicent grinned at Crabbe's praise. It was brilliant, she had to admit. They were standing, along with Pansy and Goyle, in the Early Medieval Gallery on the upper level of the British Museum, having alohamora'd their way in through a window near the Montague entrance after hours, bypassing the motion detectors with their leaping technique.
       "Are you sure nobody will notice?" Goyle asked of the brooms they'd just stashed in one of the exhibits displaying everyday items used by Brits of that period.
       Millicent shrugged. "What if they do? They'll probably just hold them while they make inquiries. We can relocate them with a summoning charm on Christmas Eve if we have to." But she was betting, with only one more day before the facility closed for the hols, that its staff had better things to do than scrutinize the exhibits. "Let's go!" she exhorted her housemates, turning back the way they'd come.
       "Wait!" Goyle grabbed her by the arm, his face puckered with another concern. "They can recognize us from what we're wearing, too."
       That was true enough. Millicent shook her head. "I can't transfigure the cloaks into another type of outer wear," she confessed, "but I could change the color."
       "Not pink!" Crabbe insisted, remembering what she'd done to their snakes last year. His housemates chuckled but t