1. Chapter 1 by cmwinters
BLAST! thought Severus Snape to himself as his heavy boots crunched the brittle grass beneath his feet sending pathetic puffs of pulverised grass dust into the ether in his wake. Bugger that overachiever gene! As if being a teacher and Head of House wasn't a full time job all its own, as if being a spy for the Dark Lord weren't a gargantuan task unto itself, as if being a spy for Dumbledore didn't place me in mortal peril every moment of every day-no, I have to go and take on all three! And add to that that in the past seven years, my NEWT-level students have only seen three even marginally qualified instructors and that includes myself, an escaped Death Eater and a bloody werewolf, for Merlin's sake! That nincompoop Umbridge set everyone two years behind at least, and it was time they could ill-afford to lose. Truly I should hex Lucius into next week for that stunt next I see him.
At the rate he was going, he wasn't going to live long enough to see Narcissa's thrice bedamned Vow to its completion. Reinvigoration Draughts could only go so far, after all.
And speaking of which . . .
Snape slipped into the shadow of Hagrid's hut, and as the bitter winter wind whipped around him, he pulled a crystal phial from a fold in his heavy black robes, uncorked it with his teeth and tossed back the bitter contents, long years of practice enabling him to do this with nary a wince.
Dropping the top into his hand, he recorked the phial with one hand and slipped the container back into his robes, and wondering how the devil he was possibly going to get even a quarter of the tasks on his list accomplished tonight without the use of a Time Turner, continued stalking across the lawn.
Oh for fuck's sake, he thought with a glance at the wall clock that was discretely positioned behind the four hourglasses holding rubies, sapphires, topaz and emeralds. I'm ten minutes late for remedial Defence with Crabbe and Goyle. Thank the gods they've not got the intelligence of a Flobberworm between them-I doubt they'll notice.
Resolutely ignoring the angry growl his empty stomach gave at the sumptuous smells wafting out of the Great Hall, Snape pounded down the flagstones toward his Defence classroom, and slammed the heavy oaken door aside as he burst into the room.
"SIT!" he commanded, glowering with utter contempt at two of the finest specimens of pure wizarding blood the world had to offer, and not even attempting to ameliorate his expression.
Merlin's hairy bollocks. I can understand apprehension at Muggle-borns, particularly during the Dark Ages, but surely this is not what Salazar had in mind?!
Snape flicked a glance at the towering stack of parchment which was piled upon his desk that he had yet to grade. While the papers were supposed to be a week's worth of essays from seven years worth of students, he had very little expectation that even the NEWT level students would be up to a standard he could have maintained at age nine, in content or in syntax.
He crossed his arms and gripped his throbbing forehead in a pincer-like grip. Taking a deep breath, and desperately hoping to maintain an at least a tenuous hold on his temper, he turned sharply on his wayward students, having come to a decision.
"This evening," he said softly, "we shall be focusing our attention on the Unforgiveables, since you have forgotten everything Professor Moody managed to drill into the heads of even your moronic classmates-if indeed you ever learned it to begin with."
The Dim Duo looked blankly at him, and Snape considered that had anyone else looked at him thus, he'd wonder if they'd already been cast under the Imperius by another. But alas, breaking the curse was not to be on the schedule for the evening-they appeared to not even have heard him. Or not have understood him, which was more likely, as they'd flinched when the door had collided with the wall, even though they'd been facing the other direction, thus calling into question the likelihood they'd become hearing impaired since he'd seen them roughly six hours ago.
Extremely pressed for time, hungry, impatient and tired, he whipped his wand out of his sleeve and verbally incanted the curse two times and with easily twice as much force was necessary. Although quite capable of casting the Unforgiveables (as well as every other spell, thank you very much) non-verbally, he was ostensibly training these imbeciles and thus had to give them the so-called courtesy of a warning so they could stand a chance at repelling the curse. He quite frankly thought that policy was moronic, given that anyone likely to use the Unforgiveables to begin with and capable of non-verbal casting wouldn't give such a warning, but he supposed learning to crawl before learning to walk was always advisable. Even if one should have learned to crawl fifteen years ago and walk a year after that.
He appraised his students critically, a fleeting concern that for some inexplicable reason the curse hadn't taken effect as the looks on their faces hadn't changed crossing his mind, then remembered that the faces of their fathers held equally blank expressions before and after being Imperiused.
To be completely sure, however (one doesn't survive as a spy for as long as I have by taking ANYTHING for granted, much less against both sides!), he commanded them nonverbally to withdraw quills and parchment.
It was little-known that persons under the Imperius Curse could be directed non-verbally, and it didn't require any particular aptitude on the part of the caster beyond proficiency at non-verbal casting, although Occlumency was recommended, because once held under the will of the caster, the victim could (and would!) respond to random thoughts of the caster.
The two mechanically reached for their quills and parchment, looks of bliss on their faces, and by that Snape was satisfied they were bewitched, since they never looked so at ease when facing parchment.
"You will compose letters to your fathers," Snape said, settling himself behind his desk with a swish of his flowing robes and a mental smirk. The fact that Victor Crabbe and George Goyle were functionally illiterate didn't seem to bother their sons, nor did the fact that Myra and Megara were equally indisposed to making sense of the nearly indecipherable scrawling. If they even knew it to begin with, which he sincerely doubted.
All of this worked perfectly well for Snape's purposes, who really didn't give a fat damn if they ever wrote to their families at all, or if all six of them dropped off the face of the planet for that matter. What he did need rather desperately was to get a message to Narcissa Malfoy that her son was being an insufferable brat who not only was placing his mission in very grave danger, but was now also refusing to attend meals. As the elder Crabbes and Goyles were both indentured to the Malfoys and geographically close to them, Snape knew they would scurry straight to Wiltshire to have Narcissa interpret. Anything sent by him would raise unwanted attention, so he couldn't scribe it himself, but a letter from son to father wouldn't draw a glance-particularly when both involved were so thick.
A few minutes of scratching transpired, during which time Snape stared aghast at the parchment from the top of his pile. He blinked, and spun the parchment 180 degrees counter-clockwise, hoping against all evidence that he'd been holding the essay upside down. When that failed to render the parchment any more legible (or less, for that matter), he flipped it over and held it up to the light, wondering if for some inexplicable reason it had been written in mirror text.
It wasn't.
Snape blinked, set the parchment down and rubbed his forehead, then glanced at his bookshelves. Those that contained titles on the spine were legible, so he hasn't been suddenly struck by an illiteracy hex. He murmured a translation spell over the parchment but saw no change and deciding he'd spent entirely too much time on the parchment, scrawled a large red T across the entire document and tossed it to the side. He'd inked his quill a little too generously, and the ink slithered down the parchment in snakelike rivulets and pooled like blood in the imperfections in the skin.
Annoyed, he turned his attention back to his students.
Gregory Goyle sniggered at a comment made by his friend Vincent Crabbe, although if you asked him to repeat it he wouldn't have been able to, as he'd already forgotten. But the sudden slamming of a heavy door against the solid stone wall of the castle wiped all humour from his mind, and he turned, slowly, to face his presumed attacker, with his wand safely hidden deep in his book bag.
He relaxed considerably when he saw his Head of House. Goyle liked Professor Snape. Draco had always liked Professor Snape, although Goyle thought sometimes that lately, Draco didn't like him so much anymore.
Goyle was happy when he saw the look on Professor Snape's face. Even if it was confusing. Any other time someone looked at him that way, Goyle thought they didn't like him very much, but Professor Snape always looked at him like that, and had told him once, wearing that same expression, that he was "absolutely delighted" to see him. Goyle knew that Professor Snape was a trustworthy guy, because otherwise the Dark Lord wouldn't trust him, and he'd heard his father and Draco's father talking about that.
When Professor Snape told him and Crabbe to sit, they did as they were told. Goyle and Crabbe were good wizards, from proper all-wizarding blood, and not many could claim the distinction of being "better" than they were, but Professor Snape was such a person who could, and they knew to obey their betters. And when Professor Snape told them their subject matter for the evening, Goyle was ecstatic. Professor Snape or the Dark Lord must truly have a special need for him in future for him to be honoured with special lessons on the Dark Arts from the Dark Lord's right-hand-man!
And so it was with as much alacrity that he could muster that Goyle placed himself trustingly in Professor Snape's hands, and reached for parchment and quill when directed, and thought that writing a letter to his father was the most smashingly brilliant idea he'd ever heard. Even though he didn't like writing very much, and even though he'd never written a letter home before, he started his letter like he was told.
dEere Da,
This took him roughly five minutes to write, and he sat up and stared at his letter, chewing on the bristles of his quill.
At an utter loss of what to say next, Goyle glanced at Professor Snape, who was looking at him intently with his arms folded over the parchment he'd apparently abandoned. But seeing Professor Snape reminded him of something he needed to tell his father.
Here Goyle stopped and stared helplessly at his parchment for a long few moments. "Professor?" he began lamely, "I don't know how to spell . . ."
"A-N-T-I-P-O-D-E-A-N . . . " intoned Professor Snape slowly.
Goyle scribbled this down.
" . . . O-P-A-L-E-Y-E," continued Professor Snape calmly.
Goyle scribbled this down as well, and continued, a very dim and distant part of the back of his mind wondering what the bloody hell Antipodean Opaleye spelled and what it meant.
This second sentence took another ten minutes to write, and Goyle's hand was starting to hurt, so he stopped writing and smashed up his parchment to send it to his father, and looked back at Professor Snape, who was ignoring him utterly.
But doing so made Goyle think of something else REALLY important, and so he uncrumpled his parchment and grabbed his quill again.
Satisified, Goyle mashed his parchment back up, heedless of the still-wet ink blotching all over his hands. He was just wondering if Anteepo-whatsisis ate cake, and thought he'd have to ask Ted that when he saw him next, when he realised he had absolutely no necessity to do any such thing. Goyle looked back at Professor Snape with a game smile.