Chapter Twelve- Yet Another Thing to Hide
Severus lasted all of about five minutes back in the Great Hall, drumming his fingers on the table, trying to curtail his own nervous habits, and attempting to finish the suddenly tasteless shepherd’s pie. Bloody Avery and Mulciber -- they must have suspected him, because this time he had heard nothing of their plans. Unlike the quasi-bombing attempt in first-year Transfiguration, this situation did not allow time for rumination and planning. And, again unlike his previous effort, the fact that he needed to intervene in this situation was bleeding obvious. As before, he picked up his book and left the hall with his meal unfinished.
As he was stalking back out, he bumped into about the last person he wanted to meet given the circumstances: Sam Douglas. Unfortunately, they had already made eye contact before Severus could look away, and Severus realised that there was no escaping it: he’d have to say something, although what to say to someone whose long-time girlfriend was at death’s door as a result of foul play was completely beyond his ability to fathom. “I’m sorry” would be a logical place to start, but after his recent conversation with Mary, he knew it might be taken as an admission of guilt, and although he and Sam were about the same height, Sam was a much more imposing figure.
“How is Siobhan doing?” Severus finally asked, unable to think of anything else.
Sam shook his head. He looked stunned, like he didn’t know what to do with himself. “I don’t know,” he answered, punching one thick fist repeatedly into the palm of the other hand in a gesture of anxiety and anger that, mercifully, didn’t seem to be directed at his conversation partner. “I’m not allowed in there.”
“Is it that bad?” Severus asked. If it were, he would have to act quickly -- there would be no time for finesse.
“Bad enough that they’re going to St. Mungo’s. But actually, it’s not that -- they brought her family over by Floo from Belfast, and her parents won’t let me see her.”
Severus gave him a puzzled look. “Some sort of … question of blood status?” he finally asked as diplomatically as possible.
Sam responded with a grim smile. “Nothing as interesting as that -- my da’s a half-blood himself, so my family doesn’t mind. Just your typical Northern Ireland nonsense. She and I were never involved in all of this business with the War,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I just thought we'd eventually just go back to Belfast and join the peace movement and get killed the old-fashioned way. And here she is poisoned for being a Muggleborn, and I’m not allowed in to see her. Of course, my lot is as bad. They think she’s a wee Papist bitch, and hers think I’m a Protestant Orange bastard. In any case, Pomfrey ordered me to stop moping around outside the door like a lost soul and get something to eat. So here I am.”
So that was where their accents came from -- and it probably explained their residence at Hogwarts over the holiday. Severus tried to think of some soothing platitude about the pointlessness of such divisions, something that would allow him to escape the conversation before he put his foot in his mouth, but he realised that any such comment would sound hollow coming from someone who had taken the “questions of blood status,” as he had put it, altogether too seriously until about six months before. “I’m sorry” finally seemed to have found an appropriate place in the conversation, so he said it.
“Ach--” Sam shrugged off the weak condolence. “I was as bad as the rest of them the first few years, and so was she. She was the only person in Hufflepuff I wouldn’t speak to, and she was no better. Buck eejits, the pair of us. But then she stood up for me once in Quidditch practice at the beginning of third year when our captain was being unfair-- always a great one for combating injustice, she is. I had to talk to her after that, didn’t I? And of course it turned out she was the most bloody amazing person I’d ever met. Well,” he finished, cutting himself off. “I suppose I’d better go have dinner before they Vanish it, if that’s what I’m supposed to be here for. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Severus repeated, and hurried away, back to his own room, because he couldn’t think of where else to go.
…………
It was only a guess, but it was a good one, and someone obviously had to tell the professors. But only two people at Hogwarts had participated in the conversation that probably had given Avery and Mulciber their idea, and Mary clearly hadn’t the foggiest notion of what their little academic discussion over chopping poppies had wrought. This left Severus.
He could, he supposed, just go talk to someone on the faculty. But the only one whom he trusted to pass on the information without mentioning his name was Llewellyn, and this being the weekend, Llewellyn was almost certainly at home. There was Dumbledore -- but Severus wasn’t sure what to think of Dumbledore. The Headmaster was fairly obviously amused by the Marauders and their antics, based on his mild response to Sirius Black’s potentially lethal practical joke the year before and the fact that Remus Lupin was actually allowed to remain a student at the school. No, he couldn’t trust Dumbledore.
Slughorn? Definitely not. If Severus somehow actually managed to produce information that contributed to saving anyone’s life, Slughorn would undoubtedly have his photo up as part of his collection of luminaries by daybreak, and the entire school would know. And no one could know that he was, again, attempting to thwart the Voldemort Youth. Therefore, not Slughorn.
McGonagall, then. She respected Severus’s efforts in her class, seemingly, and despite being Head of House for Gryffindor, she took a very fair and even approach to all of her students. Even Slytherins.
Nonetheless, it seemed foolish to walk up to a faculty member and tell her his theory. He had no idea how good McGonagall would be at keeping a secret, but while realising the necessity of speaking to someone, he had started to draw the conclusion that it would be much better if the secret were not in fact his. At Hogwarts, no good deed went unpunished.
Mary had been in on the conversation also, of course. Severus thought briefly about drafting a note, ostensibly from Mary, explaining that she believed that the two Quidditch players had not, in fact, been poisoned, but rather had been given the Draught of Living Death with a tremendous excess of one particular ingredient. There were Charms that could change one’s handwriting.
There were also Charms that could reveal which person had handled a piece of parchment. And if McGonagall asked Mary about the note, Mary would certainly remember where she had learned about the respiratory effects of the poppy.
The idea that was coming to him was probably madness, and certainly risky, but time was of the essence if the two had already become ill enough to be moved to St. Mungo’s, and he couldn’t think of what else to do. Besides, it would be something of an adventure, and if it worked, his own anonymity would be preserved -- as would his ability to learn of these plots and protect Lily from them, or at least, impress her with his efforts. He had the necessary potion. He just had to figure out which unfortunate and obliging student to impersonate to rat out Mulciber and Avery.
Not Mary, obviously. To begin with, she was a girl, which posed all kinds of problems that he had never before encountered when experimenting with Polyjuice Potion: the feminine gait, the insecure verbal tics of the typical adolescent female, and of course, the all-important question of whether he was actually secure enough in his masculinity to wear a skirt for a good cause. Of course, he’d worn a skirt years before while experimenting with Polyjuice Potion with Lily, and he probably still had it around somewhere -- but he hadn’t seriously tried to make anyone believe he was Lily. Instead, he had tried to make Lily laugh with his overdone impression of her -- and had succeeded. It was as well that no one had seen them.
On the other hand, Mary had the advantage of being a Muggleborn, which meant that if she asked McGonagall never to mention her involvement to anyone, even herself, for purposes of her own safety, McGonagall would almost certainly take it seriously. A Muggleborn was already a de facto target; one who told tales on the proto Death Eaters would definitely be singled out. But aside from being a girl, Mary was too close to the truth: she had actually had that conversation with Severus. If McGonagall did indeed come back with questions, Mary would be able to answer them, and the answers would point right to him.
As he dug through the hidden compartment in his trunk for one of his final two flasks of Polyjuice Potion, he racked his brain for other Muggleborns who were in Advanced Potions. Well, Lily, of course: tempting, for so many reasons, but no. It had been fun when they were twelve or thirteen, but this was different. Siobhan was out, obviously. Who the hell else was a Muggleborn? He went through the list of classmates he could remember insulting in the past with his cadre of friends, but none of them seemed to be taking Advanced Potions this year and thus would not have been in the class. All he needed was a Muggleborn, ideally male, taking Advanced Potions, but he couldn’t think of a single one. Perhaps those who were clever enough to be in Advanced Potions were also clever enough to hide their blood status. The Gryffindor chutzpah seemed to produce Muggleborns who were loud and proud about it, but the Ravenclaws and even the Hufflepuffs were much more subdued. The Slytherins, of course, were silent on the grave on the topic: if there were any, he didn’t know about it. And there had to have been.
When he was about to give up and settle for imitating Mary, he suddenly remembered: there was a good reason Geoff Oglethorpe had been so terrified of pairing up with Severus for the Defence practicum. He was a Muggleborn, and he was in the Advanced Potions class also.
The clothes would be easy -- they had to be about the same size. Still, he’d have to imitate Geoff’s rather robotic walk, of course, and Geoff’s nervous habit of endlessly biting his nails. The more he thought about it, the more passing as Geoff to snitch on Avery and Mulciber was becoming something of a Mount Everest of espionage, something he was beginning to actually want to do just to prove to himself that he could. It wasn’t exactly fair to Oglethorpe -- if McGonagall let slip that he had given her this crucial information and the Voldemort Youth somehow found out, they’d probably subject him to a few nasty spells to make him mind his own business. But once again, the end justified the means, and in this case, the end was Severus’s anonymity being preserved, allowing him to intervene in future. It seemed worthwhile.
Fortunately, Oglethorpe was easy to find, as he practically lived in the library. And indeed, there he was, so absorbed in some thick tome that he utterly failed to notice as Severus entered the library, casually leafed through something in the reference section and, with his wand up his sleeve, surreptitiously Summoned one hair from Geoff’s head. Geoff put one hand up to the back of his head as he studied, but didn’t seem to think enough of it to turn around. Severus feigned interest in the reference text for another minute, and then quietly exited.
The boys’ lavatory would be too public a place to do this, and there was a good chance that his roommates were already returning to Slytherin, so their room was no longer safe. And so, for the first time since Lily had stopped talking to him -- for the first time in years, really -- he found himself making his way to the third floor, to an abandoned classroom that he and Lily had sometimes used for studying or even just chatting without the disapprobation of their friends weighing upon them. No Man’s Land, they had called it. It had been about seven months since Lily had cut him off, but they had stopped going there years before: they had each grown enough backbone to study openly together in the library or Great Hall, to hell with the teasing, and they had seemingly had fewer and fewer things to say to each other that required comfort and privacy and peace. He wondered whether he would even be able to find his way there, it had been so long.
At first it seemed as though either he couldn’t remember the way, or that the door had been moved or walled up, but after a few turns down some vaguely familiar hallways, he found it, looking the same as always: clean and spotless despite the distinct appearance of having not been used in years. House-elves, he supposed. After making sure he was alone, from under his robe and out of his pocket, he pulled his supplies: a stoppered flask of Polyjuice Potion, and the one hair from Geoff’s head, wrapped in a page from the Oxford Wizarding Dictionary so that he wouldn’t lose it. He’d have to figure out how to return that, since desecrating books was not something he did casually. But that could wait -- now for the Potion.
He’d done this only once before, with Lily, of course, back in second year, which had been both hilarious and educational: they had both decided that the Transformation experience was miserable enough that they wouldn’t undertake it lightly again, and that her impression of him was much better than his impression of her, largely because he could not, for the life of him, figure out how to walk and move and sit down like a girl. Severus-as-Lily had been, apparently, overly twitchy, and hilariously un-ladylike.
And yet, over and over again in the months since Lily had stopped speaking to him, the two flasks had beckoned to him. There were any number of reasons to use the Polyjuice Potion, and what would probably fit Slughorn’s description of “obsessive love” was chief among them. The only thing that had stopped him was the realisation that Lily, who was so bloody acute that she wouldn’t need Legilimency to read his mind, would probably eventually figure it out and end their friendship even if he did manage to regain it. That Severus’s passion for her was to remain unspoken was, and had always been, an unwritten rule. Using Polyjuice Potion to possess her form without her permission was a definite violation.
In this case, however, he was actually using it to save someone’s life without getting himself killed. Siobhan Mulalley had been uncommonly decent to him and didn’t deserve to die at sixteen for the mistake of having Muggles for parents, any more than Lily did. With that more altruistic thought in mind, he grimaced and threw back the Potion.
There it was again: the nausea, the sickening warmth, the bizarre and uncomfortable feeling of his body Transforming into someone else’s. When he had recovered, he reached up and felt his face -- smaller nose, short hair: Geoff Oglethorpe. He practiced Geoff’s walk for a minute or two, reminded himself to chew on his nails occasionally, opened the door, and stopped.
Geoff might still be loose around the castle.
Of course he wasn’t. Geoff was in the library. Geoff was always in the library. And so Severus snuck out of No Man’s Land and down the stairs to McGonagall’s office, taking care to go nowhere near the library, and suddenly so nervous that he felt almost ill.
……………
“Professor McGonagall?”
“Mr. Oglethorpe. What brings you here at this hour?” As her sharp eyes considered him, Severus began to wish that he had thought up a different plan. Now that it was actually time to talk to McGonagall, the idea of making it through this without getting caught was coming to seem more and more preposterous. McGonagall was about as acute as they came.
“Well, ah, Professor -- I need to talk to you about something, but I have to ask that you tell no one that you heard this from me. I mean, I’d have to have your word that you’d tell no one that you heard it from me, that is.” That sounded like Geoff -- a bit nervous and uncertain. It reminded him to chew on his thumbnail briefly while McGonagall considered him.
Her brow furrowed, and she looked at him in a puzzled manner. “I can guarantee that to some degree, but with limitations,” she responded. “If you are revealing a threat to someone’s life or limb, I do have to report it to the authorities. And of course the Headmaster must be informed of any serious matter.”
McGonagall was not going to comply with his plan readily. No surprise there.
“Would you have to reveal my name to the authorities if I have an idea about a threat to someone’s life that has already taken place?”
“Do you mean Mr. Carmichael and Miss Mulalley?”
He nodded. “I don’t have any real evidence, so to speak. I just have a guess.”
“Do you have an idea who did it, then?” She looked surprised.
“No,” he said slowly, his voice coming out a bit higher and with a London accent and sounding strange to his ears. “I just have an idea about what they might have done. Can you assure me that my name won’t be revealed to anyone?”
She looked concerned, but eventually stated, “I suppose that if it’s all a guess, there’s no reason that I should have to report the person with the hypothesis to the authorities. Go on.”
“Then -- I can’t go into too much detail, but I have reason to believe… I have reason to believe that there was a discussion about something that could go wrong with a potion that -- that might have been overheard by the wrong people,” he stammered in a manner that seemed sufficiently Geoff-like to pass muster.
“Under what circumstances?” the professor asked crisply, tenting her fingers in front of her on the desk.
“I remember overhearing a conversation between two classmates about a potion. I don’t remember who was talking, but I do remember thinking they were close enough to people who could potentially use it the wrong way and that they ought to be more careful.”
“And who in Advanced Potions would be likely to use such information the wrong way?” She leaned forward, looking both very serious and very interested.
“I’d prefer not to say,” he replied nervously. “I’m sure the professors can examine the rosters and draw their own conclusions.” He bit off a hangnail on his right index finger for effect and was shocked at how painful it was. Geoff, he mused, must be some sort of masochist to actually do such a thing on a regular basis.
Professor McGonagall, however, seemed satisfied with the answer. “And the potion involved?” she queried.
“The Draught of Living Death.”
At this McGonagall leaned back, looking supremely underwhelmed. “My dear Mr. Oglethorpe, they’ve already essentially ruled out the Draught of Living Death. The potion is designed such that to overdose on it, someone would have to drink enormous quantities, which would be very hard to do on accident. And since there were witnesses to both students’ poisoning, I can assure you that they each drank one or two swigs from their flasks after the game and then simply dropped to the ground. They certainly weren’t consuming the quantities it would take to have this kind of an effect. Since it’s no secret, I suppose it’s safe to tell you that the authorities and the Healers at St. Mungo’s believe that the two have been poisoned. The Potions specialists at the hospital are distilling what is left of in the flasks to determine what exactly has been used.”
“That could take days,” Severus snapped, and then remembered that he was, for now, Geoff Oglethorpe. McGonagall looked surprised, so before this particular moment out of character could grab her attention, he took a deep breath and quietly continued.
“They weren’t actually talking about overdosing on the Draught of Living Death, though,” he said in a respectful but worried manner. “They were talking about what would happen if the stamen of the poppy were steeped first instead of the stem. Apparently it’s a very potent respiratory depressant. And if I overheard this -- anyone else could have.”
McGonagall looked sharply at him, finally catching on. “Of course, of course,” she replied, half to herself and half to him. “That would make a great deal of sense. It would also explain why the antidotes are failing.”
“It’s just a guess,” he said.
“It’s worth a try. I’ll report it immediately, Geoffrey,” she answered, slipping into the informality of using his given name, even if it was his full given name that no one actually used except professors. “And thank you for coming forward with this.”
Which reminded him -- “Professor?” he asked. “You won’t mention to anyone that I told you this, will you? Even if it’s correct?”
“I don’t believe I need to, Mr. Oglethorpe. But I’m not sure I understand your concern.”
“It would be best of you didn’t even mention it to me again, actually. Things make their way around Hogwarts so quickly, and I’m enough of a target as it is, being Muggleborn. I try to stay as unremarkable as possible. The trouble I could get for doing this would hardly be worth the house points.” He was relieved that he had thought to slip that one in: the thought had occurred to him that Professor McGonagall might want to discuss this issue with Geoff in future, and that Geoff would, obviously, have no clue what she was talking about. It would probably seem odd to both parties, to say the least. And it might lead back to him somehow.
Her expression softened somewhat, and she nodded with a worried look. “Of course, Mr. Oglethorpe. I understand. I will not even mention it to you if that might compromise your safety. Well,” she went on, more briskly. “It seems as though you’ve given me something to do before bedtime. Please return straight to your dormitory -- it’s after curfew, and these are troubled times.”
“Yes, Professor,” he answered compliantly, and slipped quietly out of the office.
The Polyjuice Potion had been, overall, not that bad. The transformation itself had been horrible, of course, but his hour as Geoff Oglethorpe had been surprisingly effective. After transforming back to himself back in No Man’s Land, he returned to his dormitory and made use of a more prosaic potion -- Fink’s Extra Strength Spot-Vanishing Potion, purchased during his last visit to Hogsmeade and worth every knut. Pale and oily was one thing: pale and oily with a face covered in inflammatory pustules was quite another. There were more ways than one of getting the girl -- not that any of them had ever worked.
…………
“You’ve read up on this?”
“Yes.”
“You know what you’re getting yourself into?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And you still want to go through with it?”
“I don’t see any other way to learn Occlumency, Professor,” Severus replied. He was sitting in Davis Llewellyn’s classroom, which had a distinctly different aura in the evening than it did in the daytime -- almost mysterious. For a moment, he felt bad about taking Professor Llewellyn away from the wife who was undoubtedly waiting for him at home, but then he remembered -- she probably had to take call at St. Mungo’s now and again. The professor probably had the good sense to schedule after-hours tutoring around his wife’s call schedule.
“Very well, then,” Llewellyn replied. “Presumably in your studies you have encountered the various means of opposing Legilimency.”
Ever the good student, Severus began rattling them off: “Protection Charm, Shield Charm, Petrifying Hex, any physically painful hex that will cause the Legilimens to break concentration--”
“--Cruciatus Curse, Killing Curse, not that I’m suggesting you use those,” Professor Llewellyn cut in, jokingly. “Yes, the list goes on and on. The idea, of course, is that those brute force tactics are for amateurs. They are ways of opposing Legilimency, but they are not, technically, Occlumency in its purest sense. True Occlumency involves redirecting the intruder down pathways of your mind that you do not object to sharing, so subtly that he or she does not even realise it. To do so, it helps to have in mind a set of innocuous memories of various sorts, ones that you can pull out of your hat easily when needed, so to speak. But the only way to practice it… is practice, unfortunately. That being said, feel free to make use of some of the more benign variants on brute force if necessary, to begin. This training has a way of making one relive all of one’s most horrid memories.” He looked pensive for a moment, and then stood up suddenly.
“It’s also more than a bit one-sided,” he stated. “Have you ever practiced Legilimency on anyone before?”
“No sir. I haven’t,” Severus replied, still trying to digest the professor’s earlier comments.
“Well, you should. I’ll do my best not to Occlude you, although I must say, it becomes habit. You should know what the paths of the mind look like before trying to control them in yourself. I would even recommend practicing Legilimency on a friend to get a better feel for it, with the caveat that your friend will probably want to practice on you in return. You know the incantation?”
“Legilimens,” Severus said softly, without using the accompanying wand movement.
“Legilimens,” Llewellyn concurred. “Try it,” he ordered, his wand in his hand but lying loosely on the desk rather than at the ready.
“On you, sir?” Severus asked.
“Go ahead,” Llewellyn encouraged him.
Severus picked up his wand, pointed it at the professor, and chanted weakly, “Legilimens!”
Llewellyn was in his office, answering a question from some younger student Severus vaguely recognized… he was having some sort of polite disagreement with Slughorn in Slughorn’s office … he sat at a kitchen table reading the Prophet while Mrs. Llewellyn in her formal Healer robes came up to kiss him goodbye…
Suddenly the contact was broken and Llewellyn cheerily announced, “Probably more than you wanted to see there. But you get the idea -- disjointed fragments, and you should know that the person practicing Legilimency sees and feels somewhat less than the subject, of course, and naturally has little to no context.” He paused and waited for Severus, who was nodding in reply and attempting to collect his thoughts and then redirect them. There were some thoughts, recent ones, that he did not want the professor to see. McGonagall had been enough. He attempted to think about the day’s events -- his lessons, talking to Mary in Potions class, eating in the Great Hall, one of his roommates hexing the shower to turn the water cold while he was washing his hair-- no, that one wouldn’t do, for obvious reasons…
“Shall we begin?” Llewellyn asked, picking up his wand.
“No time like the present,” Severus answered grimly.
“Legilimens!” Llewellyn chanted, and Severus could feel the boring procession of thoughts he had recently drummed up -- Potions class, talking to Slughorn afterward, breakfast, the sudden shock of icy water pouring over his head--
The memories ceased, and he was back in the room with Llewellyn, who had lowered his wand and stopped the spell. “My roommates used to do that one,” he said jovially. “Something of a running joke. Ready to try again?”
“Ready,” Severus said, even though he really wasn’t. He decided to use thoughts about Lily, which were probably strong enough, even in the increasingly distant past, to block thoughts of this morning’s exercise in humiliation, the latest in a series that had marked this year as one in which both Gryffindors and Slytherins had it in for him.
“Legilimens!”
He was watching Lily from afar as she walked away with her friends, and then watching her from the bushes in the park as she swung on the swings with Petunia, and then chasing her as she ran away from the library in anger, and then leafing through the Oxford Wizarding Dictionary, and then before he could stop it, standing as Geoff Oglethorpe in McGonagall’s office making the suggestion about the Draught of Living Death--
“Protego!” He had somehow managed to stop the spell with brute force, as Llewellyn had suggested. He hadn’t known that it would send him crashing into Llewellyn’s own thoughts -- a long room with tall windows on both sides and many beds that looked like a Muggle hospital ward, Mrs. Llewellyn again in her Healer robes, busy and worried, and then a younger Gemma Llewellyn, this time in Hogwarts attire, serious and determined but with the adolescent softness still in her face, and apparently arguing with Davis about some point in a book that she kept emphasizing with her index finger until he suddenly leaned in and kissed her, and she pulled away, looking both shocked and pleased--
“Nice work, Mr. Oglethorpe. How did you do it?” Llewellyn asked, ignoring the accidental intrusion into his own memories of his incipient teenage romance.
“The Polyjuice Potion? Or figuring out about the attack?”
“The latter. Half the students in Advanced Potions have probably been messing with Polyjuice for years, if they're anything like we were.”
“Not anymore,” Severus replied. “Professor Slughorn has taken to locking up his stores. Security concerns.”
“More's the pity,” Llewellyn commented.
“Please don't tell anyone,” Severus almost pleaded. “I'll be drawn and quartered if I’m found out.”
“Tell anyone what?” Llewellyn asked.
“Thank you,” Severus said with considerable relief.
“You're welcome,” Llewellyn responded. “Important question, though -- does Professor McGonagall know to keep this to herself?”
“She could get Geoff into considerable trouble if she didn’t,” Severus answered. “He’s a Muggleborn.”
“Of course he is -- well chosen. But you never did tell me how you figured out about the attack.”
Severus thought for a moment. “I made the mistake months ago of answering a classmate’s question about what would happen if ingredients for the potion were used incorrectly, and anyone could have overheard and used that information for their own purposes,” he finally stated. “It was a guess -- it just happened to be correct.”
“So it did. I believe both students will be back at Hogwarts by the end of the week,” the professor informed him, and then went on, “But do let me say before I Obliviate myself, that you never fail to amaze me. Now we just have to get you to amaze the girl without getting yourself killed.”
“Oh, I amaze her,” Severus replied. “Just not the right way.”
Llewellyn grinned at him. “No point in continuing the Legilimency lessons at this moment,” he said. “I believe it will probably be too difficult for you to redirect yourself from that particular point now that we’ve started discussing it. How would Thursday at seven o’clock work?”
“I can be here,” Severus informed him. “I think that’s always a fairly safe bet.”
“Work on redirecting your thoughts in the meantime,” Llewellyn ordered. “Clear your mind each night before you go to bed -- I know it sounds foolish, but it actually helps. No bombshells next time.”
“I don’t think I have any more,” Severus admitted.
“Everyone has more than they think,” Llewellyn answered thoughtfully. “Your job is to keep me away from them. Good night.”
“Good night, Professor,” Severus said, exiting the room. On second thought, Llewellyn was right, as usual. He’d have to begin practicing immediately -- Thursday was only three days away, and he had plenty of thoughts that he didn’t want the professor to see.
Snivellus and the Head Girl by SeverusSempra
Chapter Notes: A debt repaid.
Chapter Endnotes: Thanks again to Fresca (Colores) and Sandy (Snape's Talon) for beta'ing this and keeping me going with it-- and to everyone who reads and reviews it. Much appreciated.