lomonaaeren

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter One.

Title: That Glorious Strength (12/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Background canon couples, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Massive AU (no Voldemort), blood prejudice, mentorship, angst, drama, violence, torture, gore
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Instead of becoming Voldemort, Tom Riddle established a school of “secondary importance” for Muggleborns, half-bloods, and Squibs. Since the school frees Hogwarts to continue drifting more towards the purebloods’ whims and wishes, they haven’t raised any large fuss. Besides, everyone knows that half-bloods and Muggleborns don’t have any real power. Just look at Riddle, who had ambitions that outpaced his magical strength. They don’t see the revolution coalescing under the surface.
Author’s Notes: This is a story idea I’ve been brewing in my mind for a long time, and finally decided to write. I don’t have any idea how long it will be at the moment. The title is a twist on “that hideous strength,” used as a title by C. S. Lewis and from a poem by David Lyndsay.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twelve—Regimented

Draco shook his head a little as he studied the Weasley boy sitting beside him, deep in a Potions text. Of course it was a good thing that he was taking his studies seriously, but Draco saw such a natural lack of talent in Ron that he didn’t think Ron would ever catch up to where he needed to be.

To where a Slytherin really should be, so as not to shame the subject that their Head of House taught.

“Budge over,” Draco demanded, and squeezed closer to Ron so that he could take the Potions book from him. Ron gave him a narrow-eyed glance, but let him take it. Draco smiled. There was nothing wrong with Ron’s instincts, which was why he had been Sorted into Slytherin in the first place. He just had to work on training them more.

“Look,” Draco said, tracing his finger over the edge of the diagram that Ron had been squinting at for the last half-hour. “The reason that you have to stir counterclockwise is that the ingredients aren’t blended properly if you stir clockwise.”

“But why?” Ron slumped back and tugged at a strand of his overly-bright hair. “That’s what I want to know, and what the books don’t explain. Why does the direction make such a difference? Like…” He flipped back a few pages, although Draco didn’t let go of the book and so he couldn’t actually see what Ron was pointing at. “You use powdered moonstone in this one, too, and you stir clockwise instead.”

“Because the individual ingredients don’t matter as much as the combination.”

Ron gave him a heavy, skeptical stare. “Who told you that?”

“Professor Snape,” Draco admitted. “You know when I stay after class to chat with him a bit? He’ll start talking about what people did wrong that day, and he’s the one who told me that the combination is what matters most of all. You always have to have an eye on the whole potion, not just the properties of the individual ingredients.”

“Well, I never thought about that.”

I know you didn’t. Draco fought the temptation to say it, and won. “Well, not a lot of people do,” he said, which was also true. “But you have to think about the potion and what it’ll become.”

“Is Potions really that useful? I mean, I know we have to take at least up until OWL level in it, but I didn’t plan to make it a specialty.”

Draco laughed. “Don’t let Professor Snape hear you say that. Nothing’s more useful, to him.”

“But what do you think about it?”

Draco smiled this time. Having someone look up to him and who he could give advice to was as wonderful as Father had always said. Draco no longer wondered why Father always spent so much time advising people like Ron’s dad.

“I think so, too. But it’s not the most powerful thing you could do, even if it’s useful. What do you think about Dark Arts?” Draco turned on the couch to face Ron, who looked surprised and then cautious.

“I mean—I don’t know if I could get away with using them. I know some people can, but they’re Aurors or Unspeakables or people like that.” Ron scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be that important.”

“Stick with me, and you will be.”

“Really?”

“I don’t lie to my friends.”

Ron beamed at him, and Draco beamed back. He wouldn’t say Ron was a friend in the way that some of the important purebloods were, but he could be a friend like Professor Snape was a friend. Ron could have important skills, and he could be valued for that, and as long as he didn’t do something wrong and Draco didn’t have to hurt him, there was really no reason for their friendship to be all that different.

“I don’t,” Draco repeated. “But you do have to learn some Dark Arts, because the important people know them even if they don’t use them all the time.”

Ron nodded. “I can do that.”

His face was a picture of determination, and Draco believed him. He closed the Potions book and hopped off the couch. “Then let me show you some of the books my father sent me, and we’ll get started.”

*

“I thought we were just going to be learning Defense, Professor Riddle.”

Miss Granger sounded hesitant to be contradicting a teacher, but Tom could see why this was important enough to her to do it. He shot her a quick smile and turned around to face her, Harry, and the other three first-years he’d chosen for this special class.

The others would join it in their third year, when most students did. But students who had a special talent for offensive magic got earlier, hands-on instruction. Tom thought it was never too early for someone to start shaping his or her instincts to handle the kind of battle that most of them would probably see as adults.

“This is a side of Defense, Miss Granger,” he said. “Offensive magic. The kinds of curses that you’ll learn the countercurses to in my ordinary class. You’re here because I’ve seen that you have a talent for it.” He glanced at Harry, who didn’t look surprised but was watching him intently, and stepped away from the large boulder behind him. They were near the wall of Fortius, in a copse of trees and undergrowth preserved almost wild. “And you’re going to prove it to me by attacking this rock.”

“I have a talent for it?” asked Justin Finch-Fletchley, sounding utterly surprised.

Tom nodded to him. “Both you and Miss Granger are here based on your performance in Legilmency class, Mr. Finch-Fletchley. You showed that you can attack an opponent’s mind and do so cleverly and without hesitation. That’s rare. Most people, even when they know that they could use that magic to distract an enemy or shield themselves, shy away from the thought of hurting someone. You didn’t.”

“But that’s a bad thing, sir!”

“No,” Tom said as gently as he could. Sometimes he forgot how naïve first-year Muggleborns often were—and this boy, despite his own sister being cast out of Hogwarts for no crime…

But he wouldn’t take out his temper on someone who would never understand why he was doing it. Tom reined it back in and shook his head a little. “Not with the world we live in, Mr. Finch-Fletchley. There will come situations when we can’t hesitate. Not if we want to survive, or want those we’re defending to survive. Or if we want to guard secret information and take it back to our allies.”

The boy still looked stubborn. Perhaps he would be one of Tom’s rare offensive trainees who wouldn’t work out. But Tom wasn’t prepared to give up on him yet. After all, many people saw a difference between attacking their professor who was an expert in the Mind Arts and doing it to someone who wasn’t.

“What spells do we get to use on the rock?” Harry asked. He was staring at the boulder with an utterly focused expression. He seemed to have worn it most of the time since Tom had shown him the true memory of his parents’ deaths. That bothered Tom, a little, but he couldn’t deny that it would make the boy an effective killer. And that was what he wanted, had to aim for.

“Any that you want,” Tom said. “Any you’ve studied, or that you’ve already learned in class. You might even try Legilimency on it,” he added, turning to Miss Granger and Terry Boot behind her, who was stamping his feet as if trying to get rid of his anxiety. “It’s true that the stone doesn’t have a mind to influence, but there are other ways that particular magic can be used.”

“What are some of the ways, Professor Riddle?”

That was the fifth member of their little group, Alita Brenn, a little black-haired, dark-skinned Muggleborn first-year who had said that she’d had an auntie who was magical, but didn’t know what had happened to her. Tom met her eyes and smiled reassuringly; even more than Granger, Miss Brenn had a tendency to wrap herself up in her own concerns and decide that she might not be able to do something. She seemed to believe that she’d be asked to leave the school immediately.

“You might score the rock with enough concentrated attention,” Tom said calmly. “Magic can be focused through the eyes, Miss Brenn, or the hands. I’ve seen people manage Legilimency with their eyes closed. You should always seek weapons in various places, and see what happens when you touch them.”

Brenn hesitated. “But…”

“Yes, Miss Brenn?”

“You’re talking about great witches and wizards who can do that, aren’t you, sir?” Brenn whispered. “Not us. Not firsties. Or people who don’t have…” She trailed off, flushing, and Tom half-nodded.

“I know that the history classes are intimidating,” he said. “You’re exposed to the lies that the purebloods tell about us, especially in the recent history classes. But you’ve got to remember, Miss Brenn, that they are lies. Blood has nothing to do with magical strength, or power, or desire, or ability.”

“Why is desire important, Professor Riddle?” Granger piped up. She was winding one curl of her frizzy hair around her finger, staring intently at the boulder, as if she expected it to speak up and plead for mercy.

“Because wanting to do something is what summons your magic,” Tom said softly, and they all turned to look at him, alerted perhaps by the change in his tone. He couldn’t help it, though. He was speaking of something he considered sacred, and his voice thrummed through his body. “That’s why children have frequent outbursts of accidental magic when their emotions are running high. That’s why someone might achieve Occlumency when striving to protect an important secret and not at other times. That’s why we must know ourselves, learn our own desires and strengths and weaknesses, so as not to succumb to them.”

He faced the boulder and extended his hand without dropping the restraints that made his power appear negligible. The magic swelled in response, boiling against its chains. Tom stared at the rock, keeping his chains in place, and cast with his will alone.

There was a deep ringing noise like the heart of a concrete bell being torn open, and the boulder split asunder.

Brenn and Boot and Finch-Fletchley gaped. Granger looked thoughtful, as if she was trying to trace the pattern of the magic with her eyes and come up with an experimental procedure that would let her replicate it.

Harry…

Harry looked at the boulder as if he wanted to destroy it, shatter it to rubble, and dance on the pieces.

Tom smiled. Unrestrained rage was not something he wanted in his revolutionaries; it would get them captured or killed years before their usefulness wore out. But rage that ran deep and burned like a volcano’s fire underground? That was useful, and not common. Even more than they feared striking to kill, some people feared letting themselves become angry.

I shall have to train him, but that is true for all of them.

“Mr. Potter?” Tom asked gently. “Would you like to try a spell?”

“But you broke it with your power?” Granger said at once, in a tone that made it less a question than Tom would have liked. “How can we do the same thing if we’re not as strong as you are, sir?”

“I was holding back my power in the way that I usually do so as not to alert the purebloods, Miss Granger,” Tom murmured, not taking his eyes off Harry. Granger was a fine student, smart and driven, but she wasn’t the one who needed the most attention right now. “The most important factor I have that you lack right now is experience in summoning and focusing my will. And I think Mr. Potter is about to give us a demonstration that age and experience do not always matter.”

Tom flicked his wand at the boulder, and the sides slammed back together at his wordless version of Reparo, splinters and dust springing from the ground and crawling into the cracks and crevices that had opened in the sides. The other students jumped or flinched at the noise. Harry didn’t move, except to draw his wand.

“Ready, Mr. Potter?” Tom breathed.

Harry looked up at him with those green eyes that seemed swimming in brilliant fires ever since Tom had introduced him to his real memory of his parents’ deaths, and nodded.

*

Harry could feel the hatred swarming and churning in him becoming sharp and focused. He hadn’t known for sure that he would be able to do that, even though he wanted to impress Professor Riddle and the rest of them. It was one thing to want to hurt his parents’ murderers. Could he really want to hurt a rock?

But he looked at the rock, and he saw it as an obstacle on the path to his punishment of those murderers, and his magic stirred.

It was the most wonderful sensation Harry had ever felt. It was like a tree that had always been rooted in his stomach, and now it was sending roots down his legs and reaching for the sky. He could do anything from the top of a tree that grew that tall.

Harry laughed. He could feel other people staring at him, but Professor Riddle’s stare was loaded with approval that said he understood. That meant Harry really could do anything.

He aimed his wand at the rock, and didn’t think about a particular spell, even though he knew Professor Riddle would probably want him to. He aimed his will down the wand, and he asked for the destruction of the rock. He left it up to his magic and the wand to choose the steps that would get him there.

There was a sound like an enormous egg hatching.

The rock disintegrated in front of Harry. He felt the magic leaving him, saw it for a second in a flow that darkened the air like water or wind, and then the torrent slammed into the boulder, and the boulder whirled into oblivion. He watched in wide-eyed awe as little pieces of the rock seemed to dance on the air for a second, joined to each other, dancing around each other, and then they flew apart and the rock was gone.

Harry sagged to his knees. The torrent had taken its strength from him, and he was very tired now. He blinked sleepily up at Professor Riddle as the man bent over him. He looked impressed, which was a good thing, Harry thought. His body was filled with a floating feeling,

The way the little things that made up the rock floated away from each other, he thought.

“Harry? Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Harry said around a wide yawn. At least, he thought he was speaking aloud. But Professor Riddle was frowning in a way that said maybe he didn’t hear, so Harry tried to make his voice louder. “I just need to—”

Rest, he intended to end the sentence, but his head drooped, and his body collapsed in a way that meant he really needed to go to sleep.

*

“Professor? Professor? Is Harry all right?”

Granger was the loudest voice asking that, but it was more than just her. For the moment, Tom couldn’t answer them. He knelt on the grass beside the boy who had just—done what he had—and stared at Potter.

He was breathing. His thin chest was rising and falling, and his hand was clasped limply around his wand. Tom could hear his heart beating if he listened hard enough, which was an indication of the power that was driving it. No faint pulse there, although Potter seemed as exhausted as if he’d used his magic to Apparate.

And no wonder, Tom thought, as he stared for a second at the place the rock had been.

That had been controlled atomic fission.

No, not controlled, Tom thought a second later, as fear dashed through him and shook him like a dog with a rat. Not controlled. Potter was just so exhausted after he cast that magic that it couldn’t spread any further than destroying the rock.

Tom had never seen a student so dangerous in his school before now. Well, perhaps Shante Carol, but that was a special case, and she couldn’t have done quick damage like this.

“Headmaster Riddle!”

Granger was getting annoying. Tom stood up with a small nod in her direction and reached down to conjure a floating pallet for Harry. “Mr. Potter will be fine, Miss Granger,” he said smoothly. “He simply used an effort of will rather than a spell to destroy the rock, which means I will need to conjure another one for you to show me your skills with.” He studied the students for a moment. “Can anyone tell me why it would not always be such a wise thing to focus on what you wanted to do rather than a particular spell?”

They exchanged uncertain glances for a moment as Tom transferred Harry to the pallet. “Because it might have effects you don’t want it to?” Terry Boot offered after a second.

Tom managed to smile despite his own fear. “Exactly, Mr. Boot. I doubt that Mr. Potter intended to disintegrate the rock. He simply wanted to destroy it. But he didn’t visualize the means of his destruction.”

“What was that?” asked Mr. Finch-Fletchley, sounding subdued.

“It doesn’t have a name, since it isn’t a particular spell,” Tom said. “Of course, if you aren’t in control of your magic, then it might destroy things you don’t intend or even hurt your allies. I will be speaking with Mr. Potter when he wakes, simply to make sure that he understands not to just release a lot of magic like that again.”

And he would be giving Potter private lessons in controlling his magic, too. There was no way that Tom would risk the future of Fortius and his revolution for one student, no matter how talented. Harry was still welcome here, but he would have to learn finesse and not depend on the uncertain control of his will.

“Can we still cast spells?” Granger asked, shifting from foot to foot, after one more glance at Harry that was apparently meant to reassure herself he was fine.

Tom nodded and turned so that the pallet was floating next to him and he’d notice immediately if Harry moved or awakened. There was always the chance that he might come out of his magical exhaustion still trying to destroy the rock. Temporary memory loss was a feature of that sometimes. “Let me Transfigure another boulder, Miss Granger.”

When he had, transforming a portion of the dirt around where the first rock had been into a large stone, he nodded to Granger. “Do you want to go first?”

Granger was biting her lip in what looked like a mixture of longing to do so and fear about what would happen if she did. But she lifted her head when Tom’s eyes fixed on her, and after a moment, she nodded.

Her hands were clenched in front of her as she stepped up to face the boulder. She hesitated, looking at Tom. “Should I use my wand or not, if I’m going to try a Legiimency attack?” she whispered.

“Before, you were in the environment of Professor Elthis’s classroom, which is particularly amenable to Legilimency without a wand,” Tom whispered back. “I would think that you want to use it now, Miss Granger.”

That must have been the decision Granger hoped he would make, because she nodded with a relieved smile and drew hers. Then she faced the boulder and seemed to sink within herself for a long moment. Tom studied her in interest. Her magic seemed to run deeper than Harry’s, in some way, more like earth and less like fire.

“Legilimens!”

But there was nothing wrong with the power of her voice as she cried out, or the sharp gesture she made with her wand towards the stone. Tom turned, looking at it in expectation.

There was a slight shudder, and a long mark like a crack scored the top of the stone. It didn’t run as deep as Tom’s spell had, though, or of course cause the effect that Harry’s had, and Granger came down on her heels with a disappointed breath.

“That was an excellent first start, Miss Granger,” Tom assured her.

She glanced up at him. “Really, sir? But I didn’t cause…” She bit her lip again.

“Complete destruction is not always the answer,” Tom said dryly, thinking again of what would have happened if Harry had had more power to use at his disposal, or had tried something that required less power merely to create than fission. “And you’re using a spell that would normally have no effect on a rock at all. That you did is remarkable.”

Granger beamed then, and stepped back so that Boot could edge forwards. Tom began to instruct him, while still keeping a weather eye out on Harry’s gently breathing, so-far-motionless form.

He hadn’t yet encountered someone at Fortius who might have been the death of him; there had been people like that at Hogwarts, of course, when he was young. But now there was someone else.

Tom was not sure he liked it.

*

Harry opened his eyes, then hid them and groaned. The light was hurting him and his head was pounding like he was one of the drunk characters he’d sometimes seen on Aunt Petunia’s telly.

And I didn’t even get drunk!

“You worried us there, Mr. Potter.”

Harry turned his head swiftly towards Professor Riddle’s voice. He was sitting in a chair near Harry’s bed, which seemed to be in the Healing building where Harry had first met Sirius and Remus. Harry gave Professor Riddle an uncertain smile, since his face was blank. “Um. I don’t remember what I did.”

“You used magic that could have killed everyone in Fortius and tainted the land for decades.”

Harry stared at him. “What?”

“I don’t know for sure it would have tainted the land for decades,” Professor Riddle continued, after apparently thinking about it. “It had a different power source than the Muggle kind does. But it could have killed everyone in Fortius at the very least.”

Harry swallowed, shaken. “I didn’t try to do that,” he said. “I just—I wanted to get rid of the boulder. That was what you told us to do.”

“I told you to use the magic that you already knew,” Professor Riddle correctly quietly, sitting forwards and staring at Harry from so close that Harry squirmed. “Spells, through your wand, with focus and will behind them. That wasn’t a spell.”

“No. But I don’t think I could have destroyed the boulder with a spell.”

Professor Riddle sighed and shook his head a little. “Your penchant for taking instructions literally means that I have no choice but to take your training under my own guidance.”

Harry blinked and said nothing, because he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be saying.

“You will have extra training with me, on the weekends,” Professor Riddle said, and stared at Harry as if he thought Harry would complain about the loss of free time. But Harry just sat up and stared at him, waiting, wondering if this could really be as good as it sounded. Riddle nodded and sighed and said a second later, “Yes, it’ll be private tutoring in offensive magic.”

“I promise I’ll do my best!” Harry said, and couldn’t stop himself from bouncing up and down in the bed.

Professor Riddle eyed him. “That,” he said, “is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

Harry shrank back a little, but he didn’t think he had anything to be afraid of from Professor Riddle the way he’d sometimes thought he did from his primary school teachers. So he managed to smile at him and say, “Then I’ll do my best to listen to what you mean. And all your instructions.”

Professor Riddle smiled at last. “In that case, I do believe we shall get along.”

*

“How are your latest creations coming, Carol?”

Shante Carol turned her head and eyed Tom for a second. Tom just looked evenly back at her. Yes, he did occasionally think her first name, but he called her by her last one just as she’d always asked.

And she wasn’t a good enough Legilimens to know about his occasional private thoughts, anyway.

“Well enough,” Carol said at last, and made a large gesture with one of her hands over the bubbling cauldron in front of her. She was taller than Tom, with long legs and long arms and long black hair that twined busily around her legs, expressing its own kind of magic. At least it never got in the way when she was brewing. “But the bubonic didn’t work out the way I thought it would. I had to start over with that.”

Tom made a soft sound in the back of his throat. “I thought you already had bubonic.”

“I have pneumonic. I need the regular bubonic, too.”

Tom shook his head, and glanced around at the cauldrons and vials and capped flasks that filled Carol’s lab. It had taken him a long time to stop reflexively holding his breath when he stepped into the room, despite knowing that Carol’s skill was such that she never would have left plague-bearing fumes streaming into the air.

At least, not on accident. Probably not on purpose, either.

Carol had been kicked out of Hogwarts only secondarily for being a Muggleborn. The real problem had been that her Potions talent was, as Slughorn had put it, “twisted” in some way. Every combination of ingredients she touched warped into its deadliest possible form—but as the closest possible disease, not a poison.

Three purebloods had died of cholera before anyone became suspicious. And even then they thought it was an accident, since no Muggleborn was possibly intelligent enough to do it on purpose. It was the only reason Carol was still alive. They’d broken her wand and cast her from the magical world.

They thought.

Tom himself was intelligent enough to appreciate people whose magic didn’t need a wand, and who had all kinds of talent. He had met two Muggleborns whose magic had refused to manifest except as what the Ministry labeled Dark Arts—one in Charms, one in Transfiguration. They had completed their education thanks to Fortius, and now they passed as half-bloods working on the outskirts of pureblood society.

Along with Carol, they were Tom’s most skilled assassins.

“I need you to create a plague keyed to the blood of one student,” Tom said, coming straight to the point, which he knew Carol appreciated. “One that must weaken his magic and kill the most dangerous expressions of it.”

Carol’s eyes widened a little, the only sign that she was intrigued. “And what expressions of his magic do you consider the most dangerous?”

Tom drew the memory from his head and looked around for the Pensieve that Carol usually kept sitting near the front of the lab. He sighed when he saw it swarming with a thick grey potion towards the edge of a table.

“Are you going to take that out of there?” he asked.

“Not unless you want a typhus epidemic.”

Tom shook his head, replaced the memory in his own head, and looked deeply into Carol’s eyes, feeding her the image of Harry destroying the boulder. Carol tilted her head slowly back and forth when the sharing was done, obviously deep in thought.

“I assume that it’s not just explosions you want taken care of, though,” she said at last. “All the most dangerous manifestations, right?”

Tom nodded. “Honestly, the best thing would be if he contracted a fever each time he began drawing too powerfully on wandless magic. Then he would lose some concentration and certainly the will to impose his power on the world. I thought…”

His voice trailed off, because Carol obviously wasn’t paying attention to him. She turned and walked slowly towards a crimson cauldron along the far wall, Vanishing the contents with a flick of her wand. Then she began to Summon various stones and leaves from the storage cupboards beneath the lab’s single window.

Tom smiled slightly, and left her to it.

*

Minerva leaned back in her chair and swallowed more Firewhisky than was good for her. But honestly, sometimes she wondered why she was still in Hogwarts at all.

Teaching Transfiguration to students who sneered at her constantly for her half-blood status. Unable to punish those students, even the Gryffindors, who tormented Muggleborns or half-bloods who didn’t have the right politics. Staring at students, like Victoria Weasley, who had been created with magic, and wondering when the inevitable toll of that would arrive to demand its price.

Minerva didn’t know as much about Potions as she did about Transfiguration, and supposedly the creation of those children had been carried out with potions alone. But she wasn’t stupid, and she could see the way that the bodies of children like Victoria strained against their seams, bulging and rippling uneasily.

Only in their auras, for now. But those potions had been imbued with powerful Transfiguration spells, or Minerva couldn’t transform into a cat.

And human Transfiguration was almost never, ever permanent.

A knock on her door startled Minerva and made her guiltily hide the mug of Firewhisky behind an inkwell. But it was only Severus who stepped into her office, his face pale and set.

“Severus?” Minerva stood up and straightened her hat. “Is there a problem with one of the students?”

“No. I have something to talk to you about, though, and it’s important.”

Minerva frowned and sat down again. She wasn’t sure why Severus would have sought her out to talk about—something else. They worked together well enough, but they weren’t exactly friends.

Now that they were sitting down, Severus seemed at a loss how to begin. For a moment, his hands clenched in front of him, and then he saw Minerva looking at them and visibly made them relax. He finally drew his wand and laid it on the table between them. Minerva peered at it, wondering if it had a crack or some such in it.

“Minerva,” Severus said abruptly. “Do you support the current regime?”

Minerva stared at him, and then tightened her muscles as she prepared to transform. She knew how close Severus was to Lucius Malfoy. She would either flee or force them to kill her. She wouldn’t be taken alive to the torture chambers beneath the Ministry.

“No, Minerva!” Severus’s voice was a low, urgent hiss that made her pause, but not relax. “I do not.”

Minerva gasped, caught off-guard that he would say such a risky thing aloud, and then noticed the way Severus’s eyes glittered with triumph. She scowled at him, which didn’t change his expression one iota. Obviously he knew from her reaction—instead of leaping up to report him or chastise him—that they were on the same side.

“Why did you draw your wand, if what you’re saying is true?” she snarled in a low voice.

“Because I was prepared to Obliviate you if I was mistaken in you,” Severus said. Minerva scowled at him, but Severus ignored that. “But I see now I’m not.”

“What difference does it make?” Minerva pulled out her mug of Firewhisky and downed half of what remained, ignoring the burn in her throat. It couldn’t compete with the feeling the bitterness put there. “We can’t do anything about it. We can’t do much even to protect our students who are mistreated for their blood.”

“If I said we could? If I said that I already have a powerful ally who’s provided me with a magical artifact that will help us?”

Minerva’s mug thumped into the desk as she leaned forwards. She had expected him to propose a small action, such as falsifying records. That he might actually be on the brink of something larger already…

“Tell me more,” she breathed.