Postal

Seventeen

Unsurprisingly, the Department of Mysteries was a tough place to find. Unplottable, of course. But Snape knew where it was. While the Ministry of Magic kept its main bureaux in Central London for the most part, the Department of Mysteries was housed in a single octagonal building of immense size concealed beneath a body of water. A Scottish lake, to be precise.

With the Ministry's endorsement, it had become a wildlife preserve for endangered aquatic beasts ill-suited to captivity by conventional magical means. Ministry-fuelled rumours of a prehistoric sea serpent in the lake had effectively deterred unsuspecting Muggles for centuries without the aid of spells. However, despite the Ministry's best efforts, in the latter half of the century, Muggles had grown fearless and, worse still, infuriatingly curious. Some had even gone so far as to adopt a fond nickname for the "creature". To Fudge's horror, each year the height of mid-summer yielded tour buses of camera-toting Muggles flocked to the lake, hoping to catch a glimpse of "Nessie". This new development, posing the greatest breach of security to date, prompted the Ministry into back-pedaling, setting Concealment Spells and other wards on the building entrances, but more specifically, issuing a series of well-placed Muggle press reports that the creature's existence had been a mere hoax. In any event, Snape fervently hoped that at night there would be little risk of running into anyone at Loch Ness.

His boots crunched along the gravelly shores of the lake where he had been deposited by the portkey. Tossing aside Dumbledore's empty Ribena carton, he heard it splash a few feet to his left. Even with his bat-like night vision, cultivated over years in dim dungeon light, the Potions Master could barely discern shapes through the fog in the near distance. And with the moon slipping behind a cloud, he failed to notice the long, moss-coloured log in his path until his boot crushed down on it with a... squish?

The log swiftly recoiled into the water with a noisy splash. He jumped back quickly. But not quick enough to avoid the clammy vise that had taken hold of his left leg and was dragging him down across the muddy banks. Small, sharp pebbles nicked at his face and hands as he jerked about, vainly groping for an anchor, until his torso and head finally disappeared, enveloped by the bone-chilling blackness of the lake.

***

By the time young Malfoy had been dispatched back to Hogwarts in the custody of two of the DoM's field agents, the ex-Auror instinctively craved something stronger than a mug of the Ministry's tepid black tea. With a weary sigh, Moody closed his office door, warding it several times and chuckling as he set a nasty little Hinkypunk Harpoon, before sinking with a creak into the pine chair behind the battered oak desk. He ran both his eyes over Draco's affidavit which ended almost abruptly when he'd confirmed the capture of Lucius Malfoy and Peter Pettigrew. At that point, the information flow had ceased, like a tap turned off. The boy merely refused to speak, but not out of impertinence. Out of fear. Moody sighed again. The boy had been through enough, of course, and it couldn't have been easy implicating his own father. Black and young Potter had requested that he be detained in a cell until he revealed everything he knew. Arthur Weasley's youngest boy even eagerly suggested some undoubtedly effective, if unorthodox, methods of interrogation-what was that he'd said about lowering him into a pit of six-foot tall hairy black spiders? (Moody grinned and made a mental note to tap the boy for the Unspeakables upon his graduation. That fresh-faced boy-next-door look would have made him an unlikely candidate, but Moody was happy to detect in young Ronald the clear influence of his older siblings, Bill and Charlie.) But Moody, who'd accepted the veracity of Draco's story, felt that Hogwarts was the best place for him for the time being. Perhaps Diggory or even Lupin would have better luck with the boy once he found himself in more familiar surroundings.

Ducking beneath the waves of loose parchment overflowing from the in-tray on the blotter, Moody rummaged in his drawers for the bottle. Twenty- to thirty-year old quills (useless), a half-empty packet of Bolivian Guanoflower Chewing Tobacco (illegally confiscated, highly potent) and a small plastic vial of blowing-bubbles (approximate vintage: 1988; from his then young niece's visit to the Ministry) was all he could unearth. Not a single bottle of Old Ogden's Firewhisky. Dammit. His Magical Eye darted around searchingly. Ah, the trunk.

Moody pushed himself up with his gnarled walking stick. Snatching a jangling brass hoop of seven keys from his desk, he set to work on each of the seven locks on the large trunk in the corner. Let's hope old Crouch didn't manage to pilfer all the spirits last year as well, he thought. Turning the first lock, he sighed impatiently to see his untidy, unalphabetized mound of second-hand spellbooks and dust-covered DoM training manuals. Dropping the lid, he undid the second lock and flipped open the box again, this time to reveal a disorganized drawer of stationery supplies and a set of broken sneakoscopes. Moody grunted irritably. Damn that Crouch! Must've broken every last one of them! Hmmph. Bet the bastard's not even insured. The Invisibility Cloak he'd bought as a first-year-qualified Auror rippled like cascading stardust deep in one corner, still good as new. Thank Merlin for small favours. Moody draped the rich translucent folds over his shoulder as he replaced the lid and fumbled with the seventh and last lock.

This time, he peered down into a deep torchlit chamber, which by all accounts last year resembled more a tomb than a vintage wine cellar, where Moody had lain unconscious while Crouch impersonated him with draughts from a hip flask of Polyjuice Potion. The Department of Mysteries had celebrated Moody's return to civilisation with a marzipan-covered orange chiffon cake shaped like a megaphone (charmed to bellow "Constant Vigilance!" at regular intervals) and a spot of redecoration. The DoM had outfitted the cellar with a large squashy sofa, a woven Yetiskin rug and rows upon rows of rosewood wine racks with printed brass labels classifying his extensive wine and spirit collection by geographical region and type of plant base.

Climbing down the ladder, Moody's boot and the stub of his artificial leg reached the sandstone floors. He browsed along the rows of Bordeaux reds and then stretched a hand behind the 1986 Chateau d'Yquem tapping his wand at four bricks in the wall. The middle brick slid forward, yielding a dusty bottle of Old Ogden's Firewhisky. Moody's alternative first aid kit.

No sooner had he hoisted himself onto the floor level of his office and set the bottle next to the contraband tobacco, than there came a loud drumming at the door.

***

Snape rapped his knuckles against the door three times. The spray of water from his dampened robes shot across Moody's office door, drenching the parchment notices about Continuing Stealth and Surveillance Training. Bugger.

He drew his damp wand and gave it a shake. "Secculum," he whispered, feeling a puff of warm dry air as his robes and hair instantly lightened in the absence of the water weight. He smoothed a hand across the front of his robes and realized with some irritation that they had shrunk slightly, and the tip of the Death Eater Skull on his arm peeked out indiscreetly from his left sleeve.

"Yes, who is it?" Moody's gravelly voice through the door sounded peeved.

But no more so than he was, having wrestled with a sea serpent he'd mistaken for a fallen tree and which turned out to be a DoM sentry. It deposited him at a security desk manned by Merpeople clearly too preoccupied by administrative matters of compulsory trident-sharpening to trifle over a little thing like Snape's inability to hold his breath underwater indefinitely. He coughed. His lungs were still raw from water burn where he'd reflexively inhaled a moment too soon.

"Severus Snape," he replied, straining to keep his voice polite. On the other side of the door, after all, was the legendary Alastor Moody, who put more Dark wizards in prison than Severus had ever known. He had decided to take a softly-softly approach with Moody; which in part entailed putting him on a need-to-know basis. There was no point in telling him he used to be a Death Eater; he probably already knew. But if he didn't, Severus wasn't about to tarry over the details. Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus. That had been Snape's motto ever since he'd privately disavowed the Death Eaters. If Moody wanted that information, surely it must be in some file.

On the other hand, Severus was not a stranger to sacrifice. He desperately needed to see Esmerelda, know that she was alive. Needed it like it was air. To hear her soothing voice, fall into the warmth of her brown eyes, have the sensation of her arms around him again, an embrace that said I love you for who you are and who you will be, the breath in his hair and the tender hands that said I'll never leave you-no matter where we are; we'll never truly be apart, for you and I are one. He had gone for so many years without her that the void inside had become familiar, a part of him, like the curve between his thumb and forefinger. So familiar that he almost believed the completion he sought was a dream. But now that she was with him again, he knew he could never let her go. Not again. Not unless it was over his dead body.

He wasn't sure how much Moody knew about his past. And he didn't relish being confronted with it. But if that was the price he had to pay to get his wife back, so be it. Snape held his breath, listening to the last droplets of lakewater slide quietly from his wand onto the stone floor.

After a few muttered incantations from behind the oak door, he ascertained the muffled series of Latin declensions which lifted the wards and left the door slightly ajar. Snape paused for a polite second then strode over the threshold into the disarray of Moody's office. The ex-Auror stood in front of his desk, a grizzly grey mane tumbling across his shoulders. His brown eye glanced edgily at something off to the side, while the blue brilliance of his Magical Eye settled on the professor. There was a light coating of dust in his hair, Severus noted, as if he'd just emerged from a cave, trolling for hidden treasure. That, and a slight but almost guilty flush to the old man's face... but maybe Snape was just imagining it.

Moody cleared his throat. "Snape. How can I help you?" He gave the professor's hand a perfunctory shake.

Snape nervously tugged down on his left sleeve, not failing to notice Moody's hand surreptitiously pushing what appeared to be a compromising packet of Guanoflower Tobacco under a pile of St. Mungo's pathology reports. Snape arched a long thin brow, filing away the information-not necessarily for blackmail, or for any purpose, for that matter. The observation of potentially scandalous data was simply a Slytherin reflex.

Quickly averting his gaze, he found himself disoriented by the man's eyes. The brown eye glanced down toward the path reports while the blue held his unblinkingly. Snape didn't know which one to look at, so he settled for the broken bridge of Moody's nose.

"I'm here-"

"-about Callum Rosier. I know," interjected Moody with a banishing wave. "So, did you get him? Where is the bugger?"

Oh. Snape blinked at him in genuine surprise. After his conversation with Dumbledore, he'd nearly forgotten all about Rosier.

"Well, no. In fact, I was instructed to leave," he replied, "although perhaps you knew that."

"Leave?" Both of Moody's eyes swiveled to fix him with a level stare. "Who told you to leave?"

Snape looked put out. "Someone named de Sauveterre. At Rosier's firm."

"Who?" Moody's eyes were wide now. "Never heard of him." He was thoughtfully rubbing the grey stubble on his jaw now. It made a resonant scraping sound in the small cramped room. "And just what reason were you given?"

Closing the door behind him, Snape recounted the arrival of Tom Riddle and his review of the Provision of Services contract that related to Rosier's position in the Dark Army. He omitted discussion of Veniat Eques Malus. For the moment, Snape wanted to puzzle out for himself how Voldemort would plot the procedure. The spell required both his and Esmerelda's blood, and he didn't want that dangerous correlation to damn either of them, particularly given his present audience. In addition to the blood and the essential catalyst, Voldemort would need a few other ingredients, the most difficult to come by being a type of corpus resurrectus known in certain Muggle cultures as a Golem. It would take time and the expenditure of more magical energy than Voldemort was currently able to wield to successfuly create such a creature, fashioned from earth and Dark magic, in the image of Death.

"...immediately knew something wasn't right," Moody was saying, apparently having changed the subject. "Once I had my assistant dig these out, I didn't know what to think."

Snape's head jerked up attentively. "About what?"

"How Wilkes, who we apprehended this afternoon-at least we think it's him-and Rosier, or whoever he is-how they could have come back from the dead."

Snape gaped at Moody. "What exactly do you mean, from the dead?"

Moody lifted an old Daily Prophet clipping from a file which Snape took with an uncertain hand.

The article dated to the days shortly before the fall of Voldemort. His eyes scanned the article: "DEATH EATER DUO FALLS TO AUROR SQUAD. Barking, Herts. Despair and shame have once again cast themselves upon the now darkened halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. A mere two weeks after the incarceration of their schoolmates Romualdo and Porphyria Lestrange in Azkaban, two more Hogwarts graduates, discovered to be in the service of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, died at the hands of an Auror patrol unit on the Highway in the town of Bishops Stortford. Callum Scyllo Rosier and Alphonso Janus Wilkes, known in the Dark Lord's service as the Pernicious Pair, had been traced to the site of a large conflagration in the town centre. According to Auror Chief Bartemius Crouch, Sr., evidence clearly tied both Rosier and Wilkes to the destruction of six Muggle homesteads in which the mutilated bodies of their inhabitants were found. ÎAfter spotting the pair attempting to gain access to a deserted outbuilding at the edge of Friar's Farm,' Crouch reported, Îthe Auror squad gave chase and managed to apprehend the suspects, at which time, both Rosier and Wilkes performed Autoimmolation Hexes on themselves.' By all accounts, the suspects perished as a result of the flames. Their charred remains have been taken into the custody of the Ministry. An inquest is being held to ascertain the objectives of the two malefactors and the whereabouts of the Dark Lord and his Circle..."

Above the article glowered two prominent photographs of the men. Snape recognized both from the class pages in his Hogwarts Annual. Staring particularly hard at the one of Rosier, he felt a sick, cold feeling fill his stomach like liquid nitrogen. It was the same man he had seen earlier that day in the corner office-the features were unmistakably identical: the same square jaw, the bulbous nose and the beady eyes obscured by the thick, fatty folds of his eyelids. It was Rosier. But it couldn't be. Could it?

"How is this possible?" asked Snape aloud, almost to himself. "I met with Rosier earlier this afternoon, and he seemed ...very much alive." Unfortunately. He frowned, feeling an agitated throb at his temple. "And Wilkes? Dumbledore said the Ministry had managed to-"

"Wilkes is here in a holding cell under surveillance," replied Moody, clunking over to a nearby cabinet with his stick. Lifting a small glass sphere from the shelf by his shoulder, he passed a wand over it. A SpeyeGlass. Reflected in the crystal were the slate grey walls of a windowless cell with a man, propped against one wall, staring blindly ahead at nothing. Unblinking.

"He's asleep," said Moody. "With his eyes open, if you can believe that. Like a bloody fish." Severus could believe that. Anyone who knew what Voldemort was capable of knew to keep his eyes open. Even in sleep.

Wilkes, thought Severus, clearly recognizing the profile of his old classmate. "That's him, no question," confirmed Moody. "Sirius Black said he'd recognized him straight away."

But how...? An unexpected chill swept through him as his eyes lit on the man's neck. No. It's not possible... As if drawn, Snape moved forward until his nose stopped barely an inch from the glass. "Has anyone examined him?" he asked Moody. "What are those?" He rested the tip of a long finger on Wilkes's reflection on the crystal sphere.

"What's what?"

"These marks here, on his neck," said Snape, swallowing hard. "Have you... identified those?"

By now Moody had drawn the SpeyeGlass level with his Magical Eye, which seemed to fix steadily on the image. Snape anxiously watched the dark pupil ringed with brilliant blue feverishly dilate and contract as it adjusted its magnification. After a moment, Moody put down the crystal and blinked.

"Curious. Very curious," he said, rubbing his Eye. "I'll be damned. I hadn't noticed them before."

"What are they?" Snape asked. He had a terrible feeling in his gut that he already knew what they were, and fervently hoped that he was mistaken.

"It's a serpent and a dragon."

Severus closed his lids, suddenly heavy with the pounding in his head. He wasn't mistaken.

Snape stood awkwardly transfixed with his arms crossed rigidly across his chest. If what he feared was true, the Dark Lord would be much closer to completing the Dark Knight Spell than he'd supposed. And if that were the case, he needed to keep Esmerelda as far away from his grasp as possible. Unless it was already too late... Only after a few moments did he realize that Moody was watching him silently, curiosity brimming in each eye.

Moody met his gaze. "You have a theory you would like to share, professor?"

Snape blinked, pausing cautiously to choose his words. "Not exactly. But I will need to do some background research once I get back to Hogwarts. I have some ideas in mind, but at this stage, they're no more than baseless conjecture. If I come to any conclusions, you will be the first to know."

The old man's eyes grazed Snape's face as he considered the proposal. "You do that, Snape. I'd be grateful for any light you can shed on this case." Dropping his eyes, he turned to the half-forgotten Firewhisky on his desk. "I was just about to pour myself a drink, professor. Would you care for a drop yourself?"

Snape was about to shake his head when he heard himself say yes. Moody nodded mutely, summoning two glasses with a wave of his wand. He tipped the neck of the bottle into the first, pouring two fingers of Firewhisky before holding it out to a grateful Severus. Moody poured the same for himself and drained half of it in one gulp.

Severus raised his glass, welcoming the searing sensation of the liquid as it slid down his throat. But his mission wasn't yet complete.

"Moody, Dumbledore said that you have a woman by the name of Esmerelda Plofufnik in your care-"

The old man rolled both of eyes, shaking his head at himself. "Of course!" exclaimed Moody. "Of course you'd be wanting to see your wife."

Snape was aware that he looked fairly astonished.

"Oh, yes, I know," said Moody, waving a dismissive hand as if to banish Snape's stunned expression.

"Professor," said Moody, setting down his glass next to the path reports, "our job is information. We've known about your marriage to Esmerelda for years, laddie. Oh, and there's no point in hiding the Mark from me either; I know it's there." Moody's Magical Eye traveled across the black sleeve on the inside of his left arm as if it could see through the fabric. Snape suppressed the urge to cringe.

"Some marks don't ever come off," the old man said gravely, "even long after their significance has gone forever." But Snape thought he saw a faint twinkle in Moody's eyes. The old man drew up his left sleeve, turning the inside of his arm towards Snape.

Along the man's wiry bicep was the faint outline of an old tattoo, still legible after several inexpert attempts at an Erasing Spell. Alastor & Minerva.

Minerva? Snape's eyes flew open wide. That shock was almost enough to make him forget about Rosier and Wilkes. "You don't mean-"

"That was long before your time, laddie. All water under the bridge," said Moody calmly, lowering his sleeve and reaching for his whisky. He raised the glass, but stopped halfway, placidly tilting his head at Severus. Grinning now, he winked, tapping a finger to the side of his nose. "Still, let's just keep this our little secret, shall we, professor?"

Snape blinked dumbly, torn between gasping and laughing out loud until he decided on a third option. "Agreed," he said. Then as an afterthought, he held out his glass. "If you wouldn't mind, might I... trouble you for a top-up, Moody?"