three times their cost on the black market, and wands were strictly rationed.
Not that Tom had ever needed a wand, not really.
He remembered the smoke, the darkness and the burning. And at the Muggle orphanage it had been no better. He had stood on the roof with the other children and in the distance had seen the cities burn. They had cried around him, saying it was the end of the world. Tom had smiled to himself, pitying them: they knew only one world. He knew more.
Once he had brushed up against a soldier home on leave, in a crowded Muggle street; he had murmured Visificus under his breath and the images of war and death had poured into his mind like water from a broken dam. He saw men dying. They died on the beaches and in holes in the ground and they fell from the air like burst flowers of fire. They died calling for their mothers and more often they died calling for water. They crawled in their own blood and tore at their own skin. And he had known then, with a cold uncompassionate clarity, that this would never happen to him: he would make sure of it. He would never die. Death was interesting to him, in a distant sort of way: the artistry of it, the mechanics, the complex engines of life running down and stopping all in a single instant. But he wanted no part of it. It was too commonplace, too ordinary. Too human.
He looked around him now, at the few people hurrying back and forth along the alley under the bright winter sun. This was a weak generation, he thought. A generation unused to trial or hardship or horror, a generation which idealized as a hero a wisp of a boy whose greatest achievement had apparently been failing to die. They would be easy pickings. A small smile twisted the corner of Tom's mouth.
He turned and went back into the Leaky Cauldron. He paused inside the entryway and looked at himself in the mirror over the door. He wondered how long it would be before that reflected face no longer gave him a moment of startled pause. And what a face it was: tow-blond hair and all, an angel face if ever there was one. He fought down a ripple of mirth.
Inside the Leaky Cauldron, he ordered a mug of hot spiced butterbeer, asked for and received a quill and parchment, and took a seat by the fireplace, in a shadowed corner, where he would not be seen. He sat with his hood up, looking at the parchment and thinking. As he sat and thought, he wound what looked like a thin thread of copper wire slowly around his forefinger, over and over. He had found it stuck to the blood on his hands, later. Her hair.
He ceased the nervous gesture and began to think in earnest. It was imperative first of all, now that he was inhabiting the body of Seamus Finnegan, that the disguise hold as long as possible. That meant no one should come looking for Seamus. The brats at Hogwarts wouldn't dare, they'd be too keen on saving their own skins, and who would believe them anyway? But there was Seamus' family to contend with. Tom knew from his access to Seamus' memories, which was growing stronger by the moment, that Seamus did indeed have two parents, who loved him. They would be tedious and come looking for him if something wasn't done to forestall them.
He licked the nib of the quill — he'd always liked the taste of ink, and this was good ink, not the cheap, rationed stuff — and started writing.
Dear Mum and Dad, Your son Seamus here. I know I said I'd be home for New Year's, but I'm afraid that just isn't going to happen. I've been in London the last few days, generally living the high life and catching up on my Oscar Wilde short stories (after all, he is one of the greatest authors of our little country, isn't he?) and in short, I've reached a decision. It's time to tell you that I fancy other men. Yes, it's the truth. I can no longer hide my true nature. I expect you will never want to see me again and have resigned myself to that fate. If you decide to disinherit me I'll understand.
Much love, Seamus
Tom surveyed the letter with a critical eye. It sounded idiotic, which seemed appropriate, as in his considered opinion, Seamus was an idiot. If that didn't stymie the senior Finnigans, nothing would. He addressed the letter with a flourish, and went looking for an owl.
The heavy iron door of the Potions dungeon slammed closed behind Hermione. She strode into the center of the room. Snape, at work over his cauldrons, turned and looked at her with an expression of grim inquiry.
'Give me something to do,' she said.
He turned away from his worktable and glanced at her. His eyes, under the overgrown black brows, were sharply hooded. He seemed expressionless as his gaze raked her; then he turned entirely towards her, looping his thin hands into the sleeves of his dark robes. 'I do not require your assistance,' he said.
'Please,' she said. 'I need something useful to do, or…'
Her voice trailed off.
'Or what, Miss Granger?'
'Or I'll go mad,' she said. 'I mean it. And I know you don't care — '
Snape slowly removed his thin white hands from the sleeves of his robe.
'Potter is gone, then,' he said. 'He's left?'
Hermione checked herself. 'Yes — how did you know?'
Snape stood very still for a moment. Hermione looked at him and thought about how much she had hated this man once, the cruel things he had said to her, his viciousness towards Harry. That Dumbledore allowed this behavior had always made her question the Headmaster's judgement, although Harry had maintained that Dumbledore did it to prove the point that evil existed in the universe, however mysteriously permitted, and that one day they would all have to learn to cope with it.
She was not sure she had ever learned to cope with it, but somewhere along the line she had stopped hating Snape. For the past few days she had not even minded working alongside him — of course she would have thrown in her lot with Satan himself if it would have gotten an antidote for Draco. But she would have minded. Working with Snape had been surprisingly painless. He was, if nothing else, brilliant at his craft, and Hermione respected that.
'I did not know,' Snape said finally. 'I had hoped that in the end Potter would do the correct and advisable thing — I suggested it to him — but I did not know.'
'Correct? Advisable? To leave us like that — '
'Does Draco know?'
'Yes,' Hermione said. 'He found the letter.'
Snape blinked his hooded eyes once, slowly. His expression was unreadable. Hermione wondered if he could see the image that her words conjured up so clearly in her mind: Draco on the bed, reading the letter, probably having read it a dozen times, several dozen times, as if somehow closer examination would transform the words on the page or make them mean something other than they did.
'That letter,' Hermione said. 'Did you also suggest to Harry that he ought to write those things?'
'Certainly not.' Snape's tone was brisk. 'As if I would interest myself in Potter's sentimental drivel.'
'It wasn't sentimental. It was horrible.'
Snape shrugged once, briefly. 'That is as it may be,' he said. 'What is significant is that he is gone.'
'But Draco — '
'He has greater worries than Potter's whereabouts. He has his antidote to take and his health should be of primary concern — '
'I've looked all over the castle for him. I can't even find him. I've been looking for him for hours.' Her voice trembled. 'What good is a bloody antidote when I can't find him to make sure he takes it?'
'His distress will be temporary,' said Snape, still in the same brisk tone.
'That bond he has with Potter will atrophy. Distance will erode it, just as proximity intensifies it. It is the nature of such an affinity. Its occult origins give it strength, but also they provide the key to breaking it.'
'I don?t want it broken,' Hermione said, so fiercely that her chest hurt.
'And I don?t see why you do, either, or why you care, or why you'd want to meddle, either. I know you hate Harry — '
'This has very little to do with Potter,' said Snape icily. 'And you might wish to know that when I spoke of side effects to the antidote affecting Draco's Magid powers, I did not tell you all of them. Do keep in mind that as long as that bond between the two is open, as long as their thoughts and feelings and emotions flow unblocked between them, your precious Potter may well be physically vulnerable to both the antidote's side effects, and the
