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"I wish I knew what was wrong with her," Harry said to Draco at breakfast.

He and Draco were sitting at the Hufflepuff table, since the Hufflepuffs never minded and Gryffindor and Ravenclaw's Prefects had already ordered them to their own tables. Harry was watching Padma from across the room; she seemed to be eating quietly and apparently placidly. The problem was that Padma was not placid by nature, and the look in her eyes was upsetting. It was...dull. Sleepy. Not like Padma.

"I told her she should go see Madam Pomfrey, I don't know what more you think I ought to have done," Draco said guiltily.

"I'm not blaming you."

"Good, because it isn't my fault," Draco insisted. "She told me she was fine. She even showed me her diary."

"She did?"

"Oh yeah, it's brilliant -- now I wish I'd kept it. It talks back to you, she made it say hello to me and everything. I mean she didn't show me anything she'd written, you know. Did her good, I think," Draco said. "What I mean is, she saw that it was all right, you know. I didn't tease her, so she wasn't as angry at you for looking in it, after I showed her it wasn't a big deal."

"I don't want to read her stupid old diary," Harry said. "It was just a bit of a joke."

"Yeah, well, girls," Draco shrugged.

"I don't like it, anyway," Harry said. "I'd better go -- Prefects're coming."

He made it to the Slytherin table just in time and spent the rest of breakfast studying what everyone else ate and who they sat with, not with any real purpose but because he had recently received a book of detective stories from Remus and he had decided to improve his odds of having an interesting life by Noticing Things. Mainly what he Noticed this morning was that Hufflepuffs tended to avoid kippers and Dora's hair was especially brilliant this morning, pink with streaks of gold and silver.

***

Severus hadn't been sure what to expect when he entered the Great Hall after drying off and changing; he was certain that there must be some sort of...sign, something obvious that he'd missed but which would tell the whole world that he'd spent the morning inappropriately kissing another professor.

Hardly anyone even reacted, however, though he came in so late that he barely had time for a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of tea. Dora didn't even look at him, though he detected a blush now and then when he would glance down the table at her. Her hair hadn't had gold and silver in it when he'd arrived at the hot springs, he was sure. He wondered if it was supposed to be some kind of sign. He really was rotten at this kind of thing; there was a reason it had been years since he'd had any kind of romantic entanglements.

The problem was that his natural inclination to reserve, which was telling him no good can come of morning trysts at the hot springs, was warring with every other part of him, which was saying well, she's not your student now, she won't be a professor forever, and you know her parents like you...

"Professor Snape!" she called, as the students rose to go to their classes and the professors began to file out. She caught up with him in the corridor. "May I have a word with you?"

"Certainly," he said, positive that every single student above the age of fourteen was staring at them. She took his arm and led him into an unused classroom. No sooner were they inside than she'd pulled him down to her height (possibly growing a few inches as she did so; life with a metamorphmagus could be...interesting) and kissed him soundly. His natural inclination to reserve was no match for it, really. She made noises when she kissed, little sighs and exhalations that were --

-- were going to keep him from class --

"This is fun," she whispered, giving him an impish grin before she ran out of the classroom and back toward her first class of the day.

He paused, mouthed fun? incredulously to himself, shook his head, and then likewise hurried away. Not that it did much good; he taught his first two classes in a confused daze and thanked his stars that they were first and third years, since if he'd been teaching his NEWTs students he probably would have blown up the dungeon.

He didn't actually see her at lunch, because he didn't get to eat lunch; he had to supervise four very contrite students who had actually made a spirited if accidental attempt at blowing up the dungeon. They didn't finish scrubbing -- or complaining -- until it was nearly time for his next class. Apparently she'd heard; she sent a note down with one of his afternoon students that was charmed up to the gills and said only Dinner in Hogsmeade - You're buying - Front Gates, 6pm.

It was utter foolishness, of course, and no doubt simply the result of contempt breeding familiarity -- but he did not ball the note up and toss it on the fire as he generally did. Instead he locked it in his desk drawer, smoothed and neatly folded.

At the end of afternoon classes he retreated to his rooms and faced something of a moral quandary.

For years he had adamantly refused to change out of teaching robes when visiting Hogsmeade. He had also adamantly refused to care what his clothing looked like beyond two criteria: it should not have holes, and it should be black. Black was easy and, more importantly for a Potions professor, it did not show stains. Granted, he did own clothing which was considerably nicer than his (black) teaching robes and (black) undertunic and trousers, but if he changed clothing now then it would go against his policy of Not Caring and in addition Nymphadora would notice. She might even tease.

She would certainly tease him for caring this much about such an utterly foolish thing. He snorted, closed his wardrobe, and definitely did not check the mirror to see if his hair looked all right. Instead, he checked to see if he had enough Galleons in his pockets for dinner and made certain he was not on any kind of Detention duties that evening.

He felt oddly as though he were a student again as he made his way down to the front gates of Hogwarts, which led by a rather circuitous path down past the train station to Hogsmeade. The children generally took the back route, over a river footbridge and through a cleared area of the forest atop a small ridge, but the front-gate road was a more pleasant walk. He reminded himself that it was not illegal for professors to leave school grounds to have dinner somewhere more hospitable than a cavernous dining hall full of noisy, annoying children. It was not in any way forbidden to fraternise with other professors, either; hadn't he been spending quite a lot of time with Dora lately at any rate, when they practiced their duels for the club?

It was entirely likely that she merely wanted to talk about the Dueling Club, anyway. He rather trusted her to be above the sort of juvenile tricks that this might look like if they were both fifteen -- the pretty girl and the sort of boy who never got pretty girls -- but he wouldn't put it past her to have realised what a colossal mistake she'd made. He would be calm and collected and take his cues from her.

She appeared at the gates five minutes late, wrapped in a brightly-coloured light cloak against the still-chilly night air.

"I was worried you wouldn't come," she said, shoving her hands in her pockets and grinning at him. "Am I very late?"

"Five minutes," he grumbled. "When one extends the invitation, Professor Tonks, one is expected to arrive -- "

" -- before the invitee, I know," she rolled her eyes. "I got held up by a student who wanted an assignment and it took me a while to find it..."

"Yes, I've seen your office," he said drily.

"I suppose I should clean it up before the next professor comes along, shouldn't I?" she asked, following as he turned and began the winding, scenic walk down the path to Hogsmeade. "After all, I'm leaving Hogwarts in a few weeks. No more Professor Tonks, no more Dueling Club, no more drafty Professors' quarters. No more terrible pork soup."

"Oh gods!" he said, shaking his head. "House Elves should never be allowed to improvise with the food. That was a waste of a good pig."

"It would have been the waste of a bad pig. But the food's been good, by and large. It's not Dad's cooking, though."

"Very little is."

"Was that a compliment? From Severus Snape?"

He smiled, just slightly. "I have been a guest at your parents' table many times. I would hardly have been induced back if the food was inedible."

"We'll have to have you down for a celebration dinner when I'm cleared for active duty with the Aurors again."

"Do you look forward to going back to dodging hexes and apprehending stray Grindylows?"

She shrugged. "Yes. I love my old job. Hogwarts has been nice, though...maybe in forty or fifty years I'll come back and get a job teaching again, like McGonagall. I'll miss it, as much as I like Auroring."

He nodded, contemplating the line of the train-tracks below and the village, now visible ahead to their left.

"This is the part," she added, "where you say you'll miss me too and that I'll have to come visit often."

"You know as well as I do without me saying it," he answered. "You're not moving to the other side of the world, you aren't even leaving the country. You're perfectly aware that you are welcome at Hogwarts and that I will almost certainly be in London to visit your parents before the summer is even properly begun, let alone ended."

"It's the symbol of the thing," she sighed.

"I don't believe in symbols; too often they're actually lies," he replied. He felt the fingers of his left hand clench into a fist.

"All right," she said, making a face. "I won't make you say it but I know you're thinking it all the same and you can't stop me assuming that deep down you have a romantic heart."

"Deep down I have a heart condition," he retorted.

"I bet you tell that to all the girls."

"Are you going to flirt incessantly and shamelessly with me for the entire evening?" he asked. She swung around in front of him and he stopped abruptly as they kissed for the third time that day.

"That was the plan," she said, gazing at him with eyes that were, for the moment, a brilliant grey-blue.

"Oh," he said.

"You aren't going to object, are you?" she asked. He considered it, head tilted to one side, aware that the flush in his cheeks was probably making the scars on his face stand out livid-white.

"No," he said finally. "So long as you don't require any reciprocation. I do not flirt."

"If you did, I'd be distinctly worried for your mental health, such as it is," she said, moving aside so that they could continue down the path. She deftly changed the subject to the question of where they ought to eat, and he found to his relief that he really needn't participate actively much in the conversation at all. Like her mother, Dora had quite enough personality for two people. He had simply never seen it as much of a positive quality until now.

He had the distinct sensation that the phrase "until now" was going to apply to a lot of his immediate future.

***

It appeared, that evening, to be a fine night for romantic dinners all round.

In London, in the little house whose east-facing windows looked onto a grubby Muggle street and whose south-facing windows looked out on Diagon Alley, the Tonks-Black household was dining in elegance -- if only because Andromeda and Sirius, well-bred down to their fingertips, could make even intentionally-messy food look graceful.

"Moony, no, look, don't use your fork," Sirius said, picking up the crab-claw from Remus' plate and cracking it deftly with a steel nut-cracker. He peeled the shell back and slid the meat out whole, much to Ted and Andromeda's delight. Remus, who had been attempting to remove the meat with a combination of another nutcracker and a long-tined fork, sighed and accepted the meat from Sirius' fingers while Andromeda loudly cracked another shell.

"I quite like crab, you know," Remus insisted, wrestling with the other claw until it dissolved in a pile of shredded meat and shell chips. "It's just that normally, it's a little less...organic than this, by the time it reaches my plate."

"That's the charm," Ted said, offering Remus another bottle of beer. Andromeda passed Sirius a handful of legs, which he accepted gleefully.

"It's so much work for so little food, though!" Remus said. "And really, isn't it basically just a vehicle for the butter sauce?"

"Bite your tongue and chip a tooth," Sirius said, looking horrified. "Don't give him any more, he doesn't properly appreciate it!"

"There ought to be a charm to just magic it out of the shell," Remus said with the determination that comes from three beers and not enough actual meat in his stomach. "Some sort of Accio variant..."

The others laughed and went on eating and talking, but Remus watched the way Sirius' fingers pulled the meat from the shell in whole segments, trying to intuit how it was done and how one might re-create the same results with a spell. Perhaps it would be easier to simply hex the shell into oblivion, but he was willing to bet that would spoil the taste. Perhaps it would anyway, to use magic; apparently the process was part of the meal.

He had focused so closely on the actions of Sirius' hands that for a moment, in the haze of intense concentration, he didn't realise what had happened. After all, it hardly looked real -- Sirius had simply taken hold of his left thumb instead of the crab's leg and tugged, gently.

The thumb came away in his fingers -- smoothly, bloodlessly and without any visible cuts. Remus blinked, staring in horror and fascination. Sirius apparently hadn't noticed, because now he was grasping his index finger. It, too, came away with no trouble at all, and both were laid next to Sirius' hand, on the tablecloth. Still there was no blood, and Remus found himself opening his mouth to speak and absolutely unable to say a thing.

Middle and then ring finger followed so quickly that Remus found himself struggling to swallow so that he could shout something, anything. There were no words, and nobody had noticed.

He watched as Sirius pulled the little finger off his left hand as well, with the same quick jerk as the others, but this one was different; in the palm of his right hand it suddenly began to blacken and ooze thick, dark blood. The hand shook; Remus finally forced his eyes upwards and saw --

It was a pale, intelligent-looking face framed by black hair, but it wasn't Sirius' face at all. There were remote similarities that he would recall later, but at the time all he could see were the fine features of a complete stranger, and the panic in the man's hard, cold green eyes. There was a little spot of red deep in the pupils of each, and even with its handsome look, the face was somehow distorted. The man stared down at the shriveled, blackened lump of flesh in his palm, not with horror but with a sort of sullen, annoyed petulance.

"That was my first," he said, and then Remus managed to jerk away from the table and shout a warning to Ted and Andromeda, who looked up in surprise and confusion.

"What is it?" Andromeda asked, staring at him. Remus looked back at where the man had been sitting to find Sirius, gaping openmouthed at him.

"All right, Moony?" he asked cautiously. He put down the crab's leg he held in one hand -- the left hand, whole again and with all five fingers -- and the steel nut-cracker he'd had in the other. "What's wrong?"

"I -- thought I -- saw something," Remus said, blankly. Andromeda touched his arm, her expression turning from shock to curiosity. "Sorry, I don't know..."

"Did you see one of your...?" Sirius asked. Ted glanced at him, vaguely confused.

"I don't know," Remus repeated. "It didn't seem like it. Maybe -- maybe."

Andromeda tugged gently on his arm and he sat down again, picking up the bottle of beer and taking a deep drink.

"Sorry -- really," he said. "It's all right. It's probably nothing -- I'm just...tired."

He saw the glances that telegraphed across the table, saw Andromeda mouth "moon?" and Sirius subtly shake his head. He might have objected, some other time, but his heart was still racing and it was more important that he try to slow his furious pulse.

"What did you see?" Sirius asked, when he finally felt as though he could function again.

"Nothing -- I'm sure it was nothing," he answered. "Nothing to do with Harry, not like last time -- I just saw a stranger's face and it startled me. Honestly, it probably wasn't anything."

None of them looked convinced, but to his gratification they did look as though they were willing to play along.

"I think I'll just send off a quick owl to Harry tomorrow morning, anyway," Sirius said quietly. Andromeda asked how Harry was doing with his schedule-planning, and slowly the conversation picked up again.

Remus, horrified at what was apparently his own imagination, was quiet and subdued for the rest of dinner. When Sirius crawled into bed later that night and looked anxiously at him again, Remus merely picked up his left hand from where it lay on the bedcovers and spent a long time studying it silently, passing his own fingertips over the creases in the skin where finger joined palm. Sirius, sensing there were some times when questions were best left unasked, waited until Remus had fallen asleep before gently disentangling his hand and examining it to see if he could discern what Remus had found there.

***

At first, Severus thought it might have been the wine they were drinking -- not bad wine, but not great wine either. There was a...not a buzzing, not precisely, but a sensation of pressure in the back of his head, just above his neck. He ignored it through most of the dinner, which was livelier than he had expected (feared) it would be. He had very few topics, outside of his work, which he was interested in discussing, and he had been gripped by the sudden uneasy sensation that this dinner with Dora may in fact have all the makings of the most awkward meal he had ever endured. And yet it wasn't; she had her parents' knack of putting a person immediately at ease. He envied it deeply.

As the meal progressed, the sensation grew worse until he was forced to stop Dora in mid-sentence, much to her surprise, and ask her to be silent for just a minute. He put actual effort into being tactful, but he still saw the perplexed look in her eyes.

"Something's...wrong," he said slowly. "I think perhaps at the castle. I think we should return."

"Severus, if you're not enjoying yourself -- "

"This is not an excuse," he snapped, then stopped himself. "I...apologise. I don't want to leave, but something really is wrong."

"How do you know?" she asked, even as she was standing and taking her cloak from the hook nearby. He threw a handful of Galleons and Sickles on the table, enough to pay for the meal, and led her out the door.

"Look," he said, pointing to Hogwarts, standing against a darkening sky. Every light was blazing; far more than should be.

"It can't be too serious, or someone would have sent for us -- can it?" she asked, hurrying to keep up with his long strides.

"It's quite possible no one has thought to. Did you tell anyone where you were going?"

"Yes -- well, not exactly, I just told McGonagall I was going to have dinner in Hogsmeade and I'd probably be back late, and I think Hagrid saw me -- I waved to him as I was walking to the gates. Why?"

"It looks as though they're searching for something -- someone," he added. "I remember...when I was a student, I -- " he paused, weighing his words carefully. Now was not the time to dredge up that terrible full moon so many years ago. "There was a student who went missing. There was reason to worry. That's the last time I can recall seeing the castle lit up like that."

He reached out with his mind to try and touch someone at the castle -- Dumbledore was unreadable, always had been, but McGonagall seemed worried about something, desperately concerned. Almost fearfully he found Harry; the boy was pacing furiously in the Great Hall with the rest of the students, his thoughts full of unidentifiable terror but his body whole and hearty.

They had instinctively made for the shorter back-route to Hogwarts, avoiding the main gates altogether. Halfway there, a light came bobbing down across the grounds towards them, and in a few more yards it had resolved itself into Hagrid, carrying an enormous lantern.

"Perfesser Snape! Perfesser Tonks! Yer wanted in the Great Hall!" he shouted.

"I know!" Severus called back. "What's happened?"

"Blamed if I know. Dumbledore says Padma Patil's gone missing and t'was a bas'lisk took her."

"Padma?" Dora asked, even as they continued the seemingly interminable journey up to the school. "She's gone?"

"Can't find 'er anywhere, an' there's a message..." Hagrid dug a scrap of parchment out of his pocket. It was hastily scribbled, probably duplicated from someone else's; it read Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever. "Painted on the stairwell it was, 'neath the first one. All the teachers've turned out to look for 'er. Keepin' all the students in the Great Hall, cept for the seventh-years and they're only to search the top floors. Yer to come straight to the Great Hall -- Dumbledore says. Special job for ya."

Snape glanced at Dora, who shook her head in confusion. They hurried up to the school with Hagrid leading, through the doors and into the antechamber where the first-years waited to enter the Great Hall. Dumbledore was there.

"Time is of the very essence," he said, holding up his hands to forestall questions. "I am about to do something which will very likely lose me my job, but it will save the girl. Nymphadora, you and Harry must go into the forest and find the Viae Serpentorum."

"The what?" Tonks asked.

"A large tunnel -- Harry can find the place again, he's seen it once. It is the way by which the basilisk came and went into the Forest. I suspect he was using the old water-system when he traveled within the school's walls itself. I must remain here in case....you do not find it in time."

Tonks, biting her lip, nodded and left the chamber. Dumbledore turned back to Severus.

"Take what Slytherin students you require and search the Dungeons thoroughly. I suspect there may be an entryway to the Chamber there. When you have finished -- "

"The water systems?" Snape asked abruptly. An idea was forming in his head. Dumbledore nodded. "I'll leave the Slytherins to search the Dungeons -- I can think of more efficient uses of my own time."

"Go," Dumbledore urged. Snape ran past him into the Great Hall.

"Sixth and fifth-year Slytherins, to me," he called. Students, sitting in little knots at their tables, looked up. A handful of Slytherins stood and presented themselves. "Potter, you too."

A murmur went round the room as Harry, biting his lip, came forward also. Neville and Draco joined him, silently.

"Not you," he ordered.

"If he goes, we go," Neville said. His voice trembled.

"Don't waste time, you little idiots."

"If he goes, we go," Draco repeated. "Padma's one of ours."

There was no time; he would send them to Tonks and she could stun them and leave them in the hallway or something. "Fine. Go. Professor Tonks is waiting for you in the antechamber."

As he began giving orders to the rest of the Slytherins, he heard Harry's not-yet-pubescent voice asking questions and Nymphadora answering back confidently. He set aside a small place in his mind to worry about them both, to wonder what would happen if he lost Harry and Dora in one single night, and turned the rest of his thoughts to the task at hand.

"This is the Dungeons skeleton key; it will open any door. If there is no lock but the door is warded, press it to the centre of the door," he said, handing the sixth-year prefect his key. "Don't even think of making mischief with it. This is deadly serious. Pay particular attention to the washrooms."

"The....washrooms sir?"

"Do as I say."

She nodded and led the others away, leaving him standing there to collect his thoughts. Finally he turned and ran out the side entrance to the Great Hall. It couldn't be the kitchens, the House-Elves would have seen something before now. He could start on this floor and work his way up.

How many sinks and washrooms could Hogwarts have?

***

Dumbledore had vanished through a door Tonks didn't know existed by the time Harry, Neville, and Draco showed up in the anteroom.

"Professor Snape sent all of us," Harry said.

"He did not," she answered. "Dumbledore says you have to show me where the Viae Serpentorum is. He says you know."

"We'll need broomsticks," Harry answered, already leading the way past her, towards the Quidditch shed. "It's on the way. Come on!" he urged, and she ran to catch up to him and the other two boys. "Neville knows too, so he can set me right," Harry called over his shoulder. "And he'll need Draco to ride second."

He burst through the doors of the equipment shed and picked up his own broom, tossing Flint's to Neville and Draco.

"You start it, I'm pants," Neville said, and Draco got the broomstick in the air before giving Neville a hand up. Harry was already mounted, looking expectantly at Tonks.

"I'm going to get in so much trouble for this," she sighed, climbing on and wrapping one arm around Harry's waist, holding the broomstick in front of her with her other hand. "All right, take me there."

The flight was fast and terrifying; she'd forgotten how children flew when they had no fear of their own mortality. She ducked low for a lot of it, avoiding branches that Harry was too short to even consider a danger. Neville and Draco followed close behind them, occasionally letting out a shriek at a sudden drop or rise.

They touched down in the darkness, in the middle of a small open place; even at night, the white stones of the tunnel were more than clear.

"Merlin," she breathed, staring up at it. "How big is this bloody thing?"

"Big," Harry answered. "Are we going in?"

"You three need to -- " she stopped, because she wasn't quite sure she believed her eyes.

With a creaking, clanking noise, a Ford Anglia had appeared in the clearing and rolled to a stop in front of the tunnel. The fact that this was not the surprising part just made it worse. Along with the Anglia were two small motorised dirt-bikes, moving of their own accord and the same turquoise-blue as the Anglia itself.

"Where did those come from?" Draco asked.

"I think they're her....offspring," Neville answered.

"Sirius is never going to believe this," Harry whispered. He moved forward towards the tunnel, and the bikes revved their tiny engines. The Anglia made a low growling noise.

"It's all right," Harry said. "Please don't attack us."

Tonks looked up and realised that there were enormous spiders in every tree. Hundreds of compound eyes watched them.

"See? Remember me?" Harry asked, taking another step towards the car which was blocking the tunnel. "Harry, right? I rode in you once, on the way here."

The Anglia's growling turned into a low engine rumble.

"I know you're fighting the basilisk. We're fighting it too. If you let us go in, we'll kill it," Harry said. He reached the place where the bikes were sitting, and they eased forward slowly. He patted one of them on the handlebars. "I promise. We're here to kill it. It took Padma. Remember Padma?"

The headlights flashed. Dora held her breath.

Eventually, slowly, the Anglia moved away from the tunnel. The bikes followed rather more quickly, once they realised she -- it -- had pulled to the side.

"This place is really weird," Draco said, staring at the bikes fixedly. Neville gave him a shove and they both ran forward to where Harry was standing, staring up at the inscription. Dora followed hastily.

"I'm not leaving you three here with a thousand acromantulae waiting to make you a snack," she said. "But I'm leading the way, all right?"

"I'll hear it coming, if it goes this way," Harry said. "It talks to itself."

"If it's as big as all this, we all ought to hear it coming," Tonks answered. "You just keep those broomsticks handy."

She lit her wand as brightly as she could and stepped into the gloom of the tunnel. She could hear the boys' footsteps as they followed her, and after a few seconds, Harry took her free hand in his.

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