The Observer Effect

      When—long past midnight, and he had quite deliberately not cast Tempus, so as not to upset himself further—Severus at last dragged himself into his rooms, to find the door forced.       There was no need to guess who would be inside. With an irritable sigh, he pushed it open.       Potter was sleeping the peaceful sleep of the righteous—in his, Snape’s, chair, which he was sharing, in all honesty, with Draco. The godson had folded his arms, and let his chin drop onto his chest; the national hero, being shorter, had comfortably parked his thatch of hair on Draco’s shoulder. Potter’s spectacles had slid down his nose, and dangled by one earpiece. In the opposite chair, a third student—Granger—had curled up, leaning against the broad arm, hands tucked under her cheek. Idyllic. Severus strode to the fireplace with the heavy tread of a man dead on his feet, and gave the leg of the boys’ chair a proper kick.       Potter started with an inarticulate, anxious cry, blinking round him wide-eyed, like an owl. His glasses, jarred by the sudden movement, finally fell off altogether, and plopped into his lap; it took him a moment to put them back on. Draco, the little pest, was far less alarmed—he yawned, without a shred of elegance, scrubbed his face with his hands, and stretched luxuriously, all but shoving his neighbour out of the chair in the process. Both got up and gazed at the floor in unison.       ‘Godfather!’       ‘Professor Snape, sir!’       Their exclamations woke the Gryffindor girl as well—she wriggled, squeaked, and shot to her feet, tugging down her skirt, and frantically smoothing her robes.       ‘Professor Snape!’       Severus surveyed three penitently bowed crowns, black as thunder.       ‘I take it,’ he said acidly, ‘there is no need to explain that running off during a general evacuation was a monstrously foolish act. Special thanks are due for not putting anyone in possession of the fact that you were alive and well. I had not expected that of you, Miss Granger—you had previously struck me as a more disciplined young lady. But, it seems, the spirit of Gryffindor has truly seized you—you felt the call of adventure, did you not? And you even contrived to drag my charges into trouble as well.’       The girl scowled, angry, and aggrieved, but—to his surprise—did not argue, though Severus, having studied her character a little, had expected precisely that. Potter and Malfoy took it in turns to sigh, looking away—aha, so he had hit a nerve. The power clever little Gryffindor girls have over certain Slytherin hearts is astonishing—it must be a kind of curse, like the one that lies on the post of professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts.       ‘Are you going to punish us?’ Draco ventured timidly. Snape smiled grimly.       ‘Indubitably. You will be scrubbing cauldrons until Christmas,’ he informed them, with relish. ‘Prepare for hard labour—perhaps it will leave you with less energy for pranks. And now, though I value most highly the trust that allowed you to feel as at home in my apartments as in your own, Miss Granger must return to her dormitory. And you two as well—to bed.’       The Gryffindor did not need telling twice—she scuttled to the door like a mouse, and had her hand on the handle—and then hesitated.       ‘Professor, er…’ she began, mauling an already crumpled skirt, but Snape cut her off: ‘The troll is no longer a danger. Off you go.’       She sighed in an odd way, as if she had meant to ask something entirely different, but slipped out obediently. Perhaps she had wanted to ask for a note, in case she met the night patrols—little did she know that all the prefects were confined to their common rooms tonight for reasons of safety. No matter; if she was unafraid of genuinely dangerous things, let the prospect of being caught and punished a second time teach her something.       His own students were in no hurry to obey, either.       ‘Sir,’ Potter mumbled, scuffing the carpet pile with his shoe. ‘You once said that in acute situations…’       Snape understood that Potter was afraid of a dressing-down from the prefects, and he smiled again.       ‘Come now, Mr Potter, can one possibly deem the present circumstances such? Had no one informed either me or the prefects where you were and what had become of you—then yes. But you are in luck. If you meet the Bloody Baron—bow to the waist; it is he whom you should thank for the timely transmission of this intelligence. Go on, you are dismissed. You too, Mr Malfoy. I shall, of course, inform your father of your rash conduct—I am sure he will also wish to have a few words.’       ‘And had I wanted to hide your escapade, nothing would have come of it anyway,’ Severus thought, watching Potter slouch out, and Malfoy bite his lip. Matters had reached a point where a visit from the Board of Governors was a certainty, and Severus would have staked a Galleon to a Knut that, whatever the make-up of their delegation, it would be led by the elder Malfoy.       To tell the truth, Snape himself would not have minded getting to the bottom of what in hell was going on at the school. No, of the curse on the Defence post only the inmates of Azkaban were unaware, and that only because no news reached them from outside—but the wizard currently occupying it gave rise to far too many questions.       That Quirrell was under a curse, Severus understood a fortnight or so after his return to the school. Over the course of his idiotic tour, undertaken in readiness for his new post, Quirinus had altered radically. At times it seemed altogether a different man.       A somewhat dour, self-contained Ravenclaw graduate, vain and proud to the point of touchiness, always meticulous about his appearance, had become suddenly sociable, even excessively chatty. He had let himself go, and, in addition, played the clown, lesson by lesson throwing away what little teaching authority he had. The students’ gibes, now not only behind his back, but to his face, appeared not to trouble him in the least; he merely smiled, with the vacant grin of an imbecile.       The clue was the odour of decay, growing stronger by the day, which the hapless colleague was vainly trying to mask with garlic. The bouquet was nauseating, and it became harder and harder for Snape even to sit near Quirinus at the staff table. Fortunately, the man preferred to dine alone—else the Potions master would have been driven to tea and sandwiches in his own rooms. What it was like for those seated nearer did not bear imagining; though Bathsheba and Silvanus, who sat directly beside Quirinus, might have held their tongues out of a misplaced sense of courtesy.       Professor Quirrell was dying—and doing it, like everything else he had done in his short, inglorious life, slowly, vexingly, and to no good purpose.       What truly set Snape on edge, however, was Quirrell’s unfading attraction to the Headmaster’s ‘training ground’.       Yes, the idiotic enterprise, dangerous to students, born of Moody’s conquering paranoia, deserved separate consideration by the Board of Governors, and Severus intended, one way or another, to nudge Lucius into examining this ‘obstacle course’. He could not speak plainly, but there were indirect ways, and one of them ought to work. The witless attraction, like any product of collective, irresponsible ‘creativity’, could not, by definition, serve its intended purpose; by the mere fact of existing, it created a host of troubles, and now had, at last, become the source of a serious problem.       ‘We’ve played with fire,’ was Snape’s first thought at the news of the troll. It was a wonder Cerberus had not escaped; on the other hand, a troll was worse, and by the known law that governs the universe, it was invariably the most dangerous exhibit of the half-baked vivarium that would get loose.       The ‘trap’, if it deserved the name at all, intended to catch the dark wizard who had penetrated Hogwarts—by which, judging by its contents, Moody meant Potter, and the Headmaster the reborn Dark Lord—had been slapped together in haste, and it was hardly surprising that the protective charms had gaps no one had noticed. But, hurrying to the scene, Severus could not help thinking—in Mordred’s name, why was it Quirrell who brought the news of the escaped troll? His office did, of course, lie on the way down from the fourth floor to the dungeons, but what did that imply—that Quirinus had escorted the creature there, and only then toddled off to the Great Hall? Or that, by that point, he had already been somewhere in the dungeons—and why? Was he on his way to the kitchens, ashamed to poison the air at the feast, and meaning to cadge a hamper from the house-elves for a solitary banquet?       The nasty suspicions only hardened when Snape, who had made all possible speed to the corridor forbidden to students, found the hatch behind Cerberus standing open. While he was subduing Hagrid’s foam-flecked pet, he caught the same unmistakable whiff—the blend of rotting flesh, alive and yet putrid, and garlic—and it threw him so off balance that the three-headed dog very nearly took a chunk out of his leg; he snatched the limb back at the last possible instant, missing a serious injury by a hundredth of an inch.       No, it was unlikely that the nose—literal or figurative—of a seasoned spy had led him astray. Thinking back, Quirinus had, time and again, been suspiciously often somewhere nearby. Yes, as the Defence professor, he ought to have taken a direct hand in perimeter control, but could he truly have failed to grasp that his contribution was not merely minimal, but useless? Or was it a residue of injured vanity that would not let him recognise the obvious?       And how had the troll passed the Devil’s Snare? It was that plant that was meant to stop the monster, if it came to it; it had no other purpose—a first-year would have got past it without breaking a sweat; you had only to make the light brighter—easy for a wizard, altogether impossible for a troll—and the sinewy tendrils would cringe aside, opening the way…       At last Cerberus was driven into a corner, and Severus, keeping one eye on the brute, and his wand trained on it, climbed down through the hatch. The Devil’s Snare greeted him with a tight embrace. The room with the flying keys—a twist of semi-goblin fancy—and the chess set, at the sight of which he once more longed to recommend that Minerva consult a mind-healer—everything was in place; everything seemed untouched. But the troll was gone. So, it really was roaming somewhere about Hogwarts. What a plague.       Snape, who had, to the last, nursed a hope of a mistake or a stupid prank, swore floridly. He conjured a Patronus, sent it to the Headmaster, and, with nothing for it, trudged back. A jolly night lay ahead.       But not even Trelawney, pessimist though she was, would have foretold just how jolly. At the exit from the labyrinth—Cerberus, drooling, was peering into the hatch, ready to greet Severus with the greatest joy—a paper crane swooped down on Snape and began to peck his hand furiously with its tiny beak. Severus unfolded the note.       ‘Potter and Malfoy have disappeared!’ the leaping letters declared; if not for the signature, he would hardly have recognised Farley’s handwriting, so badly was it shaking. Snape swore again—here was yet another unaccounted-for factor: the Heir of Slytherin had taken the field. He called once more to the doe woven of silver light, and dictated, ‘Do not dare to search! No one is to leave the dormitories!’ The blackest forebodings came over him, and Hagrid’s little doggy was treated to a Stinging Hex so strong that he scuttled out of the way ahead of his own plaintive howl.       Another thing awaited beyond the corridor door—the Bloody Baron, their house ghost, was cutting aimless circles on the landing. When Severus set off up the stairs, the spectre made for him.       ‘What do you want? Can you not see I am busy?’ Snape snapped, when he realised the ghost was pursuing him quite purposefully.       ‘The forces of evil hold sway in the castle tonight,’ the Baron intoned hollowly.       Severus ground his teeth helplessly—getting sense out of the undead was harder even than out of the portraits. He had to be content with that woolly answer.       In the Entrance Hall he found his colleagues milling about uselessly. Under Albus’s direction, they were attempting to form search parties; only Filius, Minerva, and Pomona were missing—presumably, they had gone to calm their charges, for the only one who could maintain any kind of discipline among the students was Severus himself. They soon appeared as well. In pairs and threes, the teachers left the hall, and Snape found himself partnered with the last to arrive, McGonagall, with Quirinus tagging along uninvited, still failing to take the hint that they were trying to sideline him politely. On reflection, Severus did not object—at least the stinker would be under supervision. The troll would not snatch him, and he would not, himself, do anything extra; it was calmer all round.       They drew the third floor: the corridors by the Muggle Studies and Charms classrooms, the Armour Gallery, and the Trophy Room. The Bloody Baron followed their little procession, grim as doom—and, what is more, the Grey Lady, Nearly Headless Nick, and Lord Drabben joined him. The ghostly delegation kept a little way behind, but set one’s nerves on edge. Never before had the Hogwarts ghosts been so intrusive, even on Hallowe’en, when they grew livelier.       Their unwelcome company soon ceased to matter. From a distance, muffled by the thickness of the walls, came a vague noise. Hollow thuds, like the felling of trees, and Minerva, with the inhumanly sharp hearing of an Animagus, likely caught it far more clearly, for she commanded, ‘Quickly, this way!’ And, gathering up her robes, she charged down the corridor.       Somewhere round a bend, a door banged—but when they turned into the passage that led to the Charms classroom, it was empty and deserted; only drunken monks in a painting were carrying on their endless carousal as though nothing had happened. The Grey Lady slipped from the ghostly group, and drifted through a wall; the other phantoms whirled up in a flurry, and flickered before the runners, spoiling their view, and slowing their pace. The din, meanwhile, was louder—and then fell silent. Minerva turned her head to and fro.       ‘There!’ she decided, but the echo, wandering through the niches and crooks of the stonework, had, plainly, led her astray—the Armour Gallery was empty. It was only when they reached the deserted corridor where the unquiet spirit of Miss Warren resided that all was made plain: the source of the noise was there.       Moaning Myrtle, as the students called her, had a habit of flooding the abandoned lavatory, the place of her untimely death, and, at times, even the corridor outside. But this time it was no dirty water that slopped underfoot; no—the puddle that had seeped from under the battered, skewed door, around which a web of new cracks spread, as though someone had tried to prise out a chunk of wall, was black in the glow of the enchanted sconces, and smelt of rust and death.       It was blood.       Quirinus went green. He looked about to be sick—amazing that, in his condition, he had managed not to be left behind during their sprint. Minerva pressed her lips so tight they looked like a colourless thread. Severus felt as though ice had congealed in his stomach—he did not fear blood, but the unknown—that, very much so. He was the first to reach the door, yanked at it, and, finding it wedged solid, snapped, ‘Back, all of you!’       Even the ghosts recoiled, so commanding was the order. Snape sent Confringo at the door—he had no intention of sparing school property, not now—and the blast, which shattered the wood to splinters, revealed a grim, frightening scene.       Amid the wreck of the lavatory drifted Myrtle. She was wheeling in a strange, otherworldly dance, to a melody no one else could hear, waving her hands, and rocking her spectacled head. Around her, the ruins of her revel lay scattered—shards of mirror and basin, scraps of wood. Blood was everywhere. From a ripped-out tap a jet of water shot at the ceiling, and fell from it in uneven drops. The floor tiles had cracked in two places, plaster was peeling off the walls in slabs here and there.       ‘Miss Warren!’ Minerva breathed, nostrils flaring. ‘What, precisely, has happened here?’       ‘Oh, I cannot say,’ Myrtle replied, whirling past them in her grotesque waltz. ‘No, no, I cannot. Do not ask—I am forbidden!’       ‘Forbidden by whom?’ Severus frowned. He had his suspicions—if some unknown force had been found in Hogwarts capable of annihilating Peeves…       ‘That I cannot tell you either!’ Myrtle giggled. ‘No, no, no, no. Shhh.’ She pressed a translucent finger to her lips, and tittered again.       ‘You will answer,’ McGonagall grated, to no effect. Severus, having lost interest in their futile exchange, looked round more carefully—and noticed that one of the splinters scattered here and there was no random bit of timber, wrenched free by the blast.       ‘Inspectio sanguis,’ he whispered, moving his wand. Yes—it was troll’s blood—and, lying in it, was the creature’s club. Judging by the size of the pool, the troll was dead.       Snape had no time to share his discovery. The corridor, flooded with blood, filled with a jubilant silver light, and a Patronus—a shining phoenix, its eyes like two bright stars—swooped towards the teachers frozen in the doorway.       ‘Fire at Hagrid’s!’ it cried, in the Headmaster’s voice, and vanished.       Quirrell was sick at last—he doubled over, retching painfully, and sagged against the wall. Minerva transformed without a word and shot off, a long streak of a cat skimming the floor towards the stairs. Severus, for his part, and to blazes with everything, resorted to a means of movement he had long classed forbidden to himself. He ran to the nearest window, blew out the glass, swung over the sill, and, trailed by a dwindling stream of black smoke, flew forward, and down.       Yes—who could have guessed when the Dark Lord’s art would come in useful. Severus had kept that skill hidden—it branded him no worse than the Dark Mark—but, here and now, there was no one to see, and condemn.       The hut was ablaze. Not merely a fire—a colossal pyre; the flames had already taken the roof, and the walls, bright gold and rippling with gleams, had grown almost translucent—a sure sign they would soon collapse. A column of smoke, grey against a coal-black sky, and lit from below, billowed up, and up, and fans of sparks soared within it towards the paling stars. The sight was horrifying. An old, forgotten reflex, yet evidently still alive, stirred in Severus: his eyes scoured the sky for the Dark Mark—and only when he did not find it did he realise what he had been seeking. With a curse—the evening’s umpteenth—he came down among the cabbage beds, into rich, squelching loam.       There was, of course, no question of dousing anything here. No one was trying—they were sluicing a steaming heap of rags with jets of water from their wands; after a couple of blinks, Snape recognised Hagrid in it. The heap moved, and growled—the half-giant lived.       From the castle, a dark shape arrowed towards the crush by the hut, dropped to earth, and split in two. Minerva, gasping and holding her right side, let her broom fall, and Poppy Pomfrey, who had jumped down while still aloft, bottles ringing in her healer’s bag, was already on her knees by the wounded man. Severus glanced about, weighing what he might transfigure into a stretcher. It was impossible to levitate a half-giant, resistant to magic as he was, without some material support, and the only way to get him to St Mungo’s was Apparition, for which he must first be carried to the edge of the wards that ringed the school.       An hour later, reeking of smoke and done in, the teachers gathered to hold a council in the Headmaster’s office. Not only teachers, at that—tragedy had drawn everyone together; even Filch had come—he perched on a windowsill, smoothing his cat with a lost expression. Mrs Norris bulged her yellow eyes, digging her claws into the old Squib’s robes, and leaving fresh layers of clinging fur atop those already there. Pomfrey kept rubbing her reddened eyes, smearing her face with dirty streaks. Minerva silently conjured her a chair.       Severus did the same for Quirrell. The half-corpse thanked him with a nod, and a wretched, strained smile. The stench that came off him mingled with the reek of burning in so revolting a bouquet that Snape nearly retched himself. He breathed fast, but mastered it. Filius, settled on a second sill, kneaded his curly beard without pause. Bathsheba wept, soundlessly; Septima scowled and bit her lip. Aurora looked detached, as usual—only the way she squeezed Silvanus’s hand betrayed her agitation. Irma worried at a lace-trimmed handkerchief.       The Headmaster looked over the wizards crammed into the office, and gave a deep, heartrending sigh.       ‘Poppy, my dear girl…’ he began, and, without waiting for him to finish, the matron took it up: ‘He will live. He is in a grave but stable condition. Because of the… because of his…’ She did not know how to touch more delicately on Hagrid’s racial peculiarities, and after a couple of false starts abandoned the attempt. ‘It was hard going, but he will survive. He will be scarred, that is all…’ She scrubbed her face again with her dirty hands.       The Headmaster tugged at his beard. The tinkling of little bells seemed peculiarly ill-timed. Severus’s eye twitched. Never more than now did he long to cut that wretched frippery off. Or—in light of this exquisite evening—burn it to cinders.       ‘Silvanus, you and Aurora were the first to raise the alarm.’ The Headmaster peered over his spectacles at them. ‘Can you explain in more detail what you saw?’       Sinistra inclined her head a little, and narrowed her deep, black eyes, thoughtful. Her robes, purple and orange, which she particularly favoured for feasts, were speckled with pinprick burns from the sparks. Her hair had escaped its bun, and curled in the heat. A faint smear of soot marked her temple.       ‘I cannot say,’ she pronounced judiciously. ‘I was not even looking that way—we were searching for the troll. But it caught fire very quickly. All at once, as though by hellfire.’       ‘The same.’ Kettleburn scratched his nose with his artificial hand. Aurora still clung to his other, living one—her calm was, it seemed, put on. ‘I am not the sharpest-eyed,’ he joked grimly, touching the empty hollow under his right brow. ‘I only noticed when it suddenly grew bright. Thought at first the gamekeeper was having a bonfire. Well, it is a feast day…’       Silence fell. Then Madam Pince suddenly sobbed aloud.       ‘It was me, it was my fault,’ she got out, pressing her mangled handkerchief to her mouth, and weeping bitterly, dully, like a fit of coughing.       Severus, stunned, conjured a glass of water without thinking. Irma took it in shaking hands. Her teeth rattled on the glass, and some of the water splashed down her front, but she calmed enough to go on.       ‘About a month ago I noticed that books were going missing. All on one topic. Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland, From Egg to Inferno, Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit,’ she faltered on the last, and nearly broke down again. ‘At first I suspected the students. And now I think… I believe… it must have been Rubeus, all along. I… ought to have told you at once, Albus, but…’       The end of her speech drowned in fresh tears. The Headmaster clutched his beard with doubled fervour. The office buzzed, and burbled—everyone was in a hurry to express surprise, or to utter an opinion, undoubtedly of immense value.       Filch grunted, and hugged his cat tighter. Flitwick squeaked something in Gobbledegook. Silvanus growled, ‘Idiot!’ Poppy gasped, and bit her lip. ‘Sooner or later it was bound to end like this,’ Septima said, sharply, which set off a new wave of remarks.       ‘Not the first time…’       ‘I always knew…’       ‘Do you remember the case when…’       ‘Poor Rubeus, he always favoured the most dangerous…’       ‘You are thinking about the wrong thing,’ Severus snorted to himself. He could have signed his name to every word—under ‘bound to end like this’, and under ‘idiot’—but first and foremost, something else concerned him now. And that something he said aloud, loudly, and clearly, ‘And who saw the dragon? Where is the dragon?’       ‘Oh, Merlin!’ the voices rose again in a single, anxious chord.       So much for the weekend. At first light, the hunt for the dragon would begin. The only hope was that the specimen was still small. On the other hand, a little dragon was harder to track. The Forbidden Forest is vast—there was every chance of failing to find it. And, in a couple of years, a magnificent surprise.       In light of such goings-on, the Bloody Baron’s tidings that the shamelessly absconded boys were safe made no impression on Severus whatsoever. Safe—very well. Excellent, splendid, fine. A ghost brings the news—why ever not.       Having sent his third Patronus of the night—to the prefects, to stop panicking and go to bed—Severus felt treacherous weakness come over him. He barely dragged himself to his rooms, and, finding a set of children carelessly asleep there, could not even work up a proper anger—not at them, nor at Minerva, who had contrived to lose a student, and had yet to notice it. No, he had not unjustly accused her of neglecting her charges—had the girl crossed paths with the troll, when would they have started looking? In the morning? At roll call before Monday’s lessons? Yes, this was not Hufflepuff; lions are individualist predators. Even his own tangle of snakes is friendlier than that crew of dyed-in-the-wool rebels.       With those thoughts in mind, Severus sank into his chair, still warm, so familiar, so deep and soft that as soon as the back of his head touched the rest, sleep swept over the Head of Slytherin in a dark, turbid wave, like the deep waters of the Black Lake.       He dreamt of fire, and of Cerberus’s slobbering maw, and of the Dark Mark soaring in the sky, and of blood seeping from under the doors of the Great Hall—and, for some reason, of Quirinus Quirrell, who asked sternly, ‘Where do your loyalties lie, Severus Snape?’       Both the tone and the question itself were so out of keeping with the speaker that Snape was taken aback—and woke. On waking, he found the fire dead, himself chilled to the bone, and Tempus reading three o’clock in the morning. Invoking Merlin—for the last time that night, or the first of the morning, depending on how one reckoned it—he locked the doors, and went to bed.