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Severus Snape was right in the middle of explaining how to brew a simple potion when his arm began to burn, but he at once dismissed the class of first-years he was attempting to instruct and hurried to get his cloak, stopping by Minerva’s classroom and holding up his arm – although not exposing the mark - to let her know where he was going. Normally he would not have interrupted a class, and normally he would not have been summoned during one, but this time it was different.
Because just one week previous, something had happened in the Forest. Whatever it was had not only destroyed the barrier the wizards had put up to notify them if anyone crossed the boundary, it had taken the Fey’s anti-wizard barrier with it as well. Wizards still couldn’t enter the Forest, but they also couldn’t put up any more barriers of their own in the area at all.
Severus would not have put off answering this particular summons for anything or anyone.
He traipsed through the half-frozen muck that the snowy fields were disintegrating into under the day’s bright late winter sun, picking his way carefully until he reached the new barrier. Then he quickly spelled his boots clean and stepped across. It was like stepping through a diaphanous silken curtain, and the icy burning of his mark stopped the second that curtain touched it. Severus barely noticed that, however; his attention was completely commanded by the people waiting for him under the trees. The Knight. One of the Fey. And his young lord, which was a surprise, but one he quickly recovered from. He bowed deeply. “Lord Potter,” he said. “You summoned me?”
“I did.” The young lord, who looked near to nothing like either the abused waif Severus had so despised at Hogwarts or the arrogant tormentor of his own school days, nodded acknowledgment of both bow and title. “I have come into my inheritance, and taken up my hereditary responsibilities as Head of the House of Potter, and also as Lord of the Forest through the blood treaty of my ancestors.” He smiled. “Although I believe you had already noticed something of that last one.”
“We could hardly help but notice, my lord,” Severus replied. His mind was reeling. Lord of the Forest…he remembered hearing the legend, but had thought it was no more than that. “The new barrier…”
“Part of the blood magic connected to the treaty my ancestors created with the Queen of the Spiders,” Harry answered. “Later generations had let it lapse and then forgotten it, and so our bloodline weakened and began to wither. I have remedied the first part of that oversight, at least.”
“So the spiders are no longer a threat?”
“The spiders’ duty is to protect the forest and all who live within it, especially the unicorns,” Harry corrected. “In return, House Potter accords the spiders the freedom of the Forest and protection from those who would destroy them.” He smiled just slightly. “Under the treaty, the spiders also swear to leave innocents who enter the Forest either through ignorance or while seeking sanctuary unmolested, although anyone else can be fairly considered their prey.”
“That is fair, yes.” Severus was relieved to hear it, actually. With Hogwarts so close to the edge of the Forest, the chance of students – especially first-years – wandering where they should not go was practically a foregone conclusion. “Hagrid?”
“Was given the freedom of the Forest by request of the Queen of the Spiders herself,” Harry told him. “He is known as a friend to them, and to many others who dwell here.” He smiled again. “Professor, I have a task for you, if you are or can be free until tomorrow morning.” At Severus’ nod he continued. “My Knight wishes to send a message to a friend, and something of a gift as well. This man’s name is Rupert Giles, and he holds the title of Director of the International Slayers’ Council, which is headquartered in London. Would you be willing to apparate to visit this man and take the message?”
Severus nodded again. It seemed a strangely simple task, and he thought there must be a loophole somewhere. “And the gift?”
“That would be you,” his young lord told him, and hastened to explain when Severus’ mouth dropped open in shock. “No, not like that. Director Giles heads an organization whose purpose is to direct and protect a tribe of magically-enhanced young women who fight the forces of darkness. The man is a scholar, and a minor magic user himself although not of the Wizardly sort. We merely thought he would enjoy speaking with you about your profession, and you may utilize magic in his presence or not as you feel comfortable. As he already uses magic and has experience with many different varieties – mostly demonic – to do so would not put you in violation of the Ministry’s rules.”
“Giles is completely trustworthy,” the Knight added. “I’ve known him for years, and I’d trust him with my life – and with yours, or I wouldn’t have requested you for this.”
“Why did you?” Severus asked point-blank.
The Knight shrugged. “Giles is surrounded by teenage girls most of the time, or by people who are subordinate to him. I believe he would benefit from some intelligent adult conversation with someone he could be on an equal footing with, and so I made the request of Lord Potter that you be sent with my message for him. All you have to do is deliver the message and wait for him to read it. If he invites you to stay and chat, that’s great. If he doesn’t, I don’t expect you to hang around after that.”
Severus considered that. It was a fairly simple request, seemingly not even dangerous, and he was somewhat intrigued by the idea of conversing with one of the magic-using Muggles. And there was also the sop to his ego to consider, as in sending him on this errand his lord was also marking him as being on equal footing with the director of an international organization. He bowed again. “Of course. I would be happy to comply with this request. When…”
“This afternoon,” Lord Potter told him. “Now if possible, unless there is anything you would like to retrieve from the castle before going.” Severus checked what he had with him and then shook his head, and his lord smiled. “Now, then. I know you’ll need to tell Headmistress McGonagall, allow me to facilitate that and save you the walk.”
He waved his hand, and a circle about the size of a medium-sized mirror appeared in the air between them. Minerva McGonagall’s startled face became visible, and Severus smiled in spite of himself at her shocked expression. “Headmistress,” he said. “I need to request that the rest of my classes be cancelled this afternoon. I have a potentially time-consuming task which needs to be completed as quickly as possible, and I believe it would be preferable in this instance to put the students on hold rather than the task.”
McGonagall gathered herself. “Of course, Professor Snape,” she said at once. “I suspected the summons you received earlier might be of an urgent nature, due to the unusual timing of it. I will assign another instructor to take your classes this afternoon.” The smile she couldn’t allow on her face – she was, after all, in class herself – appeared in her eyes. “We will see you back at Hogwarts tonight.”
“Thank you, Headmistress.” Severus smiled back with his eyes as well. “I will notify you when I return.”
The green-edged portal collapsed in on itself, and Severus raised an eyebrow at Harry, who shrugged. “I’ve been able to do that since I took up the mantle of Lord of the House of Potter,” he said. “Apparently I wasn’t the only person in my line who had an…unpleasant reaction to Floo powder; one of my ancestors came up with that as a solution to the problem.”
Severus bowed. “My lord, at your convenience, I should like to learn more about that,” he said respectfully. “Much of our history appears to have been lost, to our people’s detriment. Now, however, I have a message to deliver?”
The Knight held out a sealed envelope and a small gold pin in the shape of a curved peacock feather with an emerald eye. “The message, and the ‘directions’,” he said. “The pin will see you safely to Giles and return you when you’re ready. Just touch it and say ‘Away’.”
“If you attach it in the border of your robe, it can’t be lost or removed,” Harry added. He smiled. “I hope you have a pleasant afternoon. The pin will return you to this spot, and a servant will come to you forthwith to carry back any return message you might have. After that, you are free to return to Hogwarts as you like.”
Severus bowed again. He tucked the letter inside his robe, then fastened the pin in the robe’s border and touched the emerald with his finger. “Away,” he said, and vanished.
He arrived before a set of gates which he could feel magic layered heavily upon, but which opened for him when he stepped towards them. Almost immediately, a pair of heavily armed young women in shockingly revealing clothing appeared. They looked him up and down, frowning, and then the shorter of the two said in accented English, “Welcome to de headquarters of de International Watcher’s Council. You have business wit us?”
“I do,” Severus told her. “I was asked to bring a message to your Director Giles. Is he available?”
The girls looked at each other. “He’s here,” the other girl said finally, shrugging. She sounded American. “Give us the message and we’ll…”
“I was asked to deliver this message in person,” Severus interrupted, drawing himself up. These might be the Knight’s magically-enhanced young women…but they were still just girls, and he was still a teacher used to quelling impertinent youngsters with a look. “It is possible your director may have questions, or wish me to take a message back for him. Please take me to him. I will wait if he is occupied with other matters.”
The girls looked at each other again, but this time they were less certain. The one who had spoken first pulled out a small shiny object and flipped it open, doing something to it and then holding it up to her ear. “There is someone here to see Mistah Giles,” she said. “De gates let him in, he says he has a message. I sent you a picture.” After a moment she nodded and then snapped the little object shut again and tucked it into a pocket which Severus had thought was ornamental rather than functional due to the tightness of the fabric. “Come wit’ us,” she told him. “De witch on duty says to bring you to Mistah Giles. He is doing paperwork today, he won’t mind stoppin’.”
Severus let himself smile slightly. “I dare say he won’t.” He knew all about the evils of paperwork – even with magic to help him it was still tedious. He gestured. “Lead on, young woman.”
For some reason that made both of them titter, and he just barely managed to refrain from rolling his eyes; if poor Director Giles was surrounded by this all day, every day, it was no wonder the Knight thought the man would appreciate the company of another intelligent adult. He followed the one young woman, noting that the other had fallen in behind him and approving of both the tactic and its obviousness. Caution required no apology, at least not for Severus Snape. He’d have been far more obvious – and far ruder – than these girls were being, were their situations reversed.
The well-kept grounds were beginning to brighten with the first touches of spring, and the hard, smooth paths kept the mud under the sparsely greening grass where it belonged. The oldest – although not the largest – building on the grounds turned out to be their destination, live ivy crawling up over dead on its walls and its single wooden door well warded. It was well-warded enough, in fact, that a little spray of magic went off when Severus stepped through it, and he stopped in the entryway in surprise. “That isn’t…is that earth magic?” he asked, turning his head to squint at the door’s wooden frame. “How astonishing.”
“I could say the same about the wards woven into your robe,” a new voice replied. “I hadn’t known our wards would react in that manner if they encountered Fey magic.” A plump older woman had appeared in the hallway, and the girls had fallen back. The woman cocked her head, looking at him, and then nodded and smiled. “You have a message for the director?” she asked.
Severus nodded back. He could sense the power in the woman – it was the same power he’d felt in the doorway. This was an earth witch, then, and a fairly powerful one. “I was asked to bring him a message, yes. By the Lord of the House of Potter, on behalf of one of his people.” He saw she wanted more than that and shrugged. “I know the man only as Knight, my lady.”
The two girls gasped and started chattering like magpies, but the woman shushed them and then waved them away. “I’ll take care of this, go back to the gate – you’ve still a good hour of patrol left.” They sulked and flounced back out of the house, and the woman smiled at him. “I’m Melinda Dawes,” she said. “And you would be?”
He found himself smiling back, if only slightly, and gave her a short bow. “Professor Severus Snape.”
“I’ll take you to the director, Professor,” she told him. “He could use the diversion – and he’ll be glad to get this message, it’s one he’s been waiting on for a few years now.” She led him down the hall and up a staircase, knocking on a door that had a small brass plate on it which said simply Director. And below which had been fastened a piece of paper with bold colored letters in a fanciful and somewhat childish style adding Giles the Magnificent. Severus noticed that Melinda ignored the colorful sign completely, and that she did not wait for a response to her knock before opening the door and sticking her head in. “Visitor for you, Rupert!” she announced, and then pushed the door wider and ushered Severus in. “Professor Severus Snape, Director Giles. I’ll just bring you some tea, back in a mo.”
And then she was gone, closing the door behind her, and Director Giles was standing up behind a desk covered with papers and books. He was a man approximately Severus’ own age, brown hair graying and thinning noticeably and light blue eyes sharp and inquisitive behind gold wire-rimmed glasses. “I’m sorry about that, Professor,” he said. “We tend to be rather informal around here. What can I help you with?”
“I was asked to deliver a message to you,” Severus told him. He withdrew the sealed letter from his robes, taking care to move slowly, and handed it over. “The request came from the Lord of the House of Potter on behalf of one of his people, a man whom I know only by the title of Knight.”
The other man actually jumped, eyes rounding behind his glasses. “Knight…” He waved Severus towards a chair. “Please, have a seat, Professor. Knight, you say. Good lord, that boy does nothing by halves. You saw him?”
“I have seen him on multiple occasions,” Severus replied, settling himself in the indicated chair. “He seems to be held in high regard by the Fey.”
Giles retook his own seat. “Considering they sent a centaur to fetch him out of London for whatever task it was they wished him to take on? Yes, I’d say so. Might I know where he is?”
“At the moment, Scotland.” Severus didn’t see the harm in telling him. The idea of anyone, even the Fey, using a centaur as an errand-boy was one he would be astonished over at a later time. “Although I dare say they’ll be moving along for the season soon. The Court normally leaves the Forest in the spring and does not return until late autumn each year.”
Melinda came bustling back in with a tray. “That’d be the Forbidden Forest,” she informed the director, setting the tray on top of his paperwork. “The one where the spiders live.”
“Actually, it is a protected refuge for them,” Severus corrected – politely. He was not at all surprised she’d been eavesdropping. “And for several other species of magical creature as well.”
She nodded. “So I’d heard, it’s just the spiders were what stuck in my mind. As large as a car, I heard.”
He shrugged. “That I wouldn’t know. But the Acromantulas are quite large, many of them larger than a man, and they are venomous as well.”
Director Giles had broken open the seal on the envelope and was reading his message. It did not appear to be a very long message, and it did appear to Severus as though the man read it twice before looking up again. “He is working with the Fey, with the Winter Court to be precise,” he told Melinda. “They wished him to be the guardian of a young lord who was taken in as a ward of the Queen of the Winter Court, and he is quite happy in his position.”
“He was always good with the younger ones,” Melinda said approvingly. She explained further for their visitor’s benefit. “The boy worked with the newly-called Slayers in Africa, and the short time he was here in London he worked with our younger ones as well. He’s still missed by the ones who knew him.”
“I’ll inform them of his letter this evening,” the director said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Although likely by then they’ll all know about it already, the way gossip flies around here.” He gave the witch a pointed look over the top of his glasses. “Thank you, Melinda.”
She rolled her eyes at him but left with a wink for Severus, and Giles sighed. “Again, I am sorry about that.”
Severus essayed a small but honest smile and shook his head. “No need, Director. There are several witches and even a few other wizards of my acquaintance who are similarly…familiar with everyone they encounter and do not mean any disrespect by it.”
The blue eyes behind the glasses rounded again. “Good Lord, you’re a wand wizard,” the man gasped. “But I had heard that your people were isolationist in the extreme…”
“For the most part, yes,” Severus confirmed. “It is a crime in our world to reveal our existence to a Muggle, as non-wizards are called in our society – and I will not lie, that is a pejorative term. But Lord Potter assured me that due to your position and your own ability to use magic the law did not apply to me if I was speaking with you.” He allowed himself a small smile. “The Knight seemed to think you would be as curious about my magic as I am about yours. I am a Potions Master,” he explained. “And a full professor and Head of House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
The other man looked pleased by this, and for a brief instant Severus saw the light of calculation flash in his eyes. Which was something Severus quite approved of; he himself was also sizing up this encounter with an eye for how it might be of value to him in the future. “I would very much enjoy comparing notes with you, one scholar to another,” Giles said. “Previous to my assignment by the old Watcher’s Council to their then-newest Slayer in America, I served as a curator in the British Museum’s rare-books library and as a resident expert on ancient texts. Of course, a good deal of my time was spent concealing the exact nature of some of the texts, quite a few of them were of demonic origin and one or two crossed my desk which should never have been out of magical hands at all.”
Severus made a face, adding more sugar to his tea and shaking his head. “That must be a problem we all have, then – I’ve often wondered if there’s some sort of universal curse on that causes the dangerous items to be ‘accidentally’ discarded like a used newspaper. You don’t want to know how many times I’ve found tomes which should have been under lock and key somewhere knocking around in a bargain-book bin in Diagon Alley…”
The afternoon passed quickly but pleasantly, and it was early evening when Severus returned to the Forest. As promised, a Fey servant was waiting for him. Severus handed over a letter, then detached the pin from his robe and handed that over as well. “You may tell Lord Potter and the Knight that Director Giles sends his greetings and his thanks. We had a very pleasant visit, and I shall probably visit him again in the near future. Should I wait?”
The servant shook his head. “No, Professor. I will pass on your message.” He essayed a short bow. “Have a pleasant evening.”
“And you the same,” Severus returned with a short bow of his own, then strode back through the silken barrier and began the long, muddy walk back up the hill to the school.
To his surprise, Minerva was waiting for him on the front steps; when she saw him, in fact, she hurried down them and met him in the courtyard. “How did they know?” she demanded. “Did they tell you? It can’t have been a coincidence…”
Severus raised an eyebrow. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me. Lord Potter…” She gasped, hand going to her mouth, and he nodded. “Yes, that was what happened last week – the Lord of the House of Potter apparently also held the title and responsibilities of Lord of the Forest, which our former student has now fully assumed. But we can discuss that later, as I don’t think that is the ‘coincidence’ you’re speaking of.”
“Not hardly,” she breathed, taking his arm and turning back to the stairs. “The Ministry was here, Severus, with aurors and all, and they were looking for you. They seemed to think you could answer some questions for them and they were very blustery about it when I told them you’d been summoned to the Forest earlier and probably wouldn’t be back until tonight. So they waited.” She smiled then, eyes twinkling with amusement. “One of them tried to investigate the barrier himself and was thrown back almost into the lake when he touched it…and then more aurors showed up and hauled them all off. Apparently they weren’t supposed to be here, none of them had any authorization and a few weren’t even in the Ministry’s employ any longer, and no one is sure what they wanted with you but it probably wasn’t good. So my supposition was that Lord Potter knew what was happening and arranged for you to be elsewhere for the afternoon.”
“That would make sense, considering that the errand I was sent on was important but nowhere near urgent,” Severus told her, patting her hand where it rested on the sleeve of his robe. “They must have eyes and ears in the Ministry, then.”
“I’ve always suspected that some of the old families still had connections with the Fey Courts,” Minerva agreed. “Perhaps someday it won’t have to be kept a secret, but I can hardly blame them for staying apart from us at present.”
“We have done an uncommonly good job lately of looking as though we can’t manage our own affairs without making an unholy mess of things.” Severus shrugged. “We aren’t alone in that, however. Wait until you hear what the Earth-magic practitioners among the Muggles have been getting up to lately…”