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Chapter Text

“I think, Severus,” said Professor Dumbledore, “that it would be just as well if you left England for a while after you finish school.”

The greasy-haired, sallow young man slumped in the opposite chair gave a guilty start. Of course, the Headmaster had probably observed his friendship with Avery and Rosier, but he couldn’t know about certain introductions that had been made over the Christmas holidays, nor about a ritual performed at midnight, some two weeks before. Could he?

“Yes,” Dumbledore went on meditatively, “these are dangerous times, particularly for one of your background. If you felt inclined to stay and fight, of course, there will certainly be work for you here, but there is no shame or dishonor in spending some time abroad.”

Severus stopped feeling guilty and returned to his usual state of sullenness. He hated being reminded of his Muggle father, and Dumbledore plainly had no idea which side he’d be fighting on if he did end up joining the war. He allowed himself to feel superior to the Headmaster, although he was careful to let no trace of his contempt show in his face or posture.

“Besides, Professor Slughorn tells me you have considerable academic gifts, which ought to be nurtured. He recommended you for a research fellowship at one of the wizarding universities on the Continent, and Professor McGonagall and I agree with him.”

Severus could not suppress a flicker of excitement, although he didn’t let that show, either.

“I have written to one of my colleagues at Wittenberg, and he has offered to take you on as a research assistant. I must warn you that he can be a trifle eccentric, but his work on experimental potions is very exciting, and I believe you would learn a great deal from him.”

Severus snorted. He suspected that someone who was “a trifle eccentric” by Dumbledore’s standards would be barking mad by anybody else’s.

“He speaks excellent English. As a rule, he expects his research assistants to speak English, too, rather than expressing themselves by staring at the floor and making snuffling sounds. May I trust that there will be no communication barrier?”

“Yes, sir,” Severus muttered.

“And are you interested in the fellowship?”

Severus didn’t look up. “I reckon I might be.”

“From you, Severus, I shall take that as an expression of great enthusiasm. Very well. I will write to Dr. Faustus and inform him that you accept his offer.”

* * *

A week after finishing his N.E.W.T.s, Severus set out for Germany. He carried with him a recommendation letter from Dumbledore and a battered suitcase containing a toothbrush, a change of clothes, and as many books as he could fit inside (though not his copy of Advanced Potion-Making, which had, irritatingly, gone missing). He had committed most of the potion recipes and his own improvements to memory, anyway – along with a set of instructions from the Dark Lord and every word Lily Evans had ever said to him.

An awkward and reluctant flier, Severus chose to queue up for the International Floo Network and then took the Wizarding Express from Hamburg to Wittenberg, as he had too hazy a sense of his destination to Apparate. It was late evening when he arrived, cramped and sleepy from too many hours on the train.

An ancient house-elf met him at the station and showed him to a room at the top of one of the university’s towers. It was tiny and institutional, but very clean; the only furnishings were an iron bed, a shelf for books, and an enormous wardrobe. Severus, who had grown up in surroundings that were even more austere, was not inclined to complain. After checking the wardrobe for boggarts, he threw himself down on the bed and fell asleep at once.

He was awakened by a string of firecrackers going off outside his door.

He stumbled out into the corridor, ready to hex the idiot who had set them off, only to be confronted with what looked like a mechanical devil spitting fire from beneath its tail. It had the horns and the pitchfork, but instead of being goat-footed, it rolled along on wheels.

A voice barked out a command in German; the thing stopped rolling, and the smoke in the corridor began to clear. Severus saw that the stranger who had spoken was a very old man, far older than Dumbledore, though his step was still vigorous.

“You must be the new research assistant from England – Snape, is it? John Faustus. Please accept my apologies about the Mechanical Demon. Sometimes it goes off without warning.”

“What does it do?” Severus asked.

“Well, nothing very much at the moment, but it looks very impressive, don’t you think? I made a much better one back in 1537 – but they took it from me when I was arrested for breaking the Decretals. Oh, Albus didn’t tell you about that? Quite a legend with the Muggles around here – they say Lucifer himself came to drag me away to hell – but it was really the International Confederation of Wizards who were angry about some practical jokes that I played on the Pope. To make a long story short, they sentenced me to four hundred years’ hibernation. I can’t complain. I’m still here, after all, and I’d likely have died long ago if they hadn’t. Time is a funny thing, my boy. Sometimes stepping out of it can save you.”

Severus was certain by now that Dr. Faustus was, indeed, barking mad.

“Well, now that you’re up and about, we may as well get to work. I’ll show you around the laboratory. Oh, I almost forgot, your mother wrote to me and said to make sure you changed your underwear, so I suppose you’d better do that first. Semper ubi sub ubi, as they say in Rome. Grapes?” Faustus flicked his wand, and a platter of fruit appeared in front of him.

“No, thanks.” Severus made a mental note to send an angry letter to his mother. He was a Death Eater, for God’s sake; since when did Death Eaters’ relatives badger them about their underwear?

“I sent for them from Australia. They’re really very good. I imagine your mother would like you to eat, too, although she didn’t actually say anything about that.”

His head whirling, Severus accepted a stalk of grapes.

* * *

It did not take him long to decide that Faustus was even madder than he’d expected. The doctor was, at the moment, hard at work on something he called a Plothole-Plugging Potion; Severus was not quite sure what a “plothole” was, but Faustus seemed to be obsessed with them, and claimed they were everywhere. The evidence, he claimed, was abundant if you looked at England alone: Hogwarts had had a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher every year for twenty years without anybody noticing or commenting on it; nobody ever said the Dark Lord’s name yet everybody seemed to know it; the Death Eaters, an illegal secret society, had decided it would be a brilliant idea to get indelible tattoos.

At this last observation, Severus shifted uncomfortably in his chair; his left arm felt like it was burning. Why had he thought it was a brilliant idea, anyway?

“But there are as many in my world as yours. Tell me, why did I agree to sell my soul for twenty-four years of power and pleasure? Why not twenty-four hundred or twenty-four thousand?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” said Severus, who had no idea what Faustus was on about.

“Plotholes, I tell you! They surround us, as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, and until now, no one has thought to do anything about them.”

“If they surround us, as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, are you sure it would be a good idea to do anything about them?”

Faustus shrugged. “Actually, I’m not at all sure it would be a good idea. But it would be a triumph of science, and that is even better.”

Severus was doubtful about this, and even more doubtful when Faustus told him that he would have the honor of drinking the first batch of Plothole-Plugging Potion.

“Why me?”

“Because I have no way of knowing how far in the past – or in the future – the potion may take you, and I am a wanted man in many places and times. Your record, according to Professor Dumbledore’s letter, is clean.”

Severus, who wasn’t at all sure it would be clean in the future, was not reassured by this answer. He couldn’t see any good way to explain this, however, and his own calculations suggested that the Plothole-Plugging Potion was nontoxic and, indeed, highly unlikely to have any effect at all. He drank it obediently. It tasted of pineapple.

He felt a whirling, wrenching sensation, much like being suddenly jerked into the Floo network, and the room went dark.

~ ~ ~

Severus landed spreadeagled on top of a large and lumpy object.

“Thou hast killed Rosencrantz, thou whoreson bastard!”

Severus rolled off of the object, which turned out to be a person, a dark-haired man in his early twenties. “My parents,” he said with as much dignity as he could manage, “are – most unfortunately – married to each other.” He knelt to examine the inert figure beside him. “Besides, he’s only stunned. Concussion, most likely.”

The other young man in the room, the one who had spoken, seemed to have processed the unusual manner of Severus’s arrival in the meantime. He backed up against the wall, his eyes wide, and crossed himself. “Are you an angel or a devil?” he asked.

“Neither,” said Severus coldly. “I am Severus Snape.” He considered the two young men. They wore short breeches and hose, a costume as unlike contemporary Muggle dress as it was unlike wizard robes. Unless they were on their way to a masquerade ball, he had evidently landed some centuries in the past. The one who was conscious wore a sword, and his hand had instinctively strayed to its hilt. Muggles, then. “Dr. Faustus sent me,” he said, unable to think up any better explanation for his presence.

This seemed to satisfy Rosencrantz’s companion, who didn’t appear to be very bright. “Oh, old Faustus. He’s mad.”

“I noticed.”

“‘Twould be better to have no dealings with him. They say he’s in league with the devil.”

“I don’t intend to have any more,” said Severus feelingly. He added, grudgingly, “I am sorry for the accident to ... your brother?”

“My friend. My name is Guildenstern; he’s Rosencrantz – but most people have trouble telling us apart.”

“He will be quite all right, but you’ll need to keep him quiet for a few days.” Had Guildenstern been a wizard, Snape could have woken Rosencrantz and mended his cracked skull in a trice, but he knew better than to risk performing spells in front of a Muggle, particularly in the ... sixteenth century, was it?

Guildenstern looked distressed. “We travel to Denmark on the morrow, to the royal court at Elsinore. We have a summons from the king.”

“Your friend won’t be going. Perhaps in a week or two he might be well enough to join you.”

“But King Claudius positively ordered ... I dare not disobey him. And there was a postscript from the poor queen – she sounded so distraught. ‘Tis about her son, you know, Prince Hamlet.”

Severus didn’t know, but he thought it would be wiser to nod as if he did.

Suddenly, Guildenstern’s face cleared. “I have it! You and Rosencrantz are something like each other; you must wear his clothes, and I shall present you to the king as him, and he will be ne’er the wiser.”

This struck Severus as a terrible idea. It was true that he was of approximately the same build and coloring as the unconscious man, but their faces were nothing alike; anyone less vacuous than Guildenstern would have noticed the difference at once. He pointed this out to Guildenstern.

Guildenstern shrugged. “It will make little difference. People look upon us, but they mark us not.”

“Have you ever met the king and queen of Denmark?”

“Aye, but no more than twice or thrice, at court masques and entertainments. Prince Hamlet was courteous enough to present us, and to speak of us as if we were his dearest friends, but ‘tis not likely that they would remember our faces when so many are presented to them. Besides, everyone is drunk at such affairs, especially in Denmark.”

“But you do know Prince Hamlet? Won’t he notice?”

“No, for he hath fallen into a black melancholy of late, such that if he were not the prince, men would say openly that he is not in his right wits. And so the king and queen have written to us, imploring us to discover the cause of his trouble. If he does notice aught amiss, we might play it off, saying that he would not think so if he were more himself.”

“Don’t you think the king would believe his own son before he would believe us?”

“Hamlet is not the king’s son. He’s the queen’s son, but his father is the old king, King Hamlet. I gather there is little love lost between King Claudius and the prince.”

“She’s the dowager queen, then?”

Guildenstern said no, she was the current queen, and it was rather complicated and he’d explain during the journey, and in the meantime Severus had better put on Rosencrantz’s doublet and he’d send the servants for some clean hose.

* * *

Severus would have been the first to admit he didn’t understand people as well as he understood potions, but by the time Guildenstern finished his explanation, he was sure he knew exactly what was the matter with Prince Hamlet. Guildenstern should have known it too, but he was obviously a blockhead. Severus kept his own counsel about both of these points.

The journey from Wittenberg to Elsinore was the third most miserable experience Severus had ever had, after his childhood and his adolescence. They traveled in some sort of horse-drawn Muggle contrivance, which went at an agonizingly slow pace over bumpy roads. It was always drafty inside, even when Severus bundled himself up in fur rugs, and it smelled of horses and stale sweat. Guildenstern’s powers of conversation were never very profound, and things took a turn for the worse when they met up with a wretched company of actors along the way, who insisted on regaling them with speeches from something called Cambyses, King of Persia.

“The prince will be pleased,” said Guildenstern. “He hath often told me of these players and how much pleasure they have brought him.”

This was sufficient, by itself, to convince Severus that this Prince Hamlet must be an insufferable fool.

Chapter Text

Severus had no very high opinion of royalty. Tobias Snape had always referred to them as “overbred wankers,” and this was one of the few topics upon which father and son were in agreement.

His first meeting with King Claudius of Denmark did not induce him to revise his opinion. The king, a florid-looking man in his early fifties, sipped incessantly from a tankard of wine, although it was only midday. He was still vaguely handsome, and he smiled a great deal, but Severus thought that ten more years would turn him into a broken-down drunk.

The portrait of old King Hamlet in the presence-chamber showed a man of a different mold: lean and grim-looking, in full battle armor. He must have been at least sixty when the portrait was painted, although his widow – Queen Gertrude – seemed nearer to forty than fifty. She must have been little more than a child when she married her first husband; Severus wasn’t surprised that she had chosen to seek consolation elsewhere after his death.

Claudius and Gertrude gave the visitors their instructions: they were to bear Hamlet company, encourage him to divert himself with any of the pleasures the court afforded, and try to glean what was troubling him. Guildenstern did most of the talking, while Snape merely nodded. It seemed easy enough.

“Thanks ... Rosencrantz.” The king looked from Severus to Guildenstern for a moment, apparently confused, and finally offered his hand to Guildenstern, who bowed and kissed it. “And gentle Guildenstern,” he added, turning to Severus.

“Thanks, Guildenstern,” the queen corrected, “and gentle ... Rosencrantz?” Her eyes rested on Severus; she was apparently not quite satisfied, and he decided that she might well prove more dangerous than her husband. “And I beseech you instantly to visit my too much changed son. Go, some of you, and bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.”

Guildenstern bowed again. “Heavens make our presence and our practices pleasant and helpful to him!”

* * *

The Lord Chamberlain, an excessively talkative old fool named Polonius, ushered them in to Hamlet’s presence an hour later. At first Severus thought that he was, unbelievably, about to get away with the impersonation, for Hamlet greeted him as “Rosencrantz” and seemed to notice nothing amiss. The prince was plainly distracted, responding vaguely to Guildenstern’s queries and claiming that he could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself a king of infinite space, were it not that he had bad dreams.

He was insane, Severus decided, which was just as well.

Then Hamlet gave them both a shrewd look and asked, “What make you at Elsinore?”

Caught off guard, Guildenstern shot a guilty look at Severus.

“To visit you, my lord,” said Severus blandly, “no other occasion.”

“Were you not sent for?” Hamlet demanded. “Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me; come, come, nay, speak.”

Guildenstern blushed furiously. Severus tried to pull up the hood of his cloak to conceal his features. He had cast a few Appearance Charms on himself before entering the Danish court, but he could not hope to pull off a perfect impersonation without Polyjuice, and there had been no time to brew any.

“What should we say, my lord?” Guildenstern asked.

“Why, anything, but to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to cover. I know the good king and queen have sent for you.”

After exchanging the briefest of glances, Severus and Guildenstern decided to confess that they had, indeed, been sent for.

Hamlet, as it turned out, also knew why they had been sent for, and proceeded to tell them about his melancholy at great length. Severus found his conversation tedious in the extreme, and had just started to relax when Hamlet suddenly turned to him and said, pointedly, “I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

Mad or sane, Prince Hamlet was evidently not as much of a fool as the rest of the court. Severus had no time to decide how to react to this when Polonius interrupted them, with the actors following close behind.

Hamlet elected not to expose the deception to Polonius. Evidently he was playing a game of his own, one that Severus did not understand. He commanded one of the actors to deliver an excessively long speech about the slaughter of King Priam and the grief of Hecuba, and then ordered them to perform a play called “The Murder of Gonzago” on the following evening before dismissing everyone from his company.

“We bore it off well enough, I think,” said Guildenstern as they went up to the chambers that had been prepared for them.

“Not so well,” Severus replied. “He knows.”

“How? Did you tell him?”

“Of course not, fool. But he isn’t an idiot or a lunatic. I don’t know what he is, but he’s certainly not as stupid as you are.”

* * *

Severus and Guildenstern reported to the king and queen on the following morning. By mutual agreement, they placed as rosy a construction as possible on their conversation with Hamlet, and refrained from mentioning that the prince had exposed them as Claudius’s pawns within five minutes of their meeting. Claudius seemed pleased that his stepson had taken an interest in the dramatic arts, and promised to attend the play that evening. From what he had seen of the prince, Severus suspected that Hamlet rarely took an interest in anything besides himself.

The play was to begin after supper. Severus resigned himself to several hours of boredom, but as it turned out, the theatrical interlude that followed was brief and decidedly interesting.

As soon as they entered the hall where the play was to be performed, along with the lords and ladies of the court, Guildenstern exclaimed, “O, we are lost!” and ordered Severus to keep his head down.

“And you – keep your voice down!” Severus hissed. “What’s the matter now?”

“The king never warned us that he was here. That is Horatio, Hamlet’s dearest friend from Wittenberg. He’ll know you from Rosencrantz, even if no one else does. Take heed that he marks you not.”

Severus took a seat in the back of the hall and snuffed out the candles in the bracket above him. This vantage point gave him an excellent view of the rest of the court as they took their seats. Polonius whispered something to the king and looked meaningfully at Hamlet, who had seated himself on a cushion at the edge of the stage, next to a fair-haired, fragile-looking girl who had been introduced to Severus as Polonius’s daughter. He said something to her that caused her to blush and giggle, and the actors entered with a flourish of oboes.

Severus did not pay a great deal of attention to the dumb show that preceded the play, and neither did the rest of the court, except for Polonius’s daughter, who watched with an increasingly puzzled expression on her face and turned to ask Hamlet a question.

One of the actors reentered, dressed as a king, and began to speak.

Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round
Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’s orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been...

Severus yawned. Was this a play, or a problem in Arithmancy?

It did not take the other members of the audience long to grow restless. By the end of the first scene, Hamlet seemed to be in the middle of a lively conversation with his mother and stepfather, and when the villain entered, it was a minute or two before Hamlet and his little girlfriend allowed him to get a word in edgewise.

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property
On wholesome life usurp immediately.

Severus noted that Lucianus’s technique was off; one gathered hebenon, as he supposed the poison was meant to be, at noon rather than midnight, and if one had any sense one handled it with gloves rather than one’s bare hands. More interesting, however, was the fact that the playwright knew of the poison’s existence at all.

He was the only member of the audience who observed the performance with such clinical detachment. When Lucianus poured the poison into the king’s ear, Claudius sprang to his feet and called for lights. Gertrude tugged anxiously at his sleeve; Hamlet gave a whoop of triumph and exclaimed, “What, frighted with false fire!” The performance broke up in confusion, and Severus made a hasty retreat as a number of servants rushed in with torches.

He made his way to the battlements of the castle, which were deserted except for a few guards, and paced about, trying to think. The king had been very offended by the play; that was clear. That chit of the Lord Chamberlain’s had been upset about something, too. Severus knew of only one substance that killed by being poured into the victim’s ear, and hebenon was a a wizarding poison. Was the playwright a wizard himself? That seemed unlikely; why would a wizard be writing plays for the Muggle stage? But he must have been someone who had knowledge of the wizarding world, if only through old wives’ tales. Did he know of a particular murder that had been committed that way? Might that account for the king’s reaction? If so, there must surely be a witch or wizard at the court, or at the least someone who had dealings with one.

Who, though? Severus considered Claudius. He had never heard of wizardry cropping up in any of the royal families of Muggle Europe, but something about the play had obviously struck a chord with the king. Yet, if Claudius were a wizard and had poisoned someone, why had he chosen to make a public scene and flee when he might just as easily have Confunded the rest of the audience?

His next thought was Polonius, but he dismissed this even more quickly. It was true that wizards had often found places as trusted advisors of medieval and Renaissance kings, but the man was patently a Muggle or a Squib. He had a family, though; what about his wife? A gifted witch might have been able to maneuver her husband into a powerful position at court, and sometimes witches did marry Muggles for inscrutable reasons; his own family was a case in point...

Hamlet? Severus stiffened, remembering that Hamlet had actually written part of the play. Oh, yes. The prince – be he mad, melancholic, magical, or merely a dreadful poet – would bear watching. Severus felt a twinge of annoyance that he would have to be the one to watch him, but Guildenstern was plainly unfit for the task.

His thoughts were interrupted by one of the guard. “You had best go within doors, sir; this night air is not healthy.”

“My health is no concern of yours,” snapped Severus.

The guard hesitated for a moment. “There have been strange sights abroad,” he said at last. “Those who need not stand guard should keep to their chambers at this hour.”

“What sort of strange sights?” Severus asked.

There was an even longer pause. “They say the old king doth walk about o’nights,” said the guard reluctantly. “I have not seen him, but I have heard he goes about in armor, and looks pale with anger, but he will not speak a word to any man.”

Stranger and stranger, Severus thought. Ghost or Inferius? “Have any of the people who saw him lived to tell the tale?”

“Aye, Captain Marcellus has, and Bernardo too. They brought Horatio to see him, but I know not whether he walked that night.”

“When was this?”

“Some two months past, sir. I have not heard of him walking since, but Horatio would know.”

So the old king had become a ghost, which implied that he had been a wizard as well. The pieces were beginning to fit together; he was almost sure he knew how King Hamlet had met his death, and by whose hand. He deigned to allow the guard to escort him inside the castle.

He intended to go directly to his bedchamber, but the queen buttonholed him in the corridor. “Good Rosencrantz, I would have you seek out my son and tell him I must speak with him in my closet ere he goes to bed. The king his father is in high choler, and I myself am amazed at his behavior. Tell him I am in the greatest affliction of spirit until I speak with him.”

Severus could think of no suitable excuse, so he hurried down to the great hall to deliver his message. Unluckily, Horatio was present; still more unluckily, Hamlet sent out for some recorders and proceeded to give Guildenstern a well-deserved dressing-down.

“Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me!”

It was time, Severus decided, to drop all pretense. Horatio was staring at him, and there seemed to be little point in going forward with the charade.

“Give the woe-is-me act a rest, Hamlet,” he said in a tone of intense boredom. “Whatever the courtiers may have permitted you to think, you are not in any way profound or unique.”

Hamlet rounded on him. “And as for thee,” he said imperiously, “I know not who thou art nor why my uncle installed thee in the castle, but I would have thee remember that thou stay’st here but by my sufferance!”

“Why, my lord,” said Guildenstern desperately, “are you well? Know you not Rosencrantz, your old friend and school-fellow?”

“Stay out of this, cretin,” said Severus. “Back against the wall. You too, Horatio.” He reached for his wand, judging that Hamlet was about to do the same. Unless he missed his guess, the prince of Denmark was both a powerful wizard and a murderer, and he had no particular desire for the Muggles to get caught in the crossfire.

He wondered, with rather more excitement than apprehension, what dueling would be like in the lawless times before modern regulations. He was not the sort of young man who was very attached to his life, and a part of him craved absolute license.

But before any duel could break out, the door burst open and Polonius bustled straight into the line of fire. “My lord,” he said to Hamlet, “the queen would speak with you, and presently.”

Severus lowered his hand. He had almost sliced the old fool’s face open, which would have been gratifying but difficult to explain, and he had a definite sense that the scene had just degenerated into farce.

“Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?” asked Hamlet, squinting at the casement.

Polonius nodded knowingly. “By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel indeed.”

“Methinks it is like a weasel.”

“It is backed like a weasel.”

“Or like a whale?”

“Very like a whale.”

It seemed clear to Severus that there was a veiled threat in the conversation, and the message was meant for him: if Hamlet was able to perform a wandless Confundus Charm on Polonius with his back turned, he was quite capable of doing worse to Severus. He threw up a subtle Shield Charm, but it puzzled him that he had not been attacked already.

* * *

When Hamlet at last obeyed his mother’s summons, Guildenstern hurried off to report to the king and Severus was left alone with Horatio. He was weighing the merits of an ordinary Memory Charm versus something more powerful but more liable to cause permanent damage, when Horatio finally spoke. “I shall not ask you who you are,” he said, “but I must warn you that the game you are playing is dangerous.”

Severus raised an eyebrow. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Forgive me for being so direct, but Prince Hamlet thinks you are an intelligencer in the king’s pay. Are you?”

“No.” Severus decided to tell a partial version of the truth. “I came only because Rosencrantz suffered a slight accident just before he and Guildenstern were due to depart, and Guildenstern insisted on having my company and presenting me to the king as Rosencrantz. I don't know why he insisted on it, but I caused the accident, so I thought it would be better to oblige him.”

“Have you any intention of spying on Hamlet for the king?”

“No,” said Severus truthfully. If Claudius was too stupid to see that Hamlet had murdered his father and intended to murder his uncle, it was not his affair. In any case, he thought that Claudius was not that stupid. The play had been a taunt – foolishly, Hamlet had not been able to resist bragging about his crime – and the king had recognized it for what it was.

“Good. He despises intelligencers, and he has not been fully himself since his father died; that is why he gave you such rude entertainment today. As a rule he is far more courteous to strangers. If I were you I would make it clear that you are not his uncle’s man; that is the fastest way to win his love, and believe me, it is worth the winning.”

“Thank you for the advice,” said Severus, careful to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. He was not sure what he made of Horatio. He was a friend of Hamlet’s, and perhaps an accessory to the old king’s murder, but his courtesy, and his anxiety that Severus should not think badly of the prince, seemed genuine. Indeed, that was part of what troubled Severus; in his experience, people just weren’t that nice without an ulterior motive.

But at any rate, Horatio did not seem to pose any immediate threat. Severus decided not to Obliviate him, and hoped he wouldn’t live to regret his decision.

* * *

No one in Elsinore slept that night, with the possible exception of the wretched players who had started all the trouble. One of the palace servants called Severus and Guildenstern into the king’s chamber at two o’clock in the morning. Gertrude was nearly in tears; Claudius’s face was pale with anger as he informed them that Hamlet had killed Polonius in his madness, dragged the body from the queen’s closet, and concealed it somewhere in the palace.

“And what, precisely, are we supposed to do about that?” Severus asked.

“Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the body into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.”

Severus stifled a groan. The only person he wanted to seek out was Dr. Faustus, so that he could have the pleasure of wringing the man’s neck in person – after finding out how to get back to the twentieth century, of course. He was about to tell Claudius that he was neither a coroner nor a garbage collector, when a sudden thought struck him cold.

There could be only one possible reason to hide the corpse. Hamlet was planning to create an Inferius.

Grudgingly, angrily, wondering why he was going to so much trouble to save a bunch of ignorant Muggles from a miserable death, Severus set out to hunt for a body.

Chapter Text

The most difficult part of finding Polonius was losing Guildenstern. It would be a trivial matter to Summon the body, a much more complicated one to convince Guildenstern and the palace’s other inhabitants that a corpse that flew about the castle on its own was nothing out of the ordinary. Under his breath, Severus cursed the king for saddling him with a companion whose earnest desire to help was exceeded only by his ineffectiveness.

By the time Guildenstern had grown tired of roaming up and down infinite numbers of stairs, poking his nose into cupboards, and badgering Hamlet about the corpse’s whereabouts, it was broad daylight and an army of servants filled the corridors of Elsinore. Severus returned to his chamber to sleep for a few hours, reasoning that Hamlet was unlikely to choose the daylight hours to practice magic of a peculiarly complicated, dark, and dangerous nature.

He was awakened by Guildenstern knocking urgently at his chamber door.

Severus swore under his breath. “Now what?” Becoming slightly more alert, he was seized with the fear that falling asleep had been a terrible mistake. “What’s happened?”

“Severus! I cannot get from Hamlet what he did with the Lord Polonius! Did you not know that we were to report to the king an hour ago? O, I fear me he’ll be furious!”

“So report to him, idiot. Are you under the impression that you can’t make a move without me?”

“Rosencrantz and I always did everything together,” said Guildenstern. His voice was meek, but contained a touch of reproach.

“I’m not Rosencrantz. Go and talk to the king, and I’ll see what I can do to find the body. And if you really want to make yourself useful, see that you don’t let Hamlet out of your sight.”

After waiting half an hour to allow Guildenstern time to get the prince out of the way, Severus stole down the stairs into the deserted chapel, took his wand out, and cried, “Accio corpus Polonii!”

The chapel doors swung open, and Polonius’s body sailed through them and came to rest at Severus’s feet. He inspected it briefly, but there were no signs of Dark magic about it; the cause of death had been a stab wound to the neck. He wondered idly why the old man had been killed; surely he was not bright enough to have deduced that Hamlet had murdered his father, but perhaps he had seen or heard something.

Severus left the body in the chapel and sealed the doors against intruders. Coming back up the stairs, he heard the king trying to cajole Hamlet into giving up his secret.

“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.”

“What dost thou mean by this?”

“Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.”

“Where is Polonius?”

“In heaven – send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i’the other place yourself.”

Severus suppressed a snort. Perhaps Hamlet had his points, after all.

“But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.”

“Go seek him there,” Claudius directed someone else – Guildenstern, presumably.

“He will stay until you find him.”

Severus entered the room and coughed. “Don’t bother, your Majesty. I’ve already found him and brought him to the chapel.”

“Well done, Guildencrantz. For this much thanks.” The king turned toward his stepson with an unctuous smile. “Hamlet, this deed – for thine especial safety, which we do tender as we dearly grieve for that which thou hast done – must send thee hence with fiery quickness. Therefore, prepare thyself. The bark is ready and the wind at help, the associates tend, and every thing is bent for England.”

Hamlet took this news in stride – or at least pretended to. “Come, for England! Farewell, dear Mother!”

“Thy loving father, Hamlet.”

“Father and mother is man and wife, man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother.” Hamlet offered the king a smile quite as false as Claudius’s own, and departed.

Claudius sat down and buried his forehead in his hands. Severus almost felt sorry for him.

The king rallied and turned to Guildenstern and Severus. “Follow him at foot, tempt him with speed aboard. Delay it not, I’ll have him hence tonight. Away, for everything is sealed and done that tends on this affair. Pray you make haste!”

Curious, thought Severus. He was inclined to agree with Claudius that it would be a good idea to watch Hamlet closely and remove him from the palace, and although he was not looking forward to a journey into England in the prince’s company, he was aware that he was an eminently suitable guard and escort for a murderous wizard. In fact, the king’s plan was excellent – much better than he would have expected from a Muggle. But something about it troubled him.

He was packing his few possessions for England when it came to him. When, precisely, had Claudius found time to make arrangements for Hamlet’s journey to England? Had he done so in person, within the twenty-odd hours since Polonius’s death, or did the staff of servants at Elsinore include a travel agent who specialized in hustling deranged princes out of the country? Could one charter a ship at a day’s notice, even if one was a Renaissance king?

It looked very much as if Claudius had planned to get Hamlet out of the way, had perhaps even welcomed a suitable pretext, and Severus was not sure what to make of this.

He shrugged off his doubts. There was obviously no love lost between uncle and nephew, and nothing sinister about wanting to get rid of an annoying relative.

* * *

By the time they reached the ship, Severus could definitely see why anyone who had the misfortune to be related to Prince Hamlet would want to send him into England. The fool insisted on wandering off to talk to himself at some length after they ran into a party of Norwegian soldiers. He seemed to have a habit of talking to himself. Severus cast an Amplificarus charm and listened to him from a distance, shivering in the chill of nightfall. He could not make much sense of the prince’s words, but he did not seem to be thinking about the question that ought to concern him – namely, why on earth Norwegian soldiers would choose to march across Denmark if they were really planning to invade Poland.

“My lord.” Guildenstern ventured to approach the prince at last. “The ship stays for us.”

“Very like, very like,” said Hamlet vaguely. “‘Twill stay longer if we come not; the captain hath his orders as you have yours, and belike from the same commander.”

“What commander, my lord?”

“Why, God or the devil – as you will. The king is God’s regent on earth, but I know not what he may be in hell, nor yet whose servant’s servants you may be.”

Guildenstern looked meaningfully at Severus and tapped the side of his head, a gesture that clearly expressed his opinion of the prince’s sanity.

“Let’s get on with it,” said Severus. “How far is this ship, anyway?” They were crossing a broad and open plain; he could see no sign of the sea.

“Some five miles more, I think,” said Hamlet.

“Five miles?” Severus asked, appalled. They had been walking for over an hour already. He resolved that if he ever returned to his own time, he would never complain about Muggle cars and trains again.

“A trifle; you would not have us bring the horses for such a distance? In any case there is no one to bring them back.” Hamlet stopped in his tracks again; a slightly twisted smile played about his lips. “I think that not all who go into England will return again. My dear friends, have you no commission from the king to that effect?”

“I have a commission from the king,” said Guildenstern. “He hath commanded that none other than the English king shall know what it imports.”

“The king must be obeyed, by all means.” Hamlet began to walk again, more briskly now as he turned into the biting wind.

* * *

When they finally arrived at the ship, the captain was furious because he had expected them some hours earlier, and had missed the chance to set sail while the winds were favorable.

“Someone decided that he had to stand in the middle of a field and talk to himself,” Severus explained.

“Know’st thou not who we are?” Guildenstern asked the captain.

“I know only that the king hath commanded that we stay for three passengers, and bring them straightway to England.”

“This is Prince Hamlet, sirrah. The king is sending him into England for – for his health.”

The captain bowed low. “Your highness, forgive me if I spoke too sharply. I meant no offense.”

Hamlet looked up at the sky and whistled. “Having one’s head separated from one’s neck is very bad for the health. Or so I have heard, though it would surprise me if my uncle-father and my jailer-friends would be grieved if I suffered such a misfortune. But come, for England; be it life or death that awaits us there, I am impatient to meet it. For England!”

“We must wait upon the wind and the tide, your highness.”

“Why, can the king not command the winds? Will the sea not ebb and swell at his pleasure?”

“You know it will not, my lord,” said Guildenstern. “Will you take some rest in your cabin?” He seemed desperate to get Hamlet away from people who would gossip about his sanity, although to judge from the expression on the captain’s face, the damage was already done.

“That must be a sad disappointment for Claudius,” said Hamlet meditatively.

* * *

“What is this commission you were talking about?” Severus asked Guildenstern as soon as they had settled Hamlet into his cabin. “What are the king’s orders?”

Guildenstern shook his head. “I know not. He sealed it with the royal seal, and gave it me without another word. None but the English king may open it.”

It was some twenty-four hours before Severus had a chance to open it. Guildenstern, despite his lack of other gifts, was at least remarkably good at going without sleep.

Once the ship was at last underway, Guildenstern retired to his berth. Severus, on the other hand, cast a subtle tracing spell on the prince and willed himself to remain alert. Now that the Muggles were confined to the ship, he was sure that Hamlet would make his break for freedom.

But nothing happened until well after midnight. Fighting exhaustion, Severus slipped the packet containing the king’s commission from Guildenstern’s luggage, opened the seal with his wand, and read the letter within.

Claudius King of Denmark greeteth his most noble cousin and friend, Henry King of England, and asketh him to give good entertainment to the bearers of this commission, his right trustworthy servants Gilderstone and Rossencrast.

As England hath been our faithful tributary; and as love between our kingdoms shall flourish ever green like the mighty oak and the vine which twine together; and as several great and weighty reasons, of which we shall say more hereafter, urge the present course of action: we charge that the head of the man in their care be struck off at once with no delay, not even to stay the grinding of the axe; that he on no account be suffered to speak; and that this commission be executed with the utmost secrecy.

His name is of no consequence; know ye only that he hath plotted the blackest and vilest treasons and hath suborned the people of Denmark (for he hath a tongue full of deceit and can plead eloquently) to rebel against their rightful lord. He sheweth no remorse for his treachery; if permitted to speak in public, he will do the same again. We send this plague to you, not out of any wish to spread his foul contamination to England’s shores, but that you may preserve the health of both kingdoms by applying strong medicine. We would have done this ourself, but that the poor misguided commons have given him their love, and out of our own love to them (which urgeth that none of their blood be spilt if it can be helped), we think it best for his death to be executed without their knowledge. Further, he is near to us in blood, though not in character, and we would not have the sin of parricide on our conscience, though we have reliable intelligence that he would willingly have it upon his, and would indeed be bathing his hands in our blood at this moment, had our honorable Lord Chamberlain not prevented him at the cost of his own life.

Claudius R.

P.S. Gertrude sends her love, and we thank you for the beautiful set of wine glasses. We understand that you, too, are to be congratulated once again. I have sent a crystal punch bowl under separate cover, with my heartfelt wishes that this one will last longer than the others for your happiness.

Severus, no longer sleepy, contemplated this epistle. If, as he suspected, Hamlet had murdered his father and Claudius knew it, it seemed odd that Claudius would make no mention of this supreme crime, but had instead invented a number of others.

A board in the next cabin creaked; simultaneously, his skin began to prickle as the tracing spell became active. Hastily, he resealed the commission, extinguished the light from his wand, and settled into his berth.

He heard and felt, rather than saw, what happened next. Hamlet crept into their cabin and groped among the baggage; he removed something and returned to his own cabin with the object. Severus had already noticed a small knothole in the panel that connected the two cabins; he rose from his bunk again and pressed his eye to the wall.

Hamlet had lit a candle, a proceeding that made Severus shudder, as they were on a wooden ship. Severus could now see that the item he had stolen was the king’s commission; he read it carefully and frowned, then reached for a quill and parchment and began to write. When he had finished, he folded the parchment carefully, scraped every trace of sealing-wax from the original commission with a small knife, melted it in the candle flame, and used it to seal his own forgery, imprinting it with a ring he had taken from his finger.

It was a severe blow to his pride, but Severus realized that he had got it all wrong. If Hamlet was not completely mad, he was a Muggle. A wizard would have done the job in half the time, with much less risk.

The puzzle began to rearrange itself, and several missing pieces slid into place.

He feigned sleep again while the prince returned the forged commission to Guildenstern’s luggage. As soon as Hamlet turned his back to leave, he sprang up, cast Muffliato over Guildenstern’s berth, and seized the prince by the wrist.

“I’ve been watching you. Don’t move. Don’t try to wake anyone.”

“Unhand me.” There was a note in Hamlet’s voice which Severus had not heard before. He sounded, at last, like a man accustomed to command. “Thou forget’st thyself.”

“I think not,” said Severus, reaching for his wand. At a flick of his wrist, Hamlet’s knees buckled and he fell to the boards.

“What have you done?” the prince gasped, trying and failing to rise.

“Something I can easily undo – or not, if you choose to make things difficult. Tell me, what possessed you to put on a play about hebenon?”

“How do you know about hebenon?”

“That,” said Severus, “is precisely what I’ve been trying to discover about you for days!”

When Hamlet spoke again, it was almost in a whisper. “If I told you, you’d think me mad.”

“I doubt it,” said Severus. “You seem to have been taking some pains to convince the world that you’re mad, but I must say that I never believed it.”

Hamlet looked up at him dubiously, and Severus decided the time was right to release him from the spell. “Stand,” he said. “You can, now. Just don’t make any noise. Guildenstern won’t wake, but it would be better not to rouse the rest of the ship.”

Hamlet pulled himself to his feet with as much dignity as he could manage. “What means this?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” said Severus. “I will tell you all I know about hebenon – which is an enormous amount, by the way – if you will be so good as to tell me where you heard the word.”

“Very well. Come back to my cabin.”

* * *

Hamlet stood in the candlelit cabin with an expression that said, more eloquently than words, I need a drink. He took a globe-shaped bottle of wine from his traveling bag, along with a device made from a sharp piece of metal, twisted at the bottom and attached to a wooden handle. He wormed the device through the cork and, grimacing, tried to extract it by brute force.

“Wait,” said Severus. He flicked his wand at the bottle, and the cork came sailing out.

Hamlet stared. “How did you do that?”

“Answer my question first.”

“I will. But you must be the first to drink.”

“A wise precaution.” Severus performed a discreet spell to test the wine for contamination, and, when it came up negative, sipped at the glass that Hamlet handed him.

Wine was not common in Spinner’s End, and it was only the second time in his eighteen years that Severus had tasted any. The first time had been at Abraxas Malfoy’s Christmas party, where he had spent most of the evening standing in a corner, half-contemptuous and half-envious of the wealthy purebloods who seemed at ease in this society. Strangely, he felt more comfortable in the Muggle prince’s cabin – although this world was surely ten times more alien than that of Malfoy Manor. Perhaps it was because Hamlet was plainly making no effort to impress; he wore a plain traveling-cloak and his possessions were strewn every which way around the cabin. Or perhaps it was because, like Severus, he seemed to have found it more important to supply himself with books for the journey than clothes.

It was several minutes before Hamlet spoke again. “So. If I told you that I had seen my father and held conversation with him, some two months after his death, you would not think me mad?”

“I wouldn’t, no. There are several conclusions that I might draw, but madness would not be among them.”

“He told me,” Hamlet said haltingly, “or rather, his spirit told me – that his brother Claudius had taken his life – stolen on him when he lay sleeping in an orchard, unshriven and unabsolved, and murdered him by pouring poison in his ear. Cursed hebenon, he called it. That is the only time I have heard the word.”

“And so you decided to have his death acted out in front of your uncle, to force him to confess? Didn’t you see that was a foolish plan – and an incredibly dangerous one?”

Hamlet’s voice turned cold. “I have already answered your question. Answer mine.”

Severus gave a brief account of the ingredients of hebenon, the process by which it was distilled, and its effects, which were particularly painful and included coagulating the blood and covering the entire body with a leprous crust. When he got to the last bit, he noticed that Hamlet was looking very white in the face. Some absurd impulse made him say, “Forgive me. Perhaps you’d rather not know.”

“You made no offense, and I already knew the worst part. My father told me.”

“You ... er, cared for him?” Caring for one’s father had not hitherto been part of Severus’s experience, but to judge from Hamlet’s expression, it seemed a reasonable guess.

“I did. Very much. I thank you for – for explaining it to me.”

There was a short silence. Hamlet refilled their wine glasses. Severus felt profoundly uncomfortable, and decided to change the subject. “Did the king lie when he told us you killed Polonius?”

“No. I killed him, but I thought he was my uncle. I thought –” Hamlet took a gulp of wine. “Look you. My father – or a spirit in the shape of my father – bade me revenge him. I heard a rustling in the arras, and I thought it was Claudius spying – and it came to me that it would be easier if it were done quickly, and if I did not see him when I did it. I find it is a fearful thing to kill a man.”

With a jolt, Severus became conscious of the Dark Mark on his arm, which he had almost forgotten about.

“Let me ask you one more thing. Have you ever known anyone who seemed to be able to get things done much faster than anybody else? As if by magic?”

Hamlet looked surprised by the question, but almost at once he answered, “My father’s Lord Chamberlain.”

“Polonius?” It was Severus’ turn to be surprised.

“No, Polonius is useless. The man I spoke of was his father, Corambis, who was Lord Chamberlain before him.”

“Is he still alive?” Severus asked quickly.

“No, he died some eight or ten years since. He was very old. Then my father appointed Polonius to the position, but more as a favor to his father than for any merit of his own.”

That seemed to scotch any possibility that Polonius’s father had supplied hebenon to Claudius. “Have you ever noticed anything unusual about Polonius? Other than unusual obtuseness, I mean?”

For the first time, a genuine smile lightened Hamlet’s features. “If you also mean to exclude busyness, and sententiousness, and pedantry, then no.”

“What about his wife?”

“I scarcely remember her. I was a child of six when she died – no, seven, for the plague came when my father and his Lord Chamberlain were away at the wars. Corambis was furious that he was not at Elsinore. I daresay you’ll think it strange, but sometimes he was able to heal people when the physicians had given them up.”

Severus nodded; it all fit, except for one thing that still nagged at him. Somewhere at the Danish court, there was a wizard still living. “Tell me about the rest of Polonius’s family.”

“He has only two children, and no other family. I have not seen Laertes much of late; he came for the coronation, but he has been at the university in Paris these three years. His daughter, Ophelia –” Hamlet broke off and frowned. “Why am I telling you so much? I do not even know your name.”

“My name is Severus Snape. I am an Englishman. I am also a wizard, as your Corambis was; that is how I was able to disguise myself as Rosencrantz. I have reason to think your uncle Claudius is in league with another wizard or witch, and obtained the poison from this person. Your life is most likely in danger – not only from the king, but from someone with powers that you do not understand and cannot defend yourself against. Will you trust me?”

Hamlet nodded. “Strangely, I do trust you. I know not why.”

Severus hadn’t a clue why he had trusted Hamlet, either, but he told himself that he could always cast a Memory Charm on the prince if he needed to.

“Tell me about being a wizard,” said Hamlet. “Could you force a murderer to confess if you wanted to?”

“Yes, easily. It takes time to brew, but there is a potion called Veritaserum that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth.”

“Could you bring back someone who has died?”

“No. No magic has ever been able to do that.” Severus decided to spare Hamlet a full account of the Dark Lord’s desires and experiments. This wasn’t the time or the place for it, and now that he could talk about the subject, he found that he didn’t want to.

Hamlet took a velvet purse from under his cloak. “There’s gold for thee. Thou’lt have more when I am king.”

Severus rejected the purse. The imperiousness in Hamlet’s manner reminded him of Lord Voldemort, and he responded with distaste. “I never said I would work for you, and I don’t want gold.”

“I pray you pardon me.” Hamlet’s gesture of apology seemed wholly sincere, but he rather spoiled it by being unable to resist asking, “What do you want?”

“Information to begin with. For instance...” Severus recalled the guilty start that Hamlet had given when he had first seized him. “What did you put in that letter you forged?”

Hamlet looked embarrassed. “It, ah ... well, a number of things, but the sum of it is that it asks the king to ... er, put the bearers of the commission to death. You must understand that I thought the worst of you at the time. You both seemed to be the king’s creatures, and – Know you what the real commission, the one I destroyed, orders King Henry to do?”

“Yes, I took the precaution of reading it just before you stole it.”

“You read it? But it was sealed.” Severus looked at Hamlet, not dignifying this statement with a response, and comprehension dawned on the prince’s face. “Oh. What of Guildenstern? Does he know?”

“No,” said Severus positively. “He’s a fool and a dupe. Did you really think the king would confide in him?”

Hamlet considered this. “No, I guess not. Uncle Claudius is too much the fox for that. Then we must needs steal the damned commission back and write out yet another one. A plaguey nuisance, when I took such pains to write it fair, and ‘tis a fine imitation of my uncle’s style, but I suppose it would be wrong to send poor Guildenstern to his death.”

Having spent a week in poor Guildenstern’s company, Severus was not so sure about this.

Hamlet drained the last of his wine, and Severus followed him to the adjoining cabin. Unluckily, the prince was rather unsteady on his feet; still more unluckily, the ship gave a great lurch just as he was about to seize the letter.

They went down in a tangle of limbs and muffled curses. Guildenstern stirred; evidently the Muffliato charm had worn off.

“Why were you fool enough to write that letter?” Severus hissed. “You should have known you’d regret it!”

“Why did you not come to me as soon as you knew the king’s orders? Any loyal subject would have done so!”

“I am not your subject! And I half-suspected you of the murder!”

“You thought I killed my father? How dare you?”

“Idiot, you staged a play about a nephew murdering his uncle! Did you stop to think about how that might look to other people? But no, you were too busy trying to play Sherlock!”

“I know not what manner of game is ‘sherlock,’” said Guildenstern sleepily. “Is it like shuffle-board?”

“No,” said Hamlet and Severus, as one. “Go back to sleep.”

Severus ensured that Guildenstern did so. “Got the letter?” he asked.

Hamlet nodded.

“Let’s go.”

Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon.

Chapter Text

“My commission!” Guildenstern cried in anguished tones. “The pirates have stolen my commission! From the king, sealed with the royal signet!”

He leapt from the deck of one ship to the other, drew his sword, and began to slash his way through a dozen astonished pirates.

“Quick.” Severus pulled Hamlet away from the fray. “This is our chance to get back to Denmark.”

“The pirates...”

“Are somebody else’s problem. Let’s go.” Severus pushed Hamlet into one of the boats that hung from the opposite side of the ship and severed the ropes with a swift motion of his wand. The boat landed in the sea with a tremendous splash of icy water.

“Are you mad?” Hamlet spluttered. “We’ll be drowned!”

“Of course I’m not mad. I am a wizard. How many times do I have to explain it to you?” Severus gritted his teeth and tried to work out which spells were required to make the boat go. For an awful minute, he was afraid that Hamlet’s prediction might prove correct; but at last the little craft gave a great lurch and sped southward, toward the coast of Denmark. Severus hastily put up a shield to deflect the sea spray, but not before both travelers had been drenched a second time.

“When I think upon G-Guildenstern,” said Hamlet through chattering teeth, “my mind reproves me. How is’t that he – a lackey, a flatterer, a politic instrument – dares do battle with so many salt-water thieves, for no more than a king’s commission? And I, that have been called to fight for no less than a king’s life, have delayed these two months and more –”

“Shut up, or I’ll let you get soaked again,” said Severus. The freezing water had not improved his temper, and he recognized certain signs that the prince was about to start talking to himself again. “We’re going back to kill Claudius now, aren’t we?”

“Aye, so we are.” As the ships receded behind them, Hamlet, unexpectedly, grinned. “For Denmark!”

* * *

Even with Severus’s excellent spellwork, it was several hours before they reached a small fishing village on the Danish coast. Wet and exhausted, they trudged to the nearest tavern, where Hamlet ordered a couple of tankards of hot spiced ale and made enquiries of the landlord.

The name of the place conveyed nothing to Severus, but Hamlet frowned. “We’re farther than I thought from Elsinore. ‘Twill be two or three days’ journey at the least.”

“For you, perhaps. Not for me.”

“I had almost forgot. Truly, you have shown me wonders. When we were at sea, I hardly knew whether I dreamt or woke.” Hamlet stretched his limbs in front of the fire and yawned. “Indeed, I hardly know now. At Wittenberg there were scholars who used to tell dark tales of magic, but I never credited them nor thought to see it done.”

Hamlet went on to ask several intelligent questions about wizardry, betraying a lively curiosity and none of the prejudices that Severus would have expected to find in a sixteenth-century Muggle. Under the combined influences of mulled ale, a warm room, and admiration, Severus decided that the prince was really a decent person, after all.

Hamlet called for more ale, and this time, the landlord brought a platter of brown bread, cheese, and smoked fish without being asked. Both young men fell on the food with more eagerness than manners.

“Truly,” said Hamlet with his mouth full, “the working-folk eat better than we do in the palaces. When we were at the university, Horatio and I were used to go to the shoemakers’ quarter ... in hats, you know, ‘tis a curious thing but no one recognizes you if you wear a hat, while masks are completely useless –” He swallowed abruptly; it was plain that a more serious thought had struck him. “Horatio. I must write a letter to him and explain matters. Trust no one at court but him and, at a pinch, my mother. The best of men turn horse-leeches when one such as Claudius is king.”

* * *

Severus Apparated to Elsinore around mid-morning on the following day, having slept rather later than he meant to. Hamlet had promised to follow him as swiftly as possible, but, given the inconvenience of Muggle travel, Severus did not expect him for some days.

He aimed for a spot on the palace grounds that he had expected to be deserted. It wasn’t. Someone was singing in a piercing, but not very tuneful, soprano. They bore him barefaced on the bier, hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny...

Severus approached the little cluster of people with caution, but nobody had noticed his sudden appearance. The king, the queen, and a fair-haired young man who had the look of a courtier were all staring at Polonius’s daughter. The girl had impressed Severus as a singularly uninteresting little person, but there was something different about her now. Her hair and dress were disheveled, and she hummed snatches of song. You must sing a-down a-down, an you call him a-down-a.

The young man took a step toward her, pity and horror in his face, and the girl spoke.

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.”

“A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted!” said the young man.

Severus shook his head. “Not so mad as that,” he said automatically, and then realized too late that he had spoken aloud.

The king started. “Ah, Rosenstern. I did not think you could go to England and return again so quickly. Did you deliver my commission?”

Severus bowed low; he and Hamlet had agreed on a story. “Your Majesty, I am sorry to report that the commission – and the prince – have been taken by pirates. I escaped in one of the small boats, but I could not save him.”

“What? Pirates!”

“Put aside your fears, my lord. He was unhurt, and he is a valuable prisoner; you may ransom him at your leisure.”

“I may, to be sure,” Claudius agreed quickly.

Gertrude looked distraught. So, Severus thought, she knew she would never see Hamlet again if it were up to her husband. Would she have the courage to oppose him?

“There’s fennel for you,” said Ophelia to the king, “and columbines.” She turned to the queen. “There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.”

The king, the queen, and the fair-haired young man all looked baffled by this speech, but its meaning was crystal clear to Severus. The girl might be mad as Uric the Oddball, but she was a Potions genius – which almost made him forget that, under the circumstances, she was probably also a poisoner.

He resolved not to let her out of his sight – at least, not for longer than it would take to deliver the prince’s letter to Horatio.

* * *

“A wizard?” Horatio looked up from the letter. “Has he gone mad in earnest?”

“You tell me,” said Severus. “You seem – for some unaccountable reason – to be his friend.”

Horatio gave him a quizzical look. “I wonder whether you mean to insult me or him.”

“Both,” Severus replied, out of long habit, but without any real venom. He pointed his wand at a small rock and blasted it into shards. “Does that satisfy you?”

“I have seen mountebanks and charlatans do stranger things.”

“How do you know they were real mountebanks and charlatans?”

“You are a strange man, Severus.” Horatio folded the letter. “But the prince speaks most warmly of your abilities and your character.”

“He does?” said Severus. He mistrusted people who said that sort of thing.

“Aye. Read it for yourself, if you will.”

But Severus had no time to read the letter. There was a great splash from behind the willow trees, and a shrill cry from the queen.

* * *

“She’ll do,” said Severus. Ophelia lay on the bank, twitching and coughing; the blue pallor had begun to disappear from her lips. Severus felt more relief than he was willing to show. Pulling her out of the brook and expelling the water from her lungs had been a tricky bit of spellwork, and for a few awful moments, he had been afraid he was too late.

The queen crossed herself, wide-eyed, and then fell on Severus’ shoulder and started to pour out incoherent thanks.

“Don’t waste time thanking me! Go and fetch all those herbs she mentioned – rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, rue – and a good cauldron, or any sort of large cooking pot. Quickly, if you want to help her! Go!”

“For future reference,” said Horatio when she had bustled off, “it is considered proper to call the queen ‘Your majesty,’ or at the least ‘madam.’”

Severus ignored this. “Is there any place we can take the girl before she starts raving again? Somewhere private, where she won’t attract notice?”

“There’s a sort of a cabin farther downstream. The old king used it for storing his fishing-tackle.” Horatio looked dubious. “But it will be dirty and damp.”

“That’s all right. The main thing is to get her out of sight.” Severus started to cast Levicorpus, thought better of it, and picked the girl up in his arms.

It seemed to take the queen an age to return. She had taken it into her head that Ophelia would catch her death of cold without dry clothes, so her arms were full of an absurd amount of velvet and brocade. Luckily, she had also remembered everything Severus had asked her to bring. She dropped her bundle on the floor of the hut, scattering flowers and sprigs of herbs everywhere.

Severus turned his back as the queen tried to coax the shivering girl into a clean gown. He had a potion to brew.

“Drink,” he said curtly when he had finished.

The girl shook her head. “‘Tis for Prince Hamlet. We’ll sing like swans, to welcome death, and die in love and rest. There are more adders in the world than have fangs. I must warn him.”

“You need it more than he does. Drink.”

“I think you had better do as Rosencrantz asks, my dear,” said the queen. “I never knew he had so much in him.”

Severus handed the cup to Gertrude, who held it to Ophelia’s lips. She stopped humming to herself and drank.

The change was almost immediate. Ophelia blinked, looking around the small hut with eyes that were bewildered, but sane. “How came I here?”

“I’ll explain in a minute,” said Severus. He turned to the queen and Horatio. “I must have a word with her in private. In the meantime, I think you’d better go and tell everyone at the palace that she drowned. She will be in grave danger if certain people know she’s alive.”

Horatio looked as if he were about to balk at leaving Ophelia alone with Severus, but the queen seemed to have decided she trusted “Rosencrantz” implicitly.

* * *

For the second time in his life, Severus found himself telling a Muggle-born girl she was a witch. Like the first time, it didn’t go as well as he expected. Ophelia burst into tears.

“Oh, stop crying, you tiresome girl, the way you’re taking on anyone would think magic was some terrible curse.” He recalled that it was all too likely to be a curse, especially for an untrained girl in the sixteenth century, and modified his tone. “Truly, Ophelia, being a witch isn’t what they’ve told you. It’s a gift – a great gift – only Muggles are too ignorant to understand it. Most of them, anyway.”

“I never thought of it as ... as witchcraft. M-my grandfather called it art.” Ophelia swallowed a sob and looked curiously at Severus. “Are you one, too, Rosencrantz? Someone like him?”

“Yes, I am a wizard. My real name is Severus Snape. I never knew your grandfather, but I’ve heard good things about him.”

“He was a wonderful man,” said Ophelia. “He taught me ... a little of what he knew, and he said I must not tell my father or Laertes, but he would be able to teach me more once I turned eleven. But then he took ill and died in the winter when I was ten. After that, I tried to teach myself by reading his books ... oh, I must tell you that he left me his books, and Father said they were not fit reading for a girl, so he locked them away in his cabinet, and I was terribly angry at him, and suddenly the glass in the cabinet shattered of itself, and I was so frightened. Have you ever heard of such a thing, Severus?”

“Yes. It’s quite common, and nothing to be frightened of. Go on.”

“Father did not blame me – he thought one of the servants must have cracked the glass, and while he was trying to find out which of them it was, I took the books and hid them. I hated to disobey Father, but they were the only things Grandfather left me, and...”

“They were your heritage and your birthright,” said Severus, now furious on Ophelia’s behalf, “and your father was an old fool.”

Ophelia turned a flushed face toward Severus. “He was not a fool. People always said that he was, but he was a good, kind man – it was only that he never understood certain things...”

Polonius hadn’t understood most things, by all accounts, but Severus kept the thought to himself.

“And perhaps he was right. I wish I had not meddled with those books.” Ophelia went abruptly silent. She looked terrified.

“How did the old king come to die?” Severus asked, as gently as he could manage.

Ophelia started. “Oh! My father’s servant, Reynaldo said ... He said that the Duke – King Claudius, I mean, he was only a Duke then – needed a mixture to poison rats. I found a receipt for one in my grandfather’s books. I knew not what I did, or what he meant to do – and then King Hamlet died, and the new king gave out that he was stung by a snake, but I knew...” She burst into tears again.

“You brewed the poison yourself?”

Ophelia looked miserable. “I am sure of it. Please don’t tell the queen. She knew nothing of it – I am sure of that, too.”

“I won’t tell anybody. How did you come to choose hebenon?”

“I thought it would be the easiest. The receipt looked simple.”

Severus could no longer hide his excitement. “It’s too complicated for most wizards. I don’t think one in a hundred would get it right on the first try. And the Sanity Solution – the books say that one wasn’t invented until 1820, and your formula is more elegant than Golpalott’s. Did you work it out yourself? How did you come to think of adding the columbines?”

“The king,” said Ophelia, “is dead.”

“I know he’s dead!” Severus snapped. A moment later he felt like he could have bitten his tongue off. Was he cursed to make a bloody mess of it every time he tried to be tactful? “Look, I know you feel bad about it, but you can’t bring him back. But you have a gift that you can use to help other people. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

Ophelia looked uncertain. It occurred to Severus that there were many good reasons why he had never considered a career in suicide counseling.

“Worth more than throwing yourself into the river, anyway. What were you thinking?”

Ophelia shook her head. “I remember very little. I think ... I began to fear that I might be a witch, and I had heard it said in the village that witches will not sink in deep water, but float. And I thought, ‘twould be better to know the worst, and I care little if I drown. I am not sure that is what I thought. Ever since my father died, there have been black times – hours when I scarcely knew what I was doing, or remembered afterward.”

“Some part of you had the will to survive and be sane. You would never have come up with that potion if you hadn’t.”

Ophelia frowned. “I meant it for Hamlet. I thought ... I could help him, a little, even though he would never forgive me if he knew.”

“Oh. Right. Hamlet.” Severus had the uncomfortable feeling that something that had appeared simple had just become very complicated, although he couldn’t work out why.

* * *

The next three days, however, were blessedly uncomplicated. For the first time since he had swallowed the Plothole-Plugging Potion, Severus felt completely in control of the situation. He spent most of his spare time in the hut by the brook, beginning the long and laborious process of brewing Veritaserum. Ophelia was eager to help once he explained what the potion was for, and she proved a quick and apt pupil. He would have to see about getting her a wand of her own.

On the fourth day, Hamlet arrived, and all hell broke loose.

The queen had arranged a funeral for Ophelia – a quiet, understated one, as befitted a death that had taken place under suspicious circumstances, but public enough to settle any rumors about the death. She and the king were in attendance, along with several other courtiers, and everything proceeded decorously until Ophelia’s brother decided to pick a quarrel with the priest and leap into the grave.

Before any of the mourners could react, Hamlet stepped forward from behind a gravestone and plunged into the grave after Laertes. “This is I! Hamlet the Dane!”

Laertes grabbed him by the throat, and they both went down in a cloud of dust.

“I loved Ophelia,” Hamlet gasped as the priest and the queen pulled the combatants apart. “Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum! What wilt thou do for her?”

“Please,” said Horatio in Severus’s ear, “can’t we tell him she’s alive?”

“No.”

“Not here, I meant. After the others have gone.”

“The answer is still no. She begged me to let Hamlet think she was dead. She said it would be better that way.”

Horatio glanced back at the grave, where Hamlet, astonishingly, was challenging Laertes to eat a crocodile. “Better for whom? He’s half-mad with grief, for God’s sake! What makes her more important than the prince?”

“What makes her any less important than the prince?” Severus asked, and walked away without waiting for an answer.

* * *

The next thing anyone knew, Hamlet and Laertes were apparently the best of friends, and the court was buzzing with plans for a grand competition that involved the wager of six Barbary horses against an equal number of French swords. Severus found it all baffling.

“What, exactly, is this contest that Hamlet and Laertes are planning to have?” he asked Horatio.

“A fencing-match. Laertes is reputed to be excellent.”

“They compete to see ... who can build the biggest fence?” This struck Severus as a very strange pastime, particularly for royalty, but Muggles had odd ideas about what constituted fun.

Horatio laughed. “No, no. Do you not have fencing in England?” He described a sport which sounded like a sort of Muggle duel.

Severus frowned. “Do people get killed that way?”

“No, never. The foils are blunted, you see.”

“Never?”

“Well ... hardly ever. ‘Tis said in Wittenberg that a student lost an eye once, but that was before my time, and besides, he was drunk.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I am not sure that I like it, either,” admitted Horatio. “Let’s go seek him out.”

They found Hamlet in the hall where the fencing match was to take place. He and Horatio spoke earnestly for a moment, too low for Severus to hear.

“If your mind dislike anything,” said Horatio at last, “obey it. I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.”

“Not a whit,” Hamlet replied. “We defy augury; there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is ‘t to leave betimes? Let be.”

He swept his hair out of his eyes and flashed Horatio a crooked grin. Severus did not find the gesture at all reassuring. Hardly knowing what he did or why he was doing it, he ran out to the little cabin to fetch Ophelia.

Chapter Text

Ophelia stared, wide-eyed, as Severus burst into the cabin, swept bunches of drying herbs down from the ceiling and stuffed them into his suitcase. He thrust the largest of their makeshift cauldrons at her and said, curtly, “You carry that. I’ll take the books and the potions ingredients. Did your grandfather happen to leave you a bezoar, by any chance?”

“A what?”

“A stone. From the stomach of a goat. Counteracts most poisons.”

Ophelia looked blank.

“Never mind. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the palace. There’s a fencing-match on.”

“But I thought I was to stay out of sight.”

“Don’t be a little fool. Hurry up!”

Ophelia tossed her head. “I wish you would not call me a fool when you’ve told me nothing at all.”

“I don’t know anything at all. I only know the prince was idiot enough to agree to a sword-fight with a man who tried to strangle him two days ago. Frankly, I’m not sure why I bother trying to save you lot from yourselves.”

Ophelia gasped. “You suspect treason?”

“I don’t even know what I suspect. Yes, call it treason if you like. But hurry. No, leave the Veritaserum, it’s got to sit for another three weeks. Take the mortar and pestle, though. Let’s go.”

* * *

“One.”

“No.”

“Judgment.”

“You did not tell me he was playing with Laertes,” whispered Ophelia. “Why, my brother would never commit treason!”

“Are you so sure of that?” Severus answered. “Most people will do anything if they are paid the right price.”

“No. Not my brother.”

“A hit,” said the foppish courtier who seemed to be judging the match, “a palpable hit.” He glared at the new arrivals; Ophelia was flushed and bedraggled, and Severus was sure that he looked even less respectable than she did.

The king raised a glass, threw something that looked like a pearl into it, and drank to Hamlet.

Ophelia glanced at Severus. “Was that an Ugsome Union?”

“I’m sure of it. Cool customer. He has seven seconds to drink before it begins to dissolve. Look, he’s offering the cup to Hamlet.”

Ophelia gave a little squeak and stiffened, but Hamlet waved the cup away. “I’ll play this bout first; set it by awhile.”

“Don’t make noises like a mouse, you silly girl. Antidote.”

“Mandragora, balsamum, and rue.”

“Correct.”

Ophelia began to compound the antidote. Her little fingers were quick, but she was not more than half-finished when the king’s voice cut across the hall. “Gertrude, do not drink!”

“I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me.”

Severus groaned. “Has the woman no more brains than a sheep? No, don’t rush, you’ve got time, but we can’t afford to make a mistake. I’ll help.”

He was bending over the mortar and pestle, so he didn’t see the third hit. There was a sudden clatter; and then the courtiers abruptly fell silent. Severus glanced up.

Hamlet had dropped the dagger he held in his left hand on the floor and seized the hilt of Laertes’ rapier, twisting so that Laertes had no choice but to break his grip or break his fingers. A flash of red caught Severus’s eye. The prince’s shirt was torn and stained with blood.

“I thought the swords were supposed to be blunted.”

“They are,” said Ophelia.

“It seems your brother has his price, after all.”

Laertes had acquired Hamlet’s rapier using an almost identical maneuver, and the match began again in deadly earnest.

Claudius stood up. “Part them!” he roared. “They are incensed.”

“Nay, come again!” shouted Hamlet.

The queen tried to stand, swayed on her feet for a moment, and collapsed. “The drink – the drink – O my dear Hamlet –”

Severus gave the antidote a final stir and thrust it at Ophelia. “Quick.”

Laertes was now trying to stanch the blood from a wound of his own. “Hamlet,” he said desperately. “Thou art slain. No medicine in the world can do thee good; in thee there is not half an hour of life –”

Severus vaulted over several rows of seats. “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said. “What sort of poison did you put on the sword? Tell me, for God’s sake! I’ll treat you both if you tell me the truth.”

“An unction – bought of a mountebank...”

“What KIND of unction, idiot? What was it called?”

“I think –” Laertes fell to his knees. “It began with a D. The foul practice – hath turned itself on me – but the king, the king’s to blame.”

“We know that!” snapped Severus. “Doxycide? Draught of Doom? Dragonweed?”

“Venom, to thy work!” gasped Hamlet, stabbing the king.

“Treason! Treason!” shouted several courtiers.

Hamlet grabbed the cup of wine before they could reach him. “Thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane! Drink off this potion!”

“I have ’t,” said Laertes, almost in a whisper. “Danesbane. Exchange – forgiveness with me – noble Hamlet –”

“Ophelia!” Severus shouted. “Newtswort, and some extract of dittany! Now!”

Ophelia, who had been ministering to the queen, straightened up.

“My sister,” said Laertes incredulously. “Am I – in heaven – my treachery – forgiv’n?”

“You’re here on earth, and if she’s quick about it, you’ll stay here.”

Ophelia was already at her brother’s side. “Newtswort on the wound, three drops of dittany by mouth, no more,” said Severus. “Let me have some of that for Hamlet.”

By the time Severus reached the prince, Horatio was cradling his head, distraught.

“Thou livest,” Hamlet murmured. “Report me ... and my cause aright –”

“Never believe it!” Horatio grasped the cup of wine. “I am more an antique Roman than a Dane; here’s yet some liquor left.”

“JESUS CHRIST!” Severus knocked the cup out of Horatio’s hand. “ARE YOU ALL MAD? WILL YOU STOP POISONING YOURSELVES FASTER THAN I CAN SAVE YOU?”

He tore what was left of Hamlet’s sleeve into strips, bound the newtswort to the wound, and forced a little of the dittany between the prince’s pale lips. The shallow breathing slowed, then stopped altogether. Severus cast a Resuscitation Charm, almost sure it was hopeless. A moment, an age later, Hamlet gave a little choking sound and drew breath once more.

Shaking with relief, Horatio knelt down beside the prince.

The king?

The prince?

“Ophelia, what the hell are you doing?”

Ophelia gave a guilty start and took a step away from Claudius’s inert body. “I had some dittany left. I thought I should try to save him.”

“He’s a murderer.”

“But he is the king. I think it must be treason not to save him.”

Severus sighed. “Let’s be traitors, then. We’re all traitors. I think we had just established that everyone has their price.”

Ophelia shook her head and bent over the king again. “‘Tis God’s place to decide and not ours.”

Fortunately, God seemed to share Severus’s opinion of Claudius. “The king is dead,” Ophelia announced to the silent hall after a minute or two.

Severus’s mind and hands had been occupied with the other patients; only then did he realize the true danger of their position. Here they were, in a Muggle court in the violent, superstitious age just before the passage of the Statute of Secrecy. And they had been practicing magic openly: brewing potions, muttering incantations that the courtiers could not have understood. And the king lay dead at Ophelia’s feet, and the queen and the prince might die yet, and Severus had bent over them both as they fought for life.

He swore between his teeth. They’d probably be burned at the stake for this. How was it that none of the courtiers had laid hands on them already?

He stood and turned, ready to fight for his life and Ophelia’s if he needed to.

A strange sight met his eyes. Nearly all of the spectators lay on the floor or sprawled in their chairs, snoring gently. Other than himself, Horatio, and Ophelia, only two people in the room seemed to be awake: two men in oversized hats, who stood near the door at the far end of the hall.

Severus caught Horatio’s arm. “Who are those?”

“The English ambassadors, I think,” said Horatio. “They came in with Fortinbras.”

“Who’s Fortinbras?”

“Prince of Norway.” Horatio indicated a young man slumped by the door. “He seems to have fallen asleep. I suppose invading Poland is a tiring business. Would you have me call the ambassadors hither?”

“Tell them to take off their hats,” said Severus, remembering something Hamlet had said in the tavern.

Horatio approached the ambassadors. “Good sirs, will you uncover? You see that you are in the presence of the king ... er, the dead ... Well. The dead king.”

The ambassadors glanced at one another and removed their hats.

“Lupin,” said Severus, trying to hide how relieved he was to see two faces from his own time and place. “And Black. What are you doing here?”

“You might say thank you,” said Black. “We saved your neck, you know. That poncey bloke with the feather wanted to have you arrested for treason.”

Horatio seemed somewhat puzzled by this speech. “Osric?” he hazarded at last, indicating the judge for the fencing match, who had an oversized ostrich feather in his cap. Black nodded.

Severus shrugged. “A Muggle and a fool. Do you really think I couldn’t have dealt with him myself?”

“You were busy saving Lord Hamlet’s life,” said Horatio. “You do owe them thanks, Severus.”

“All right, thanks, then. Now will you tell me what you’re doing here?”

“Professor Dumbledore sent us,” Lupin explained. “He was worried because he hadn’t heard anything from you since you went away, so he sent us to Wittenberg after you, and when we got there Dr. Faustus was tearing his hair out with worry because he’d forgotten to give you a – what did he call it, Sirius?”

“A Portoclavis Temporalis.”

“Right.” Lupin drew a tiny stuffed bunny in a vivid shade of pink out of his pocket. “Meet Saxogrammatica. Basically, she’s the offspring of a regular Portkey and a Time-Turner. She activates at noon and midnight. Works pretty much like a normal Portkey, only you get taken back to your own time in history as well ... even your own universe, if you happen to have left it. Faustus was a bit hazy about how far you’d gone, exactly, but he was pretty sure the Portoclavis Temporalis would get you back from wherever-it-was. So we drank something called a Plothole-Plugging Potion, and off we went. Where are we, just as a matter of interest?”

“Denmark. Sometime in the sixteenth century. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got two patients here suffering from acute Danesbane poisoning, and one who’s swallowed the greater part of an Ugsome Union. I haven’t got time to stand around admiring a stuffed animal.” Severus turned away to examine the Queen, whose pulse was still very faint.

“We’ll help,” said Lupin. “Those were our instructions, to help you do whatever you had been sent to do, and then bring you back from wherever you were. Not terribly specific, but what can you do?”

“Fine. Go and get some more rue from the palace gardens, we’re nearly out of it. And you, Black, make yourself useful and see if they’ve got anything in the kitchens that will do for a cauldron. I want the rue distilled to its essence – mind you do it and not Lupin, I’ve seen him in the potions lab and it’s not pretty. Ask Ophelia if you need someone to help.”

Black snorted. “I think I can manage Essence of Rue! It is a fourth-year potion, you know, even for those of us who don’t have your unique and precious talent!”

“You’ll be working with sixteenth-century equipment – Muggle-made, at that. Good luck.”

* * *

Severus was loath to admit it, but during the next twelve hours he had many occasions to be grateful for the presence of two more trained wizards. Although two of his patients seemed to be doing as well as they could under the circumstances, dealing with three cases of poisoning at once was no picnic ... and then there was the rest of the Danish court to worry about. Fortunately, Lupin had a gift for diplomacy that more than made up for his incompetence at potions. When the courtiers awoke, he somehow contrived to explain the situation in a way that made everyone left alive look tolerably blameless, and Severus positively heroic. Severus tried not to think about this. He disliked having to be grateful to Lupin.

He was too busy with his third patient to think, anyway. Hamlet was looking very still and very, very pale. All of the blood in his body seemed to have drained into the wounded arm, which was badly swollen.

Severus ordered one of the servants to bring him the poisoned rapier, so that he could analyze the substance; perhaps the sixteenth-century formula for Danesbane was different from the one in Moste Potente Potions. But as far as he could tell, it wasn’t. By all logic, the prince shouldn’t be this ill. Laertes had been poisoned with the same stuff, and Laertes was doing well enough; Severus had left him to his sister’s care.

Phrases drifted into Severus’s head, unbidden. I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth ... this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ... What is’t to leave betimes? ... You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal, except my life, except my life, except my life ...

Slughorn had said once that all the antidotes in the world could not save someone who had no desire to live. Severus had dismissed this as a platitude at the time, but he began to fear that there might be something in it.

He thought about drinking with Hamlet aboard the ship; Hamlet knee-deep in frigid seawater, dragging the little boat ashore; Hamlet in the tavern, starting to tell a story about his student days in Wittenberg, which he’d never finished. Feeling rather foolish, he began to talk to the unconscious prince, trying to convince him that life, after all, life was bright and hopeful and worth all the pain of living. He did not particularly believe any of it. His words seemed empty and useless, but he kept trying to fill the royal bedchamber with them, as if Death might turn aside at the sound.

A couple of courtiers passed by the door. One of them was saying, “Of course he’ll be for Fortinbras. He hates Hamlet like poison,” and the other replied “I would not be so sure.” Severus paid them little mind.

A little later, Lupin and Black stopped by to tell Severus that it was midnight and the Portoclavis Temporalis was about to activate. “Go away,” said Severus, “can’t you see I’ve still got work to do here?”

At last Ophelia peeped into the room, looking exhausted and anxious. “How doth my lord Hamlet?”

“About the same,” said Severus. “How doth thy brother ... I mean, how is your brother? And the queen?”

“They’re better, I think. Laertes is awake and asking for you. He wants to thank you for saving his life.”

“Tell him no thanks needed,” muttered Severus. He was not sure what he thought of Laertes.

“All the same, he would speak with you. May I stay with the prince?”

“Of course,” said Severus, “there’s no one else to stay with him. See if you can bring him round.”

Ophelia took Hamlet by the hand and started to talk to him in a low voice. Severus stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her as she bent over the prince. He felt a twinge of jealousy that he did not understand, and turned away to find Laertes.

* * *

Laertes looked pale and drained, and his arm was almost as swollen as Hamlet’s, but he was able to move the fingers. Severus thought there would be no permanent damage.

“Ophelia has told me everything. I know not how to thank you.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” said Severus.

“Sir, you have given me my life and restored to me a beloved sister I thought dead. ‘Tis far more than I deserve. I can say little to make amends for my treason; only that I was not myself... Is there no doubt that my sister is a witch?”

Severus felt something tense within him. “No doubt at all. She’s a very good one.”

“I had suspected as much. If only it had been I, or my father, we might have used such a gift to serve our king as my grandfather did ... Severus, I have no right to ask favors, but I must beg you not to make this public. It is different for a girl.”

Severus suppressed the instant dislike he felt. He reminded himself that Laertes’ reaction might have been far, far worse. Even in his own century, he had seen more than one family torn apart by such a revelation – which had convinced him that mixed marriages and families were a danger to the entire community.

“I don’t intend to make any of your sister’s private business public. She has the right to tell whom she wishes, when she wishes; neither I nor anyone else can make the decision for her.” He was fairly sure this was correct, from the point of view of sixteenth-century wizarding law – but even if it wasn’t, it ought to be, and Laertes wouldn’t know any better.

“She is very young,” said Laertes. “Only just turned eighteen, and she has seen so little of the world. She can have no idea of the dangers.”

“And you can have no idea what it is to be a witch or a wizard.”

Laertes opened his mouth to retort, but before he could say anything, Captain Marcellus burst into the room. “My lord, it gladdens my heart to see you awake and looking so well. King Claudius, I am sorry to say, is dead. There must be an election.”

“I had heard,” said Laertes. “What’s the news?”

“That rests with you, my lord. You are one of the electors.”

“Oh.” This was obviously news to Laertes. “I am?”

Marcellus looked amused. “Aye, for your father was one, and you are his only son and heir.”

Laertes tried to sit up, and winced as soon as he put weight on his wounded arm. He fell back against the pillows. “I fear I’m in no condition to join them. ‘Twere best they hold the election without me.”

“They did,” said Marcellus. “Half of them are for Hamlet, and half of them want Fortinbras. It falls to you to cast the deciding vote.”

“They want Fortinbras?” said Laertes. “Fortinbras, prince of Norway?”

“No,” said Marcellus. “Fortinbras, prince of the Anthropophagi. He just arrived yesterday on a winged camel.”

“Fortinbras,” said Laertes again. “Whatever for?”

Marcellus explained that Fortinbras was not widely rumored to be mad, did not go around leaping into freshly-dug graves, and had not murdered the king in front of the whole court, and that certain of the electors considered these necessary, if not sufficient, qualifications for kingship.

“Let them say what they will,” said Laertes. “Tell them I am for Hamlet.”

“Very well, my lord,” said Marcellus. He looked a little dubious, and Severus could see why. He was tempted to say a number of other things about the wisdom of choosing a king who had tried to kill you, and whom you had tried to kill, less than a day earlier, but he decided that it was not his business to look after Laertes.

“And if Lord Hamlet dies? Where does your election fall?”

Laertes tossed about, restlessly, and Severus made a mental note to give him more dittany. “It matters not,” he said at last.

Marcellus was still endeavoring to explain why it did matter when Ophelia came into the room. She was smiling. “He will live,” she said. “He woke for a moment, and knew me. You had better come and give him some of the potion you made for my brother – I was not sure how much to give.”

Severus tried to stand and found that his knees refused to obey.

Chapter Text

“My new-crown’d lord,” said Osric, “requests your presence in his chamber.” He gave a sniff that clearly expressed what he thought of Hamlet’s taste in companions.

“Tell him I’ll be there as soon as I finish this potion.”

Osric sniffed again. “It is not the custom in Denmark to keep the king waiting.”

“Well, it’s not the custom in my country to interrupt a wizard when he’s brewing a potion. In fact, it can be quite hazardous to your safety.”

Ophelia looked up from her reading. “I’ll finish the potion, Severus. I know how.”

Grumbling, Severus thrust the cauldron in her direction.

He arrived at the royal chamber to find that someone else was already inside. A voice was saying urgently, “My lord, I am too low of birth – I am not schooled in the ways of the court.”

“Thou’lt learn, Horatio. Do not, I pray thee, think thyself more foolish than Polonius.”

Severus stood outside the doorway and coughed.

“Come in,” said King Hamlet.

Severus knelt beside the king’s bed; Ophelia had briefed him about the protocol on such occasions. “My lord,” he said, uncomfortably aware of how recently he had addressed someone else with those words.

“You may stand, Severus. ‘Tis I who should kneel before you, in all justice.”

Severus stood.

“I thank you for my life.”

“You’re welcome.” Severus wasn’t sure that this was how one talked to kings, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. At any rate, Hamlet didn’t seem offended.

“We have kept you long from your own country. May I ask if you are eager to return to England?”

“No,” said Severus. The thought of England, and the war, and the oath he had sworn filled him with despair. He could not go back and be what he had been; he was also not fool enough to think he could turn his back on it all and hope to live. “Definitely not.”

Hamlet nodded. “I thought not,” he said. “That is why I summoned you here. Every king needs a council – advisors who help him govern. I trust few of those who were about Claudius, so I mean to start anew. Horatio shall be my Lord Chamberlain – yes, you shall, Horatio, and I’ll brook no more disagreement, unless it be about matters of state.”

Horatio, who had looked like he was about to interrupt the king, subsided into silence.

“Marcellus shall remain captain of the guard. He was my father’s man and not Claudius’s, so I trust him with my life. And I mean to make Laertes Master of the Horse.”

“Laertes?” Severus forgot everything Horatio had told him about how to talk to a king. “Didn’t he try to kill you yesterday?”

Hamlet explained that when someone tried to kill you, you could either have them executed or make them one of your closest advisers, and in Laertes’ case he had several excellent reasons for preferring the latter.

“You are mad,” said Severus. “I wash my hands clean of you.”

“I am sorry to hear that.” Hamlet’s eyes were bright with suppressed laughter. “I was about to offer you the position of Court Wizard.”

Court wizard? Severus tried to recall what little he knew of court wizards. He wished he had paid more attention in old Binns’s class. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, he knew, wizards had often risen to positions of great respect and influence in Muggle courts; some said they were, more often than not, the power behind the power. He had a vague recollection of a story about the Borgias, and something about a Duchess of Gloucester who had almost become queen. The details were gone, now. The rest of his knowledge about court wizards came from a little green book that Lucius Malfoy had lent him, 1,001 Sayings and Opinions of the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord had regarded them as loathsome, cringing dogs, good for nothing but licking their Muggle lords’ filthy feet.

King Hamlet, however, seemed far less likely to demand foot-licking than Lord Voldemort, an irony that was not lost on Severus.

“I know that you must want for books,” said Hamlet. “There has been no wizard at court since Corambis. Whatever you wish to buy, you may have. And if you would travel, to meet with other scholars, you shall do it with my blessing.”

Severus cleared his throat uncomfortably. He imagined a twinge of pain in his left arm, but that was surely a trick of his mind; he had felt nothing since he came to Elsinore. “Look, I’m much obliged to you, but I can’t – I mean, I don’t think I’m the kind of wizard you want. And to be perfectly frank, I’m not sure I want to be bound –”

“Severus, it is not bondage I offer you, but freedom.”

“I will think about it.”

“If that is your way of inquiring about your salary, would ten thousand ducats a year be enough? You would, of course, have an allowance for wine and candles.”

“Er. How much is that in Galleons?”

Hamlet looked puzzled. “If you want your own galleon, I suppose that could be managed. But would it not be simpler to buy passage on a ship?”

“Never mind. How soon do you need an answer?”

“When you will.”

* * *

“You’re thinking of what?” said Black.

“You heard me the first time.”

Lupin bit his lip and wrinkled his forehead. “But I don’t think you can. I mean, the way Faustus explained the potion, you only get sent backward or forward in time long enough to plug some plotholes. And then once they’re all fixed, you come home – only it doesn’t quite seem to have worked, in your case.”

“What if they’re never fixed?” Severus asked. “What if, every time you plug one plothole, it creates a new one, ad infinitum? What if I never run out of work to do here?”

“You can’t go on being a – a plothole plumber,” said Lupin. “I mean – that isn’t really a career.”

“Court wizard is,” Severus said triumphantly. “What do you say to that?”

“Court wizard?” said Black. “Like one of those blokes back in the Dark Ages? You can’t be serious.”

“Look around you.” Severus waved a hand around the palace hall. “Gorgeous art and architecture. Good wine. First editions of Cornelius Agrippa. On the other hand, back in the twentieth century, violence, terror, madness, and disco music. Define ‘Dark Ages,’ will you?”

“Sooner or later,” Lupin insisted, “you have to come home.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But you don’t belong here. This isn’t your time.”

“Time is a funny thing,” said Severus. “Sometimes stepping out of it can save you.” He had a vague idea that someone had said something like this before, but at any rate, it sounded clever.

“So you want us to leave you here? Stranded in the sixteenth century?”

“I’m not stranded,” said Severus. “I want to stay. The Danes want me to stay. Dumbledore and Faustus might not think they want me to stay, but they don’t really give a damn what happens to me, and I’m not fool enough to think you and Black want me back. If it’s your own reputations you’re worried about, I’ll give you a letter so they know I’m staying here of my own free will. That covers all of the people who are involved, really. What’s the problem?”

“Won’t your family miss –”

“No,” said Severus.

“Moony, you’re wasting your time. If he wants to stay, let him. We’ve been here four days already, and I’m damned if I’m going to miss the wedding.”

“What wedding?” Severus demanded.

Lupin looked deeply uncomfortable. “Er –”

“What wedding?”

Black and Lupin exchanged a look. Before either of them could answer, Ophelia burst into the room like a small blonde whirlwind and threw her arms around Severus.

“Severus, what do you think has happened? I tried to make my brother stay in bed but he would not, he insisted on seeing the king as soon as he could stand. And he went to the king’s bedchamber and fell down on his knees, and oh! he took out his dagger as if he meant to plunge it into his breast. He said that he had plotted against his lord’s life and was unworthy to live, but he asked that his treason might be pardoned for my sake. And King Hamlet told Marcellus to take the dagger from him and made the most beautiful speech – I cannot remember all he said, for I know no colors of rhetoric, but he made my brother understand that all was forgiven. And, think of it, he has appointed Laertes Master of the Horse! ‘Twill suit him perfectly. I think he is the wisest king Denmark has ever had. And then he turned to me – the king, I mean – and bade me seek you out and ask if you were ready to give him your answer, though he did not say to what question.”

“Tell him –” said Severus, shaking his head in bemusement at this speech. “Tell him I’ll stay. But only because you lot seem to need me to keep you from killing yourselves.”

“Are you not going home with the ambassadors? Oh, I am glad! Do you know anything about doctoring horses, and will you teach it to me so that I can help my brother in his work?”

* * *

“Give Dumbledore and Faustus these letters,” said Severus at five minutes to midnight. “I’ve explained that I’m well and safe and I’ve taken a new job. Don’t tell anyone exactly where I am, whatever you do.”

“All right,” said Lupin. “Severus – I don’t mean to pry, but are you in any sort of trouble?”

“Not any more.”

“Are you sure you want to stay here? There are – other ways to disappear. If you should happen to need one, hypothetically speaking.”

“I’m very sure.”

“He doesn’t want our help, Moony.”

Lupin shrugged. “I just thought I’d ask.”

Two minutes to midnight. Severus remembered something. “What was that wedding you were talking about before?”

Lupin and Black exchanged another meaningful glance. “Well, er. This is a bit awkward, but you’ve every right to know. James and Lily ... Well, they’re engaged. They wanted to have the wedding at once, given the circumstances.” Lupin looked as if he were on the verge of saying “I’m sorry,” thought better of it, and waited for a reaction.

“Oh,” said Severus. He found that the news did not hurt as much as it ought to have done. “Give her my congratulations,” he added at last. “I’m sure they’ll have a very boring life together.”

And, because there was no one to hear a certain prophecy, indeed they did.