He was a bloody idiot. In fact, he was quite possibly the heir to the throne of the kingdom of bloody idiots. Well, no, that position was reserved for one particular fifth year who insisted upon haring off to government offices in the middle of the night, but at this point he was quite certain that he was at least a member of the governing body of said kingdom. At the very least. He narrowed his eyes at a passerby who spent a few too many moments looking at Draco and himself and had the pleasure of seeing the man pale and hurry off as he debated what his next move should be. Albus hadn’t been in his office when Severus had gone looking for him, but Minerva had been there sorting through some paperwork, and after a few muttered comments about the probable ancestries of certain Ministry flunkies that made Severus wonder just what had happened in the political arena that he had missed, she’d calmed enough to hear his request. She’d then made him both a Portkey to get them to the Floo station and a second to get him back to Hogwarts. All in all, perfectly satisfactory. And then he’d gone and Portkeyed himself and Draco directly to the thrice-be-damned Floo station without a second thought. Also without Polyjuice or glamours or disguises of any sort…at this point he’d settle for a giant hat if one was available. Draco was still in his school robes for Merlin’s sake!

He growled. Of course, anything he did now to disguise them would likely only draw more attention from curious onlookers, but…. He turned Draco towards him and muttered a spell to hide the badge on his cloak. It wasn’t perfect—they were still fairly obviously school robes, and there was a decided lack of other platinum blonds bearing an eerie resemblance to Malfoy senior at Hogwarts—but at least it was something. Though there are hardly queues of one-eyed one-armed black-robed potions masters standing around either. Might as well be wearing ruddy nametags.

He needed to find Narcissa and get her and her son headed off wherever they were going, and he needed to do it quickly. He hadn’t seen anyone that he recognized as a Deatheater or Dark Lord supporter yet, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t one lurking somewhere. Or that more weren’t on the way. Since his idiocy meant that even the most superficial of questioning would no doubt yield several witnesses who had seen both himself and Draco here…well, he had no desire to help the two of them escape Perth only to find that they’d been caught and dragged back to the Dark Lord for execution only a few hours hence just because their tracks had been so poorly covered.

Another, more complicated, flick of his wand served to ward Draco’s things against tracking spells. Setting such a spell on a person, at least without a close blood connection or at the very minimum his permission, was notoriously difficult, but cloaks and bags and such were a different story. Something else I should have done earlier. Honestly, I haven’t been out of the spy business that long. This sort of sloppiness is just ridiculous.

“Professor, I don’t see her,” Draco hissed.

“Neither do I,” Severus responded evenly. “And don’t try and whisper; no one can hear you in this babble—myself included—and making the attempt only draws more attention to us.” He continued his scan of the crowd as though he didn’t have a care in the world. He was tall enough to see over most of the heads surrounding them, but there was no telltale flash of white-blonde. Although since presumably Narcissa wasn’t hauled out of her bed and thrown into this scheme less than an hour ago, she has no doubt made some specific preparations. Say, for example, a disguise. “We will most likely have to wait until she contacts us.” Much as he didn’t care for that scenario since it meant that they’d have to stand out in the open where she would be able to see them. She and everyone else, damn it all.

An old woman bumped up against him, and he began to bring up his wand defensively until he caught a flicker of familiar blue eyes. He lowered his wand again, sliding it casually into his clamp, and latched his hand on Draco’s arm lest the boy give them away. “Aunt Helen, how nice to see you again. I hope things are well at home. This is the boy I was telling you about.” It was a horrendous cover story, one that didn’t stand a chance of fooling anyone short of a complete and utter moron—so possibly if the elder Crabbe or Goyle did the questioning it would work—but they needed some reason to stay close to her and it was the best that he could come up with in the seconds that they had. This is what happens when you force sleep-deprived ex-spies into rescue operations. Or smuggling operations. Or whatever sort of operation this is.

Narcissa smiled. “Ah, excellent. Offer your arm, young man, these old bones make it hard to move as quickly as I’d like.”

Draco looked momentarily stunned, but then a flicker of recognition—quickly concealed, much to Severus’ relief—crossed his features and he bowed slightly and did as he’d been ordered.

Severus took charge of the trunk that had been trailing behind Narcissa, trying to look as though he was herding the two of them in the direction that she was leading. “And how was your trip?”

“Oh, you know how it is. Everyone is in such a rush. Pop in, pop out….”

Something brushed against his hand, and he palmed the small note Narcissa passed him. When instead of withdrawing her hand she shifted it slightly to rest on the handle of the trunk, he realized with some surprise that she did plan to apparate. To where he had no idea—a smaller Floo station? Another relative in England? Then again, at this point it was probably just as well that he didn’t know.

“I thought you might be hungry after your trip, so I made reservations at—”

The ‘pop’ of apparition was mostly concealed by the activity around them, although one or two people did give Severus odd looks as he finished his sentence speaking to empty air. Severus gave the most obvious of the lot a glare in return, slipping the bit of parchment into his pocket as he reached for the portkey back to Hogwarts. By his estimate he had now fulfilled his good deed for not only the day, but quite possibly the month and year as well. For putting up with Potter alone I should be nominated for sainthood.

His hand closed on the glass bauble from one of Albus’ shelves that Minerva had chosen for the return portkey. It felt…odd…that one of the most stable personal connections he’d had since he’d left Hogwarts could be severed so quickly. Well, perhaps not severed—there was still Lucius in Azkaban to consider, and with his money and influence Merlin only knew how that was going to turn out even with the evidence from the Department of Mysteries—but in one way or another the Malfoys had been a part of his life for over two decades now.

He fingered the bauble without activating it, unable to tear his mind from the flood of memories. At first there had merely been casual conversations back when he and Narcissa and Lucius were in school—their years hadn’t overlapped by a great deal, and there wasn’t really a great deal that an eleven year old and a fifteen or sixteen year old had in common. It had always surprised Severus in his later years at Hogwarts that Lucius had stayed in contact after he personally had left, occasionally owling Severus about his progress in classes or other various inconsequential details. Later, of course, had come more contact with Lucius at the Deatheater meetings and the discovery that the Dark Lord had been interested in recruiting Severus for his potions abilities from a fairly early age, but when he’d been young and stupid Lucius had been a more-or-less willing ear for other things as well. Granted that Severus’ admiration for the older wizard had long since soured, but it didn’t change the fact that the two of them had known each other for better than two-thirds of Severus’ life.

Not to mention that over the years—particularly the intervening years between the defeat of the Dark Lord and his latest rise—there had always been casual invitations from Narcissa to come to the manor for tea or a meal or a holiday…after Draco had been born he’d even become something of an uncle. An odd experience for a man who didn’t particularly care for children, but he’d found that he hadn’t minded a great deal. And now it was…over. Wherever Narcissa and Draco were going, it was doubtful that they’d ever return to England—that it would even be safe for them to do so—no matter which way the war went. For the foreseeable future it was unlikely in the extreme that they’d even attempt any sort of contact. He suspected that the bit of parchment she’d given him held some sort of instructions for Lucius to find them, but Severus didn’t even know if he’d have a chance to deliver it. Or if he even wanted to; it might be better for both Draco and Narcissa if their location remained entirely secret. What Lucius didn’t know he couldn’t possibly reveal.

He shook his head, forcing himself back to the present. This was neither the time nor the place for that sort of introspection, and frankly he wasn’t likely to have a chance to deliver the note any time soon anyway. Best get back before those little dunderheads start celebrating their cancelled potions cla—

A commotion off to his left caught his attention, and he twisted in time to see a cloaked figure raising its right arm. Other figures—also wearing cloaks, ones he recognized all too well—were shoving and cursing aside the crowd, and Severus’ hand closed convulsively on the glass object in his pocket as his eye bore into the darkness under the hood of the man facing him. The eyes glaring back at him from within its depths were red.

As soon as he processed that fact, Severus slammed up his strongest Occlumency shields and started to bring up his wand even as he shouted the activating word and the Floo station blurred around him. Then he was falling, with the cries of terror from the crowd at the station still ringing in his ears.

It was hardly the first time that he’d traveled by portkey, and normally he was able to keep himself properly upright and land with at least a reasonable amount of decorum, but the encounter had shocked him enough that by the time it occurred to him that he should probably prepare for a landing he was already sprawled out on the floor. Of the Hospital Wing. Bloody tabby…this is probably her idea of a subtle suggestion that I’m not looking so well. Well, he would have his revenge. I wonder what catnip does to cat animagi. I suppose I could always lace it with something….

“Professor?” Harry asked, scrambling off one of the far beds and coming to crouch by his side. “Are you all right?”

The other children were still there as well, although they appeared far more curious than concerned.

“You’re bleeding!”

Severus was opening his mouth to tell the brat to be quiet before that wretch of a mediwitch heard him when Harry’s shout of ‘Madame Pomfrey!’ made the order moot.

“Mr. Potter, what are you doing out of—Severus!” Poppy exclaimed, looking down at him with a startled expression on her face. “What in Merlin’s name are you doing on the floor?”

“Looking for a cat.” I plan to wring her neck at the earliest possible opportunity.

“He’s bleeding,” Harry pointed out.

Severus gritted his teeth. “It’s nothing.” Damn all Gryffindors. Of course, Poppy already had her wand out and was flicking it over him rapidly so she’d probably have noticed anyway, but there was no need to give her any help.

“Your respiration and heart rate are both greatly accelerated,” she informed him with a glare a few moments later. “Your blood pressure is also elevated, and that hand is badly lacerated. Not to mention that it looks as though you haven’t been getting anywhere near enough sleep. Didn’t I just tell you yesterday—”

“Thank you,” he interrupted before she could begin to harangue him in front of the children. “I’ll be going—”

“Not before I see to that hand. I assume that’s why you came here?” She tapped her foot impatiently. “Though I can’t imagine how you managed to end up on my floor.”

“But of course.” He certainly wasn’t going to tell her that he’d been Portkeying around on errands when she was in this sort of mood, but he didn’t particularly care for the idea of Deatheaters destroying the Perth Floo station either. He got to his feet smoothly, or as smoothly as was possible when his only available hand had several large shards of glass embedded in the palm. “But I need to use your Floo for a moment first.”

She sputtered something, but he was already halfway to her office. He shut the door firmly after entering and activated the Floo with an awkward toss of powder. As far as he knew Floo powder was nonpoisonous, but he had no desire to find out differently after it entered his bloodstream.

He was fairly certain that someone at the station would have called in the Aurors as soon as the Deatheaters had arrived, but, well…. Merlin knows there are far too many idiots in this world to assume reasonable behavior from anyone. His Order alarm was down in his rooms, but hopefully he could reach Albus who could then alert the Ministry. Unfortunately no one was in the Headmaster’s office—Minerva was no doubt in class by now, and it was entirely possible that Albus was still at the Ministry—and with a growl he contacted Auror headquarters. Tonks would be in St. Mungo’s for at least another day or two if he remembered Alastor’s words correctly, but Shacklebolt should be able to come up with some reasonable explanation for taking a group of Aurors to Perth.

The commotion in the background, complete with shouts of directions, when he finally managed to get through to the witch manning the front desk came as something of a relief. Surely there weren’t two Deatheater attacks in progress in Perth.

“Can I help you?” the witch at the entrance desk demanded, less than politely.

“I assume that you already know about the Floo station in Per—”

“Yes, we know!” she snapped. “We are handling it! We would be handling it much more quickly if every witch and wizard in England didn’t feel the need to in—”

Severus closed the connection, cutting her off quite effectively. The Aurors already knew about the situation, and he didn’t have to be involved. That suited him quite well. The fewer people who know just why the Dark Lord was there—and that I was as well—the better. He didn’t actually have any proof that the creature had come because of Draco and Narcissa, after all, though in his opinion it was far too coincidental to have been anything else. However, on the ridiculously remote chance that he didn’t know, I’m certainly not going to be the one to suggest it.

“Severus, what in Merlin’s name is going on?” Poppy demanded as he exited her office.

He hid a sigh. He’d been sorely tempted to use the inter-Hogwarts Floo system to simply return to his own rooms, but that would have just led to more harassment. “Personal business.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she did hold out a hand imperiously. “Let me see your wound.”

His ‘wound’ had been caused when he’d accidentally crushed the bauble being used as a Portkey—hopefully it hadn’t been anything Albus was particularly fond of—and he was perfectly capable of dealing with it himself, but thanks to Minerva’s ‘help’ in bringing him back to the Hospital Wing he doubted that he’d be allowed. He proffered the arm.

“Hm. You’ve managed to do yourself a fair bit of damage, haven’t you?”

She set about extracting the bits of glass with a determined look, and Severus clenched his jaw. Harry and the rest of the little dunderheads were watching him as though this were the most interesting thing that had happened all year, and he wasn’t about to show them any sign of weakness.

After she was finally satisfied with her work, Poppy waved her wand around for a solid five minutes, presumably doing some sort of disinfecting work, before summoning a roll of bandages. “Well, that should do. Mind you don’t use that hand for the rest of the day; I’ll check the bandages tomorrow morning and make sure the wounds are healed enough for proper sealant.”

“And you can’t use sealant now because?” He didn’t particularly want to attempt to teach classes with this large wad of cloth on his only hand, after all. Particularly in a potions laboratory, even if he didn’t plan to do more than lecture.

“There were bits of magic imbued in those glass shards, and it needs to fully disperse before the sealant will function properly. And it shouldn’t be any hardship for you to let that hand be since you’re going to be in your rooms resting, anyway.”

“I have classes to teach—”

“One day is hardly going to make a drastic difference in the students’ work, and it very well could with your health. Now, I’ll call a house-elf to stay with you in case you need anything—”

“Absolutely not,” Severus interrupted. The last thing he wanted was one of those scraping, bowing creatures attempting to dance attendance on him. He’d murder it in the first twenty minutes.

“I can help,” Harry offered.

“I beg your pardon?” Severus demanded, raising his voice to drown out the youngest Weasley boy’s strident query about Harry’s sanity. Though for quite possibly the first time in the little idiot’s existence they were actually thinking along the same lines.

“Well, she was going to send us back to our rooms and tell us we needed to spend the day resting anyway….” He shrugged awkwardly. “I can help you with whatever you need and then read there just as easily.”

“That sounds like an excellent suggestion,” Poppy said, before Severus could form the proper words to express his opinion. “Though I daresay that you could use some sleep as well.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry agreed quickly.

Severus opened his mouth to argue, but from the set of her jaw she wasn’t going to let this be. Better to act as though it was a tolerable situation—though it certainly wasn’t—than to lose this sort of argument in front of half a dozen of his students. “Come along, then.”

Harry had to trot to keep up with him through the corridors, but Severus wasn’t in an accommodating mood and didn’t bother to slow his pace until they reached his quarters. “Get in the spare room, and unless you’ve a good reason to come out I don’t expect to see you again today.”

“But Professor—”

It was nice to know that he could still manage an appropriately quelling glare as Harry shut his mouth and hurried into the other room. He wasn’t going to try any brewing with this thing on his hand, but a new journal had arrived a few days ago that he hadn’t had time to take a look at yet.

///////////

A tentative knock at his bedroom door made him start awake, and he took a moment to orient himself before snapping at the intruder to enter. It didn’t require a great deal of intelligence to determine just who it would be, after all.

“Professor? The house-elves brought lunch….”

Severus gestured for him to enter. Poppy wasn’t above checking with the house-elves to make sure trays weren’t returned with too much food on them, though Merlin knew that their definition of ‘too much’ didn’t match that of any reasonable witch or wizard. He’d long suspected that satisfying them required eating twice one’s weight a day. “Have you eaten?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, then, I expect that you should.” He flicked his wand, levitating the tray the boy was carrying, and nodded to a chair.

Harry stared at it.

“Sit down,” Severus ordered, repeating the gesture. “As I recall, you and I have a discussion to finish.” If he’d been in the mood to admit such a thing, he might have admitted that even just that short nap had improved his temper a fair amount. He wasn’t in the sort of mood that would allow such admissions of course, and even if he had been it still wasn’t enough to convince him to forgive Poppy’s high-handedness, but despite his earlier orders to the brat he wasn’t about to let such a perfect opportunity go by. Harry was now stuck in his rooms for the rest of the day, and he had the remainder of a tongue-lashing to deliver.

For his part, Harry simply nodded and sank gingerly into the seat indicated, picking up half a sandwich as the tray began to float towards Severus.

“I believe we were in the middle of reviewing the general idiocy of your decision to go to the Ministry before Albus arrived, correct?”

Harry flushed and quickly swallowed the bite of sandwich he’d taken. “I know what you said, but I still think I had to go. Nobody was supposed to—”

“To get hurt, yes, I believe you mentioned that,” Severus interrupted. However, once again in case you missed this little tidbit of information, people were hurt.”

“But Professor—”

“I don’t want to hear it! There is a saying…I believe Muggles use it on occasion as well. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Are you familiar with it?”

“I’ve heard it,” Harry admitted grudgingly after a few moments of silence. He obviously wanted very much to add something else but managed to hold his peace. Severus didn’t have any great expectation that that happy state of affairs would last.

“And do you know what it means?”

“It wasn’t like that!” Harry protested. “I had a plan! A good one! I didn’t think—”

“That seems to be the one point upon which we agree. Tell me, Mr. Potter, in that ‘planning’ that you claim to have done, did it ever occur to you that you could very easily have been killed? All this fuss about destroying the prophecy—do you realize that if you had died, it would have made the entire thing moot?”

Harry dropped his eyes. “I didn’t know there would be Deatheaters there… I thought I could just sneak in, destroy it, and get out without anyone noticing.”

Severus made a disgusted sound. “Leaving aside the fact that the Department of Mysteries is hardly a place that anyone can just waltz into and out of with no one the wiser, you knew that’s where Arthur Weasley had been attacked. It didn’t occur to you that there might be other watchers on the door?”

“That was why I went in the middle of the night!”

Merlin save me from teenagers and what constitute their ideas about valid plans. “Yes, because the Dark Lord is very concerned that his followers get a full eight hours of sleep every night and therefore would never consider stationing someone there round the clock.”

“Well, they weren’t there, were they? They were monitoring the Floo.”

“That argument hardly helps your case,” Severus pointed out. “I’m going to assume that you’ve managed to keep your mouth shut about the entirety of the prophecy when speaking to your little friends; though even so I have no idea why one or all of them didn’t simply sit on you when you suggested this ridiculous idea.” Granger, at least, has been known to exhibit sense. On rare occasions.

“I told you, they weren’t even supposed to know.”

“Which, for the record, was almost as idiotic an idea as the rest of your plan—running off in the middle of the night with no one the wiser. As if your midnight escapades here aren’t bad enough, you’ve decided to expand your efforts!”

“But—”

“Then,” Severus continued, overriding whatever excuse the brat was attempting to make, “when you didn’t return in the morning, we could all spend the foreseeable future combing the entire bloody planet for you. As if I haven’t spent enough of my time of late doing just that.” He pushed himself up off the bed and began to pace. “Not to mention the reaction of the rest of the Wizarding world when they found out that you’d disappeared.” Mass panic wouldn’t even begin to describe it, and not for the first time Severus wondered just why they insisted on making a hero out of a fifteen year old idiot. Then again, considering who they elect to government offices, perhaps it shouldn’t come as any great surprise.

Harry started to mutter something under his breath but subsided at a sharp glare as Severus reached the far wall and spun back around.

“Of course, the entire group of you disappearing wouldn’t have gone over well either, but I doubt any of you considered that. And then, to make matters even worse, after dragging yourself and your brainless band of followers off to the Department of Mysteries and discovering that there were Deatheaters there, instead of behaving like a reasonable person and staying where you were told, you went haring off alone after one of the most dangerous of the lot!”

“But she—”

“I know damn well what she did! I was there! I would simply love to know how your thought processes work.” His voice took on a mocking tone. “‘I’ve just seen this decidedly less-than-rational woman eviscerate a man in front of me, survive a curse that opened her back down to the bone, and then manage to defeat a fully trained Auror. Gee, I know, I think I’ll run after her.’ Have you completely lost whatever small bit of intelligence you ever possessed?”

“I couldn’t just let her get away!”

“Why in Merlin’s name not?! Yes, I’ll grant that what she did was certainly horrendous—” though by no means the worst thing that Severus had ever seen her do—“but why didn’t you call for someone else to go after her if it was so important? Professor Dumbledore, Professor Moody, myself…there was hardly a shortage of adults available!” Granted that none of them had really been in a position to go after her—he hadn’t even seen her running out of the chamber—but shouting would have been a better idea than tearing off like an idiot.

“You were fighting Mr. Malfoy and a couple others, and Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were off in the other corner, and…I don’t know! I just saw her getting away and had to go after her! Blame it on my people-saving-thing!”

Harry was on his feet now as well, and Severus made himself take a step back before he did something he might actually regret. In all his years of teaching he’d managed to refrain from damaging—physically, at least—any of his students, and he didn’t plan to start today. Or with this particular child. Although I suppose if I was going to start, I’m not likely to get any more provocation than this. He shook his head and then turned and resumed his pacing. “First of all, there were no ‘people’ to save in this particular instance, and second of all, as far as I can tell, this ‘people-saving’ thing of yours is sheer arrogance more than anything else! It seems to me that you basically decide that you are the only one who can do a given job and disregard anyone who says otherwise. For example, what makes you think that you are more qualified to fight a Deatheater than an Auror, pray tell?”

“I didn’t say I was more qualified, I just…I was the one that saw her. Why can’t you understand that?!”

“Why can’t you understand that you very nearly got yourself killed multiple times in one night for no damned reason?! Did I, or did I not, tell you weeks ago that you were to stay away from the Department of Mysteries?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You are fifteen years old—it is not your duty to play caretaker for the rest of the Wizarding world!”

“I know that! I know I have responsibilities and I should be careful!”

Severus gritted his teeth and made a mental note to strangle Albus. He had no doubt where the little idiot had heard that particular phrase, and knowing Albus he hadn’t bothered to define just what said responsibilities actually entailed at this particular point in time. If he even knew…there were times that the headmaster had so many schemes within schemes going on in his head that he didn’t know where one ended and another began. At least this particular oversight was easily rectifiable. “Yes, and currently those responsibilities include means that you should be going to classes, doing your homework, and staying out of trouble! You’ll note that they do not include attempting clandestine missions to government offices in the middle of the bloody night!”

“They do if—”

“They do not!” He turned and stalked back towards the boy. “I have no idea what we are supposed to do with you now—you were already in enough trouble for going off to the Chamber of Secrets with Mr. Weasley, and instead of doing the reasonable thing and keeping your head down and attempting to behave, you do this! I’d say expel you, but aside from the fact that you’re going to need all the training you can get, it forces you out of Hogwarts and Merlin knows how much trouble you’ll manage to get yourself into then!”

“I wasn’t trying to cause trouble!”

“And yet you have such a knack for it!”

Harry huffed. “Well, Professor McGonagall already said we—all of us, practically the whole Gryffindor team—aren’t allowed to play Quidditch anymore, and I think we’re going to have detention practically until we leave school…what more is there?!”

“Personally I’d like to lock you in one of the dungeons and have the house elves feed you through a slit in the door. I daresay that might keep you out of trouble for the foreseeable future. Not to mention giving you ample opportunity to think about what I’ve just said.” He waved a hand, sinking down on the bed. “Back to the other room; I don’t think there’s anything else to say right now. Do us both a favor and try that thinking thing.”

“But—”

“That wasn’t a request, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir.”

Severus sighed and lay back on the bed as the boy shut the door behind him. Shut it hard enough to be just this side of a slam, but that was the least of Severus’ worries just now. Short of locking him in a dungeon, he really had no idea what to do about the little idiot. He seemed completely incapable of understanding that he wasn’t responsible for being anything but a student. Hopefully Minerva would have some idea beyond a bloody Quidditch ban because he very much doubted that Albus would.

A scratch at the door made him grit his teeth, and he opened it with a sharp gesture. Surely Harry wasn’t that suicidal….

An owl winged in, dropping a piece of parchment into his hand before winging back out, and he groaned as he recognized the address. “Oh, brilliant.”