S. Snape (exsequeverus) wrote in bearandbarnacle, @ 2009-09-20 19:02:00 |
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Current location: | Out and about |
Current music: | umm... goldfinger theme? |
Entry tags: | dumblethread, event, gaavthread, holmesthread, rhyme, rodolphusthread, sevpost, sevthread |
Severus Snape: Event: Rhyme
When he sees the paper that morning, Severus snarls wordlessly to himself, state of mind throwing itself back several years in an instant, and leaves a note for Q asking him to take care of the day's brewing (except for the copper cauldron, which he should just throw a stasis spell on). Twice is coincidence? Sod that. He's still not going to write the 'all afire to be on campaign' note that he's been dying to for weeks, or call in the cavalry, but it is time to do something else. Just because no one's been actually killed yet means... enough to matter, but not to reassure; it's early days of a very familiar pattern.
It takes nearly him all day, and that with the help of a hastening potion, but by three-thirty, every car parked in the... district council, town hall, local ministry? He isn't sure what to call it, and is too preoccupied to look for words on the building rather than magics. By then, though every car in its lot and garage, as well as those at the county court and police station, has been enchanted with a protego totalum.
So have the rings, watches, shoes, and ID badges of the Mayors and his second, the judges, and, really, everyone Severus has passed on his way to and through the buildings, on the basis of better safe (and exhausted) than sorry. On the buildings themselves he's slapped DoM-level fire, explosion, and particle-containing wards on. These he'd learned from Moody, once they'd sorted their differences out.* He supposes people may have trouble smoking in the lav, and the janitors may have less work from lack of dust, but that's not his problem. And if certain people who've run up against Auror spells often enough to recognize him make certain assumptions, that's far from being his problem.
The coffee pots, office mugs, air vents, cupboards, silverware, and water coolers all have tiny filtration runes against magic, drugs, and toxins carved inconspicuously into them, with protego horribilis layered over them in case of removal attempts. There were, no doubt, a lot of thermoses that he hadn't seen, although he'd gotten to the ones he had, and obviously homes, other towns in the district, bridges, and the public transport system (what a nighmare in the offing!) are a problem for tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. He sighs, hoping Albus and maybe even Holmes can help him there; this will have to do for now.
He'd like to think that certain people won't connect Lily Evans's facility with charms and runes with her study partner, or even know he'd been that study partner in his own history. Or, at least, that they let his tendency to reach for a cauldron first convince them he has a one-track mind. If they do make the connection, though, well... since Lucius had convinced him that he wasn't safe from his old self, from the risk of having to live like that again, he'd resigned himself. It's a damned shame; he likes being young Veris Clayborn, with only ordinary and professional concerns to prey on him. If that life has to be a brief and pleasant memory, though, so be it; he has few as peaceful to look back on. Even the 'eighties were full of students and the parents of Slytherins. But if making reparations isn't enough, if shaking past mistakes off and starting fresh down a useful path isn't enough, or doesn't work, then you simply must plod ahead on that path yourself.
At four o'clock, utterly drained from so many nearly permanent spells, letting the small presence-concealers and deceptions melting away slowly as he's nearly too tired to banish them, he presses Holmes's doorbell. Here's hoping that Albus isn't off having tea in a shop somewhere and can remind him of protections he's missed, that Holmes isn't and can tell him where people who need more protection than he's been able to lay on today live. Not having said a word to anyone all day, when the door is opened, he's not quite too weary to be startled by what comes out of his mouth.
* This had involved a two-hour duel, evenings on end of grading and reading through the Albus And Alastor Knitting And Comedy hour, an ambush on an attempted ambush (wherein Alastor got petrified and his wand stolen and sent up to Albus but not hurt, which Moody found persuasive, although not convincing), and a really dreadful pun involving cocaine and hallucinatory alligators, which had gone on for nearly ten minutes before someone failed to keep an entirely straight face. The final blow had been when Moody, during his recovery period from Crouch's box, had been cajoled by one of Severus's all-time favorite pupils into flying a kite outside, and then taught her a few charms to stop other students stealing her books and shoes. Severus had sent him an obviously-hexed card which, when the hex was disabled, manifested a bottle of really good lubrication for Moody's false leg, and Moody had smacked him so hard upside the back of the head on the way to the Great Hall the next day that he'd thought it was Hagrid. And that was that.