The Case of the Boomslang Skin


by Sinick


TO Severus Snape, she was always the girl. I seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipsed and predominated the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Hermione Granger. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine the world has seen; but, as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer -- excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one girl to him, and that girl was Hermione Granger, of dubious and questionable memory.

I had seen little of Snape lately. As usual, the start of the 1992 academic year had kept me more than occupied in educating a fresh crop of first-years as to the rules and regulations of Hogwarts' hallowed halls. I scarcely had the time to keep the rust from my sadly-unused manacles, while Snape, who loathed every form of society with his whole misanthropic soul, remained in his lodgings in the dungeons, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between Potions and pedagogy: the seduction of the products of his own cauldron, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of the Dark Arts in all their insidious forms, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of magic and of mind in following up those clues, and clearing out those mysteries, which had been abandoned as hopeless by other authorities. From time to time he would suddenly and mysteriously absent himself from the school after hours, returning late and sequestering himself in his rooms. Occasionally, he would return from these absences in so battered a state that his convalescence took place in the hospital wing. Though these stays never lasted particularly long -- so extraordinary was the recuperative ability of that wiry frame -- he invariably emerged from them in a mood so black that even our habitual discussions of detentions could not raise him from despondency.

Apart from this occasional moodiness of his, Snape was certainly not a difficult man to share the dungeons with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. He had invariably gone to his first class before I rose in the morning. Sometimes he spent his weekends in the Potions laboratory, sometimes in the library, and often his evenings were occupied in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the castle. Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for entire weekends he would lie upon the sofa in his sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some Dark elixir, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.

Having no other neighbour in the dungeons -- it was always an area of the castle in which few cared to spend time -- my interest in him and my curiosity as to his private affairs was naturally intense. His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch, as I frequently had occasion to observe when I watched him manipulating his fragile philosophical instruments.

The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often I endeavoured to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself. Before pronouncing judgment, however, be it remembered how objectless was my life, and how little there was to engage my attention. My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavouring to unravel it.

One evening during my regular rounds I was patrolling the main corridor of the dungeons where the Potions classroom, Snape's office and his private laboratory lay. From the line of light beneath the door of the latter, I deduced that Snape was at his usual researches again. I smiled to myself. This circumstance boded well for my friend's mood, and I looked forward to calling upon him later in the evening. Only that day I had confiscated some Blood-nose Bubblegum from the Twin Terrors, and Snape would no doubt be amused by the story, and perhaps by reverse-engineering the formula as one of his extracurricular projects.

But no sooner had that happy thought occurred to me, when I heard a sharp cry of fury from within, followed by a stream of vituperation of astonishing fluency and inventiveness. Few wizards -- let alone powerless men such as I -- would have cared, or dared, to make their presence known to Snape when he was in such fearsome form. However, my concern for him enabled a truly Gryffindor excess of recklessness. My feline companion retreated a safe distance down the corridor as I knocked upon the door and called, "Professor! Is something wrong?"

A wordless charm from within snatched the laboratory door wide with such force that had I been clinging to the handle I would have been hauled bodily into the room. Snape was standing before his private cabinet, where were stored all the rarest, costliest -- and Darkest -- of Potions ingredients within Hogwarts' walls. Black eyes a-glitter with fury, he thrust his wand at the cabinet's shelves.

"You see it, Filch?" he yelled. "You see it?"

But I saw nothing. The sudden glare of a Lumos flashing into my eyes made it impossible for me to tell what it was at which my friend pointed so savagely. I could, however, see that his face was deadly pale and filled with horror and loathing.

"It is gone!" Snape cried. As I came closer, I could see that his wand illumined a small bare spot on the otherwise-crammed shelves. "My boomslang skin has been stolen!"

To say I was thunderstruck hardly does justice to my feelings. That cabinet was one of the most thoroughly locked places in all of Hogwarts. "But who could have done such a thing?" I felt my mouth going dry as I spoke aloud the awful suspicion, "Was it ... an agent of You-Know-Who?"

My question, inane though it was, served to cool my friend from the first shock of his temper. "He may be the Napoleon of the Dark Arts," Snape replied in calmer, though still acerbic, tones, "and his agents may be numerous and splendidly organised," as he had more cause to know than anyone alive, "but, had the Dark Lord been behind this, far graver crimes would have been committed than mere petty larceny. No, no," he continued in ruminative tones, as he began to pace, the energy of his anger transforming as I watched to the energy of thought, "I feel assured we need look no further afield than Hogwarts for the culprit." He paused to impale me with his stare, like a tattered brown moth on a pin, as he declared, "There is a cancer of thievery in the student body, and I will have it excised."

In that moment, as I returned that sabre-sharp stare, I remembered well the old saw: "Meddle not in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle, and quick to anger."

Snape lifted his gaze from me and his wand lifted in the same moment, moving in a beckoning gesture that left a serpentine symbol in green fire upon the air. I watched in awe as it writhed and flared, before fading at length with a slow, sinister hiss.

At this moment there was a loud knock at the door, and I could hear Mrs. Norris raising her voice in a wail of expostulation and dismay.

"What in Merlin's name is that racket?" I said, "Is Hogwarts under attack?"

"No, it's not quite so bad as that. It is my unofficial army -- the Slytherin Irregulars."

As he spoke, there came a swift pattering of feet upon the stones, a clatter of high voices, and in rushed a dozen or so dirty and ragged little students. There was some show of discipline among them, despite their tumultuous entry, for they instantly drew up in line and stood facing us with expectant faces. One of their number, paler and cleaner than the others, stood forward with an air of lounging superiority which was very funny in such a disreputable little scarecrow.

"Got your message, sir," said he, "and brought 'em on sharp."

"So you did," said Snape. "In future, they can report to you, Malfoy, and you to me. I cannot have my rooms invaded in this way. However, it is just as well that you should all hear the instructions. I want to find the student who stole a boomslang skin from my stores today. It is one and a half feet long, two inches wide, brown, smooth-scaled. I want the skin and I want the thief. Let me know the moment you have news. Is that all clear?"

"Yes, sir," said Malfoy.

"The old scale of reward, with five points extra to the boy who finds the thief and another five if the skin is returned intact. One point each in advance. Now off you go!"

Away they buzzed out the door and I heard them a moment later streaming down the corridor.

"If that snakeskin is still in existence they will find it," said Snape. "They can go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone. I expect to hear before tomorrow evening that they have spotted it. In the meantime, we can do nothing but await results."

However, on my return to Snape's rooms the next night, it was evident that his urchin Aurors had not been as forthcoming with news as hoped. As a result, I found him dejected and somewhat morose. He would hardly reply to my questions and busied himself all the evening in an abstruse alchemical analysis which involved much heating and distilling of vapours, ending at last in a smell which fairly drove me out of the dungeons. Up to the small hours of the morning I could hear the clinking of his phials which told me that he was still engaged in his malodorous experiment.

The following afternoon, I saw him stalking purposefully toward the castle's entrance hall. I hailed him and those long strides halted. He stood silent, silhouetted against the archway, waiting for me to catch up. Mrs. Norris trotted ahead, pausing to rub against his robes in greeting. It was remarkable that Snape allowed a familiarity which left long hairs upon the black silk. More than once during the years that I had lived with him in the dungeons I had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion's stern and didactic manner. His catlike love of personal cleanliness ensured that his chin should always be smooth and his linen perfect. I made no remark however, but limped up to him. Though my rheumatism did not prevent me from walking it ached wearily at every change of the weather.

"The fact that my Slytherins have been unable to discover the culprit has made me wonder whether the students might not be innocent after all," Snape said as we started down the stairs leading out onto the grounds. In reply to my snort of skepticism at the very idea, he added slyly, "Well, I thought I might as well rule out the possibility, however remote."

We made our way to the Groundskeeper's hut, a ramshackle hovel well suited to its squalid inhabitant. The muddy yard surrounding his hut was well-trampled by the footprints of a gigantic hound. Sure enough, our arrival was heralded by a baying howl from within, and Mrs. Norris turned tail and fled as if a werewolf were at her heels.

We could hear the booming voice of the occupant, "Orright then, 'ush up, yeh great slobberin' thing," before the door opened and the half-Giant Hagrid stood filling the doorway with his uncouth bulk. His beetle-browed frown in my direction turned instantly to a deferential, cowed look when he saw my companion.

"Oh, hello there, Professor," Hagrid said, as his shaggy head bobbed and his ham fists twisted before him like a sheepish firstie's. "What can I do for yeh then, sir?"

"I should like to see your Gremlins." Snape declared coolly.

"Fascinatin' creatures, Gremlins," Hagrid replied, as he stumped down the stairs and led us round the back of the hut, where a large cast iron cage held five creatures that resembled overgrown Cornish pixies, except that they lacked wings and antennae, and their green hides were as coarsely armoured as a crocodile's. All of them were curled up in tight balls on the floor of the cage, insensible save for faint, rasping snores. "I got 'em off ol' Sourdough Crumb down at the pub, he wanted ter give 'em away as a litter. They've grown up a treat since I got 'em, too." He pointed out the comatose creatures one by one, chattering brainlessly as he did so, "Ain't they beauties? That one there's Salacious, an' that's Rapacious, Suspicious, Delicious, an' Robert, he's the runt of the litter. Sorry they ain't more lively, sir, only they're nocturnal, your Gremlins are," Hagrid burbled, "they won't start to perk up before sundown."

"Thank you, I am aware of the meaning of the word 'nocturnal'." Snape declared in tones that withered the great oaf's enthusiasm with gratifying ease. "Are you quite sure they are securely confined?" he inquired, as he craned in to peer at the cage's padlock with extreme dubiousness.

"Oh, yes, def'nitely, sir," Hagrid rushed to assure him, "I keep 'em locked up tighter'n a Blast-Ended Skrewt's arse, pardon me French, sir," he added hastily as Snape gave him a glare that almost set his beard ablaze. "I gotta lock 'em up," he babbled, anxiety knotting his thick brows, "'cause they're terrible things for thievin', Gremlins are. Steal the core outta yer wand as soon as look at yeh, Gremlins will. I got this lock special when I got 'em, see," one huge and hairy finger poked at the heavy padlock, "'cause cold iron's the only thing that'll hold 'em."

The Groundskeeper's hound, which had slunk out of the hut at his master's heels, snuffled wetly at the pointed ear of one of the creatures, which was protruding between the bars. The ear flicked and the hound let out an earsplitting bark and promptly hid behind the half-Giant's bulk, cowering from a creature not only asleep but a fraction of his size. I could not forbear from snorting in derision, and a slight lift of my friend's aquiline nose hinted that he shared my opinion of the slavering cur.

"Do you confine that beast in your hut after dark?" Snape asked suddenly.

"Fang?" Hagrid replied -- as if there could be any doubt -- "Oh, no, sir, I let him out every sunset so's he can have the run of the grounds at night. He jus' loves it, always has, ever since he was a pup. I've never once seen him back home before sunrise. Does him the world o' good to have his nightly sniff around, don't it, boy?" At this point Hagrid seemed to forget he was in a conversation with his betters. He bent to fondle the slobbering animal's ears while it gazed up at him with an expression of idiot devotion that matched Hagrid's own.

"I see." Snape cried with prodding sharpness, snapping Hagrid's wandering attention back where it belonged. Snape nailed the dolt beneath an assessing scrutiny that had him squirming with apprehension. After allowing the silence to stretch to a point where it was in itself a scathing comment, Snape said merely, "Carry on, then." He turned in a wash of robes -- his lithe frame all the more elegant in contrast to the other's coarse and unwashed bulk -- and strode away.

After I hastened to catch up to Snape, he commented, "An amusing interval, and most instructive."

It had seemed a singularly pointless discourse to me, especially the latter part, but naturally I knew better than to say so to him. I composed my next question with great caution, so much so that I found myself unconsciously mimicking his turn of phrase, which was always more scholarly and cultured than my own. "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

"The dog did nothing in the night-time."

"That was the curious incident," remarked Severus Snape.

I turned my friend's words over in my mind, and spoke no more until after we had returned to the castle, and to the dungeons, and to his sitting-room.

"Well, Filch," said Snape as I settled onto his sofa with relief after the long walk, "what do you make of it all?"

"I make nothing of it," I answered frankly. "It is a most mysterious business."

"As a rule," said Snape, "the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes that are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this matter."

"What are you going to do, then?" I asked.

"To brew," he answered. "It is quite a three cauldron problem, and I ask that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes." He seized a Potions grimoire from the most heavily-warded shelf in the room and curled himself up in his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his hawk-like nose, and there he sat with his eyes lowered and his nose thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird. I had come to the conclusion that he had dropped asleep, and indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair with the gesture of a man who has made up his mind what to brew. He strode from the sitting-room into his laboratory. However, he did me the courtesy of leaving open the door communicating between the two rooms, and through it I watched him work.

As I watched, I stretched out at full length upon his sofa, for the ache in my joints was particularly bad, and though I was too proud to ask my friend for liquid relief, I was weary after the unfamiliar work of walking in the treacherous and muddy outdoors. Severus Snape was a man, however, who, when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view until he had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on an apron and gloves of dragon-hide, and then wandered about the room collecting knives and ladles and other implements from one cupboard, and jars and phials of ingredients from another. These he set out upon the workbench, before which he stationed himself with three cauldrons and the grimoire laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the magical fires I saw him, his eyes fixed intently upon this brew or that, the blue smoke curling up around him, silent, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he was as I dropped off to sleep, and so he was when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the early sun shining into the charmed 'window' that adorned the deeply subterranean apartment. The cauldrons still hung above the flames, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense haze, but nothing remained of the heap of ingredients which I had seen upon the previous night.

"Awake, Filch?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then arise, and do wake your companion, we shall have need of her." He chuckled to himself as he spoke, his eyes twinkled, and he seemed a different man to the sombre thinker of the previous night.

I looked down at Mrs. Norris, who had curled up on my chest during the night. I gathered her up as I swung round and rose to my feet. I peered at the small round 'window'. It was no wonder that no one was stirring. It was scarcely dawn.

"I want to test a little theory of mine," said Snape, pulling on his coat. "I think, Filch, that you are now standing in the presence of one of the most absolute fools in Europe. I deserve to be kicked from here to Charing Cross. But I think I have the key of the affair now."

"And where is it?" I asked, smiling.

"In your arms," he answered. "Oh, yes, I am not joking," he continued, seeing my look of incredulity. "Come on, my friend, and we shall see whether it will not fit the lock."

"It has been in some points a singular case," said Snape as we left his rooms. "I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all."

There was nothing I could say to this. It was never wise to disagree with Snape's opinion, yet it was equally rash to insult him. So, I merely walked at his side, as Mrs. Norris' purring enveloped us both.

"You have a grand gift of silence, Filch," said he. "It makes you quite invaluable as a companion."

Snape paused before a section of blank corridor, in every respect as featureless as the walls that stretched away from us on either hand. He produced his wand with a flourish of wing-wide sleeves. Ebony tapped against stone as he murmured, "Prudentes sicut serpentes," and the stones rearranged themselves into an archway. He led me through into a low-ceilinged but spacious hall. Windows set below the surface of the lake filled the room with a deep green glow. I followed him down the right-hand one of a pair of spiralling staircases, past the first landing, until we paused at the second. He slipped a glass atomiser out of his sleeve and, opening the door a crack, sprayed the room beyond once.

Turning to me, he opened the door wide. "It was a sleeping-potion," he explained in a murmur. "I brewed it to act specifically upon witches," he added as I made no move to enter, "you will feel no effects."

Hesitantly I stepped into the room. The green-and-silver curtains did not prevent the occasional unladylike snore from escaping. I gazed questioningly at my friend. Caution would not permit me to ask aloud what we were doing in the second-year Slytherin girls' dormitory.

With an inviting gesture, Snape opened a large wardrobe. In it, on hangers labelled with each girl's name -- Parkinson, Bulstrode, and the rest -- was the entire dormitory's supply of clean uniforms for the week, still warm from the house-elf laundry. "It occurred to me that I owe Mrs. Norris a treat, after leading her into proximity to that disgusting cur of Hagrid's."

I nodded cautiously.

"So perhaps we should give her somewhere more comfortable to rest than your rather bony chest." I bent to set Mrs. Norris down on the floor of the wardrobe. She paraded to and fro, tail and back arched happily as the warm drapery of robe after robe slid over her like stroking hands. As I obeyed Snape, I kept my features schooled as carefully as I knew how, but judging by the glint of sardonic amusement in black eyes -- a look I had often seen turned upon students as they tried to bluff their way out of trouble, but had almost never been directed at me -- I suspect I did not hide from him my sudden conviction that the stresses of overwork had finally caused him to take leave of his senses.

So we left Mrs. Norris to her bizarrely-located catnap. I followed Snape out of the Slytherin dormitories, through the commons and out of the secret door. I spoke no word, but my heart was as heavy as the stones that sealed themselves behind us as I silently lamented the ruin of the most incisive, logical mind in Wizarding Britain.

"Well, well," said he presently with an exclamation of satisfaction, "things are turning a little in our direction at last. Why Filch, I do honestly believe that we are going to pull it off, after all." He slapped me on the shoulder with a sudden burst of hilarity before leaving to prepare for his first class of the day.

*

Over the days that followed, my reactions to that extraordinary scene were such a tangle that it is difficult to describe them now. I had no fears for Mrs. Norris' safety, for she had returned to my side later that same morning. Evidently she had been roused from her nap by the sounds of students preparing for their breakfast, and had come to ask me for hers.

No, my fears were all for my highly-strung friend. Where before I had sought his society eagerly, now I shunned it, in unspoken terror that I should find that magnificent intellect babbling like a foolish child. Of all ruins, that of a noble mind is the most deplorable. Thus deprived of the pleasure of my friend's company, I found myself recalling time and again, the most troubling exchange I had had with him in the past.

I relived, over and over, that fateful night after the end of the previous academic year. I watched, helpless to alter the flow of events, as Severus Snape took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all disfigured and scarred with that Darkest of Marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject; but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.

Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the firewhiskey which I had taken with my lunch or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.

"Which is it to-day," I asked, "Serenitas or Delectatio?"

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened.

"It is Serenitas," he said, "a seven-pixie-heart solution. Would you care to try it?"

"No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution lacks a wizard's durability. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it."

He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Filch," he said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment."

"But consider!" I said earnestly. "Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another but as a caretaker to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable."

He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his finger-tips together, and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.

"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation."

"It is as well for all of us that you thrive so on your work." I replied, thinking of his gruelling round of duties, as Potions Master and as Head of Slytherin, as well as his private Potions researches and whatever it was that took him occasionally off Hogwarts' grounds, only to see him return wounded both in body and in spirit. "Still, the division seems rather unfair," I remarked. "You have done so much work this year. Yet Gryffindor gets both House and Quidditch cups, Potter gets the credit, pray what remains for you?"

"For me," said Severus Snape, "there still remains the potion-bottle." And he stretched his long white hand up for it.

*

In the end, and to my own lasting shame, it was not I who brought the long days of our estrangement to a close. It was Snape who broke his reclusive routine and sought me out. I was in my sitting-room with my brushes, my fairy-wing glue and tincture vitae, and my strips of mummy-linen, restoring a worn portrait, when I heard the fire in my bedroom grate roar high, and saw its light shift to the green of an active Floo connection.

"It is a lovely evening, my dear Filch," said a well-known voice. "I really think that this admirable firewhiskey I have just obtained will be more comfortable inside you than out."

For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifting from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in all the world. I dropped brushes and linen with a clatter. The scrawny witch in the portrait harrumphed irritably at me but I paid her no mind as I hurried into the other room as fast as my feet could carry me.

"Snape --" I cried, "Professor!" To see those sharply-planed features glowing amid the flames of my own small fireplace was as astonishing as if you passed the Knight Bus while travelling by Floo.

"Come along," said he, as calm and rational as you please, "and do bring Mrs. Norris. I have some disjecta membra from a recent dissection -- neck, legs, crop and so on -- that she would no doubt enjoy."

It was all I could do to gasp, "I'll be there!" before running back out to the sitting-room to get my coat. I thought I heard a snort of amusement as the Floo connection sputtered and faded.

*

The door to Snape's rooms creaked wide before I had time to lay a hand on the age-blackened oak. He was ensconced in his familiar armchair at the far side of the room. Mrs. Norris chirruped a greeting to him, side-swiping his legs politely before making her way to the dissection tray on the hearthrug between us. I eased down onto the sofa with a mutual creak of worn springs and worn joints, and caught the glass he sent floating toward me, light as a soap bubble and as round and gleaming. I sipped at the rich amber liquor, grateful for the warmth of it, as he watched me over the rim of his own glass.

"A most satisfactory conclusion to events, wouldn't you say?" Snape asked suddenly.

I could only blink at him in confusion, "What conclusion?"

He regarded me with a gaze that glittered with covert amusement. "Have you not heard the dreadful news?" he inquired in a voice taut with hidden glee. In response to my bewildered headshake, he added in openly triumphant tones, "Miss Hermione Granger was confined to the hospital wing today, having ingested a most lamentably botched potion of her own brewing." He paused significantly, before concluding, "Polyjuice potion."

I knew Miss Granger was a Gryffindor, and students from that House are generally miscreants of the worst sort, yet I wondered somewhat that he could gloat so openly over an accident serious enough to require a hospital stay. His final words lacked the explanatory power that he seemed to feel they should have. But then, I was never in a position to formally study Potions, so I settled for prompting him, "Polyjuice?"

Snape settled comfortably into full Professorial mode, assuming that clipped, quiet, yet carrying tone of voice he used in the classroom, as easily as he might don the draping over-robes he wore during the day. "Polyjuice causes the imbiber to temporarily assume the appearance of another person. I might add that the formula for Polyjuice is only available from a Restricted Section volume. I fear Miss Granger will leave Madam Pomfrey's jurisdiction, only to enter Madam Pince's rather less tender care." He arched a quizzical eyebrow at me. "Can you speculate as to the ingredients of Polyjuice?" he asked suddenly.

While I am not even a Potions student, much less a Master, I flatter myself that I am not entirely devoid of wits. I scratched my chin, raising a rasp of stubble in the evening quiet, and rolled my eyes as I pretended to think it over. "One of them wouldn't happen to be boomslang skin, would it?" I drawled dryly.

Snape looked at me thoughtfully and shook his head. "I never get your limits, Filch," said he. "There are unexplored possibilities about you." He gave me one of his sharp, triangular grins and lifted his glass to me in toast. I returned the compliment, and we sipped for a moment in silence.

"So how in the world did you guess that she was the thief?" I asked, openly intrigued.

"Guess?" Snape quoted in tones sharp with rebuke, "No, no: I never guess. It is a shocking habit -- destructive to the logical faculty. What seems strange to you is only so because you do not follow my train of thought or observe the small facts upon which large inferences may depend." He set down his glass and held up his long, slim hands. They gleamed like ivory against the black backdrop of his robes as he began to count off points on his fingertips. "Fact: Granger, obnoxious little know-it-all though she is, is nevertheless one of the most intelligent students of her year. Therefore, she is one of the tiny minority of students who might actually succeed in petty larceny from my stores. Fact: there are remarkably few potions for which boomslang skin is an essential ingredient, and of those few potions only Polyjuice has effects which would appeal to student mischief-makers. Fact: there is no question that anyone or anything apart from a student could have committed the crime,"

I had been listening raptly to this elegant display of reasoning, but here I could not forbear from interrupting, "How do you know that?"

"My rooms are quite thoroughly warded against intrusion by ghost or poltergeist," Snape replied, and I nodded with admiration and no small amount of envy. I would have given much to be able to cast anti-poltergeist wards over Hogwarts as a whole. "I can also rule out magical creatures as suspects. Nifflers are enamoured of treasure -- precious metals and gems -- they are not attracted at all to snakeskin. And while there is no accounting for what a Gremlin will choose to steal, I am thoroughly satisfied that none of Hagrid's Gremlins have ever left his custody."

I grumbled, "I wouldn't be so certain that lumbering ox could do anything right."

"Ordinarily, I would be inclined to agree with you." Snape replied mildly, accepting my contradiction with a lack of comment that spoke clearly of his rare good humour. "However, had any of them escaped, they would have had to do so after dark. They are, as you no doubt observed, completely torpid during daylight hours, even late in the afternoon. And we know that none of them made a night-time bid for freedom, and why?" Another of those sharp, flashing grins, "Because of Fang."

Mrs. Norris expressed her opinion of this idea by promptly vomiting a hairball onto the hearthrug. Snape merely tsk'd at her and banished the mess from existence with a flick of an Evanesco. I sighed wistfully. My envy of magic was as old as my earliest memories, and, in the company of this particular wizard at least, it had long lost its power to wound.

Snape gleefully went on to explain, "We know that Fang is let out of doors every sunset. We know that he has 'never once' returned before sunrise. We know -- or at least I know -- that Boarhounds such as Fang have exquisitely acute senses of smell and hearing which are, of course, unaffected by even the darkest night. And, most critical of all," he added with a smirk, "we know that Fang is a pathetic, cowardly cur. Had even one of those Gremlins set so much as a toe outside that cage, he would have been howling Hagrid's door down, so he could be let in to hide under his master's bed."

I chuckled appreciatively at that mental image, and he joined me, snickering softly. "So," I murmured, "That leaves the students. The smarter students," I clarified hastily in response to the lift of one eyebrow. "But how did you know it was Granger?"

"Though Granger, by reason of her intelligence and her lack of proper respect for her Professors, was always my prime suspect, I did not know for certain that she was guilty," Snape replied, "not until my retribution -- no, our retribution --" he nodded to me, and to Mrs. Norris, who replied with a purr "-- had landed the thief in the hospital wing."

I gaped, utterly bewildered, at my friend. "In Merlin's name," I cried, "What retribution?"

"We ensured she would botch that Polyjuice." Snape replied. "Or, to be completely accurate, Mrs. Norris did."

The mystery was only growing deeper by the second. All I could do was gasp, "How?"

"By sleeping in the Slytherin wardrobe, of course." Snape answered, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. But at last, after basking in my flummoxed expression, he did finally take pity on my incomprehension. "You see, Filch," he explained, "Polyjuice will only allow the imbiber to impersonate someone else if one adds a bit of tissue from the person to be imitated. Hair is the most usual ingredient, as it is the most easily obtained without the target's knowledge. That night you put my sofa to such good use, as I brewed I asked myself, among other things, 'Why would Granger, or another highly intelligent student, desperately need to impersonate someone? Stridently, self-consciously intellectual people such as Granger seldom have romantic entanglements to drive such deception, and romantic factors are doubly impossible in her case because of her youth. No, her motives were probably far more transparent, most likely having to do with helping her tiresome little friends, Potter and Weasley. So, what might she be helping them to do? Potter is currently feeling rather self-indulgently victimised by the ludicrous rumours that he, of all people, is supposedly the Heir of Slytherin. Presumably the three of them feel that these Heir of Slytherin rumours are some sort of conspiracy by Slytherin students to malign poor little Potter."

Mrs. Norris sneezed. I contented myself with a roll of my eyes.

"Therefore," Snape continued, "so that she could uncover this non-existent conspiracy, the target for her impersonation must perforce be a Slytherin. And I could further deduce that Granger would be most likely to attempt to impersonate a female Slytherin, and one whom she knew most thoroughly, so that she could accurately mimic her target's mannerisms. Thus," he concluded, "it was a simple matter to deduce that it was to the second-year female dormitory we should bring Mrs. Norris for that morning visit, which I timed carefully to follow the weekly laundry delivery by the house-elves. After that, when the larcenous Miss Granger approached any of my second-years on her quest for Polyjuice ingredients, she would obtain hair samples that, by their very nature, would declare her guilt when she added them to the skin she stole and brewed her restricted potion. Yes, Filch," Snape declared with an air of vast satisfaction, "By her own actions she let the cat out of the bag."

As I spluttered at the pun, he advised me with a diabolically deadpan manner, "It would be a compassionate gesture, were you to pay her a visit during her hospital stay." A truly wicked grin dawned on those sallow features as he concluded, "I imagine her once utterly ordinary face has been much improved by its new whiskers and fur."

I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. "When I hear you give your reasons," I remarked, "the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours."

"Quite so," he answered, stretching long legs before him as he sprawled at ease in his armchair. "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have seen this bottle, from which I had poured your drink and mine."

"I can see it now."

"How plainly can you see it?"

"As plain as the nose on your face."

"Then how many drinks are there in it?"

"How many? I don't know."

"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point."

With that, Professor Severus Snape embarked, with the aid of a bottle of Ogden's Old Peculier and an increasingly-haphazard application of Leviosa, upon the selfless course of action of educating your humble correspondent, Argus Filch, in the Practical Application of the Subtle Science and Exact Art of Observation and Deduction.

As a result, I Observed, albeit through somewhat doubled vision, that between us, we managed to Deduct every last dram from the bottle, before the night was done.

***


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