adjunct | Predictably, Neville was left partnerless.

I talked to Ms Carnahan about making sure you weren't scheduled with Snape, and I'll try to swing that as best I can. But I figured it'd probably be politer you talk to you upfront. Unless you'd rather I talked to her? [Fiona doesn't want secondhand information, and angles the question to politely underline that point. Still, if he says no, she's hardly going to force him.]

It's alright.

[He's done this now, a few times now. It's much harder to be detached about the whole experience when he's not explaining it to people who know what they were up against, but Neville at least gives it his level best go. He takes a breath, and begins quietly, voice cracking here and there:]

Albus Dumbledore is the name of the Headmaster before Professor Snape. Snape killed him, before he took over, so he must've had a good laugh naming the school after him here.

There're these people that call themselves Death Eaters. They care about blood purity, they say you're worth nothing if you haven't got wizard blood that you can trace. They hunted Muggle-borns - that's kids who are born to two parents who can't do magic, I mean - like animals, they locked them up in our prison, Azkaban. Young as eleven-year-olds. Said they'd stolen their magic from someone else, which is - that's just stupid, yeah? You can't do that, and none of the muggle-borns I know would have done, anyway.

Professor Snape was one of those, a Death Eater. Hogwarts used to be safe for everybody to learn magic, no matter who your parents were, but that changed when he got the spot. He hired two Death Eaters, too, a brother and sister - the Carrows. He put them in charge of discipline because they liked that sort of thing, and teaching - Muggle Studies, and what used to be Defense Against the Dark Arts. It just turned into Dark Arts. Alecto Carrow did Muggle Studies, she taught everybody that Muggles are disgusting and shouldn't be mated with. Quite mean. Carried around a knife and liked to stick the students who argued back. Amycus Carrow taught us how to use the Dark Arts to torture other students, including curses that used to get you a life sentence for casting. The Cruciatus Curse, specifically. It causes you the worst pain you've ever felt, the worst pain you ever could feel, and if you get it enough, your mind could just... break. If we refused to torture each other, we got tortured instead.

He says he was working undercover, that he did what he could for us. But he was the only one in that whole school with the power to stop the Carrows, and he never did, not once. He never left his office, never lifted a finger, he just let them torture us and cut us up and deny us going to the Healer for laughs, sometimes kept us from eating or sleeping with their detentions. He let them take kids hostage to use against their parents who were causing trouble outside, he didn't care. Or if he did care, fat load of good that did anybody in the world but himself.

[Whatever fight had entered his voice bleeds out after that, and there's a bit of quiet before he finishes.]

Anyway, other people from our world believe him, but they weren't there: they were on the outside that year, on the run. They didn't see what he turned that school into. If you want the truth, I don't think his arm needed much twisting, either way. He always hated the students that weren't in his House, even the really good ones who worked hard and wanted to learn, like Hermione Granger. He always looked for reasons to punish them or give them bad grades long before Dumbledore was-- gone.

Wait, so he used to be a teacher, before Dumble-d- [What could be an emotional moment is ruined by Fiona stumbling over Dumbledore's stupid name.] Dumbledore. So you think that guy kept him in check, but when he died...?

[She's got a running theory, and it all lines up. She's just got to check when their Dumbledore showed up, and also talk to this Hermione Granger kid. Woman. Shit, isn't she a teacher?]

Yeah. He was a teacher - Potions - and the head of one of the four Houses. [Neville stops to think about the question, and he finds himself nodding even though she can't see it.] I think so. He was just about the most powerful wizard in the world, according to everyone. None of that would have been allowed to happen, if he had still been alive: Professor Dumbledore always did everything he could to protect that school.

And... d'you really think he'll start torturing kids again, if Mr Dumbledore leaves? He's at the school now. [Fiona has met him, and he reminds her of the kind of guy who sells weasels out of shoe boxes on street corners because they make excellent pets, really, one for five dollars, two for nine! But, you know, wizards. They're weird.]

I-- don't know. Maybe not. But he already proved perfectly willing to do it once, didn't he. [No matter what Harry and Hermione say, that is absolutely nothing that Neville wouldn't put past Severus Snape anymore.]