A House Homecoming for All

\"What\'s all this then?\" Pomphry snatched the quivering linen imbued mass from Cait\'s \"Quidditch\" tired limbs manically.

\"What exactly did the professor tell you?\" Jess asked carefully, casting a poignant look Cait\'s way to ensure her silence.

\"Just some rushed fragmented sentences about an abandoned child belonging to one of the faculty,\" Pomphry cooed, her entire demeanor morphing into something frighteningly gentle whilst unravelling the disfigured bastard\'s wrappings.

\"Well...\" Jessica paused with bated breath, expecting the anticipated gasp of repugnance that never came, \"it\'s not... hideous to you, is it?\"

Cait immediately puffut lut like some silly flamingo and stepped forward towards the oblivious pinky; having obviously taken a shining to it, Cait felt a strange megnetic, all encompassing cosmic pull to orbit the infant for the rest of its days. This emotional connection was fairly visible in her eyes, just as it was reflected in Pomphry\'s - Jess could only pray the thing be dead before nightfall; if not for Dobby\'s sake, then for its defamatory life to be lead there at Hogwarts... as Flitiwick\'s babe.

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At the manor, Lucius was contemplating the many new and improved, ingenius improvisations upon muggle warfare and its weaponry since the sixteenth century; the reason being because, of course, his chambers of delight merely contained a few discarded items befallen from previous satanic cults and the like which even more devious ancestors had been involved in. He was anxious to begin reaping the eternal benefits of association with a muggle born Slytherin, if it had ever been possible in the past; he didn\'t rightly care.

Taking it upon his noble self to sharpen all necessary surgial equipment of a vicious and certainly prodding persuasion, Lucius was preparing to garner the truth by the most expedient means as well as one he had always surpassed all others he\'d ever come into contact with - torture.

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\"Headmaster, will you listen for just one ample moment amidst your feeble reorchestrations of literary prowess\"

\"Severus, there is this one, you know: \'I\'ve been living, drowning, drinking the words upon a course-\' you\'re laways like that, aren\'t you? Buried in a book, eh?\" Dumbledore\'s galss eye was threatenging to hurl itslef upon the floor in a most decorous way to assist Snape in causing the man mortal blindness as well as for more decorous purposes.

\"Really, yes; how bountifully trite-\"

\"Oh, and you, \"soar upon the silence of thought,\" often, don\'t you, my boy?\" Dumbledore laughed the way only old, senile decrepids can becfore choking upon their own spittle and nearly widdling themselves.

\"Yes sir, very cleverly integrated quote there...\" Severus clapped obtusely and rather felt like defenestrating himself than standing there subjecting himself to another escapade as Death\'s nanny for the soon to follow.

\"It\'s a wonder you haven\'t yet grown some candal appendage, associating with that serpentine witch,\" Dumbledore smirked - the old man smirked! Snape stared on aghast.

\"I thought you\'d bst est entranced to hear a reitteration of your lover\'s published works...\" Dumbledore could\'ve very well have done a somersault right there at that point in time and Severus would\'ve been less bemused. The robed pretender then stood up a little less stiffly than expected and turned around to face the bookshelf where he slid the modest book of poetry.

\"Reallevereverus, she has got you flitting around at her beck and call, hasn\'t she?\" Snape finally came to his senses then and stood up abruptly.

\"Headmaster, whatever you have against Miss Slytherin, I trust that opinion or rather... percpetion of an opinion, will not portend the culmination of her stay here at Hogwarts,\" Snape panted, attempting to conceal the breaking sweat and trembling palms so easily kept at bay at far less opposing conditions - for instance, at orginerous meetings at Malfoy Manor. Compeltely forgetting his original reason for coming into Albus\' office, Snape regarded Albus for a few seconds before surmising that it was a plot of casuistry, corruption and malintent.

Before he could firmly consolidate his thoughts, he felt a swirling through his mind as though someone where splashing a bathtub to form phsychological ripples amidst the dendrites and axon bulbs; Dubledore was using occulemency to discover Jessica\'s whereabouts, which meant that it wasn\'t really Dumbledore because there was never any need to go to such ends; the old wretch was always omnipresent! LUCIUS!

\"Ah yes, how the machine turns, Severus, you\'ve discovered the ruse...\" Lucius\' voice revererabted inside his head like Satan\'s thunderous appraisal before claiming Beelzebub\'s solidarity for all of time.

\"\'The gleaming trees, like the snow\'s tears amidst the glistening sun\'s persuasion\' - how lovely, my defiant protege; tell me, why aren\'t you abiding our master\'s orders?\"

Snape twisted and writhed beneath the blonde deman\'s mental brace, unyielding and apathetic as his eyes and tongue and daggars upon closer expection of \"Dumbledore\'s\" robes.

With a jolt, Snape was sent across the room and nearly knocked out by Lucius\' respectable determination; to serve meant everything, even more than prosperity for his family at times, and he was damned to allow one dissollutioned man by the ways of \"love\" prevent him from harnessing total control.

With irrespectiemeremerity, Lucius snatched at Snape\'s shirt and trousers and took another polyjuice pre-ordered selection from his own pocket, and downed it with a black hair. Snape merely moaned and went to reach for his wand which had been predictably seized as Lucius had bent down to retrive whatever else he had needed to take on his persona for awhile. Snarling once more, Lucius caught Snape\'s arm and wrenched it free of its joint, immoblizing him further with a yelp and a twitch of vendictive promise.

\"If it\'s left to me alone, Snape... and you don\'t atone your treacherous negligence... I will be the one to spill her blood upon the whim of our master...\" Lucius sneered with an edge of competition looming in the flash of his cold regard, \"and save the cambric for you to suck dry as it will be her only remains.\"

Snape fell asleep abhoring himself rigorously after a mumbled, \"stupefy,\" from across the room and babbled irreprehensibly about love dampening his initiative and foresight. Lucius checked himself in the mirror and gave a pompous gloat before striding off down the spiral staircase, a gagged Fawkes squawking silently. He wasn\'t sure as of where to rest his cane-hand; staring at the obstinate limb annoyedly and trying to find some sort of pocket in Snape\'s surprisingly snugly fit robes. It was just another reason as to why he didn\'t take it upon himself to do these sort of things... damn that MacNair for dodging responsibilty as his lackey.

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Jess thought she\'d just about strangle herself if she heard one more endearing utterance from either the blarney enriched matron, now easily considering the adoption of one sordid misconception of a child, or the supposed \"modern woman,\" complete with rampant, panting sex life who in no way would ever be suited to breastfeeding... a baby.

Finally, her respite had arrived in a black cloaked bustle of determination; Jessica rushed up and clasped a steely cold hand in the mimick of a hearty shake only to press it to her cheek warmly. Lucius, who\'d only been privvy to the demonstrative, assertive, no-nonsense Jessica for any congnitive period of time, was momentarily stunned and speechless; however, Jessica merely interpreted it as a hesitant reaction to the glorified tadpole in Pomphry\'s bottle-wielding arms.

\"I know it\'s a bit repelling... but it should be; be; what am I saying? Of course it is,\" Jessica rolled her eyes and shook her head in self-deprication, \"it\'s only them that\'ve been at my throat for half and hour, coercing me into believing that this little Duckie\'s going to be fine-\" Jessica choked and nearly spat her self-loathing.

\"Did you hear that? I just called it Duckie!\" At \"Snape\'s\" slight nod, Jessica fell into his arms like a cold, wet noodle and mumbled something into his chest as she was wont to do. Lucius mentally sighed, never permitting himself the explusion otherwise and stared down at the beguiling blonde tufts before him; she really was quite nice once she was amenable and compliant. And so Imperio was in order; although it would be a shame to see the insides of her eyelids weaken against the nondepleting brash light triggers behind the cerebral cortex as he took possession of the darkest recesses.

He would extort whatever use she would provide for their cause, although it was still unbenknownst to the lot of them in on the arrangement; Lucius had an inkling himself that once the amulet was around her neck that she would carry on the line or perhaps be inhabited by Salazar\'s vicious immortal affirmation himself. However dissolute by nature Lucius was, he wasn\'t prepared to gradate any scheme originally conjured up by his master in order to slake his impending want, no... he had some honour.

When Jessica looked she she saw not the man he\'d grown so accustomed to these past few days, but a timerous, aesthetically demonstrative demon; the usual placid face of her Severus was contorted into some sneer of indignation at being touched and automatically, she dropped his hand.

Then, purely out of gut instinct, Jessica shouted at Pomphry and Cait to get down and unsheathed her wand from a nifty little case with snakes trailing up it which Andrew had so considerately bought for her somewhere in Diagon Alley.

\"Get back, Malfoy! I don\'t know why you\'re here, inhabiting Snape\'s body, but whatever it is, I wager these two right here needn\'t have to be involved!\" Lucius forgot where he was for a moment and reached for his cane, cursing his own fatuity, orchestrated by this oversight in and of itself.

With a lurid, palpable abatement of pride in his eyes, so tempting it provoked Jessica to want to rip it out had it not been for the reminder of their charcoal lustre, Lucius primally lunged at her with a crash upon some instrument tray before they were sent far from Hogwarts grounds by a dark magic portkey in an embezzled serpentine pendant almost identical to Jessica\'s new \"prize\" from Draco.

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The first thing Andrew woke up to was a vivid imprint of the Slytherin escutcheon upon his retina, as if burned there by Voldemort himself. Leaping out of his cot, not long ago vacated by one semi-corpereal Baron after a late night of \"lessons,\" Andrew wrenched on his trousers and a large t-shirt and ran to the Great Hall in a flurry, struggling to clean his glasses from all of the fog quickly gathering there. Recognizing a hobblng form reminiscent of a scowling Snape, Andrew caught up quickly and tugged upon his sleeve, or what was left of it being half singed and charred.

\"Sir, I think I had a preminition!\" Snape merely trudged onward, sightly limping and wincing with each step; he refused to make eye contact, but for some implicit reason, Andrew knew why - *sniffle, sniffle*.

\"Something\'s happened, hasn\'t it?\" Andrew gasped and finally, the correlation was revealed to him; the state of Snape, Jessica\'s apparent absensce, and the hellish wailing emanating from the infirmery where Snape was obviously trying to head for.

\"He took her...\" Andrew\'s voice petered off into the echo of Snape\'s too thin boots of dragonhide to cope with the loss of something so pungeantly unforgetable to just relent. Snape turned around suddenly, still clutching his arm in a meagre attempt to rectify its dislocation and gave a grim smile.

\"The Slytherin line will live on, Mr. Ravenclaw-\'

\"And what\'s that supposed to mean exactly?\" Cait piped up as they\'d entered the infirmary, bouncing around, hair deshellved (which was not only because of her most recent of debaucheries, though when compared to what Jessica was destined to partake of in the measure of lewd verisimilitude, they were right trips down the altar to confession), and feeling completely useless.

\"It means... that Jessica\'s stealth... may have to overcompensate for lack of magical knowhow,\" Snape breathed and collapsed upon a stray gurny; repleted and weary at once, he passed beyond the shades of dark, beyond the strips of green lea in lieu of a playground as a boy, befor\'d \'d ever set foot upon the tatterred earth he\'d come to worship as some sardonic, inanimate god; forever it kept him there at Hogwarts whilst sending him flashes of solace in the form of an evil so coveted because of the greeness, the unwilling spawn of the demonic principle, not yet forsaken by him or any of the Dark Lord\'s constituents.

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A/N: PLEASE REVIEW - I WILL CHERISH EVERY WORD!