The Taming of the Shrew - Wizard Style - COMPLETE

____________________________________________________


5-8-10 Sat

Sorry for being one day late. It's Mother's Day in the U.S.A. tomorrow and I got a bit delayed by other plans. Happy Mother's Day to all of you female parental units out there! (Old joke from a long-running comedy show here.)


Plot begins to really simmer. More lemons after the plot comes to a rolling boil - sorry, none this time. For those who need a refreshing glass of lemonade, try rereading some of the earlier lemon chapters and see if they do any good. The plot has to go center stage now.

____________________________________________________


Chapter Forty-Eight

The Room Tells All

Within two days Lucius and Snape had organized their spurious reason for passing each student through the Room of Requirement by merely adding wand-casting to the curriculum in the same way they had added the physical exercise.

Most of the students were eager to have some place to let loose with spells they normally would not be allowed to try, so there was no trouble lining up all the Charms and Transfigurations classes for appointments in the Room; those classes were taken each year by nearly everyone so it accounted for almost all students. Even the teachers were enamored of casting a variety of spells they didn’t get to use much.

To the investigators’ collective dismay and the Room’s disgust, the Room became a wildly popular place with students practicing even when not required. Rows of manufactured targets in a multitude of designs from little horklumps to mountain trolls to dragons attracted the teens; a few students wanted to have Death Eaters to aim at, but that idea was summarily vetoed by both Snape and Lucius. By the end of the first week all the students had passed through and been relieved of the poison in their systems – for the moment. That wasn’t the part that interested the small group, though.

The Room had identified several places on the students’ bodies where the toxin had originally entered. Strangely, the ingress had more often than not been on their hands, most notably fingers and the sides of the palms, although occasionally the palms themselves showed signs of the drug. Quite a few toxic tongue tips were recorded and one student had it appear on his rear end. That puzzled everyone. Had the student sat in the drug somehow?

~~~~~~

Using the data they gathered from the Room, a new meeting was called and everyone offered an assortment of opinions on what contaminants could have caused the odd patterns on the students’ skin.

Hermione was assiduously writing down all the wild postulations and rolling up full parchments, when suddenly she squealed. “Yes! Yes! Look!”

The others turned to see her standing up from her desk, halfway through rolling a parchment. They looked around the room trying to see what had her so excited and she barked impatiently, “No! Here! Look!” and she held up the parchment. “See what I’m doing? I’m rolling the paper. It touches my palms. When I write on the paper, it touches the side of my hand. And I’m constantly repositioning the paper with my fingers. It’s the parchment. The parchment!” Then she sat down. “I think…”

Snape stood up and walked over to Hermione, “Give it to me!” he said peremptorily. He took a piece of the parchment, sniffed it and ran his fingers over it. “It doesn’t seem wrong,” he said, “but let me test it right now.” He hurried over to the attached Potions storeroom, gathered some ingredients and re-emerged with various bottles. Bent over a worktable, he set out his equipment and began testing the parchment. Then he chanted “Specialis Revelio” and waited. Several minutes went by with everyone holding his breath, hoping it was the answer.

“Damn,” came the expletive from Snape as he straightened up, gazing sadly at the group. “There is nothing unusual about this paper.”

“Oh, no,” said Hermione. “I was so sure…” She slumped in her chair, a difficult feat with her ballooning middle. Lucius stepped over to his wife’s side, rubbing her shoulders to show his support. His initial urge was to rub her sweetly rounded belly, but the strictures of his formal courtesy forbade that familiarity in the presence of the group.

It was one of his most prized joys, seeing his wife’s body bloom with his unborns. He wasn’t ready to admit it to anyone, but he turned positively mawkish when he saw her walk toward him with her jumper straining across her belly. The current Muggle fashion of tight maternity garments instead of loose robes was one idea he could embrace wholeheartedly. His masculine pride in her condition was an unending emotional high.

Instead he sat down beside Hermione and took her hand in his, squeezing it in sympathy. “The pattern fits and your idea was clever,” he said. “It’s becoming very dispiriting, trying to find the answer in all this. There are too many possibilities. I had my own hopes with the knowledge the Room of Requirement has added for us. Now I feel as though we are back to square one.”

Draco’s head shot up so suddenly that everyone’s eyes were drawn to him in curiosity as he sat on a desktop near the front of the room. “Sweet Goddess, Father, the squares!” He jumped up from the rickety old desk and strode over to the wooden cabinet with all the drawers where Crookshanks had lain so many months before. Frantically, he began pulling out the small drawers one by one, rummaging in each, then moving to the next.

“Do you need any help?” asked Neville, exchanging puzzled looks with Luna.

“No, no, they’re here somewhere. Ah!” Draco stood up and turned to the circle of people staring at him. He held up his hand and in it were numerous small colored squares of – Hermione gasped – parchment.

“Yes!” she cried. “Oh, how clever of you, Draco. It isn’t the plain parchment, it’s the new colored parchment. Oh, that makes so much sense. Severus -” she looked over at him, but he was already moving toward Draco with his hand out.

Draco dropped the handful of colorful squares into Snape’s hand and followed him to the worktable, hovering at his elbow as the dark-haired wizard quickly went to work setting up to analyze the new paper. He opened one folded square and went rigid for a second, then a low chuckle escaped him. “Are all these the same, Draco? What did the girl student think of your “manly chest,” hmm?”

Draco huffed and lunged to retrieve the colored squares, but Snape held him off with one hand, while prying open another. “Oh, rich, these are all love notes, apparently with idiotic threats mixed in. How romantic.” He opened more of the squares, his eyes crinkling in laughter at the sophomoric inscriptions inside. “ ‘Goldilocks, you make my heart go pitty-pat. Love me or prepare for,” Snape squinted at the green paper, “my rath – misspelled,” he stared at Draco. “You got all of these from your students?”

“And more,” mumbled Draco, thoroughly embarrassed. He shoved his hands in his pockets, his eyes traversing the room until they lit on his father. A chagrined glance traveled between the two blonds.

“Actually, Severus, I got several, too,” said Neville unexpectedly, speaking into the silence. Everyone slewed around to stare at the Herbology professor in some surprise.

“Me, too, but not so many as Neville,” said Luna. A few mouths now hung open in the room.

Hermione blushed, “I got a few. They were rather crude, but puppyish, if you know what I mean.” She darted a glance at her husband and shrugged.

Lucius turned to his wife with wide eyes. He hadn’t known she was getting them, too. Then he stood up, “Well, if we’re all mentioning those blasted scraps of paper, I’ve had them, too.” He bowed to his son and his wife. “It looks like the only ones not receiving the love notes are you, Severus, and Narcissa.”

Snape’s amusement faded at the knowledge that everyone in the room had been getting the odd missives except him. He expected Narcissa would be protected from them by his careful wards, but for all of them to receive the notes?

Narcissa saw her husband’s face turn stoic and knew he hadn’t liked the direction all the disclosures had taken. She wasn’t very happy with Lucius for skewering her new husband, but she’d known the exasperating blond forever and he was defending their son. In Lucius’ mind Severus came second to Draco. Maybe even third now that Lucius had Hermione. Severus would understand that, but it must hurt to be singled out as the only one not getting love notes, no matter their underlying lethal threats. She had never meant her secret to come to this. Narcissa couldn’t let it go on. She grimaced and stood up also, knowing her butt was now at risk of some bruising. “Actually, Severus, you’ve been getting them, too,” she admitted in a small voice.

The glare she got almost made her sit again, but she persevered, “Owls have been bringing them to the apartment. I’m there all day long and I received them. I got a few, but you got a lot. I haven’t read any but the first one belonging to you. After I started getting them, I realized what they were and I just put them away. I’ll give them to you if you like. I didn’t destroy them or anything.” Her weak, conciliatory smile didn’t budge her husband’s frozen stare an iota.

Abruptly Snape let his wife loose from his steady gaze and he turned to the room at large. “I started this with my inappropriate levity. I apologize, Draco. It was…startling to read the first one, and I let the situation get away from me. I see I am now served with the same farcical missives. Give me a few minutes to test these colored parchment squares. Did you need them preserved or may I destroy them during my tests?” Snape faced Draco with his apology and his question.

“Destroy them by all means. Except for this one,” Draco plucked a square from the pile and read it off to the group, who all began to snicker at the clinical description of Draco’s philtrum and the ‘pleasing masculine, anatomical proportions of his deltoids and scapulas’.

“What’s a philtrum?” asked Neville.

Luna rubbed the vertical depression running from under his nose to the center of his upper lip and said, “This.”

“Oh,” Neville rubbed it himself, shaking his head. “Sounds like a Ravenclaw wrote it,” he grinned. Luna punched his arm, earning an even bigger smile from her husband.

Snape had gone to work again, setting out the various pieces of paper, choosing one of each color. He set up the parchments using his ingredients and again intoned, “Specialis Revelio”. The schoolroom grew quiet once more as hopes rose.

Nerve-wracking minutes later, Snape straightened up again, but this time he smiled. “Ah, finally,” he held up squares of red, green, yellow and blue parchment carefully by their corners with pincers. “All the different colors in Draco’s little collection are tainted by a chemical that shouldn’t be there. I will need to run a few more tests to pinpoint the properties of the contaminant so we can determine how damaging it is to our bodies even though the Sorting Hat said the effects were not permanent - but we now have the culprit.”

Lucius frowned, “That fancy parchment is all over the school. Ah,” he said, enlightened, “that explains why more female students than male were affected. The girls gravitated to the pretty colors more than the boys, I’d imagine.”

“And it explains why I haven’t been bothered much by the toxin,” said Snape. He nodded at the blond wizard, “You were wondering about that, Lucius. I haven’t touched that colored parchment. It’s in our apartments,” here Snape raised an eyebrow at Narcissa, who looked even more miserable, “but I don’t use it at all. And,” he shrugged, a quizzical smile lightening his expression, “naturally, few people dare to touch me, so I would only be infected by Narcissa.” He turned to his wife, “I guess you might say you’ve reaped what you’ve sown, my love.” Narcissa’s face turned bright pink, knowing that her husband referred to his erotic spanking regimen, which had so often led to her sleeping on her stomach lately.

Hermione suddenly giggled, drawing everyone’s attention away from Narcissa and making Lucius smile at her, a question in his eyes. “The toxin on the tongue tips…students must have been sealing the tainted envelopes with their spit. And that student who had the toxin on his butt,” she laughed. “He must have used some as toilet paper.”

Barks of laughter rolled through the circle, breaking the final bits of tension for the moment. The relief of finding the answer after months of failure was making the small clique almost giddy and the merriment was very welcome.

“How do we get rid of the parchments without causing pandemonium?” asked Luna, sobering the group with the next problem. “We should really remove it all, but what excuse could we use that wouldn’t cause an uproar? If we tell students here, they will tell their parents and the ripples will go everywhere.”

“The Aurors are currently loitering around Hogsmeade trying to catch some thieves using Hagrid’s abandoned hut. I think it is time we brought them in on this, now that we know the culprit vehicle for certain,” stated Lucius. “I’ll inform the Head Auror at the Ministry first, of course, and he may choose to assign the ones already here to assist us.”

“Oh dear, that beautiful store off Diagon Alley with all the lovely colored parchment and inks – it must be the real source. How sad to lose such a delightful place,” mourned Narcissa.

Everyone blinked at the lovely woman who had put her finger unerringly on the main problem. Of course. The huge, new emporium was the only store selling large enough amounts of the colored parchment to be affecting so many. It had to be the origin of the tainted items.

“But why?” asked Hermione. “Why would they do this?”

“I’m certain we’ll discover the answer to that now that we know who is responsible. But that will also be for the Aurors to handle,” Snape said firmly. “We will leave the notification of the Head Auror to you, Lucius. He and I didn’t have a very productive discussion when I tried to tell him about the unrest a year ago. For now this information is not to be shared with anyone. The toxin is not life-threatening, merely an extreme nuisance to Purebloods, so we have a bit of time yet. I think that is all for this evening.”

Everyone disappeared except for Snape and Narcissa who helped Draco put his potions classroom back in order for the next day. After Draco left, Snape and Narcissa walked back down to their apartment hand in hand.

“I think Draco has discovered that his father has fallen in love with Hermione,” she said quietly. “It was quite obvious when we were all sitting together on our sofa. Oh, Severus,” she sighed. “I do love Lucius, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I care about the idiot, too.”

A tear appeared at the corner of Narcissa’s eye, “I’m just so happy for him. He finally has a woman who is right for him. That makes me very happy. I wish he would learn how to make her happy. He wants to, but he’s so clueless. It’s sweet and yet it’s painful to watch without being able to intercede. It’s all there if Lucius would just take the poker out of his butt.”

Narcissa!” Snape quelled his wife, “Language.”

“Pooh, now you’re sounding like Lucius.”

“I resent that. I’m nothing like that overweening, posh snob.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” she tittered, amused. “Both proud, arrogant, forceful men who always think they’re right.”

“In my case, I am always right.” He bent a mock stern look down on the beautiful blonde at his side.

“There is that,” she smiled.

“You’re to burn the rest of your green parchment immediately,” Severus directed, “but I want to read the notes I received before we burn those. You will have to open them so I don’t get the toxin on me.”

“Yes, my love,” replied his witch, petting her husband’s black clad arm in silent apology.

“Why didn’t you give me the notes when you got them?” he asked, mystified by his wife’s uncharacteristic behavior. It was not at all like her to act so decisively on her own, nor to keep secrets from him.

Narcissa grimaced, scrunching up her lovely face, “The ones I got were quite crude – I suppose because they were from boys – and juvenile. I didn’t want any girl students harassing you, but maybe the girls wrote more pleasant notes. Draco’s notes were more funny than alarming.”

They arrived at their door and Snape ushered his wife inside, quickly warding the apartment and leading her to the black sofa. He sat gingerly, the surprising caning that Narcissa had been angry enough to serve him in retaliation for her embarrassment about dallying in the sentient Room of Requirement still caused a twinge of pain when he put pressure on his backside. He was making progress with his submissive wife, but sometimes he wondered if he was doing the right thing. It was true he allowed her whatever freedoms she had and the caning had been his idea, but recently she was showing signs of a stronger self-will. Was that what Lucius found so erotic? Perhaps it wasn’t Lucius who was the idiot after all. He settled her against him, but she leaned back to look him in the eye.

“I’m sorry about the notes, Severus. I never meant to hurt you. You always take such good care of me, protecting me, and I wanted just once to be the one shielding you. Sometimes I feel as though all I do is take from you, sucking away your energy like a clump of mistletoe, a little decorative, but giving nothing in return to the strong tree supporting it.”

“I hope you aren’t going to take that analogy to its end, Cissy. Mistletoe ultimately kills its host.” Snape’s lip quirked up, but he was silently appalled at the hidden anguish of his wife. How had he missed her feelings of frivolous insignificance? Was he polluting the essential sweetness and goodness of this woman he adored by stifling her just as Lucius had? Perhaps his domineering personality couldn’t be trusted with the gentle fragility of his wife’s nature.

“Of course not, silly,” she scoffed instantly, dispelling the frisson of gloom that had scared the dour man. No one had ever dared to call him ‘silly’ before; he rather liked it. His arms tightened around her and he sighed in relief. She brought light and happiness to his somber soul; conversely only she had the power to truly frighten him. Nothing else mattered so much to him as her. Her power over him was absolute, but never threatening. Just loving. He drank in that love greedily, generously wanting to give her in return all the love she had always wanted and never had before.

“Severus, you’ve given me more courage and…and… guts in one year than I had in twenty with Lucius. I would never have hidden the squares from him. I would have been too afraid to make that decision. With him I was little more than a pretty, but lifeless, doll, being set in whatever position was useful to him.”

Narcissa reached up and ran her slender fingers through the heavy strands of Severus’ hair at his temple. The color fascinated her, her own hair was so blonde. His hair seemed to swallow and extinguish the light, giving off only a dark, subtle gleam, like his beautiful, black eyes. Narcissa never tired of gazing into those fathomless, onyx orbs of his – they could make his face look so ferocious at times, those deep eyes, but when he looked at her they were the essence of his love distilled.

“With you, I feel more adventurous,” she tried to explain, “but I haven’t had much outlet for it. You seem to know all my needs before I do. I admit I’m basking in your attention and care. I don’t feel a lifeless doll at all, but perhaps cocooned a little.” She smiled up at her husband, seeing him frowning, grieved, down at her, and she tsked, “You worry too much, darling,” and set about erasing his frown with her fingers on his face until his features relaxed into the uncertainty she knew was under the frown.

“The difference is the love, Severus. I see it everywhere with you. You manage our fortune, building it, but not letting me fritter it away in a stupid, extravagant manner. I know I don’t have a head for the value of money, but I’m learning with your help. Lucius never offered. I know you like being with me, talking to me, and…other things,” she blushed. “Just like Lucius has found with Hermione - it’s all there, but thank the Gods, you aren’t clueless,” she chuckled.

“Perhaps I am clueless if you are feeling like useless mistletoe,” he answered. He leaned back on the sofa bringing her with him and cuddling her under his chin, “I’ve been too protective of you. That old woman who slapped you put me in a blind panic and I overreacted. I’m sorry. I dragged you here and placed you basically under house arrest.” Snape lifted her chin with his palm and gazed into her blue, blue eyes willing her to understand his dread. “I needed you safe.”

“I know,” she said simply. “You have too many years of bad memories, knowing what bad things can happen when someone isn’t safe. I understand that. I don’t mind that you want me safe. I cherish your care of me.” Narcissa rested her head back under her mate’s chin, snuggling into his warmth.

“What do you wish changed?” he asked. “We know what the threat is now, but even if we did not, I would do as you wish.”

“For now? I would like to go about in the school without a house elf at my heels.”

“The house elves will be taken off guard duty and I can perhaps add to your desire for occupation. Lucius has lost Hermione’s help in the office. She apparently sleeps all the time now.” Severus didn’t mention Hermione’s other pastime as Lucius’ resident ravisher. “If you will, we would like you to take over her duties. Will you?”

“You both are willing for me to take on the office assistant position? Is Hermione?” Narcissa sat up straight, “Oh, Severus, I think I’d like that very much. What do I do?”

“Hermione is quite willing to teach you; she can explain the routine to you tomorrow or whenever she stays awake long enough. I think you will only be asked to start with the receptionist position, then slowly take on the rest of the work. You will have people coming and going through that office so I do want you to be careful.”

“Oh, Severus, you funny dunderhead, I can look out for myself, you know. I have my own wand and I learned a few things about self-defense to protect Draco. I can even do some wandless things,” she boasted.

“Very well,” Snape pursed his mouth, attempting to corral the smile that tried to escape while preening inside at her calling him a dunderhead. How did the insult sound so sweet from her lips? And funny? No one had ever told him he was funny, either – that warmed him from the inside out. “Perhaps you can demonstrate your wandless magic for me?”

“Now? It’s mostly spells to render another person powerless, like being tied up or stuck to the ground,” she replied, dubious.

Snape lifted her off him and rose, pulling her up off the sofa and herding her toward their bedroom. “You can work your wandless magic in our bedroom using me as the victim,” now his smile was full-blown and feral.

“I should have asked if others got those notes. It didn’t occur to me. I’m sorry,” she said again, but responded to his carnal grin with a sparkling one of her own.

“Apparently it didn’t occur to most of the others to ask around, either. Everyone seemed surprised. I’ll read mine tomorrow.” Snape slipped his hand up to her nape, guiding Narcissa to their bedroom door and they disappeared inside.


tbc...

____________________________________________________


As usual, don’t forget this chapter’s pics and responses -

http://labibliographe.livejournal.com/68124.html


Also, many thanks for those who have left reviews on my older stories. It give me a very big thrill to see a new review appear for one of them. Yay!

So now we have some answers. Please review? I'd love to get your reactions to the method used to victimize the Purebloods.

.
.