Chapter 170. Rest.
Two hours later.
He lifted his palm from the last Queen operative's head and let out a disappointed breath. A moment later, crimson fire engulfed all three bodies, leaving nothing behind, not even ash, in seconds. Severus turned toward the staircase that had appeared.
Almost nothing new. From the memories of all three, he had only managed to confirm some of his existing assumptions: the approximate strength of their forces, their location, and the group's mission objective. Beyond that, he had confirmed that capturing members of this organization was largely pointless. The most critical information, including the location of their headquarters, was copied and stored at headquarters, then simply erased from the operative's memory for the mission's duration. It was crude, and likely to cause long-term damage to their mental state, but he had to admit it was quite effective.
He had also managed to extract information on the organization's spies currently operating in Magical Britain. Most likely, that intelligence was already outdated; they could have relocated and changed their faces, which they had almost certainly done. Still, finding them should not be a major problem. There were dozens of ways to track a wizard, no matter how carefully they covered their trail.
Either way, he had no intention of dealing with that now. Instead, he needed to rest and clear his head. Too much had piled up in too short a time, and his mind was simply overloaded and worn out after those three days. His productivity had slipped slightly. Normally, he would have needed thirty minutes per wizard. Today he had spent forty minutes on each, which wasn't good, and he urgently needed to recover. There was no way to know what tomorrow might bring. If the Queens decided to come at him all at once, unlikely as that was, he couldn't entirely rule out such an absurd scenario.
The moment he stepped into the sitting room, two pairs of eyes fixed on him. One belonged to Nagini, who had been waiting on the sofa the entire time. The other belonged to a pale-faced man: a former Black Star member who was watching Nagini with unease and keeping a distance of almost five meters from her.
"Speak quickly. I'm a little tired." Severus yawned broadly and looked at Nagini with a smile, catching the resentful look she shot him.
"After you released us, we were never told what our duties would be."
"Duties." He rubbed his temples and shook his head. "Let's talk about that another day. For now, you simply aren't strong enough for me to trust you with anything." At those words, the man's eye twitched.
Within his division, he had ranked third in power. Across the entire organization, he ranked in the top thirty. No one had ever called him weak, but he could not dispute his own weakness now: he remembered exactly how effortlessly they had been defeated, and they were still in bad shape.
Severus ignored the shift in his expression and the emotions he could easily sense through the seal. He walked to the sofa, dropped onto it, closed his eyes, and placed his palm on Nagini's head. She was still looking at him with quiet displeasure.
"Gorby."
"What can Gorby do for Master?" The elf appeared before him, looking at Severus with open admiration.
"Find José and tell him to stop watching the Blacks' house and take charge of them instead." He pointed at the motionless dark wizard. "That's all."
"Yes, Master!" The elf bowed and disappeared at once.
"He'll be working with you. José is a true master of stealth and shadow magic. You've both spent too long in the lower levels. You need to recover." He dropped his gaze to Nagini, who still looked away in quiet reproach. "Rest today as well. Tomorrow you begin training. Understood?"
Taking orders from a "boy" was mildly irritating, but the man had no real choice. He'd made this decision himself, so he had no room to complain.
"Yes. Thank you."
"Good. You're free to go. If you need anything, speak to Gorby." The man nodded and left the room quickly.
Severus yawned again and resumed stroking Nagini.
"Are you still mad at me over that harmless little joke?"
"No!"
"Your voice says otherwise." He stretched lazily. "How about we go somewhere the day after tomorrow to apologize?" He caught the look that clearly said, Do you really think I'm that easy to win over? His smile turned decidedly more playful. "All right, then. I'll invite Bella instead. I don't think she'd object..."
"Manipulator!" She nudged him in the ribs, knowing full well he wasn't serious and was just trying to provoke her.
"Look who's talking." He tapped her on the nose. "But I wasn't joking about the outing." Nagini narrowed her eyes. "With you, with you. So stop being jealous."
"Hmph!" She turned away again. "Just go already!"
"All right, all right, I'm going. Though if you like, I'll leave a spot for you on the bed." He gave her a wink and vanished, leaving Nagini hissing something behind him, something that was definitely not a wish for pleasant dreams. But a few minutes later, glancing sideways at the television, she slid off the sofa and made her way up the stairs.
While Severus slept, conversations about the day's events were taking place in two other locations. Both parties had known Ihiros was no ordinary wizard, and had understood he surpassed even Dumbledore, but discovering just how terrifying a mage he truly was had genuinely shaken them and forced a reassessment of certain plans. This applied especially to the Ministry of Magic, which had previously been considering using Severus to draw the old man to their side. Voldemort, who had intended through Bellatrix to increase the number of potions he received from Severus, also set that plan aside for the time being. Neither of them wanted to antagonize this particular threat, or involve themselves with him at all. No one knew what he had in mind, or how he would respond to being approached. The encounter between Ihiros and the Death Eaters was proof enough of that.
The matter went no further than those two parties, aside from some drunken rumor-trading in the kind of run-down pub where no one believes anything anyway. The ordinary wizarding population of Britain remained entirely in the dark, and no one was in a hurry to change that.
Over the next day and a half, Severus did not leave his room. The moment he neutralized the Alertness Potion, every bit of accumulated exhaustion hit him at once, and he was asleep almost immediately. As if by some mercy from above, that stretch of time turned out to be remarkably quiet.
There were visitors, of course: in addition to Moody, there were the Blacks, the Malfoys, the Macmillans, and Charles. But they all behaved with reasonable courtesy. When they were told that Severus was occupied assisting his teacher with an important ritual, they left without disturbing him.
There was one additional visitor, however: Dumbledore, who had come to look in on one of his students. He happened to arrive at precisely the right moment, just as Severus had woken from his long sleep in a considerably better mood. Severus had intended to send him away as he had the others, but he stopped when the old man said he had managed to obtain the ingredient needed for the ritual and might know where the final one could be found. He let the Headmaster in. Nagini, hearing this, was especially eager: it was her chance to become human again.
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