A love-struck warrior really could create miracles.
When Snape jolted upright from the bed, the pain in the back of his head felt like a red-hot iron rod had been driven up through his neck and into his skull.
"No!" The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was enough to make anyone lose their mind. The little wizard and a not-so-tall skeleton were wrestling on the floor.
Iain was straddling the little skeleton, fingers jammed into its eye sockets, trying to dig something out. The little skeleton did not scream. Its jaw clattered frantically. One hand shoved at Iain's chin, while the other had reached down and grabbed a skull from the floor.
Lily Potter's skull.
The little skeleton swung its arm in a wide arc and hurled the skull toward the big pot nearby, clearly having decided to boil the magic of love into soup.
"Aah!"
Snape let out a sharp cry. He forgot all about the lump on the back of his head, threw himself off the bed, and lunged barefoot onto the stone floor.
This was adrenaline, pure and simple, forcing his body forward. He stretched out with all his might, fingers reaching, and at the exact moment the skull was about to miss the pot and hit the ground, he touched it.
Snape crashed face-first onto the floor.
Fortunately, he had caught the skull of his first love, the woman he would have recognized even if only bone remained. Perhaps that was what moonlight truly was, the color of a skull under silver light.
"Thank God. Thank God."
He was sprawled miserably on the floor, but inside, Snape felt an enormous rush of relief. He cradled Lily's skull carefully in his arms.
When he looked up at Iain again, anger crashed down over him.
"This child is already this vile. I can hardly imagine what kind of catastrophe you'll become when you grow up." Snape rose to his feet again, one hand still shielding the skull protectively, while the other drew his wand from inside his robes and leveled it at the little wizard still sitting on top of the skeleton.
To be fair, he had already recognized who stood before him: his future Potions student. A two-faced operative. Voldemort's former loyal hound.
And the wizarding world's greatest hopeless romantic, Hogwarts' number one tragic lover.
But none of that changed the fact that this was not a good enough excuse for interfering with Iain's path toward evolution.
"I know exactly what you're about to say. Believe me, there is another mastermind behind all this." Iain raised both hands, intending to carry out Plan A exactly as he had originally imagined.
He was met with merciless mockery.
The little skeleton, still pinned under Iain, stretched out a finger and wagged it at Snape. Its jaw clicked lightly, the sound rising at the end in a way that clearly seemed to say, See? This is what happens when you don't bury him properly.
Iain pretended not to get the point.
"What is your name?"
Snape kept his wand trained on Iain and asked the question in a hard, cold voice.
"Jerry Gargamel," Iain answered honestly.
Whether the answer was truthful or not had nothing to do with whether he considered himself honest. A man could have several names when out in the world. That was not a crime.
Unfortunately, Snape was not one of the idiots Iain usually dealt with.
"Do not lie to me, you clumsy little brat. You are obviously a member of the Dumbledore family. Only a Dumbledore can command a phoenix."
Snape's wand did not waver. His expression only grew colder.
"Well, if you insist on saying that, what can I do?" Iain sighed dramatically, lowered his head, then raised it again with the expression of someone reluctantly conceding a point.
"All right, then. Since I clearly cannot fool you, I admit it. I am from the Dumbledore family. My name is Zero Dumbledore. The secret descendant no one knows about."
Iain rolled with Snape's assumption without hesitation. Unfortunately, he had underestimated just how much the old bat had it out for him. No amount of smoothing things over made any difference.
"So what answer would make you happy?" Iain's face reddened with irritation. He glared at the future Potions professor, his tone full of grievance.
Snape gave a harsh, humorless laugh.
"If you were sent to Azkaban, I would be delighted. You must pay for what you've done." He began preparing a binding spell.
"Levi…"
His lips had only just formed the first syllable when, just as before, he failed to finish the incantation.
An invisible fist smashed into his face.
It was Iain's Wizard Hand.
The force, enough to shatter stone, had been restrained at the last second. It only made Snape's head ring and forced him to double over, clutching his nose, his spell interrupted.
"Nonverbal casting?" His voice came muffled from behind his hand, bloodied and nasal. "You are only a child. How is that possible?"
Even as shock rippled through him, Snape's fear spiked. He moved to stoop and snatch up his wand, but before he could, Iain's voice sounded again.
"Severus Snape, my endlessly disappointing servant."
"At my side, nothing is impossible."
"You knew that already, didn't you?"
"On that night, when you begged me, when you pleaded with me to spare the woman you loved, you already knew that no one in this world could stand against me."
It was as if Iain had become a different person.
His bearing changed. His expression changed. Even his presence changed.
His voice was not loud, nor especially low, not hurried, not slow. But the way he spoke, the serpentine cadence, each word falling heavy at the end, triggered something primal.
Snape froze as if struck by lightning. He looked up again, horror and disbelief written plainly across his face.
The abrupt shift in Iain's manner, and the things he was saying, hit the double agent like a curse. Snape could not imagine how a child could suddenly seem to switch personalities.
So that harmless act was just camouflage.
An operative's instincts left him no choice but to think so.
At that thought, his hand stopped in midair. His wand was only inches away, but that small gap had suddenly become an abyss.
It was not that he could not reach for it.
It was that he no longer dared to.
Very few people knew the things Iain had just said aloud, and as a master of Occlumency, Snape was certain the boy had not slipped into his mind and stolen those memories. Not even Dumbledore could have done that to him without his notice.
Powerful people trusted their own abilities. And because Snape trusted his, he no longer dared move.
"You have disappointed me greatly."
Iain rose from the little skeleton. His wand lay against his open palm, tip downward, as he walked step by step toward Snape.
"You failed to live up to my expectations. Worse, you repeatedly interfered with my plans. So now I must wonder. Have you betrayed me?"
"Otherwise, how dare you show me such disrespect to my face?"
Iain lifted his wand and tipped Snape's chin up with it. A green light flickered faintly along the wood.
The boy's voice had turned colder now, harsher, more vicious.
Yes, this was Plan B for handling Snape. Iain's super brain had once again chosen the path of authority.
Snape did not fear Dumbledore, but he absolutely feared the Dark Lord.
Voldemort was not here?
That did not trouble a genius like Iain in the slightest.
If Hogwarts currently had no Voldemort, then he would simply become Voldemort himself.