1 : IMPERIO

CHAPTER 2: THE ESCAPED PRISONER

Word Count: 3715

After that day, she had her meeting with Moody. He was absolutely not ready for the request.

"Please sir" she said trying to master her best puppy dog eyes. "I do think that fighting of Imperius will be a task."

"A task that doesn't need to be accomplished right now" he answered gruffly. Snape watched the whole thing, not really bothered as if he knew Moody would say no.

"You're the best Auror sir. It would be better if you –"

"And I'm a ministry official. I'm not allowed to –"

"You're not allowed to train a minor either sir." She said giving him a challenging eyebrow. "Yet on Dumbledore's saying –"

"That was for Dumbledore" he replied irritated. "I owed him a favour." Charlotte held up her hands in surrender, and nodded.

"Then I owe you a favour. Please sir" she said joining her hands together. Moody looked extremely uncomfortable and confused. "Please sir. I'll do anything want me to do. Well anything that does not include –" she didn't complete the sentence and saw Moody's face turn into disgust when he caught up.

"That's disturbing Charlotte" he replied. She knew he was going to say yes, and she turned to look at Snape whose expressions unfathomable. Hiding her smirk she looked back at Moody. "Fine" replied the Auror. "I don't approve of this, neither does your father, but I will teach you." She was trying not to hype too much about it and hug the man. "Don't ever ask me to do something like this again, and don't tell Dumbledore"

It had been two weeks since that conversation. It was the last week of July, and she sat in Snape's study making the revised recipe of Wolfsbane. Snape watched in silence as she added each and every ingredient.

It wasn't new thing for them to do; making potions in silence, especially the new ones. What she didn't understand was why he was making her do it. None of them knew any werewolf to test the potion on, so there was not much for experimenting.

Snape waved the wand for the last spell. She hadn't practiced it yet, and didn't want to mess up.

"Now we let it cook" said Snape as he looked at her with a smile. She gave him a nod and slumped down on the sofa, Snape taking the seat opposite to her. "I've been meaning to ask you," he said and Charlotte looked at him, eyebrow raised. "How's the snake doing?"

She looked at him surprised, and smiled. "Kara's doing fine." Her father shook his head in disagreement.

"Not her, I'm talking about your Animagus." Charlotte knit her eyebrow, looking at him with narrow eyes.

"Who told you that I had snake as my form?"

"Your patronus of course" her eyes widened a little in realisation. She wasn't sure how she hadn't noticed that before.

"Shit." She whispered. Snape looked confused and curious, and she closed her eyes, and tried to think of a reason. "Damn it"

"What wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong" she shook her head answering. "It's just confusing how my patronus is a fucking –"

"Language!"

"A bloody," she waited for him to object, but when he did, she continued the speech. "A bloody snake, and the form is a fox."

"A fox?"

"A fox" she confirmed with a nod. "Well a cub actually, but still. Does this ever happen?" Snape shook his head in confusion. "Either of my other things is wrong."