The Next Dark Lord

Aftermath

Once inside his room, Snape whirled around with wand and incanted, "Leglimens". He forced past any meagre defence Draco's mind could put up. He withdrew immediately after making sure Draco had nothing to do with the morning's incident. "Give me your wand Draco", he said.

Now more afraid after the mental attack, Draco handed his wand. Casting the priori incantatem, it was clear that this wand was used for the switching spell. He recalled Daphne Greengrass sitting next to Draco this morning. "Go to Defence classroom Draco. I don't have any class this morning and no one should see you go there", said Snape handing Draco his wand. He then applied a disillusionment charm on Draco and said, "I have disillusioned you and you have ten minutes to reach the classroom before the charm expires".  His office's door opening on its own, and closing a few seconds later was his answer. "Tippy", he called for the house-elf. A small elf appeared and bowed. "Does Master Snapey call Tippy?", the diminutive elf asked. Snape handed a note to the elf and said, "Deliver this to Ms. Daphne Greengrass now". The elf bowed again and disappeared.

It was another twenty minutes before Daphne entered his office. "Please be seated Ms. Greengrass", said Snape. "I had an interesting conversation with Mr. Malfoy. He has no clue about anything that happened this morning. Do you have any idea what might have happened, since you were sitting next to him?"

Daphne sat silently staring at the large slimy tank in the wall behind Snape. "Ms. Greengrass, you have nothing to fear", Snape said. She briefly glanced at Snape's face, and he seized the chance and launched a silent leglimens probe. She held his gaze without flinching and presented the scene of her conversation with the Dark Lord, the day before start of school term. 

'You'll do well to remember your mission at Hogwarts Daphne. I do not fully trust Severus to keep his over-large nose out of your business and you are to show this memory to him if he is nosing around your mind', said the memory Dark Lord. 'Severus, perform your double agent role and leave Daphne out of your concern. What she is doing and yet to do is none of your concern. She is forbidden from talking about it with you and you'll do well not to pester her as well. I know you would have let Albus know that Daphne has taken the mark to preserve you value as a valuable spy. If I know the fool well, he would have asked you to keep an eye on Daphne and report to him. Now I order you to stop any such nonsense and leave her alone'.

After this Snape felt himself ejected out of Daphne's mind. "Now you know. I will take my leave", Daphne said and stood up.

"But you will not bring ill-repute to the great Slytherin house, and you will definitely not be using your fellow Slytherins as your scapegoat", growled Snape.

Daphne stood in her tracks and turned around to see the sneering face of her Head of House. "You heard what our Lord said, and there is nothing you say that can supersede it. Where did your pathetic sensibilities of protecting your Slytherin students go, when you let that slimy bastard Lucius convince the Lord to make me take the mark instead of his son. You stood there as he tortured my father until I relented", she shouted. "For all I know, the idea might have even been yours", she added hotly to see a small flinch on his face.

"You bastard, it really was your idea to put me in this position. You were responsible for my father being tortured, me taking the mark and risking my life now", she said icily taking her wand with shaking hand.

Seeing her draw the wand Snape chuckled and said, "You think you can best me with a wand? I can beat you with my wand arm tied behind my back".

"Pray that our Lord always has some use of you. The moment you become useless to him, I'm coming after you and you'll not be chuckling or sneering when I'm done with you", she said and exited the room.

When the bell indicated the end of Ancient Runes class, Hermione was worried that Daphne hadn't returned. "I have my ways to keep Snape off my tail", she had said when they were planning the assassination attempt. 'I can't live with myself if she got into trouble because of something that I didn't plan correctly', thought Hermione. She ducked into the nearest secret passageway and opened the marauder's map and looked for Daphne. After some frantic searching she found the girl in the kitchens of all places. She wanted to see Daphne and console her but there was another class in five minutes. "Screw it. It's not like I'm missing any worthy class, it's just History of Magic", she muttered to herself and went down to the kitchen.