THE TRAPPINGS OF OFFICE

Disclaimer: Any body, thing or place you recognise does not belong to me but to J K Rowling and I make nothing from my use out of them except a strange satisfaction.

Summary: Set after Takeover and Sacrificed to the Sword and based at Hogwarts during Book 7. The staff continue to do their best to protect their students and each other while Severus manipulates people, perceptions and situations all around them. MM, SS, PP, PS & FF

PART 4.

When Severus had been issued with the invitation to the Ministry gathering that evening, it had come with a suggestion that he might like to bring along a particular guest. It was a suggestion it hadn't made sense to refuse, holding comparatively little real risk. He had however, worked his way through as many likely scenarios as he could think of and tried to plan for the worst of them. To this end he had invoked what little protection he could to insure, without it being palpable either to herself or any of the other guests, that Minerva was as safe as possible. He was caught up in thoughts of the tortuous hours to come, and what was due to happen on the Express while he was visibly elsewhere, when Minerva arrived in his office as promptly as ever.

He was momentarily taken aback, though he covered it with a grace born of practice, when she stepped into the room. Despite knowing what it was he had purchased when he had ordered the dress, he had somehow managed to disassociate himself from the actual image of her in the garment. It was... unlike anything he had ever seen her in before. But that had been, at least in part, the purpose. It was revealing and degrading and yet somehow the pale expanse of ivory skin normally hidden from sight was also entirely captivating.

Covering his study in a mask of disdain, he took the opportunity to examine the overall effect.

"Almost passable." He declared after a moment.

"You ought to approve, you chose it." She countered with a defiant air.

"Indeed." He replied, hoping tonight would not be the straw that broke the camel's back, seeing his deputy pushed from reluctant co-operation into overt militancy. Coming out from behind his desk he walked around her slowly determined to unnerve her as best he could while trying to establish how he could take her from wearing a daring but flattering dress into someone who had been entirely objectified. "Well I'm sure with a few adjustments we can ensure that you don't embarrass the school." He murmured moments later. "Bend forward."

Severus could only imagine what some of his fellow Death Eaters would say if they could see them now, the notorious Minerva McGonagall braced against a chair entirely at his mercy as she was now on a regular basis. He didn't like to dwell on what it was that those same men would be doing to her now, or his female acquaintances who might well be urging them on. No, he was certainly the lesser of many evils on that front.

Reaching out, he grasped hold of the corseting charms and began to slowly tighten them as he would the laces on his boots. As he did this, he carefully activated the tethering charm he had woven into the fabric earlier insuring that she would never be further than 20ft away from him without his knowledge. He could see the changes in her posture as her entire back was forced into a longer, straighter posture but only stopped when her breathing became shallow enough to concern him.

"There, now let me see you stand." He drawled, feigning a lecherous anticipation while trying to disregard his basal awareness of the way in which the tightened corset had pushed her bust up and how the drape of the fabric across the neckline and around her shoulders only served to accentuate the curves. "Much more satisfactory. I do enjoy a waist a can wrap my hands around." He left that comment to hang there for a moment, cementing the idea that she was to be no more than a trophy for the evening, a symbol of his own position of power to the rest of the guests, before slipping back into his familiar mask. "Now Professor, some ground rules for this evening. There are going to be a number of very important individuals at tonight's gathering and you will be expected to represent Hogwarts in the best possible light."

"Of course." She replied dryly.

"You will address me as Headmaster, Professor, and would do well to remember that I will be aware of your every move. Should anything you say or do not be conducive to the proliferation of the schools and my own good name, measures will have to be taken in order to insure you will not be so fool hardy again in the future. You might also like to note that I would be more than willing to wait until the start of next term in order to meet out any punishment necessary." There was no further need to elaborate she knew exactly what he meant and Severus could be certain that though she would have shown no hesitation in putting herself in jeopardy she would not risk her students.

"Of course, Headmaster."

Severus picked up the vial he had left sitting on his desk and held it out towards her.

"Good - now drink this." He could almost hear the cogs turning in her head. She would take it with a minimum of fuss - at least he was reasonably sure that she would.

"What is it." she asked bluntly. He considered telling her that that was of no matter to her but knew that there was no point in antagonising her further over this for no real gain.

"It's a little something to insure that I have the pleasure of your human company this evening. It will inhibit any form of self transfiguration including that of the animagus." He had also brewed it with the intention of blocking the absorption of alcohol into the blood stream, but that was beside the point. He watched her contemplate her options before taking the potion from his outstretched hand and downing it in one go. A small portion of him took a deep breath in relief; keeping her sober and in close quarters to him was the best protection he could offer for tonight.

The usual suspects were already present when they arrived at the Ministry but Severus had the looks on the students and staff's face when they had both appeared at the top of the steps to fuel his contemptuous smirk. If he'd had any concerns before then they had been entirely banished upon seeing their reactions. At dinner the conversation was predictably uninspiring but when dealing with a nest of back stabbing vipers, he had long ago learned that it was advisably to keep ones wits about one. Most of his fellow guests were interested primarily in inflating their egos and in making less than subtle insinuations about the advantages of his position at the school and how good a job he had done in brushing up his deputy.

He'd just poured himself a glass of port when he felt the tug on the proximity tether. Looking rapidly about the room he tried to spot where Minerva was, only to see a flutter of fabric in a corridor on the opposite side of the room. Putting down his glass next to an odious floral display on a nearby occasion table, he crossed the room as quickly as he was able without garnering undue attention, checked both ways to make sure he wasn't being observed, and listened at the door for a moment.

"... nothing of the sort." he heard Minerva say sharply, followed by a grunt that indicated that whoever was in there with her was in some considerable discomfort.

"I don't know what Snape thinks he's doing, but obviously he aint teaching you manners so maybe I'll just…" Jugson began, obviously too caught up in the prospect to notice as Severus slipped inside the room.

"Hands off what doesn't belong to you, Jugson." he drawled, placing a firm hand on the other man's shoulder causing him to start at the unexpected interruption.

"I don't know what you see in that stuck-up harpy - but you need to teach her to behave…"

Severus merely cocked an eyebrow. "I think you'll find that Professor McGonagall is the perfect embodiment of poise and manners - aren't you Minerva?" he asked without ever taking his eyes of Jugson.

"Naturally, Headmaster." Minerva replied, the perfect epitome of the demure subordinate. Severus felt a strange surge of nostalgia at the familiar patter they had built over the years.

"Well then, I don't see a problem. I suggest you take yourself off to sober up and perhaps indulge in a well placed cooling charm."

For a moment, he thought that the other man was going to be stupid enough to make Severus do something more serious to maintain his reputation. Merlin knew after the kind of week he had had he would enjoy nothing more than thrashing him but still... As it happened, the opportunity was taken away when Jugson chose to withdraw with less than good grace.

Severus was about to suggest that Minerva would do well to keep herself out of trouble for the rest of the evening as he had better things to do than come to her rescue, but he was caught momentarily by the look in her eye that unnerved him. He was distracted enough by this that he started when the Ministry elf appeared next to him. He took the message with a sense of foreboding as there was only really one thing it could mean. The best possible news it would bear was that they had managed to remove their target from the Express without any incident, but he strongly suspected that that wouldn't be the case. There were some days when he genuinely wondered why he bothered with the subterfuge at all.

As he predicted, the tidings were not good.

"We're leaving." Was all he said, before turning and heading out of the room. He didn't check to see if she was following him, knowing she would be there. In true form Severus managed to exude enough of a prevailing aura that no-one got close enough to interrupt them on their way to the door.

"Take my arm." he instructed when they reached the apparition point.

"Where…?" she began to ask, but he silenced her with a single look. Focussing on the co-ordinates that had been supplied, he blocked out everything except their destination and getting them both there in one piece.

The scene that greeted them was not a complete surprise to the Headmaster, the wind was biting, whipping the snow around them and bringing the acrid smell of smoke up from the crash. Severus struck out across the field alone trying to establish who was in charge of the melee so that hopefully he could hopefully find out what the official story was. He had been aware of leaving Minerva behind him as she stood shocked and staring but suddenly she was speeding past him, her dress hiked up to allow her greater freedom of movement. She slowed to a stop though, allowing him to catch up with her as she seemed to take in the view before her.

There were several hotspots of activity but the vast majority of the officials now appeared to be discussing rather than doing, the height of the crisis having obviously passed.

"Professor," a young Auror said as he bounded towards them. "Headmaster."

"What happened?" Snape asked, ignoring the fact that his title had been tacked on almost as an afterthought.

"There was some form of attack… Sir."

"Really?" he asked scathingly, valiantly trying to suppress the desire to call the young man a dunderhead.

"Reports are confused, Sir." the young man added hesitantly.

"The students… Where are the students?" Minerva asked sounding strange enough that Severus glanced across at her for a moment. The level of anxiety radiating from her was uncharacteristic, and a disassociated part of him couldn't help but wonder if he was only now seeing the true extent of the impact that the stresses of the previous months were having on her.

"They've all been accounted for, Professor. They've been sent to St Mungos along with Professor Flitwick…"

"Where are the Professors Carrow?" Snape asked shortly.

"They were over there the last time I saw them." the other man indicated in the direction of the train's engine though there was no one currently in sight. Severus was trying to extrapolate where the two incompetent siblings might have wandered off to when there was a flurry of movement as Minerva turned on her heel and dashed back up the hill to where they had arrived. The tug on the proximity tether grew stronger until it snapped back as she disapparated. "Where…?" the Auror asked uncertainly.

"St Mungos, one would assume." Severus replied shortly, striding out for the engine in search of his errant staff.

When he spotted them, the two Carrows had their heads bowed in urgent conversation. As he approached it became plain that neither of them had managed to escape whatever had happened unscathed: their robes were torn and both had various streaks of mud and something that could have been blood streaked across their persons. Waiting until he was almost upon them, he swept down as though they were a pair of transgressing teenagers out after curfew.

"Well, would someone care to tell me exactly what happened here?" he asked in his most imperious tone. Neither of them seemed inclined to provide him with an explanation and so he waited, knowing that soon enough his stare would unnerve one of the siblings.

"It wasn't our fault." Amycus blurted out suddenly.

"Naturally." Severus growled. "But what I asked was, what happened?"

"I don't know… " Amycus continued.

"It didn't go the way we had planned." Alecto cut in defensively.

"That also was painfully obvious given that the train should have paused for no more than a moment as the girl was removed." They both started to talk at once in response to this, only resulting in a sharp increase in Severus' desire to knock their heads together in order to get them to shut up. From what he could make out however, there was mention of Flitwick and something that sounded unpleasantly like Weasley. "Merlin knows how you manage to fumble even the most elementary of tasks but you had better hope that you haven't entirely wasted your opportunity."

"They got the girl." Alecto pointed out. Severus was saved from replying to that when a jarring crack rent the air.

It didn't take him more than a moment to locate the general direction from which the noise had come from. Rounding the train wreckage, Severus was just in time to see Minerva stumble slightly where she stood at the top of the snowy crest. Given that everyone in the field was now staring at her, any doubt he had had that her arrival had been heralded by that unearthly noise was extinguished.

In the many years that Severus Snape had known Minerva McGonagall he had never heard her so much as pop when she apparated before and this concerned him almost as much as her obviously ashen pallor. His contemplation of her was disrupted as his Deputy's knees seemed to give way beneath her and for a moment he thought that Minerva was about to end up face down in the wet snow. Just before that happened however, she transformed into her animagus incarnation., shook her cat self all over and then, planting her nose to the ground, started snuffling all around.

Severus had seen the Gryffindor behave like this before, most recently after Potter and Diggory had disappeared from the centre of the maze and when Montague had disappeared entirely from the castle, and despite the outcomes of those two incidents she had proven in the past to be able to locate any number of 'missing' students over the years. The entirety of the gathered company appeared to watch as Minerva worked quickly down to the train, before padding along it's length until she suddenly went totally rigid. It was obvious that she had caught scent of something but it wasn't until she shot off like a lightening bolt, tearing across the field and towards the edge of a dense copse, that a wave of conversation suddenly swelled amongst the onlookers.

It was only out of the corner of his eye that he saw Poppy Pomfrey appear in the spot at the top of the hill that had seen so much toing and froing lately. She was making quick work of searching the scene from her vantage point, her own anxiety easy enough to read in the set of her shoulders and though he wasn't certain he actually wanted to deal with the formidable mediwitch, Severus set out towards her hoping to diffuse the situation before there was another scene to entertain the gathering masses.

"Madame Pomfrey?" he asked as he neared where she stood.

"Have you seen Minerva?" she asked, "I mean, has she arrived back here after she left to go to the hospital?"

"Professor McGonagall arrived back a few moments ago in what I could only describe as a less than sterling example of her apparating talent."

"Well given that she apparated through St Mungos anti-apparition barriers it's a wonder she made it at all." Poppy muttered and Severus closed his eyes for a moment in order to suppress his anger. She had a death wish. There were no two ways about it - Minerva McGonagall had a death wish.

"It would have been more impressive if she had apparated through the wards and into the hospital, given that that is what the wards are primarily designed to prevent." he commented idly. "May I ask what exactly it was that caused the Deputy Headmistress to loose all trace of common sense and surrender to her innate Gryffindor impetuousness?" he could see the mediwitch forcibly biting her tongue from making some form of sharp retort.

"It seems that Luna Lovegood is missing. They're double checking the admission records but Minerva was concerned that she might have been missed at the crash site."

"Quite." Severus said, primarily to give himself a moment to think how he was going to be able to handle this latest crisis.

At that moment, the Carrows deigned to join them, providing him with the perfect excuse to distract Poppy and allow him to retrieve Minerva without creating further problems.

"Madame Pomfrey - seeing as you're here now, could I please ask you to see to Professor Carrow and Carrow and insure that they haven't been injured and I will see if I can't find our errant colleague." He could see the protest forming on her lips but he wasn't about to be moved. She was going to point out that they needed to find Minerva, that having just achieved such a ridiculous feat of apparition, there was every chance that she had done herself an injury and would need some medical assistance. What she didn't understand was that he would be able to find her more quickly if he didn't have to give the impression of nonchalance. He silenced her with a look and turned and stormed off before she could verbalise her objections.

Despite the fact that Minerva had broken free of the tether when she had apparated alone to London, it transpired that there was enough resonance left that he had a good idea where it was he needed to be looking. Following his instincts, he soon found himself following a path through the recently trampled undergrowth of the copse. The trail was far too wide to have been made by a cat, but several grown men dragging a young girl however, could have easily caused the damage. They didn't seem to have gone very far but they wouldn't have needed to go far before they'd disapparated away with their bounty.

Upon reaching a small clearing, he quickly spotted Minerva's feline form, rooting around in concentric circles. Her return to human form was just as unexpected as her earlier transformation and but even still she remained on all fours, panting heavily and obviously struggling to catch her breath. When she looked up and caught sight of him, the pure fear in her eyes shook him more than anything.

"They… they've…they've taken… her." She finally managed, her arms shaking beneath her weight. "Why?" She almost seemed to plead, and for an instant that proved fatal to a spy like him. He didn't know what to tell her. She fell onto her forearms, spluttering now, and he was driven into action.

"Minerva!" he said firmly, crouching beside her. "Calm down." She may well have injured herself but currently she was anxious to the point of hyperventilating and that was certainly not helping. "Take a deep breath." he instructed, only to remember that there was every chance she was still heavily corseted. Reaching along her back, he felt the familiar charms he had adjusted earlier and couldn't help but wonder that they had held so well. Releasing them gradually, he continued to coach her into taking slow and steady breaths but had little success. Her lips were beginning to look distinctly cyanotic and Severus was contemplating more drastic action when nature intervened and Minerva lost consciousness and slumped fully to the ground.

Within moments her breathing changed, relaxing into a steady if still shallow rhythm. Kneeling next to her, Severus gently rolled her onto her back and took the opportunity to better gage her condition. Minerva's pulse fluttered beneath his fingertips as he placed them on her wrist in an action learnt in a childhood more than a lifetime ago. She was unnaturally pale and completely unresponsive but given the cross country apparating through anti-apparition barriers, breaking of his tethering charm and the anti-transfiguration potion, all while probably oxygen deprived it was hardly surprising. He suspected that the implication that Luna Lovegood had been captured was simply the last straw.

Sliding one arm beneath her shoulders and his other beneath her knees he lifted her limp form gently into the air. Walking back out of the clearing and through the trees Severus found his mind racing as his heart rate began to slow. He tried not to think about how fragile this bastion of Hogwarts seemed to feel in his arms, or of why he had automatically gone to lift her rather than cast the standard levi corpus. Instead he focussed on what had happened tonight and what they were going to have to do to in order to try and cover it up.

The primary objective may have been successful, Luna Lovegood had been abducted which would give them the needed leverage on her father but only if they could keep the fact under wraps. All that had been required of the Carrows was that they isolate Lovegood on the train and knock her out so that she could be transferred as easily as possible. Even at the outset however, the plans had never adequately taken into consideration the Hogwarts staff presence on the train and though removing Minerva from the equation had been part of his show of facilitation, he was perhaps better placed than anyone to know that Flitwick would be able to hold his own. He only hoped that when the hammer fell he would be able to deflect the entirety of the blame onto his incompetent colleagues.

Every day he played this game, trying to balance what he had to be seen to be doing versus what he could get away with and every day that saw him succeed only seemed to draw him more deeply into the mire. Everything he said and did had to be perfectly calculated and pitched to maintain his façade while still trying to protect the students and designed, when possible, to derail Lord Voldemort's plans.

The longer it went on however, the harder a game it was to play. His situation had never really been tenable in the long run, and certainly now, without anyone to work with, his life expectancy was growing ever shorter. It was more than that however, the wider situation in the wizarding world was reaching a crux. Things were going to change shortly for the better or far more likely for the worse and whichever way it went, Severus was certain that Potter would be at the heart of it.

He was doing his best to keep tabs on what the brat was up to but the information her was able to garner was patchy at best. It seemed his former students were being at once completely unpredictable and remarkably unoriginal in both thought in action. As far as he could tell, it was sheer luck that had kept the Golden Trio out of the hands of the Ministry up until now. This was an underground war being fought on more than one front though and until Undesirable No 1 deigned to change things, Severus was certain that the Order and he would continue on in their own ways for as long as they were able.

"Severus!" Poppy's distant voice broke through his thoughts. "Minerva!" Stepping out into the open, it only took him a moment to locate the mediwitch and she spotted him just as quickly. "Oh thank Merlin you found her Severus!" she gushed, rushing to join them.

"It would seem that I can't take my staff anywhere for fear of them embarrassing themselves – or completely forgetting the appropriate deference they are due their superiors." he added pointedly , all the while wandlessly levitating Minerva so that he could remove himself from supporting her.

"Sorry, Headmaster. I..."

"I have no interest in excuses." He retorted sharply. "I do however require a Deputy Headmistress fit to fulfil her obligations. Professor McGonagall was due to be in residence at the castle throughout the school holidays as I have better things to attend to. I assume I can trust you insure she's capable to see to all of her duties." It was not a question. Severus turned on his heel and walked away.

A/N: Well that's it. I do have another story in the ark on the way but I like to leave a little up to your imaginations… Thanks to all of you who have reviewed and I hope you've enjoyed.

xLx