The Potion Princess

Headquarters

It's surprisingly easy for Snape to get The Dark Lord to go along with the plan.

Audra was to stay at the Order Headquarters for the rest of the summer, and continue in her role as honorary Weasley. According to Voldemort, this was good, since because of her close connection to these Weasley children (and therefore Harry) she'd have access to all kinds of damaging information that Snape wouldn't, which she will give to Snape to send back to Voldemort. According Dumbledore, the most important thing was that she had infiltrated the ranks safely, and was now allowed to just hang out at Headquarters while awaiting further instructions. No need, of course, to inform her of his actual plan.

"Okay." Audra said, after a solid minute of her and Bill standing in the street staring at little kids playing soccer. "What the bloody hell are we looking at?"

"Oh. Right." He rummages deep in his pockets and comes up with a scrap of paper. "Memorize this, and concentrate on it."

She does, and neighborhood shifts, a new house folding out. Audra can see the silhouettes of people moving in the windows, and becomes incredibly nervous for a reason she can't quite figure out. "Come on," Bill said bracingly, grabbing her by the shoulder and pushing her forward. "Get it over with."

They open the door, each step like she's dragging herself through knee deep mud, and she follows Bill into the kitchen. When she turns the corner, everyone freezes and erupts into chaos simultaneously- McGonagall stumbles back into the wall in surprise, halfway through putting on her coat, Mrs. Weasley stops halfway through dishing out food, Ron pauses with an overloaded fork dripping mashed potatoes on the table. Ginny has knocked over her butterbeer, and it is spreading over the table to drip in Professor Lupin's lap. At the same time, she can hear someone in the hallway shrieking about mudbloods and filth and another, male voice bellowing at her to shut up. Hermione jumps out of her seat and barrels towards her, knocking her backwards with the force of her rib crushing hug, Ginny at her heels. Over their shoulder, she can see the twins gaping at her, having stood up so fast that they knocked their chairs to the floor with a bang.

She smiled and raised a hand weakly, caught up in the flurry of hugs and excitement. "Hi?"

They show her to her room later -after she's introduced the apparently non-evil Sirius Black, after Molly bursts into tears, after Ginny composes a song in her honor that lasts through dinner. The twins are walking a few paces ahead of her, holding a whispered conversation that she doesn't think she really wants to hear. It is not until they abandon her in a dusty, dark, and freezing cold bedroom that they slam the door and round on her so quickly that she jumps back against the wall. "What," Fred says, in a voice of carefully contained calm that she knows will explode in seconds. "The bloody hell is going on?"

The story spills out, about the night in Dumbledore's office and what they all agreed was best (but no one asked them, they never do) and the letters she had to steal, about Vance. About the parties she went to (pixies frozen with silent screams, glass that cuts into her skin, blood seeping into a table, but she doesn't tell them that) and Voldemort. "I had to make you think that I didn't care about you. That I thought that you were beneath me, or weren't worth my time, or something." And you believed it so easily, both of you, it only took a handful of half assed words to make you turn your back on me. "And more importantly, you couldn't care about me. I couldn't risk you running into me on the street while I was trying to get information and saying hi, or hugging me, or even looking happy to see me. No one could know until we were sure V-," She stumbled over the name, tries to shape the word but can't. It seems that seeing him has finally rid her of the ability to be brave. "Until we were sure you-know-who would take the bait. If I saw you, or one of the death eaters saw you with me, it had to be convincing. You had to believe it."