"Harry! Come here at once!" he called, never taking his eyes or wand off the miserable house elf.
Harry ran in. "Da! What is it?"
"Come see what has been caught in the trap we laid with our little fiction," Snape said, indicating the house elf, who promptly burst into tears at the sight of the boy.
"Ohhhhhh, Master Harry Potter Sir! Dobby is sorry for getting Master Harry Potter Sir into such trouble! But Master Harry Potter Sir would not leave the castle!" Dobby yanked at his own ears in a frenzy of remorse.
"Da, it's that weird house elf I told you about," Harry exclaimed, hurrying to his father's side while being careful not to cross in front of Snape's wand. "Dibby or Dooby or something like that. He's the one who threatened me!"
"Dobby is bad elf," the little creature agreed mournfully, "but poor Master Harry Potter Sir must be sent away to be safe."
"How'd you know it was him?" Harry asked, regarding Snape with wide, worshipful eyes.
Snape fidgeted, uncomfortable with the admiration he saw there. "I knew you would hardly spend four hours helping make ingredients just to destroy them, but I could find no trace to explain who did it nor how you were framed. I recalled what you had said about being threatened by a house elf before the term began, and on the off-chance that it was responsible for all of these tricks, I got the castle elves to teach me how to prevent elves from entering or leaving our quarters.
"When I realized the potion cupboard was the latest attempt to get you expelled, I decided to play along. I hoped that if I seemed angry enough to make a threat to send you away sound realistic, then whoever was doing it would be unable to resist one more trick. That was what the potion in my lab was for тАУ to entice our mysterious adversary into attempting another prank, only this one in a time and place of my choosing. It worked, the trap was sprung, and here we are."
"Wow!" Harry breathed in awe.
"And as for you, elf," Snape began threateningly, raising his wand.
"Please, Master Potion Master Sir!" Dobby cried. "Please send Master Harry Potter Sir away from here! Very Bad Things is starting!"
Snape paused. "Does it have to do with the Dark Lord?" he demanded, but Dobby merely wailed and pounded his head against the floor.
"Stop! Stop!" Snape commanded, seeing Harry's stricken face as he watched the elf punish himself. If it had been up to him, he would have enjoyed watching the little creature dash his brains out after all the trouble he had caused Harry. "So you are trying to protect Harry?" Dobby sniffled and nodded. "How did you learn about this danger?"
Dobby yanked his ears. "No! No! Can't say! Can't tell what Master plans!"
Snape's mind worked busily. House elves were excitable little things, peculiar on their best day, but what drove them insane quicker than anything else was being unable to carry out their owner's instructions. If this little elf belonged to a Dark household and had learned of a plot against Hogwarts, but then wanted to protect Harry from it, it would be torn between its duty to protect its master's secrets and its desire to save Harry. That could well set up exactly the sort of conflict that would make an elf mad.
But which Dark household had such an odd and independent little elf?
"How did you know Harry was at Hogwarts?" Snape demanded. "Or that I am a Potion Master?"
Dobby looked stricken and began to bite his own hand. "Can't say! Can't say!" he protested, the words muffled.
Snape took a closer look at the frantic elf. He couldn't imagine that his professional qualifications were discussed in too many Death Eater households. At best he might be referred to as a Hogwarts professor, at worst as "Snape the ****** traitor", but he'd never socialized all that much with his fellow Death Eaters, and тАУ "Malfoy. You belong to Lucius Malfoy."
Suddenly it all made sense. Lucius and Narcissa would, thanks to Draco's letters, surely comment to each other upon Potter's presence at Hogwarts, and Malfoy was one of the few people Snape had at one time considered a friend. As such, Lucius was familiar with Snape's academic credentials and probably referred to them not infrequently, being the name dropper that he was. Snape had visited the manor on more than one occasion and while most elves looked the same to him, he supposed that this one might look a bit familiar.
Dobby burst into tears, confirming his guess. "Dobby is a bad, bad elf! But Dobby only wants to keep Master Harry Potter Sir safe!"
"That is my job," Snape informed the distraught elf. "You are to return to Malfoy Manor and say nothing of this. I am well aware of Lucius' little plot," he lied, "and I have no intention of allowing Harry to be harmed. I will protect the boy, and you are to leave him alone from this moment forward."
Dobby wept and protested, still uncertain, but Snape was adamant. "Go now, or I will inform your master of your actions," he threatened, waving his wand to lower the wards around his quarters.
Dobby whimpered in terror, but still delayed long enough to ask, "You is sure Master Harry Potter Sir will be safe? You promises to protect him?"
Snape rolled his eyes. "Yes! Now go! And don't come back!"
Dobby finally popped away, and Harry relaxed with a gusty sigh of relief. "Merlin! What a weird little elf! D'you really think there's something bad going on that Draco's dad is planning?"
Snape snorted. "Surely you saw how demeted the creature was. You have nothing to worry about." He eyed the boy in concern. Would he accept that? Was he still traumatized by the horrible things Snape had had to say earlier?
"Oh. Okay," Harry agreed, not noticing that his guardian had dodged the question. "SoтАж can we have tea now?"
##
Harry was easily distracted by a plate of sandwiches, then sent off to his dorm, but Snape's peace of mind was not so easily reclaimed. He had known Lucius was going to try something тАУ the man had warned him, after all тАУ but it bothered Snape that Lucius had obviously set something in motion and Snape was still unaware of it. He had in fact wondered if Malfoy were behind the tricks that seemed aimed at discrediting Harry, but now that Dobby had been revealed as the culprit, that meant that some other plan was silently unfolding.
That made Snape very, very nervous.
What was more, it was a distraction he could ill afford. He was already trying to come up with a plan to get rid of that idiot Fudge, and he had hoped Malfoy might at least remain neutral. Removing Fudge would be tricky at best, but if Malfoy actively opposed the change, it became more difficult by several orders of magnitude. Snape had hoped that he might be able to persuade Lucius to remain on the sidelines, and that might have worked if the other man had still been in a passive "wait and see" mode. But from Dobby's words тАУ and actions тАУ it was clear that Lucius had put some scheme into play, and he was unlikely to resume the status of onlooker unless forced to do so.
But if Fudge were still in power when Malfoy's plan was finally revealed, then it would be that much harder to counter LuciusтАж Was it better to remove Fudge as quickly as possible, even if that meant taking on Lucius at the same time? And how?
His own past made him extremely vulnerable; any hint of impropriety and there were plenty of Aurors and others in government who had been waiting ten years to see him locked up in Azkaban. But who else was there to do away with Fudge? He supposed he could call in the Marauders, but pranking a Muggle family was a lot different than targeting the Minister of Magic, and Snape had gone to a lot of trouble to reestablish Black as an upstanding member of society. The last thing he wanted was to squander Black's status, and that didn't even take into account that if Lupin's part in such a scheme were discovered, the hysterical Wizarding public would probably тАУ egged on by the idiot press тАУ see it as a werewolf plot to destabilize the government. At the very least, it would mean an automatic death sentence for Lupin, and Snape had no desire to have to break yet another Marauder out of Azkaban.