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[watchesthewatchers]

A man named Mundt goes missing. He's Dolohov's sister's fiancee, and loyal, though not particularly bright. News never comes of his arrest or his murder, and in the current political climate, a victory on that front would certainly have been publicized. No one in the Order even seems to know about it, from the snatches that come through to Voldemort's growing camp.

It bears investigation, is the ultimate verdict, investigation but not outright alarm or panic, so dear, reliable, young Severus is dispatched to see what could possibly have happened.

Mundt, it transpires, had been from West Berlin initially and keeping temporary rooms on the outskirts of town. He'd been a cruel and stupid man, and had murdered his landlady and then failed to keep up any paperwork for the abode, and there had been a string of other attacks on muggles in his surrounding neighbourhood besides. He'd had a nasty habit of breaking into a home, killing the inhabitants messily and for sport, at his leisure. Muggle authorities had ascribed the work to a vicious serial killer in the area, and had been somewhat distressed when the killings had stopped cold several weeks ago. Relieved, certainly, because no deaths were good news, but afraid that the man may have gone dormant, slipped their grasp, perhaps even left the country...

He hadn't even had the good sense to really be afraid of the gun, and Peter's bullet, got off between curses, had taken him square between the eyes.

With no magic, they certainly have no ability to follow the man's trail to a lovely little home on the outskirts of the same outskirt where Mundt had been living, or to the young gentleman who spends that Sunday morning laying a lovely new bed of petunias out front. Peter isn't much of a gardener under normal circumstances, as evidenced by the trousers he's wearing, the rolled up shirt sleeves, the clean fingernails and the rather shiny and new look of the trowel he's wielding, but it's a lovely excuse to dig a hole that is good and deep.

Normally he'd hide the body a lot further afield, but after the trouble he had with this one he half expects him to come back to life. It isn't an anxiety he can explain to his coworkers, who would normally be the ones to take care of something like this for him, and anyways, he wants to be the very first one to know if reanimation occurs.

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[snarkypotions]

Investigation, it seems, is what Snape's life consists of nowadays. Ever since that fateful night on the cold, windy hilltop, the newly appointed Potions Master has had to dance between his two masters, sniffing out certain choice morsels of information and passing it on as instructed. Both are harsh taskmasters, and the young, disillusioned Death Eater-turned-spy has had to quickly learn to adjust. The Dark Lord's moods are always difficult to predict, especially with the threat of the prophecy looming on the horizon, and Snape has suffered under the Cruciatus curse or the bite of the lash many times for not bringing in anything useful. It's a result of working for Dumbledore. The headmaster does not trust him, nor has he earned that trust, and more often than not, Snape has had to return to the Dark Lord with nothing to report.

Sometimes he wonders if this is the old wizard's way of making him pay penance for the many sins he's committed.

So here he is in West Berlin, dressed in a black Muggle shirt and matching trousers. His wand is neatly tucked up the sleeve of his jacket, waiting only for a sharp flick of his wrist to slide out of its holster and into his hand. A convenient charm is in place to keep observant eyes away from the slightest bulge near his elbow, and Snape keeps himself Disillusioned for most of his travels. There are a few instances where he has to... question some of the inhabitants of the town, but Snape keeps his presence well-hidden otherwise. Dolohov may have kicked up enough of a fuss over his missing sidekick in Muggle baiting, torture and murder for the Dark Lord to initiate a search, but Dumbledore's orders are clear: find the man, extract any information he may have, and then dispose of him to prevent any more Muggle deaths.

Trying to think up a way to reconcile the two conflicting orders has left him with a mild headache that the last few days of travel has done nothing to assuage, and it's certainly showing no signs of easing up by the time he tracks Mundt's trail to the house with the new petunias.

Standing in the shadow of the lamppost across the road, Snape takes a moment to study the gardener that's hard at work on his budding garden. Little things don't add up, details the Potions Master notices from his experience cultivating certain ingredients, and his frown grows more severe, deepening the furrow between his brows. Mundt had certainly been enjoying himself in this town (he had recognized the handiwork on the victims), and there was no doubt that his trail of carnage had ended here, but the question currently bothering Snape is why? The other Death Eater is not the sort that's smart enough to stop while he's ahead, nor is he good enough to hide from Snape's tracking spells, so it stands to reason that with no news of his capture or recall to England, the other man is most likely gravely wounded or dead.

The new trowel across the street flashes in favor of the latter hypothesis, but surely a mere Muggle can't have managed to kill Mundt. Unless, of course, he isn't a Muggle...

[watchesthewatchers]

With the faint glimmer of magic about him, Snape isn't possible for Peter to see in that amount of shadow, not exactly. But something about the evening air- when did it get so dark?- clearly rattles him, if Snape watches closely. He stops working quite suddenly, glances up and down the street- it's the dogs, there are no stray dogs- and then gathers the trowel up neatly and climbs without ceremony to his feet. He brushes his knees off, puts his hands on the small of his back as he arches slightly, stretching, and then turns on his heel and moves at an even clip into the house.

The door shuts neatly behind him, and locks.

Inside, Peter leans his back against the door for a second, getting a few deep breaths before going to get his gun. He carries the thing into the kitchen, setting it down on the counter as he goes to wash the dirt out from under his fingernails. Normally he isn't quite so casually armed in his own home, but you don't do this for as long as as Peter has without developing and relying on some fairly aggressive professional instincts.

After that, it's the kettle, and the curtains, and a little low lighting in the kitchen.

He prepares the cup in its' saucer, flicks a kitchen light on, but then walks right away into the living room to sink into a seat in there, in a corner of the room where he can see every window, every entrance, including the front door through the hall.

[snarkypotions]

Snape's eyes narrow as the man across the street suddenly gets to his feet after checking his surroundings. He hasn't noticed anything that should have rattled the Muggle, and doesn't think anything should have alerted him to his presence, so his sudden departure into the house is worth noting. Granted, the movements through the house (or at least what he can judge from the faint light filtering through the curtains) seem normal enough for an unsuspecting Muggle, but Snape is slowly learning to trust his instincts.

Still, instincts can't immediately overpower almost twenty years of bigotry and prejudice towards the relative uselessness of Muggles. He remembers the man he had the misfortune of calling father, remembers the viciousness of poisonous words and the pain of meaty fists meeting a malnourished body. He also remembers the pathetic, fearful pleading the night he had returned to Spinner's End a newly graduated wizard and full-fledged Death Eater. Most Muggles are full of bluster and bluff, displaying small-minded disbelief and fear towards the wizarding world while greedily coveting the magic they cannot understand or ever hope to wield. To them, magic is at once an abomination and a perceived shortcut towards an easy life.

That thought is enough to draw a derisive snort out of the wizard, one that is thankfully muffled from other ears thanks to the silencing charm that surrounds him like a second cloak.

A few minutes after the light in the kitchen goes on, Snape detaches himself from the lamppost and quietly makes his way over to the bed of petunias. His wand slips into his hand, the softly glowing tip changing from yellow to green by the time he's stopped next to the freshly overturned dirt. There's no doubt that Mundt has at last been put down like the mad dog that he is, but how a Muggle accomplished that particular feat is beyond him. At least this means he's successfully accomplished the first part of the tasks assigned to him.

On the other hand, this has now left him with several more questions that require answering before he can return to England and face either of his two masters.

Snape scowls down at the flowers that have the audacity wave at him in the light evening breeze, and he ruthlessly crushes down any associations they may have with another particular species of flower. Instead, he turns that fierce glare towards the door of the neat little house, debating if it would be better to storm through it or simply knock. That he doesn't know exactly who or what he is dealing with is the only thing keeping the young Death Eater from blasting the door off its hinges.

He takes a moment to consider his options as he casts a few 'notice-me-not' wards along the perimeter of the front yard to dissuade prying eyes. His movements are precise, practiced, and he stops briefly to admire his handiwork before turning on his heels to calmly and cleanly blast a hole where the front door used to be.

Instincts may not have won the battle against ingrained prejudice, but at least Snape has the sense to use the cover of that particular commotion to transfigure the kitchen window into a full-length door in the wall and enter the house that way.

[watchesthewatchers]

If Peter were running into the front hall from the kitchen, Snape would have a perfect shot of his back.

Instead, the situation is more delicate than that. He slips fast out of the seat in the living room, thumbing back the safety on his gun, and putting his back to the wall next to the door from the front hall. If the intruder does burst into the house and carry on down the hall Peter will be able to put a bullet in his back.

If, on the other hand, he's coming from the kitchen... well, that will depend where Snape goes first, and how quietly he does it. Peter waits where he is, gun at the ready. There's no screaming, no panic, just cold steadiness as he stays absolutely still and listens keenly.

He remembers Mundt, learned something from the experience. The key is to get the man away from his wand, and failing that, kill him before he can say a word.

[snarkypotions]

Snape still has the Disillusionment and silencing charm surrounding himself as he steps into the kitchen, so he's relatively hard to spot if it weren't for the dust and debris in the air and the newly created door in the wall. If he had the time, he'd re-transfigure it back into a wall and cast an illusion of a still open door over it, but there's no time for elaborate games right now. Instead, he leaves it open as a sort of psychological test to see what kind of man he is dealing with.

He moves lightly and quietly through the kitchen, eyes drifting towards the kettle on the stove before he sweeps his wand through the air with a murmured, "Homenum revelio."

Snape may be hard to see, but the feeling that some large bird of prey is swooping low over Peter and immersing him in its shadow certainly confirms his presence.

[watchesthewatchers]

Peter takes one shot at it, in pure instinct. It tears right through, of course, and shatters the mirror above the fireplace. He hisses, and plasters himself back against the wall for a moment, then takes a rolling dive for cover by the wardrobe, hoping that the smooth movement will take him out of the radius of the darkness.

"Came here to follow your little friend, did you?"

He asks, gun lifting, hoping against hope for a response. He won't shoot yet, but getting a sound from him will help track him, if the room remains dark.