Vector's Challenge

Snape took That Woman's graphs back to his quarters with him. He wanted to see just what she was carrying around. He had taken Arithmancy many years ago, when there was more Kabala and less statistical analysis. He spread the graphs out on the table, slowly and deliberately.

He could not make head or tail of what she had graphed out. It gave him quite the headache. Apparently, Arithmancy could be used as a method of torture. He had never looked at it in quite that light before. Ah, well, it would give him an excuse to lure her back down here when she realized that her graphs were missing.

Her remark kept running through his head all day, even as he took a shower that evening. My late husband taught me how to kiss...my late husband, my late husband....

"I didn't even know she was married," he muttered to himself. "She was Emmy Vector when she was here. I wonder if she married a cousin, or if she doesn't use her married name professionally."

Then the realization hit him like a ton of bricks. She. Had. Been. Married. She was not the little innocent that she had been when he was a seventh-year and she was a first-year. What was he like, Emmy? Was he good to you? Which House was he in? Could he keep up with your cleverness? What else did he teach you besides how to kiss? He turned the shower down to a stinging cold. He did not need to have any more of those thoughts about That Woman. His dreams were torment enough.

And if you had taken a different path, Severus, you could have been the one who married her first. You could have been the one to teach her how to kiss. He shivered. The water was far too damned cold. He turned the shower back up until he was comfortably warm again.

Late husband. Late husband. She wouldn't say late if she were still married. So she's a widow. He imagined her crying at the funeral, imagined himself there watching her cry. Would you have wanted consolation from me, Emmy? Would you have accepted it? He imagined himself kissing her again, kissing the tears away, loosing her long brown hair and stroking it. Oh Merlin! Enough! He turned off the water, got out of the shower, and started to dry himself off.

She'll never accept you, Snape, a voice in his own mind hissed out. She'll never let you put your hands on her, you filthy criminal.

"That's what you said before," he muttered to himself. "And she did kiss me of her own free will..."

Sooner or later, she will leave you, Snape. She will run screaming away from you, you slimy bastard. You are unworthy.

"Shut up!" he said to himself. Wonderful. I am now talking out loud to myself. How much longer until That Woman drives me utterly insane, if she hasn't already? He pulled a bottle of Dreamless Sleep Potion out of his medicine cabinet. This looks to be the only way I'll get any sleep tonight, he thought.

Emmy Vector had a sleepless night in her lonely bed. He finally kissed me, she thought to herself in the small hours of the morning. And it was a real kiss, a proper kiss, a damned fantastic kiss! Where did he ever learn how to kiss like that? Who was the lucky woman who taught him? Some Death Eater slut who was no better than she should have been? Or some man? Or a non-human? Some veela or rusalka or banshee?

She remembered the rumors that had gone around school about Severus Snape. Because she was a very quiet little girl who was easy to overlook, she had often heard conversations among the Ravenclaw Quidditch team that probably should have been conducted in the locker room and not before her innocent ears. She hadn't understood what all of it meant at the time, but her Uncle Jimmy Finnegan was a most surprising source of information. His view was that innocence and ignorance were not the same thing, and that sometimes the best preserver of innocence was knowledge.

Of course, the rumors may not have been true. A lie travels around the world before the truth can even get its boots on. A reputation is a hard thing to earn, and an easy one to lose.

And yet she still tossed and turned. Where there's smoke, there's fire.

So Emmy Vector got up the next morning in a foul mood, due to jealousy and lack of sleep. And then after spending a good hour looking for her charts, including a quick owl to Dumbledore, she remembered that the last time she could remember having them was down in the dungeons.

Wonderful, she thought. If I'm lucky, either Bulstrode or Snape found them and have found out that I monitor as much activity as possible at this school with statistics. And if I am not lucky, Malfoy or one of the other Junior Death Eaters found them and owled them off to Daddy or Mummy. Either way, too many people will know that I can and do keep these kinds of tabs on them.

She prepared herself to head down to the dungeons to ask That Man if he had seen her graphs. It was six a.m., after all, and chances were that he would be up by now.