Vector's Challenge

Chapter 30

Snape marched into the Slytherin common room in a fine snit. He saw Blaise Zabini there, reading the Charms textbook. "Zabini, you're part Italian. Why the hell weren't you at Mass today?"

Blaise Zabini gulped in astonishment, and replied, "Sir, the last time any Zabini set foot in a Catholic church was 1842. The water in the baptismal font boiled, and no one knew if it was a practical joke or something supernatural. So we've been good Communists ever since Communism has been around."

Snape hissed in irritation. "I entered a Catholic cathedral today, Zabini, and the roof didn't fall in on me."

Zabini's eyes widened. "You did, sir?"

Snape's mouth twitched. "Yes, I did. Apparently, it settled a bet among your classmates as to whether I was a vampire. Members of other Houses were gathering for Mass, and none of us knew about it. We need to find out about these things and stay informed."

Millicent Bulstrode had wandered into the common room by this point, and Snape turned toward her. "Bulstrode, did you know when and where Sunday Mass was?"

Millie shook her head. "No, sir."

Snape cleared his throat. "Bulstrode, if you're serious about a Catholic, you should attend a Mass or two, so you can find out what you're getting yourself into."

Millie asked him, "What was it like, sir?"

Snape retorted, "It was full of motion and very noisy."

Millie asked, "Full of motion and noisy?"

Snape nodded. "Kneel, stand, sit, in all sorts of order, for varying periods of time. And everybody else seems to know exactly when to do these things. And there are little children running around all over the place, yelling, screaming, crying, babbling, etc. Bulstrode, I think you should come with me next Sunday."

Millie replied, "You mean you're going back?"

Snape replied, "Yes, I am. Let me teach you to do this charm." He performed the vampire-fang charm. After he took it off, he said, "It's definitely an experience you need to have."

Millie said, slowly, "I'll take your word for it, sir. Who else was there?"

Snape frowned. "The Finnigans, the Macmillans, the Boneses, the Tonkses, including their daughter the young Auror, Professor Vector, and Michael Vector." He paused, and went on, "Bulstrode, on second thought, perhaps you needn't come."

Millie narrowed her eyes, and said, "Oh, I think that I will. It sounds a bit different from a Black Mass." And I want to keep an eye on Michael Vector with Auror Tonks, she thought.

Snape tried to imagine a bunch of screaming children at a Black Mass, and shuddered. Bulstrode laughed.

Snape glared at her, and said, "Bulstrode, who's in loco parentis here?"

Millie shook her head, and said, "Sir, you need all the help you can get."

Snape's face twisted into a scowl, and he spat, "Bulstrode, I am going to bring you next week, and hopefully the theme will be respect for your elders!" He then swept out of the common room.

Zabini looked at Millie, and asked, "What happened to him?"

Millie dissolved into laughter. "I think it's what didn't happen. She must be giving him hell. He's been unbearable since Friday."

Zabini sighed and flopped down on a couch. "And here I thought that when the Old Bat finally snared himself a woman, his temperament would improve."

Millie kept laughing, and said, "I think that he needs to get shagged regularly for that to happen, and Professor Vector's a devout Catholic."

Zabini sighed. "Ah, Merlin. So we have to get him married off to her as quickly as possible."

"I wonder if that's the real problem," Millie muttered. "They come from such different backgrounds."

Zabini blew out a breath. "True. Well, let's start drawing up a plan for Operation Impossible, shall we, and plot how to get the two of them hitched?"

Millie frowned. "Operation Impossible?"

Zabini shrugged. "You can't cross a Vector and a scalar, after all."

Millie wrinkled her nose. "Zabini, you make the worst mathematical jokes."

Zabini shrugged. "I'm sure that Professor Vector has heard them all before. I wonder if she'll change her name when she does cave in and marry the Old Bat?"

Millie pursed her lips. "I'm not sure. It might be a bit confusing to have two Professors Snape on the faculty."

Zabini nodded. "True. Will you change your name to Vector?'

Millie blushed. "What are you talking about?" She thought, He hasn't asked me yet! Don't jinx me, Zabini!

Zabini shrugged. "According to m'father, Michael Vector has never been this happy before in his entire life. And m'father's worked with him for years in the Ministry."

Millie shook her head. "I am merely good friends with Auror Vector. We happened to hit it off rather well when we met, that's all."

Zabini looked at Millie, and wisely decided not to pursue the matter further, but thought silently, Good friends, my arse. You'll be engaged by the time you leave school at the latest, or my name isn't Blaise Zabini.

Millie asked, "What are you looking at me like that for?'

Blaise replied, "Well, I'm thinking of the casualty list of you two hitting it off. One dead Dementor, two students spitting slugs, three hours' infirmary time for him ... I'd shudder to think of what would have happened if you didn't like each other."

Millie said, "I still remember how to do the slugs, Zabini."

Blaise replied, "I surrender!" and went back to reading Charms.

Meanwhile, in Professor Vector's chambers....

"What's the matter, Emmy?" Father Sorin asked.

"Snape and I had a fight, and I told him we should reconsider getting married," Emmy said.

"You stupid idiot!" Father Sorin said. "I want you to go to his office now and apologize to him."

"Me apologize to him for what he said about having children? Whose side are you on anyway, Father Sorin? Mine or his?" Emmy Vector shouted out.

"I'm on Christ's side," Father Sorin yelled back.

"Aargh! You men are all the same. You stick together no matter what creed you are," Emmy screamed.

"Sacre bleu! He has a bloody point, Emmy! You have been expecting far too much of him, and you have been unwilling to come and meet him halfway!"

"I met him halfway, I bloody well had intercourse with him three times," Emmy spat out.

"That's not what I meant and you know it! You are not always in the right just because you happen to be born Catholic!"

Emmy was pacing angrily around her sitting room now. "I want his children, I want to marry him, this whole thing started because I wanted him to be fair to his students! What do I want that's wrong? He's no paragon of virtue, walking around this school with his sleeves constantly down to cover the Dark Mark!"

Father Sorin retorted, "Is there anything you like about him as he is now, besides the purely physical? If all you want him to do is change, of course he's going to resist."

"I thought he knew what I liked about him," she replied. "Do I have to keep telling him again and again?"

"Yes," Father Sorin screamed back. "Men are basically insecure! They need their egos and their spirits fed constantly, no less than women do! You're not God, and you're not always in the right." Father Sorin made a visible effort to calm himself down, and continued, more quietly, "Has Snape ever told you about his family?'

She frowned, and said, "Yes, a little bit."

Father Sorin said, "Did you get the impression that his family accepted him for who he was?'

She sucked in her breath between her teeth. "He didn't come out and say it one way or the other. But I don't think so, no."

Father Sorin went on, "So do you think he is confident that he is someone who is loveable and worthy of love?"

Emmy shook her head, sighed, and said, "No."

Father Sorin asked, "Do you think he even trusts God to love him?"

Emmy replied, puzzled, "Well, that's why I want him to be a Catholic."

Father Sorin sighed, and said, slowly, "Let's try this again. He doesn't know God. He knows you. And if he thinks that you only love him because you want to make him into somebody else, are you any better than his family?"

Emmy replied, screwing up her face in concentration on the problem, "So I'm supposed to love him like God loves me, unconditionally? And I'm supposed to act as a image of God in his life?"

Father Sorin said, "You're supposed to do the best you can. You do love him, right?"

She slowly started nodding her head, and said, "God help me, yes, I do."

Father Sorin exclaimed, "Well, go tell him that, for the love of Christ! Because if you don't tell him so, he will never, ever figure it out."

Emmy bit her upper lip, and asked him, "Do I have to go now?"

Father Sorin gave her a hard look. "That's up to you. I guarantee it will not get easier."

Emmy sighed, remembering Dumbledore's comment, "Don't let him brood. It only gives him a chance to refine his cutting remarks." She looked at her watch. Almost noon. He had had about three hours to brood. "Pray for me, Father Sorin, and if I don't return, be ready to sing my funeral Mass."

Father Sorin signed her with the Cross. "Go with God, my daughter."

Emmy sighed, and headed out of her chambers. She used the Designo me spell again, and wound up once again facing a blank wall in the dungeons. She knocked on the door. "Severus, it's Emmy. Please let me in. We need to talk." No answer. She knocked again, and again. Still no answer. She shouted, "Severus Snape, will you let me in, or shall I practice my banshee impersonation for any Slytherins who happen to be passing by?"

The wall opened up, and Snape stood in the doorway, scowling. He sneered, "So you think you'll have something to say that I'll enjoy hearing better than banshee imitations?"

Emmy said, "I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

Snape's jaw dropped, and he said, "For what, exactly?"

She replied, "Father Sorin said--"

Snape exploded with, "And of course you do what Father Sorin says, God knows. You crazy Catholic Ravenclaw, you can't think for yourself."

Emmy said, as calmly as she could, "Father Sorin said that if I didn't tell you I loved you, you'd never figure it out."

Snape stood still as a statute. Finally, he drawled, "Really."

She nodded. He took her arm, drew her into the room, shut and locked the door, and sat down on the sofa with her. He said again, with a smile beginning to form on his face, "Really?"

She replied, "Really what? That I love you, or that you'd never figure it out?"

Snape said, "Leaving Father Sorin out of it, was I supposed to figure it out?"

She sighed, looked down and then back into his eyes, and said, "Well, I thought you would. I don't go to bed or get engaged to just anybody, after all."

Snape lifted his eyebrows. "I suppose I should find that reassuring."

She nodded her head. "Yes, you should." She swallowed, took a deep breath, and went on, "I know I'm asking a lot of you all of a sudden."

Snape replied, "You're damned right you are."

Emmy's mouth twitched, and she said, "But I do want you, even if you never change. Even if you never convert, even if you only like children with onions and potatoes on the side."

Snape said, perplexed, "Where do you get these ideas? Onions and potatoes!"

Emmy folded her lips in. She said, "That one about the children was from Dumbledore." Snape snorted, and Emmy went on. "Now, I first realized I was falling in love with you during the course of that bet, and when you announced on Halloween night that we were engaged, I was a bit shocked and a bit angry because I wanted it to be true."

Snape replied, intently, "It is true." He gripped her hand, the one with the ring on it, tightly.

She realized, My God, I did have to tell him, and not just show him. She said, softly, "I had a crush on you since I was a first-year, but it wasn't until last Halloween night that I realized I did want to spend the rest of my life with you, and it terrified me."

Snape replied, smirking, "I do tend to have that effect on people."

She chuckled and said, "You should. You work hard enough at it."

Snape asked, "So why didn't I frighten you before?"

She shook her head and said, "It's not you that frightens me; it's taking another chance on marriage. It didn't really work that well the first time for me."

Snape leaned back, mouth slightly agape. Father Sorin was right, and my preconceptions were wrong. "Really. I find that surprising."

She nodded and said, "Maybe we could have made a better go of it if he hadn't been murdered and other things, but looking back on it, I married him for the wrong reasons."

Snape raised his eyebrows, and said, "Such as?"

Emmy grimaced. "I wanted to escape into the Muggle world and get away from the wizarding world, leave it behind entirely."

Snape said, "Well, that certainly won't be the case with me."

She shook her head and said, "No, you're not an escape ticket by any means of the imagination."

He said, "Good."

Emmy sighed, looked away, and said, "With Brendon, I had to shut him out of large parts of my life. My past, my abilities, et cetera. And eventually we shut each other out of everything." She looked back at Severus. "I want you to be part of all my worlds, including the Catholic, and that's why I've been pushing. I forgot it can't be easy for you."

He started to rub her palm, and softly replied, "No, it's not easy."

Emmy smiled and asked, "Is it worth it?"

He smirked, and said, "Did you really have a crush on me when you were a first-year?"

She blushed, nodded, took her lower lip under her teeth, and said, "Yes, I did."

He smirked and said, "Well, then." He put an arm around her and leaned her back.

Emmy muttered softly, "Lemons." She put her hand on Severus' chest, and pushed gently against him.

Snape moved his left hand so it laced with hers, started kissing her, and whispered, "I have a bag of them in the kitchen. Stay with me, Emmy, please. I do love you."

End of chapter 30.