Vector's Challenge

Chapter 31

Snape was quite content with the world at that point. He had a beautiful, willing woman in his arms, his door was locked, and it was a Sunday, so he did not have to deal with any pesky students.

Emmy suddenly pushed against his chest. "Severus. Severus, I hear Albus calling you."

Snape bit down a curse, got up, and set his robes back to rights. He went over to the fireplace.

Dumbledore's head was in the fire. "Ah, Severus. There you are. I have an important matter to discuss with you, right now."

Snape sighed with disappointment. "I'm on my way, Headmaster." He turned to Emmy, who had by now set her own robes to rights. He nodded to her, "Later, Emmy."

She bit her lower lip, and nodded back. He Flooed himself to Dumbledore's office. She checked to see that the door was locked, and then Flooed herself back to her own quarters. Once she was there, she started grading papers like mad. She had fallen quite behind, what with her other work for Dumbledore, and now her engagement. However, grading Arithmancy and calculus quizzes was a task that required only part of her mind, and the other part kept on turning over the scene in Snape's quarters.

He was taking advantage of you, her conscience whispered to her. You poured out your heart to him, and he took it as a license to shag you. Men are all alike. All they want is sex, and then when they get what they want, they'll leave you without a backward glance. If he really loved you, he'd respect your religious beliefs and your decisions. He's worse than Brendon was. At least Brendon married you before he lost interest and started to neglect you and cheat on you. And even if Severus did marry you, it wouldn't work anyway. He bears the Dark Mark, he hates children, he's a pagan born and bred. If you couldn't even get a relationship to work with Brendon who was a Catholic, how will you ever get it to work with Severus, who's so different from you? It's not going to work. You can't get it to work. You'll fail at it as you did before. Best to break it off with him as soon as you can. Emmy savagely made the final correction on the last quiz, stacked the papers into two piles, one for Hogwarts and one for the University, and retreated to her sofa. She wrapped herself in a blanket, and started to cry.

Meanwhile, Snape was talking to Dumbledore about war-related business. Suddenly, he felt the summons coming through his Mark. He gripped his arm, and Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. Snape gasped, "Albus, I need to go." Dumbledore nodded, and Snape used his fireplace to get off-campus. Once he was off Hogwarts grounds, Snape followed the summons and wound up at a Death Eater gathering.

Voldemort announced, "We are here to witness the punishment of a traitor."

Snape's heart nearly leapt into his throat at that, and it took him all his effort to remain still. However, no one went for him, no one singled him out, no one grabbed him to drag into the circle for punishment. Instead, Crabbe and Goyle dragged a badly battered man into the circle. It took Snape a few minutes to recognize him as Edgar Pangbourne, a Hufflepuff who had been two years behind him at Hogwarts.

"And what punishment does a traitor deserve?" Voldemort asked.

The gathering responded with one voice, "Death!"

"And what kind of death?" Voldemort asked.

"Painful!" the chorus came.

Voldemort sneered, "Well said, my faithful servants. Crucio!" he shouted. Pangbourne convulsed in agony for a long time until he fell still. Voldemort laughed, and said, "Take this, all of you, and eat it." Snape nearly gagged as he suddenly realized where that line had come from. He had seen executions like this before in the old days, but now he had seen what the execution was parodying. He silently asked pardon from Pangbourne's soul as the crowd of Death Eaters advanced with their knives.

When Snape came back to Hogwarts, he was quite shaken. After he curtly reported Pangbourne's death to Dumbledore, he wound up retreating to his own quarters, and vomiting into a dustbin. It could have been me. It could have been me. And Edgar Pangbourne did not deserve that kind of death. No one does. Once he cleaned himself up, he decided to go to Emmy. He needed to remind himself that there was still something clean in this world. And hopefully, she had been thinking fond thoughts of him all that afternoon.

When he knocked on Emmy's door, he heard a faint "Alohamora" from her, and the door opened. She was sitting on the sofa in her sitting room, with an empty box of tissues by her side. "Good afternoon, Severus," she said coldly.

Snape frowned. "Good afternoon, my dear. Is something wrong?"

Emmy stood up and snarled at him, "Don't you dare call me 'my dear.' You were only taking advantage of me. I poured out my heart to you, and you took it as a free license to shag me. All you really wanted was sex, and when you get what you want, you'll leave me without a backward glance. You don't really love me. You just told me you did to get me into bed. You were planning on smugly taking advantage of me, and using me for escape. If you really loved me, you'd respect my religious beliefs and my decisions about when I'll share my body with you."

Snape spluttered, "What the bloody devil is the matter with you, Emmy? I told you I meant it when I announced we were engaged, I told you I loved you, I've been to your religious services with you. Yes, I enjoyed sex with you, yes, I want to get you into bed again, but I am not going to leave you. I want much more than just sex from you. And you went against your religious beliefs before for me; why not keep on with what you started?"

Emmy narrowed her eyes. "I believe this conversation has reached its useful end, Severus." She grabbed the Portkey off her shelf, and vanished before he could stop her.

Snape stormed out of her rooms in a fine rage. Damned manipulative sneaky crazy Catholic Ravenclaw wench. She won't stay and fight it out with me, damn her eyes. She throws my words of love back in my face. I expected it to go this bad, but not this fast! I was planning on having plausible deniability on telling her that I loved her, sneering and laughing at her and her naïve Catholic Ravenclaw ways, telling her, 'I just said it to get your knickers down,' but I was expecting it to work at least once, dammit!

Father Sorin came drifting down the hallway at that point. "Where the hell did That Woman go?" Snape hissed at him.

"What did you do to her that she ran away from you, Severus Snape?" the Friar replied.

Snap sputtered, "I told her that I did love her, and the psychotic wench rejected me! She told me that if I really loved her, I'd respect her religious beliefs and practices."

Father Sorin sighed. "And what did you do to her, that she thought you didn't respect her religious beliefs and practices?"

Snape flushed and fell silent.

Father Sorin shook his head. "Congratulations, you finally got one out of three right, maybe. You finally told her you loved her. Was it true, or did you say that just to get her into bed again? Do you love anything about her besides her body?"

Snape sighed. "She is a most maddening, intoxicating, infuriating woman."

Father Sorin said, "Oh, so what happened? She said no?"

Snape said, "I said I loved her. She called me a liar."

Father Sorin asked, "Were you lying?"

Snape took a deep breath, about to exercise plausible deniability, and sneer that no, he didn't really love her; he had just said it to get her back into bed.

Father Sorin said, "Yes or no? I have centuries of dealing with people who aren't telling me the truth."

Snape spluttered, "Well, she obviously..."

Father Sorin repeated, "Yes or no, and we'll go on from there."

Snape yelled, "Yes, dammit, I do!"

Father Sorin nodded. "All right. Now why do you think she doesn't believe you?"

Snape retorted, "How the hell am I supposed to know?"

Father Sorin said, "Because you're a spy. You know when you're lying to others and you have gotten away with it, and if you're still alive and breathing, you must have some skill at it, with certain exceptions that I cannot go into because of the seal of the confessional."

Snape thought, Are any of my students Catholic? Which ones of them were at Mass, what have they done...He looked the ghost in the face, and said, "All right, she expects to be lied to."

Father Sorin said coolly, "So where do you think she got that from?"

Snape frowned. "Her first husband, damn his eyes."

Father Sorin said, "So now what do you know about her first husband?"

Snape said slowly, "He lied to her about whether he loved her."

Father Sorin replied. "Excellent. Twenty points to Slytherin. So what are you going to do?"

Snape drew himself up and stared at the ghost. "She said she didn't want me to be like her first husband."

Father Sorin shrugged. "Very well. Tell her the truth about whether you love her."

Snape retorted through clenched teeth, "I did tell her the truth, dammit, and she won't listen to me."

Father Sorin looked at him and said, "Well, she's afraid."

Snape sneered, "Afraid of me?"

Father Sorin shook his head. "No, she's afraid of marriage. She doesn't trust her own judgment about men anymore."

Snape said coldly, "I am hardly evidence that her judgment has improved."

Father Sorin sighed and went on, "Snape, let me give you some advice. The only way this marriage is going to work is if only one of you is in a guilty tailspin at a time. Now since she is the one feeling guilty and ashamed of herself, which you may be pleased to know she would not be if she hadn't wanted to go to bed with you, it is your turn to be the mature and reasonable one. Any fits of self-loathing you plan to indulge in will have to be postponed until she comes out of it."

Snape sulked, "She could have said 'not until after we're married.' I'm the one who wants to get married."

Father Sorin said slowly, "You are going to have to convince her that she wants to get married."

Snape sneered, "Now how do I do that? By pretending I don't want to sleep with her?"

Father Sorin said, "No. By restraining your actions. You may want to sleep with her, but you shouldn't until after you're married."

Snape shouted back, "You don't understand, you meddlesome ghost! You've been dead for seven hundred years, and you were a celibate even before you died."

Father Sorin hissed, "Before I was dead, I was alive, and before I was a priest and a monk, I was a man with a past that you know nothing about."

Snape's jaw dropped. "Oh." I think I could find out.

Father Sorin sighed. "Snape, do you expect her to read your mind?"

Snape set his jaw.

"What happened to you that you needed to make love to her?" Father Sorin asked quietly.

"Nothing," Snape hissed. "Absolutely nothing."

Father Sorin sighed. "Snape, let me tell you two things. First, part of confession is absolute confidentiality on my part. By my vows, I cannot ever tell anyone what you have said to me in confession. Second, don't insult my intelligence by saying nothing happened. I've heard too many confessions from Crusaders and other warriors not to recognize that 'nothing.'"

Snape glared at the ghost. "Not out here in the corridor."

Father Sorin nodded. "Of course not. Let's go into the chapel."

Snape looked around, and the door to the Catholic chapel was indeed present. He had never seen it there before. He opened the door and went in. Father Sorin drifted in, and into the small boxy-looking structure with three doors in it. Snape opened the door and went in. He looked at the kneeler set besides the screen, and shook his head. Father Sorin's voice sounded from the other side of the screen, "Come around to this side, Severus." Snape sat down in one chair, and Father Sorin appeared to sit down in the other.

"What happened, Severus?" Father Sorin asked.

Snape sighed. "I was summoned to a meeting of Death Eaters this afternoon by the Dark Lord. He was torturing and executing a traitor to his side. It was an acquaintance of mine from school, Edgar Pangbourne." Snape could feel himself shaking all over again at the horror of it.

"How did it happen, Severus?" Father Sorin asked yet again, quietly and inexorably.

Snape shook his head. "You don't want to know, Father."

"I've heard many horrible things throughout my ministry here, Severus. I doubt I can be shocked anymore." Father Sorin replied, calmly and levelly.

"First Voldemort used Crucio. Then he parodied your ceremony, and said 'Take this, all of you, and eat it,' and then -" Snape choked in disgust on what all the Death Eaters had done.

Father Sorin nodded. "Blasphemy and Dark Arts, indeed. A parody of the Mass. Traditional. I can see why you sought Emmy out after you returned, but you told her none of this?"

"She hasn't had several hundred years not to be shocked."

Father Sorin replies, "So as far as she was concerned, you left to go talk to Dumbledore about something ordinary, came back from your errand, and expected her to fall into your arms."

Snape replied, "I wanted to take up where we had left off, and I didn't want to think about what I had just seen."

Father Sorin replied, calmly, "You wanted to be comforted without making yourself vulnerable by admitting you needed comforting."

"Well, I didn't want to tell the woman I loved that I was afraid for my life and feeling sorry for a Death Eater and throwing up in the dustbin over the fate of someone whom she would think deserved it. Aren't you going to tell me he's in hell now?"

Father Sorin asked him, "Have you heard of Jonah? Or St. Dismas?"

Snape replied, "The whale, and no."

Father Sorin said, "I'll take that as a no on both. After Jonah was spit out of the whale, he went to Nineveh and prophesied to the people, and they repented. Jonah grew furious with God for not punishing the people of Nineveh for their past sins, and went out into the desert. God caused a gourd to grow up to provide shadow to Jonah in his tent. Then He caused the gourd to wither, and Jonah grew angry with God for not having mercy on the gourd. God reminded Jonah, 'If you wish mercy for this gourd, how much more do I wish it for an entire city?' And the second story I want to tell you is that of Dismas, who was executed for thievery on the same day and at the same place that Jesus Christ was. Dismas asked Christ for mercy, and Christ replied, 'This very day you shall be with me in Paradise.' And the Church has remembered that man executed as a thief ever since as Saint Dismas, and believes that he is in Heaven with Christ." He paused. "Are you more merciful than God the Father or God the Son, Jesus the Christ?"

Snape shook his head. "Not by a long shot, Father."

Father Sorin shrugged. "And if you can have pity for a fellow Death Eater, God can presumably have mercy on him. I am not going to tell you that so-and-so is in Hell, Snape. I can only give you the official list of those who are in Heaven."

Snape replied, "Does she know these stories?"

Father Sorin said, "She should. She'll know St. Dismas, at least."

Snape sighed and said, "All right, Father Sorin. What do I do now?"

Father Sorin said, "Do you think she's happy right now?"

Snape replied, "No."

Father Sorin said, "There was a wise man once who said, 'Grant that I may not seek so much to be consoled as to console....for it is in giving that we receive.'" Father Sorin gave Snape a small smile, and continued, "It actually works, you know. Seek her out, comfort her, reassure her of your love, and you will be reassured of hers, even if the pair of you don't fall into sins of lust."

Snape replied, "So where is she?"

Father Sorin sighed. "What part of "seek her out" did you not understand?"

Snape muttered, "'Sins of lust' are a lot less complicated."

Father Sorin raised an eyebrow and drawled, "Really. I was under the impression they could be quite complicated."

Snape realized, He's been hearing confessions for centuries. I can't shock him on that one either. He said, "All right, I'll find her myself, and I'm going to make all three out of three right. Track her down and convince her that I do love her, ask her for her hand, and send a letter to her father to make an appointment to ask him for her hand."

Father Sorin nodded and said, "Good lad. Go with God, my son. May God open your heart, and may He keep your trousers fastened. May St. Raphael the Archangel, patron of travelers and young lovers, guard and guide you on your way."

End of Chapter 31