Vector's Challenge

Chapter 36 - Meet the Parents

On that Thursday, Snape re-read the note from Emmy's parents again. I thought that I would be talking to her father alone, and doing the old traditional "ask him for her hand." Is this where the Vector family has a lot to say about our engagement? He sighed and readied himself for the Floo trip. He wound up emerging in a fireplace set in a hallway, with a mirror hanging on the wall and a Muggle coat rack standing on the floor, with cloaks, Muggle coats, and umbrellas stuffed into it. He vaguely remembered it from the visit with Emmy a few weeks earlier. He turned his attention to Aoife and Edmund Vector.

Aoife Vector was a small, somewhat plump woman, with blond hair pinned up on top of her head, and blue eyes. Not as plump as Mrs. Weasley, but a pleasantly cuddly armful. Snape suddenly remembered his classmates joking about "Watch the mother to see what the daughter will look like." By that standard, he had little to worry about. Edmund Vector had his arm around his wife. He was a tall, lean, weather-beaten man with sharp brown eyes, graying dark brown hair cut as short as any Muggle's, and dressed in clothing of a style that Snape had seen in pictures from the unit on World War II in the Muggle Studies texts when the Muggle Studies professor was preparing outlines in the staff common room. Snape decided that Emmy must have taken after her mother in build, and her father in coloration.

Something about Edmund and Aoife Vector triggered a memory for Snape of what the Vector parents had looked like the first time he ever saw them, on the King's Cross platform with six children to watch, not just two. He realized they looked much sadder than the first time he ever saw them. And I am responsible for that.

"How do you do, Mr. Snape?" Edmund Vector asked him.

"Quite well, thank you. And yourself? Mrs. Vector?"

"Quite well. The tea is ready, Mr. Snape."

Snape followed the Vectors into their sitting room, and Edmund waved his wand to summon the tea-things. Snape noticed out of the corner of his eye that the Vectors had pictures of all their children up; Emmy and Mike at every age, and pictures of the younger children as well. The ones who never got a chance to grow up, thanks to you, Snape.

The conversation was at first muted while everyone started in on the tea, and then turned to the weather and Quidditch. Edmund had some interesting anecdotes about his colleagues in the chemistry department and their hapless students, and Snape found himself chucking a few times and telling stories to match Edmund's.

After the petit fours had gone around the table, Aoife asked, "So, Mr. Snape, you and my daughter have worked together for several years now. How is it you have suddenly decided to get married?"

Snape tried to give her his "Gaudy weekend" smile, that was normally reserved for rich Slytherin alumni such as Lucius Malfoy, and replied, "Would you believe that we just suddenly fell in love?"

Aoife said, "No. What happened, Mr. Snape?"

Snape set his cup of tea down, and began, "Well, one very hot day just before the start of term..." He told them a fair amount of the story, leaving out Lucius Malfoy's interactions with Emmy.

Edmund screwed up his face, briefly pinched the bridge of his nose, and then took his hand down and glared at Snape. "So having known my daughter professionally for some years, you fell in love with her when she belly-danced with her snake in the Great Hall at Hogwarts."

Snape asked, "What snake? There was no snake involved in her dance."

Edmund drawled, "I stand corrected." He paused, and let the silence build.

Snape sighed and said, "In the course of the bet, we got to know each other better, and she showed great kindness and concern to one of my students, which we in Slytherin don't expect from outsiders. I also saw her behave with great courage and level-headedness under trying circumstances."

Edmund snorted. "Courage, yes. Level-headedness? Don't try to fool me about my own daughter."

Snape said, "I won't go into detail, but yes, I have seen her behave with level-headedness."

Aoife glanced at her husband, and said, "She must finally be acting like you, Edmund."

Snape blinked for one moment, at the awful mental picture of Lucius Malfoy making advances on Edmund Vector. For some reason, the image of a barracuda taking on a shark came to mind.

Edmund's lips twitched. "How is Lucius Malfoy these days?"

Snape replied, calmly, coolly, and as a professional spy, "I believe he's well."

Aoife pursed her lips, and said, "What's all this about?"

Snape said, "Lucius Malfoy's son Draco is a student at Hogwarts and in Emmy's Arithmancy class. Lucius tried to bully her, and made insulting remarks about her religion."

Aoife narrowed her eyes. "Mr. Snape, is that true?"

Snape nodded. "It is."

Aoife said, in a practiced mother's tone, "Then tell me the rest of the truth."

Snape involuntarily responded to the tone and said, "He also attempted to harass her in connection with our bet."

Edmund set down his teacup with a menacing clink. "Oh, really. She did not inform me of this."

Snape replied, "She dealt with it, as I said, courageously and level-headedly."

Edmund muttered, "You mean she didn't use an Unforgiveable in front of witnesses. She's learned something after all."

Snape was perturbed on her behalf and his own. What has this family found it necessary to do? And what has Emmy learned from her father? "She is very well thought of by everyone at Hogwarts, with the exceptions of Lucius and Draco Malfoy."

The corner of Edmund's mouth twitched. "I see. Mr. Snape, I have to step into my office for a moment to get something. Would you mind waiting here?"

His tone triggered Snape's memories of dealing with the Ministry, in that dreadful limbo after he had confessed to Dumbledore and turned Ministry's Evidence. He had never been sure if the Aurors had wanted to execute him, or if they were merely willing to subject him to painful and highly embarrassing forms of magical restraint. He nodded and sat stone still. Edmund left the room, quiet as a cat, or a black panther on the hunt.

Aoife went to clear the tea things away. She seemed quite irritated, moving very quickly, slamming things around, et cetera. Now you know where your fiancée gets it from. He cleared his throat. "Mrs. Vector?" he said, hesitantly.

She looked up at him. "Yes, Mr. Snape?" she replied.

He paused. How do I bring this up...."You seem to be upset about something, Mrs. Vector."

Aoife Vector's blue eyes narrowed. She hissed, "Yes, I am. I am extremely upset about my daughter bringing you home as her fiancé. I know now from Michael that you were involved with the Death Eaters. I don't wish to say anything to her, yet, but I will before it's too late to stop this."

Snape's face froze. "I see." Yet another person who couldn't look past the Mark on his arm...

"For all I know, you could have been the one responsible for the poison gas that killed my children."

Snape drew in a breath, and thought, Oh, God. Father Sorin warned me this would be difficult, but I had no idea...He cleared his throat. "I did not conduct the attack, and I did not manufacture the gas," he replied.

Unfortunately, Aoife heard the omission he made. "So you were the one who came up with the formula for that hellish stuff, you frigging bastard?"she said. She hit him across the face, hard.

Snape's first instinct was to grab her wrists and stop her, but one look at her face convinced him to hold his hand. Besides, it's not as if I don't deserve it.

Aoife hit him in the stomach. "You're the one responsible for my brother-in-law's whole family dying?" She hit him again, on the jaw.

"You're the one responsible for my sons and daughters dying in agony, choking on their own phlegm and blood?" Another hit to the lower abdomen. Snape fell off his chair and sank down to his knees, groaning.

"You're the one responsible for making me barren?" Aoife kicked him. Snape let out another groan.

Aoife let out a scream, and went after Snape's face. He brought his arm up to protect his eyes from her fingers. He felt her nails tear at his face and arm, felt the blood running down his cheeks. He cringed as he knelt on the floor, waiting for the next hit. And the hell of it was, he deserved everything this woman wanted to do to him.

He heard sobs, rusty-sounding as if she hadn't cried in years, and he took his arm away from his eyes. She was looking at her own hands and at his blood on them, and she was rocking back and forth, babbling in Irish. Snape caught her as she fell, and held her while she cried.

He very nearly said that he was sorry, but he checked himself. He thought, What possible difference would it make now? He rocked her as if he was the mother and she was the child. He bit his lip as she cried.

She finally regained control of herself. She looked at the man who was holding her. Six-foot-two, he was, and he could have stopped her at any time. She said, "I'm not going to apologize to you, Mr. Snape."

He sighed, and replied, "Have I asked you to?"

She glared back at him, thinking, I drew the man's blood with my fingernails, and he can still sit there cool as a cucumber. Frigging unnatural Limey bastard. She asked him, "My babies - how could you?"

Snape flinched briefly and quickly, but then rallied and replied, "You're no more interested in hearing the answer than I am in answering."

She spat back, "There couldn't be any excuse. But you could say you're sorry."

He gave her a thin smile, which combined with the blood on his face, made her shudder. He stood up, and began to pace. He said, "Your brother-in-law's family gone. Your children, in pain, terrified, probably crying for their mother with the last breath they were able to draw. And no more children for you, ever."

Aoife closed her eyes for a moment, to get rid of the image of the blood-stained man. However, his words painted a picture of things she had never been able to get out of her mind. Her eyes opened as the realization hit her. He hasn't been able to get these images out of his mind either. She looked at him, clad all in black and pacing like a panther in a cage. He wound up with, "What of all that would change if I said I was sorry?"

She yelled at him, "It's not about changing the past, you black-hearted murdering bastard, it's about saving your frigging worthless soul!"

He started laughing, harder and harder. She sprang to her feet and began to run around the room, looking for something that she could kill him with. He slid down to the floor, and she realized that he was crying. He shook his head and pushed her away when she hesitantly attempted to hold him. He choked out, "Words aren't enough."

Aoife rocked back on her heels. He'll let me rip his face open, but he won't let me hold him while he's crying. Christ, did my daughter ever pick a tough one. What did her Da and I do wrong? She snarled, "Tears can't wash away blood, and you're right that words aren't enough, you shite. You have to prove it to me that you're sorry, with your actions. Right actions."

He shook his head, and kept on crying. She finally had to give him an open-handed slap across the face to stop it. She said, "Do you know what the worst part is?"

Snape's voice was rough from crying and laughing, but he still managed to sneer back, "Tell me."

Aoife spat out, "The worst part is that not only can God forgive you, but He expects me to do so as well."

Snape snorted, and she thought for a moment that he was going to start laughing again. He collected himself and replied, "Now, we both know one of those is quite unlikely and the other one is impossible."

Aoife snarled, "I said, 'forgive.' Not 'Forget what you've done.'"

He retorted, "I heard what you said."

Aoife took a deep breath. "If you don't think forgiveness is possible, what was the point of your changing sides?"

Snape stood up, and Aoife followed suit. He said, "I changed sides because I was wrong. Not because it cancelled anything out." He pulled up his left sleeve, and showed her the Dark Mark on his arm.

Aoife looked at the Dark Mark. She bit her lip to keep from smiling at the thought that here was a living example of the old milk-bottle story, and how Purgatory was necessary to clean the remaining traces of sin off people's souls after they died. The story went that the human soul was like a milk bottle, and the stains of sin on the soul were like dirty fingerprints left on it, even after an attempt to wipe it clean. She had told it to her children herself; "God forgives, but he doesn't forget." She frowned at the thought of her children, dead because of this man.

Snape continued on, "Faded, for the most part, but permanent. I cannot make it go away, I cannot bring the dead back to life, and I do not see any point in my serving as your punching bag on a recurring basis. So -"

Aoife interrupted him. "You could make an antidote. For that hellish gas of yours."

The very last expression she had expected to see on his face was irritated incomprehension, but that was what she was seeing now. He said, "Another one? Any variation on the original antidote would be inferior -"

She flew at him again, screaming, "Liar!" He held her off with an ease that suggested he was serious about not being her punching bag again. He gripped her shoulders and held her in the air, at his arms'-length. She flailed around helplessly as she attempted to reach him, but all she could do was hit and scratch his arms. She kicked out at him, but he swayed so that he took the kicks on his side and not in his groin.

"Considering what I have already admitted to, why should I lie about that?" he said.

"There is no antidote!" Aoife shrieked.

"Nonsense," Snape retorted. "It's a complicated process, and the ingredients and results aren't cheap, but I gave the formula to the Ministry years ago. One of my first assignments for Dumbledore."

Aoife started to cry. "They never told me. Those frigging bastards never told me." Snape lowered her down. She lashed out at Snape one final time as she collapsed to the floor, and Snape wound up going down with her.

At that point, Edmund Vector opened the door to the dining room, with a folder in his hand. "Aoife, darling?" he said. He entered the room, and came to a halt when he saw his wife and his daughter's - fiancé - sprawled on the floor together, both spattered with blood. "What precisely is going on here?" he asked, in a too-calm voice, as the folder dropped from his hand.

Aoife scrambled to her feet. "Guess who came up with the formula for that gas, Edmund dearest," she replied.

"What gas?" Edmund replied.

"That gas that was used on August 10, 1975," Aoife said.

Edmund stood stock-still while he processed this information. He said, again in that too-calm voice, "I know all about it, Aoife darling. But by the time I got told about it, the bastard had already switched sides, so I couldn't kill him."

Aoife's eyes flashed as she glared at her husband. "You stupid men and your goddamned frigging games. Why didn't you avenge your children?"

Edmund's mouth thinned. "I swore before the Divine Presence at the Westminster Cathedral altar that if Snape ever went off the straight and narrow, that I would kill him, and damn the consequences."

"And did you know that he had made an antidote to that frigging gas?"

Edmund's eyebrows shot up. "Now that I was not aware of." His eyes narrowed. "My former colleagues have quite a great deal of explaining to do to me."

Aoife Vector's eyes were alight with the battle-light now. "And to me as well."

Edmund gave her a very predatory smile. "The great Gaels of Ireland," he muttered.

Aoife returned his smile. "Are the men that God made mad," she quoted back at her husband. The two chorused, "For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad."

Edmund brought his wife's blood-stained hand to his mouth, and kissed it. "Madame Vector, let us attack." She gave him a brilliant smile back.

Snape watched the two with great fascination as he slowly stood up. He thought, If Aoife Finnigan Vector had attended Hogwarts, she would have made a magnificent Slytherin. And the gods help anyone who ever got in her way.

Edmund turned his attention back to Snape. Aoife glared at Snape and muttered things under her breath about Snape's intelligence, ancestry and his eventual fate in the afterlife. Edmund said to her, "Aoife, dear, Snape is not at the top of the list of those who are guilty in our children's death." Edmund looked over at Snape. "Severus Snape, did you devise the formula for the poison gas that was used in that attack?"

"Yes."

"Did you know the gas was going to be used in that attack?"

"No, not specifically."

"Did you know there was going to be an attack?"

"What else are you going to use a gas like that for?"

"That's not what I meant. Did you know where and when, and by whom?"

"I didn't know the specifics because I didn't want to."

"Did you participate in manufacturing the gas?"

"No, but I would have if they'd asked me."

"Did you participate in the attack itself?"

"No, but I would have if they'd asked me."

"Would you have given Lestrange the gas if you had known what he planned to do with it?"

"At that point, yes." Snape's mouth twisted. "I was a Death Eater, we were going to change the world, purify the race."

Edmund asked, "How old were you when all this happened?"

Snape replied, "It was just after my fifth year at Hogwarts. I was sixteen."

Edmund drawled, "So, you were sixteen and hated the world and everybody in it. When did you leave the Death Eaters?"

Snape said, "I was twenty-one."

"And what did you do after you left?"

"I confessed to Dumbledore, then became an informant."

"And when did you make the antidote for the gas?"

"When I was twenty-one. It was one of the first things I did for Dumbledore."

"Why did you leave?"

Snape choked.

Edmund asked, "Did you stop hating the world?"

Snape said, "No, but I realized they weren't any better. They were worse."

Edmund smiled coldly. "You are guilty of willful ignorance and of felony murder, Severus Snape. However, you were a minor -- "

Snape interrupted, "I knew what I was doing."

Edmund said, "I don't dispute that. But someone should have stopped you. Your parents, your Head of House, Headmaster Dumbledore, the Ministry, somebody should have known. And you would not have been in a position to commit those crimes if people who were older and who should have known better weren't doing worse."

Snape was nonplussed by this. "So where do we go from here, Mr. Vector?"

Edmund replied, "I decided many years ago to let you live. I see no reason to change my decision, unless you harm my daughter. Is that perfectly clear?"

"Admirably," Snape said.

Aoife nodded.

Edmund asked, "Who did you give the information about the antidote to?"

"I submitted the information to Menelaus Fisher, and his supervisor was Niniane Pangbourne."

Edmund said, "I know Niniane Pangbourne. I'll speak to her."'

Snape said, "I assume that you will tell Emmy about this?"

Edmund replied, "No. I will not. Nor do I see any reason why you or anyone," he looked at his wife, "should."

Snape was quite stunned by that. "What? Why?"

Edmund said, "She knows your past and the type of thing you were responsible for. It shouldn't matter if it was our family or someone else's."

Aoife snorted. "That's the type of thing that only a cold-blooded Englishman could do."

Edmund said, "Aoife! They were my children as well, as Emmy is. 'Let the dead bury their dead,' and it wasn't an Englishman who said that."

Aoife said, "I'm sorry, Edmund."

Edmund sighed. "You're wild Irish, but I'll civilize you yet, my dear."

Snape opened his mouth, and closed it again. He realized that his presence was utterly superfluous. He nodded to the two. "Mr. Vector. Mrs. Vector. I think I should be going now."

Edmund and Aoife merely nodded in response to Snape's voice, and continued to stare at each other.

Snape caught sight of his face in the mirror in the front hall as he took his cloak off the coat rack. His future mother-in-law had truly gone berserk, and his face looked horrible. He brought out a handkerchief, wiped most of the blood off, and pulled a healing potion out of his cloak. It would be quite difficult to explain to anyone who saw him just what had happened. And he really didn't want to explain to Emmy why her mother had seen fit to attempt to rip his face off with her fingernails. It would get into matters that her father had as good as ordered him to keep quiet about. Not to mention how Emmy might react to the news.

As he worked on his face, he overheard Aoife and Edmund Vector talking.

Aoife said, "Are they hiding the formula as a secret weapon?"

He heard Edmund replying, "No, they probably just misfiled it. Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. Menelaus Fisher was never very bright. And Niniane Pangbourne always spent more time arguing with him than properly supervising him. No allegiance to Voldemort in her, regardless of what other members of her family had done."

Aoife said, "They have no right to be this stupid! There are people's lives involved here!"

He heard a sigh, "That's why I let young Snape off the hook."

Aoife spat, "I want to go teach them a lesson to not be stupid!"

Snape shuddered, and decided to Floo back to Hogwarts at that point, before she came looking for him again. He could well believe Emmy's words now, that Michael had taken after their mother. Just my luck. My future mother-in-law is Mad Maeve O'Connaught herself, my future father-in-law is willing to kill me if I ever go off the straight and narrow, or if I harm his daughter, and my future brother-in-law is a berserker. And Emmy has a fine temper of her own. Bloody wonderful. What precisely have I done by agreeing to marry That Woman? He Flooed back to Hogwarts.

In the Vectors' sitting room, Edmund raised an eyebrow at his wife. "How do you propose we go teach them a lesson? They will be doing the national security dance and attempting to hide their incompetence. They won't admit to anything."

Aoife's smile sharpened. "We'll just have to make them." She started to pace around the room, then turned back to him and said, "On reflection, I think that what we are going to do is to give an exclusive interview to the Daily Prophet, the one that they've been begging me for all these years. I'm going to tell them about our children's deaths, and my infertility, and how the Ministry has deliberately withheld the antidote ever since they got their hands on it."

Edmund Vector frowned. "Aoife darling, we have been over this again and again. I cannot talk to the Press, and you cannot either."

Aoife retorted, "Edmund Ignatius Vector, you have been 'officially retired' from the Ministry for over twenty years. What are they going to do? Now, if you're still afraid of what they'll do to you, you don't have to talk to the press at all. But I am not going to sit silent anymore, my dear."

Edmund glared back at his wife. "I don't trust those reporters at the Prophet any further than I can throw them with my bare hands. I am not going to send you to deal alone with them. God only knows what sort of claptrap they'd twist out of our story." He let out a hiss of breath, and ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair. "Let's think of something to do that doesn't involve blowing Professor Snape's cover. He needs to live until the wedding, at the least. I propose quiet blackmail first, and then a leak. This will finish me at the Ministry, at least until the war heats up. In every organization, there is a point at which the idiot density builds up so high that a sensible person who remains is no longer a good influence, but an accomplice, and I always hoped I'd get out before that happened."

"You want Snape to marry our daughter?" Aoife shouted.

Edmund shook his head. "Not particularly. I would be perfectly content if she did break it off with him. But remember, we tried interfering the last time, and it did not work. It has to be her decision, Aoife." Aoife crossed her arms and thrust her lower lip out. Edmund embraced her, and rubbed her shoulders. "Aoife, remember, we told her not to join the Muggle world, we told her not to marry or stay with that rat bastard Donovan, and she did exactly the opposite. And you have to admit, Snape's grown up better than you'd expect from his early career. At least he has a brain and something resembling a conscience."

"So we should tell her to marry Snape, then? You're going beyond tolerance." Aoife said, looking up at her husband.

Edmund sighed and shook his head. "Aoife, the war is heating up. She could do a lot worse than Snape. At least he has the desire and the ability to protect her as much as she'll let herself be protected."

Aoife said, "Why couldn't she have married that nice Bill Weasley boy? "

Edmund snorted. "Well, I don't think he ever asked her. I think Bill Weasley would have been more interested in Mike than Emmy."

"That nice boy; what a waste."

Edmund shrugged. "He seems happy, and the Weasley name is in no danger of extinction."

Aoife said, "I wish Michael would find somebody and settle down."

Edmund grinned. "Other than Bill Weasley, you mean."

Aoife threw a pillow at him. Edmund ducked it, and grabbed her around the waist. He swung her off her feet, and around in the air. Aoife slid down against the length of his body, and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

When she came up for air, Edmund murmured, "It's nice to have the children out from underfoot."

Aoife gave him a throaty laugh. "You wicked Englishman."

Edmund retorted as he lowered her to the sofa, "You love it when I'm wicked."

Aoife gave him a sweet smile, and said, "It almost makes up for you being English."

Edmund growled, "Almost, Aoife?" as he started to kiss her more fiercely and undo the rest of her hair.

End of Chapter 36