Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Four

If Rebecca bore any naïve hope that queasy-stomached Borgergups would be the worst obstacle she would have to face at Hogwarts that year, it was swept away the instant she stepped into the shadowy Potions classroom the following afternoon. The professor, a tall, sallow man with lank black hair, was standing by his desk, watching his charges enter with an expression of bored disdain. At the soft whirr of her chair, his head snapped in her direction.

He was remarkably quick. That was the only thought she had time for before he was looming in front of her, cloak rippling around his ankles. He glared down at her, arms folded across his chest. A wrinkled parchment was clutched in his right hand.

"Good morning, Miss Stanhope," he murmured, though from his tone it was clear he saw nothing good about it.

She was so surprised that she was at a loss for words. She craned her neck to look at him. His face was an inscrutable mask, but his eyes were glittering with anger, and she felt the pit of her stomach drop into her knees. This was not going to turn out well. She swallowed a lump of unease and spoke, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Good morning, Professor Sn..." She trailed off. In her consternation, she had forgotten his name. It was the last time she would ever make that mistake.

"Snape," he hissed through gritted teeth. "Professor Snape." Then he was crouched in front of her, turning the rumpled parchment in his hands. His black eyes bored into her wide, uncertain blue ones. "Do you happen to know what this is?" he asked, eyes darting momentarily to the paper before fastening onto her again.

"No, sir," she managed, knowing as soon as the words left her mouth that it was the worst answer she could possibly have given. Her fingers clamped convulsively around the rim of her cauldron, making it squeak.

"No?" A malicious smile played around the corners of his mouth. "This," he said, standing up and turning to address the class, "is a list of the accommodations you require in order to participate in this class. Professor McGonagall delivered it to me just this morning. Tell me, Miss Stanhope, do you think yourself special?" His voice was a wicked silken purr, and he turned his bottomless eyes to her in mute, vicious glee.

"No, sir." She could feel the first beads of sweat popping out on her forehead. The malevolence and loathing were radiating from him in staggering waves, and she fought hard against the urge to flinch.

"Then why do you insist on asking for things no other student has access to?"

"Sir, they're just things to help me do as well in everyone else."

He lunged toward her so quickly that she did recoil then, pulling as far back from his unyielding face as she could. Her cauldron rattled dangerously in her lap. "If you cannot do the same work with the same equipment as everyone else, then you do not deserve to be here. Go back to wherever you came from and refrain from dragging the rest of these sorry pupils with you. I am not a nursemaid. I have no patience with the Headmaster's latest charity case. I am not going to waste my time chasing after an oversized, enchanted cutting knife, a control beaker, or anything else on this pretentious little list of yours. Is that clear?" His face was now so close to her own that she could see the individual pores of his skin.

"Yes, sir," she croaked, too stunned to react in any other manner.

"Good. Very good. Now get to your seat. You've wasted more than enough of my time already. And if you even think about pulling out that Dicta-Quill of yours, you'll be in detention for the rest of your life." He flashed her a lopsided smirk. "Oh, and one more thing," he purred, his breath tickling her ear, "five points from Gryffindor for being in my presence, another five for forgetting my name, and ten for being unprepared. If you are not in your seat by the time I reach my lectern, it'll be twenty." He straightened and whirled toward his desk.

Rebecca tried, but it was no contest. He was two steps away from his goal; she had half the distance of the room to traverse to reach her desk. Her chair had just lurched into motion when his nightshade voice cut the silence of the room like a rapier.

"Twenty." It held a note of smug triumph.

She retreated to her desk in a daze, pulling her chair alongside the first empty seat. Never had she encountered such overt and unrepentant hostility from a teacher. All her life, teachers had been her protectors, her advocates. This was a new, and dangerous, phenomenon. A hateful peer was relatively easy to counteract. If their petty cruelty was ignored long enough, they usually went off in search of new quarry. A teacher, though, was an entirely different matter. A teacher did not have to limit their cruelty to tart barbs or tasteless pranks; with a scratch of a quill, they could demolish academic futures. Professor Snape could, and probably would, ruin all her dreams with a single scribble of ink.

"Today," began Snape with considerably more vigor and enthusiasm than he had shown in quite some time, "we will be brewing the Camoflous Draught. When brewed properly, it can be used to conceal the drinker in broad daylight. They can stand a mere hairbreadth away from someone and never be seen. The list of ingredients is rather complex, and I don't expect that many of you will be competent enough to do it properly. Actually, I anticipate that most of my Anti-Ache powder will be gone by the end of the session." Here he spared Rebecca a terrible glare. "However, despite my annual protests, the Headmaster is adamant that I teach you." He turned toward the blackboard and began to write out the lengthy list of ingredients.

There was a dry rustle of parchment as students began scribbling furious notes. Barred from using the Dicta-quill, she could only watch as Snape's lily, long-fingered hand glided across the board, tapping out the secrets of the world in staccato rhythm and white dust. Every movement he made was a testimony to cold efficiency, and looking at his ramrod-straight, narrow back, she felt a shiver of fear. He was a man without mercy, and any minute now he was going to turn around and see her not writing anything down.

Sure enough, as though he had read the thought, his hand paused in its mesmerizing flow, and he turned to look at her. The cauldron on her lap was jangling like a doomsday bell.

"Miss Stanhope, why are you not copying these ingredients down? All of your classmates seem to be able to manage." His voice was quiet thunder.

"Well, sir," she said, hating the tremulous squeak in her voice but powerless to control it, "the only quill I have is the Dicta-Quill, and you told me not to use it."

"Don't be impertinent," he snapped. "Five points for your cheek. Use that muddled head of yours and borrow one." Someone on the Slytherin side giggled. Snape watched her impassively.

She risked a quick glance around the room. Most of her classmates were intent on studying the fine grain of the wood used in their desks. A few shot her sympathetic glances, but none dared to raise their head. Potter and his group were glaring at her smirking tormentor, but they uttered not a syllable in her defense. They already knew what she was fast learning. It was a futile cause.

No one made a sound for a full minute. Her hands were sweating so badly that the small pewter cauldron was slipping from her grasp. It clanked loudly against the metal clasp of her seat belt.

"Stop that incessant rattling!" he roared.

His voice was so loud after the previous quiet that she was startled into a vicious spasm. Her leg shot out and kicked the desk in front of her, eliciting a startled screech from the occupant, an Indian girl who spared her an offended sniff. Worse yet, the cauldron slithered from her grasp and clattered to the floor with a jarring ka-bong. It rolled to a stop at Professor Snape's feet.

Another spasm gripped her, this time tearing through her left arm, bringing it to her chest in a violent whipsaw. She gritted her teeth against the tight, sizzling pain. There was a sharp prick on her left arm, and she turned to see Neville Longbottom holding out an owl quill and inkwell to her with jittering hands. His eyes were round as dinner plates, and his skin was waxy with terror.

He feels the same way I do about Snape, she realized as another cramp lanced through her forearm, making her give a soft gasp.

"Ah, Mr. Longbottom has come to your rescue. I should have known the two of you would get on," Snape sneered. "Well, what are you waiting for, girl? Take them."

She forced her rigid, clenching arm to extend, pale, cold fingers snapping closed around the slender shaft of the quill. Please, Merlin, don't let it break, she thought. Her hand was trembling and cramping so badly that the quill was convulsing erratically, scribbling against the air. She dropped it onto the desk and flexed her fingers in the hope it would calm the tremors, but it did no good. The hand trembled just as badly as before, and from the corner of her eye, she saw that Professor Snape was curling his lip impatiently. The hand darted out again and wrapped around the inkwell. Another spasm ripped her, and she crushed the inkwell between her fingers, slick black ink sloshing onto her wrist.

"It only took you six minutes to grasp a quill," Snape said in mock admiration. "By my calculations, it should only take you six months to complete this potion." He smiled a bloodless smile. "Pity."

It was clear from his expression that he was enjoying himself. His eyes twinkled with black mirth. Nothing she could say would move him to mercy. Her chest constricted with fear, confusion, and low-grade panic. There was no way out of this. He hated her simply because of the way she was. She could not change herself, and she was certain he would never change his mind. They had reached an impasse. Silently, staring up at his cadaverous face, she considered her options.

She could break under his fierce, unrelenting lash, as he no doubt hoped she would, or she could stiffen her spine and endure him. The first was by far the easiest option. She was beginning to crack already, and she had a sneaking suspicion that he had not even begun to bring the full extent of his cruelty to bear. Her hands shook, her teeth clicked together, and the hot scald of threatening tears needled her eyes.

Can I survive a year like this? The thought resonated in her mind. She had survived every conceivable cruelty life had ever thrown in her path thus far, besting them with steel-jawed indifference, but this was something outside her scope of experience. She could not combat his venom as she had Malfoy. He was not some haughty, sniveling, spoiled child strutting and preening his way through life by bullying others. He was an adult, an adult in position of authority, and if she tried to deflect his torment with her usual defense of sarcastic wit, he would crush her beneath her heel. His wit far outmatched her own, and his cruelty was eroding her carefully constructed defenses faster than she could shore them up. She would be lucky to survive the class.

Do you want to go back to D.A.I.M.S.?

The thought was like a sharp blow to her heart. D.A.I.M.S., with its antiseptic walls and stone-faced, white-smocked nurses was a tomb, a crypt where the souls withered before the bodies gave out. She had seen it with her own eyes. Students came in, suffering but bright, eager to hone their skills as best they could. They left dull-eyed and disillusioned, settling for menial jobs in obscure little shoppes or submitting meekly to the regimented schedule of life in an institution. If she went back there, her spirit would be broken just like the others. It might take months or years, but it would happen. Better to take her chances here with this vituperative, irritable bastard than succumb to the vampiric monotony of life back home.

Having come to a decision did not lessen her fear of the glowering figure before her. Her hands shook in her lap, and her heart thudded painfully against her ribcage. Her mouth was desert dry, and she scraped her tongue along the roof of her mouth to moisten it. It was sandpaper against granite, and she soon gave it up.

"Pick up your cauldron, Miss Stanhope, and do it quickly. If you take longer than thirty seconds, you will regret it." He said this almost cheerfully.

She reached inside her robe for her wand, but his voice froze her with a sinister hiss. "No wand." There was a muffled groan from the Gryffindor side of the room. They were anticipating a long battle and a crushing loss of points that would likely drop them from contention for the House Cup. The Slytherins sniggered behind their hands. Everyone in the room was aware of the outcome before the battle had even been waged.

Rebecca rolled toward the cauldron at the scowling professor's feet, furious because they were right. There was no way that she would be able to retrieve the cauldron in the allotted time. Even totally calm, she would have been hard pressed, and after the very public excoriation she had received, serenity was the furthest thing from her mind. The class was silent except for the nervous tapping of quill shafts upon desktops and a smattering of jubilant titters. Professor Snape watched her approach without comment, his hands resting lightly upon the lectern.

She brought the chair to a stop less than an inch from his feet. This close to him, she could smell his scent, a dry mixture of allspice and yellowing parchment dust. It was not entirely unpleasant; he most certainly did not smell of turpentine as Longbottom had suggested. He stared down his long, crooked nose at her, his thin lips pressed in a flat, unforgiving line. His eyes held cool amusement and haughty challenge. They were extraordinarily beautiful, out of place on his bland, icy face. Like the eyes of an adder just before it moves in for the kill, she thought uneasily, and blinked. She was wasting time.

She leaned down and reached for the cauldron, bright in the shadowy darkness, and her fingers brushed the hem of his robe. He hissed behind his teeth, flinching from the contact. She recoiled as though electrocuted.

"Ten points for touching me," he said calmly, making no move to step back and give her room to work. "You have fifteen seconds."

She bit back a scathing reply, knowing that if it passed her lips it would cost her and the rest of Gryffindor dearly. No use giving him anymore satisfaction than he had already gotten. Her fingers grazed the gritty copper surface, but the thin wire handle remained just out of reach. She bent farther, bony knees jabbing into her scrawny chest. Her back gave a sharp warning twinge. Still the handle eluded her. Another back spasm clutched at her, this one forcing a small, muffled cry from behind her closed lips. Some of the students shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

"Time is up, Miss Stanhope," he snapped. "One point, two point, three..."

Her back was screaming now, the cramps coming in unceasing waves. A panicked whine escaped her throat. Each second cost her a point, and the pain was nearly blinding. It was getting harder and harder to retain control of her limbs, but if she didn't get her cauldron very soon, Gryffindor was going to be more than one hundred points in the negative.

Snape had reached twenty in his methodical count. She pushed off against her footrest, stretching her back to its absolute limit. She heard her vertebrae pop and crackle with the effort, a huge, convulsive spasm momentarily blotting out rational thought. Despite her best intentions not to show weakness in front of her peers, she screamed, a high, reedy sound, and then mercifully she felt the cool tingle of the copper handle on her fingertips. She jerked it to her and sat up, gasping against the searing agony still echoing through her bones.

Save for her ragged, anguished whooping, the room was utterly silent. Even the formerly raucous Slytherins had gone still. Accustomed to their Head of House's wanton, indiscriminate cruelty, even they were stunned at the lengths to which he had gone to belittle and humiliate her. Acid barbs and crushing criticism was his usual fare. None of them had ever seen him physically torment a pupil, and the fact that he had taken this new and drastic step raised unsettling questions in their own minds. Would he unleash this new cruelty on them as well? The fun had gone out of the game for most of them. Only Malfoy and his lackeys could still find any joy in the spectacle. They sat smirking triumphantly in the back corner.

"Good work, Professor," crowed Malfoy, confident there would be no rebuke.

In truth, the Slytherins needn't have worried. Severus Snape had not decided to expand his repertoire of sadisms. He simply wanted to see how far he could push the pathetic bundle of bones known as Rebecca Stanhope before she collapsed. Frankly, he was a bit surprised she hadn't yet. Most students would have been a blubbering, insensible heap by now. Then again, she had been dealt a harder lot than most. It was only a matter of time before she broke. The cracks were already forming; he could see them winnowing behind her eyes like blight.

"Your ineptitude has cost your House another forty points," he said casually, watching for the spark of miserable outrage to flare in her eyes as it had in so many others.

There was nothing in her eyes-no hatred, no confusion, no fear-just an opaque blankness, like soaped-over windows. So, she was putting up her defenses, walling up her seething emotions. He knew about such protective measures. He'd used them successfully for many years. And he knew how to break them. Break them he would. He would have her begging for that squalid little school she had come from in three days.

"Now that you have your list of ingredients, you have three minutes to collect them and return to your seat. I need not remind you of the consequence for tardiness."

He watched the students file from their seats to the neatly organized storage closet that held all his stores. He kept a particularly close eye on Rebecca, noticing she kept well back from the other students, afraid perhaps that she would jostle them with that improbable and likely dangerous contraption of hers. Unlike the others, who had left their cauldrons neatly on their desks, she still clutched hers in one frail hand, like a talisman against his rage.

His gaze followed her as she moved hesitantly to the shelves, eyes searching the labels for the necessary items. A timid hand reached up to grasp a vial of powdered dung beetle mandibles. If she drops one single vial, so help me, I'll penalize her so severely Gryffindor will be working to clear the deficit for the next three hundred years, he thought savagely, all the while hoping she would do exactly that. Anything to further humiliate her. If she lost enough points, eventually McGonagall would notice. Notice and complain. The success of Gryffindor was of paramount importance to her, and she would take whatever steps necessary to preserve its dignity, even voice her opinions against this strange, ugly girl. And if two Heads of House complained about the detrimental effect she was having on student morale, then the Headmaster would have no choice but to dismiss her.

Regrettably, she did not drop the powdered dung beetle mandibles, nor did the mucus of toad slip. The crushed poppy wobbled precariously for an instant, but she managed to steady it. He felt a grudging stab of admiration as he realized she was using the cauldron to carry the various nostrums. Clever; it showed she wasn't a complete boob. He gave an irritable snort. That changed nothing. She didn't belong here, and he was going to prove it.

A self-satisfied smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. It seemed Miss Stanhope had run into a bit of a conundrum. Oh dear, the minced rosehip was on the highest shelf. Much too high for her. Unless, of course, she stood up, and alas, that was one feat she most certainly could not accomplish. He checked the hourglass on the farthest edge of his desk and was pleased to see that less than forty-five seconds were left before the punishment could begin. He counted of the seconds with relish. Forty. Thirty-five. It was going to be his first hundred-plus point deduction day in fifteen years.

Just then Neville Longbottom, the boy personally responsible for tripling the yearly Potions budget through his mind-numbing, wanton destruction of cauldrons, ruined everything. Finished gathering his own provisions, the feckless clod reached up and retrieved the rosehip, handing it to the pitifully grateful Stanhope with a courteous smile. Not only that, but the do-gooding meddler collected the remaining ingredients and put them in her cauldron.

Furious at having been stripped of a golden opportunity to beat his personal best point-shaving record, he favored Longbottom with a withering glare and was most gratified to see him quail and flinch beneath his gaze. He retreated to his seat, thoroughly cowed and probably hoping that would be the worst of his punishment. He should have known better.

Stanhope, too, spared him a glance, but his was disappointed to detect no noticeable fear, only that same guarded, emotionless look. He would have been surprised indeed if he had known that it was the very countenance he himself assumed when in the presence of others, but he had not looked into a mirror in seventeen years and knew nothing of the striking resemblance between tormentor and the tormented. He suppressed an exasperated hiss when he realized his quarry was going to escape to her seat unscathed. His already abysmal mood worsened.

"Congratulations, you've finally managed to do something right for a change." He applauded slowly, willing her to wilt. Her cheeks flushed scarlet and her mouth worked, but she did not burst into hysterical, keening wails. He saw the first flickers of hatred, though, and that was good. That meant he was getting beneath her skin, and once he was inside her mind, he could do anything he wished.

He bestowed the class with a disgusted scowl, and as they had always done, they averted their eyes to the parchment on their desks or a spot on the blackboard. He watched Stanhope grapple with her borrowed quill, stiff, clawed hands tearing the gossamer feather as she fought to hold it perpendicular. He bit back a groan. The girl was hopeless, and Albus had lost his mind.

He began the lecture on the proper preparation of the potion, ignoring the notes he held in one hand in favor of his unsurpassed memory. After seventeen years, he could recite the directions by rote. Forty heads bent over parchment. He risked a sidelong glance at Stanhope's progress and was mortified to see an indecipherable mass of jerky scrawls and blossoming inkblots. He thought he saw an r, or maybe it was an n. Her hand jerked, and the quill slashed angrily, leaving a jagged, runny line.

Morgan's scepter! If I have to read that drivel every day, I'll be as blind as Moody by the middle of the term, he thought incredulously. Indignation swelled in him. That was enough. He was not going to tolerate this nonsense one moment longer. He broke off his lecture in mid-sentence and strode to her desk, ripping the parchment from beneath the sporadically moving quill.

"What is this?" he hissed, giving the paper a contemptuous glance. "Do you expect me to read this? This is not Divination, Miss Stanhope."

Her breathing quickened. "My hands are too stiff to write properly, sir. If I am not allowed to use the Dicta-Quill, that is what everything is going to look like. It's the best I can do."

"Then I suggest you improve. Quickly. If I see anything remotely resembling this travesty cross my desk, we will be paying a visit to the Headmaster's office."

"The only way to avoid that, sir, is to let me use the Dicta-Quill," she said quietly.

"I did not ask for your opinion, nor do I appreciate your insolence. Fifty points." There was an astonished, horrified gasp from the Gryffindors. "I think it's no secret that that I'm not terribly fond of you. In fact, I despise you. You don't belong here. It's only because of the Headmaster's misguided charity that you are here."

He knew instantly that he had struck a very raw nerve. Her face, that up until then had been a mask of rigid self-control, crumpled. Her chest began to hitch, and the fever-bright shine of impending tears was in her eyes. He felt a sudden thrill of victory.

"What's the matter, Miss Stanhope," he said in feigned sympathy, "have I destroyed your little fantasy world with the unpleasant truth? Did you really think you were invited to Hogwarts based on your academic merit?" He laughed, a cold, cruel sound. "I regret to inform you that our esteemed Headmaster has a history of taking in the unwanted outcasts of others. Our Groundskeeper, Hagrid, is one such example."

There was muffled shout of outrage from Potter's entourage, but Snape could have cared less. It was two birds with one stone as far as he was concerned. He was pleased to hear the low beginnings of a miserable wail from deep within Stanhope's throat. It was music to his ears. He'd heard it often throughout the years; he was not selective about whom he cut with his serrated tongue. A singularly stupid Muggle Studies teacher had once fled his office in tears after making an innocent query about his grading methods. As far as the world knew-and he was quite content to let them think so-he hated everyone with equal fervor. It was an idea not far from the truth. He did not suffer fools, and very few had ever managed to be exempted from that category.

He waited, but the expected bout of incoherent blubbering never materialized. She took a huge, gulping breath, choking back the sob that was struggling to find its way from her throat. Her glottis bobbed and clenched as she swallowed. Then she looked up at him, her face pinched and haggard.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, and though there were tears coursing down her cheeks, her voice was steady.

This was not the response he had hoped for, but he responded as though it was. "As well you should be. I've never had a more inept pupil in all my years, including Mr. Longbottom," he spat, sending an evil sneer in Neville's direction and causing him to whiten most satisfactorily.

He returned to his lectern to finish the lecture, his jaw set in a hard line. She had almost buckled, but at the last moment she had rallied. Why? It infuriated him that someone so physically weak should resist him. It shouldn't be. Throughout his life, he had reduced Aurors trained to withstand his practiced vitriol into gibbering, weeping wrecks of humanity; this chit of a girl should have collapsed under his weight like softened candle wax. Her resistance only strengthened his resolve that she would weep before him ere the term was out.

By the time he had finished his lecture, she was all he could see, her hunched, crab-like form baiting him with its vulnerability. She worked ponderously, slowly, and without conviction as she started to prepare her ingredients as per his instructions. She never met his gaze, though he was sure she was aware of his attention. Her head tucked against her chest as she laboriously chopped her jackal meat, the slender cutting knife held awkwardly in her right hand. She was hacking more than chopping, the knife strokes wide and arrhythmic. He entertained the idea of dressing her down for dangerous knife handling, but decided it would be unwise. If he startled her and she managed to slice her fingers off, there would be an inquiry, and Dumbledore would take him to task. Not to mention the fact that it would reflect badly on him as a teacher. He had always prided himself on keeping his students safe, regardless of their own idiocy.

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Watching her contortions was giving him a pounding headache. He could see from here that her meat was too unevenly chopped. The ragged edges would make her mixture far too lumpy and inconsistent. She seemed not to notice, going busily about her work. She painstakingly scooped up the pieces up and dropped them into her cauldron. As she reached across her desk for the vial of powdered dung beetle mandible, her face became a rictus of pain, and she clenched her teeth against a guttural cry. Several turned to stare, and he saw Longbottom step over to ask if she were all right. She nodded, and after a moment she resumed her work.

The spasms she suffered fascinated him. He supposed anyone else would be moved to compassion by her intermittent writhings, but he had seen and experienced too much to feel anything more than perfunctory interest. Her periodic twinges could hardly be expected to stir pity in his heart when he himself had had his bones remolded inside his skin by the Cruciatus Curse. The memory of his last taste of the Cruciatus was still fresh in his mind; two weeks ago it had been. After fourteen days his skin was still hypersensitive to the touch.

His fingers subconsciously massaged his forearm, tracing over the dark secret his robes concealed. It was the reason for his suffering, though he had no one to blame for it but himself. He had chosen to have it seared into his flesh, and he had likewise chosen his penance. The Cruciatus Curse was part of that penance. He grimaced at the memory of the molten agony flooding through his bones like bilious acid. He had screamed like a child and prayed for it to stop, for this time to be the last time, the knowledge that it wouldn't be needling the base of his brain even as he shrieked to the Fates for mercy.

I wonder if Miss Stanhope would be able to defy the Cruciatus like she braves her inconsequential little aches, he thought bitterly, pausing long enough in his personal ruminations to reprimand an imbecilic boy for mixing in far too much rosehip.

He hoped he never had to find out the answer to that question. He hated her, resented her presence in his classroom, and loathed being responsible for her, but he would never wish the unspeakable agony of Cruciatus on anyone, not even a creature as misbegotten as she. Like it or not, for the time being she was his student, and if something so dire were to befall her, it would mean that he had failed in his foremost duty to Albus Dumbledore and Hogwarts-shielding them from Lord Voldemort.

This train of thought led him to another revelation. He would need to exercise a great deal of care in his quest to drive Miss Stanhope from the school. Being too overt or causing her physical harm during his campaign, intentionally or otherwise, would force Dumbledore to sack him, and if that happened he would be dead within a week. Voldemort only let him live because he still hoped to gain important information on the movements of the cunning Headmaster; if Albus cut him loose, he would be useless, as useless as Stanhope, and Voldemort would cast him aside as offal.

There was a loud bang followed by a wet hiss, and he wrenched his eyes away from the sweating visage of Rebecca Stanhope to see Neville Longbottom presiding over yet another calamity. Some of the other professors found his bumbling endearing, but he did not. The boy was a menace. If Miss Stanhope were fortunate enough not to incinerate half of Hogwarts with her clumsy hackings and dribblings, Longbottom would perform the job admirably.

His frayed nerves snapped, and he stormed from the lectern, a black cloud of impending doom. Longbottom, seeing the imminent danger, tried to back away, but his feet were held fast by the rapidly hardening glue that had been his Potions assignment. He still clutched a shard of melted and mangled cauldron in one quivering hand.

"Curse you, Longbottom!" he spat, towering over his cowering victim in a monolithic fury, his eyes sable fire and as piercing as a sharpened blade as they swept over the ruinous, slimy remnants of Neville's work area.

"I'm s-s-sorry, P-Professor," he stammered, trying to make himself as small as he could in case Snape decided to put his formidable wand skills into use.

"Sorry? I've heard that paltry, meaningless little utterance come out of your mouth far, far too often for it to do any good. How many cauldrons have you destroyed in this class? Two hundred? Three? Tell me, Longbottom. I'm most interested in the answer." His face was mere inches from Longbottom's moon-shaped, pudgy one, and the naked fear he saw there disgusted him. Spineless, the lot of them.

"I don't know, sir," Neville wailed.

"Why does that not surprise me? Clean this mess up and stop sniveling. And wipe that vile green glop off your nose," he hissed.

He noticed that Miss Stanhope had paused in her work and was watching him with those veiled blue eyes, one hand absently stirring her too-thick brew. That she should be observing him so unashamedly rather than concentrating on her work rankled him still further, and he rounded on her in one fluid movement. Does something interest you?" he snarled.

The hand stopped its languid rotation, and she let the spoon clink against the side of her cauldron. "Yes, sir."

"Oh? Enlighten me."

She paused for a moment. "You, sir."

It took a moment for him to register exactly what she'd said. "Don't be impertinent."

"No, sir."

"Let's have a look at your potion, shall we?" He stepped over to her desk

Rebecca watched him lean over to inspect her effort. It was useless, really. She hadn't even finished the decoction. Her diced wolverine gallbladder was still sitting on the desk, waiting to be added. In all the excitement, she never got around to dropping them in, a fact he soon noticed.

"Your potion is incomplete," he said with grim satisfaction.

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

She felt a flash of white-hot anger. He knew damn well why she hadn't been able to finish it. He had refused to allow her to use any of the specialized equipment she needed, equipment the Headmaster himself had approved. On top of that, he had spent more than half the class berating and tormenting her and the unfortunate Longbottom. With all of his hissing, snapping, and muttering, it was a wonder anyone had managed to get anything accomplished at all.

"With all of the distraction, sir, I was unable to concentrate on my work," she said, opting for the most diplomatically truthful answer she could think of.

"Stop making excuses." He opened his mouth to offer another jibe or perhaps deduct more points, but then thought better of it. "Since you find me so fascinating, you will serve detention with me tonight in the dungeons. Maybe then you can actually do what is expected of you. I can promise there will be no distractions."

There was something ominous in his tone, something that sent another ripple of gooseflesh up her back. She looked into his tar pit eyes to see if they would reveal anything of what he planned, but she found no clue, only a steely cold that made the spittle in her mouth go dry.

"Class dismissed," he purred, never taking his eyes off her. To her he said, "Goodbye, Miss Stanhope; I look forward to seeing you this evening."

With a lurching twist in her stomach, she saw that he meant it.

She was three-quarters of the way back to the Gryffindor Common Room when the emotional dam she had built to weather Snape's merciless battery collapsed. Her hands began to shake, causing her chair to veer into the stone wall. She made no attempt to reverse; instead she sat with her head resting against the cool stone, salty tears streaming from her eyes. Her shoulders shook with mute sobs.

All of the hateful, wounding things Snape said needled into her brain like the throbbing, burning sting of frenzied hornets. Especially if you cannot complete the work in the same manner as everyone else, you don't deserve to be here. The unmistakable jeer in his voice scalded her soul. It was the single thought that she had worried over for a week before her arrival, the dark and secret fear that maybe she wasn't good enough, that she would get here only to be sent home within days because she was hopeless and useless, everything D.A.I.M.S. made her feel she was. It was her private fear, and he had exposed it, smelling it the way a lion detects the scent of fresh blood.

The anger swept over her again, and she choked back a sob, determined not to draw attention to her private misery. What right did he have to demean her, to make her feel less than human? She had not chosen him, nor had she chosen the body she would inhabit. It wasn't as if she had asked the Fates specifically to be allowed to inconvenience the life of Professor Snape. Never had she felt so helpless, so powerless.

Damn him! Damn him!! The thought cut into her mind, and she beat her hands against the wall in impotent fury.

"Don't take it so hard," came a voice from behind her. "He's always an awful git."

She jerked her head away from the wall and swiped at her face, embarrassed that someone had seen her wallowing in self-pity. Through her tear-blurred vision, she saw Neville Longbottom standing there, shifting his books from one arm to the other.

"I'm sorry," she said with a watery sniffle. "It's just-I've never...," she trailed off.

I know," Neville said. "You get used to it. He's been after me five years now."

The idea of anyone surviving five years of such staggering abuse boggled her mind. "Five years?"

He nodded glumly. "Every time I try to brew a potion I blow up a cauldron. Three cauldrons a week for the past four years. He hates me."

"It's not just me?" she asked, her mood lightening.

"No. But he was nastier than I've ever seen him before."

The slight lift in her spirit evaporated. "Oh."

Seeing his mistake, Neville hurried on. "Listen, don't worry about him. He'll never change. You want to go play some Exploding Snap before supper?"

The faintest of smiles danced across her face. "I've seen it played, but I've never done it myself."

Neville looked surprised. "You haven't? That's no problem. I'll teach you."

She brightened. "You wouldn't mind? Sometimes I drop my cards, and it takes a while for me to rearrange them."

"I don't mind. You've seen what a klutz I am with Potions."

"OK," she said happily, all thoughts of Snape's cruelty banished from her mind.

They set off for Gryffindor Tower. Neville Longbottom had thwarted Snape again.