Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Eleven

Severus Snape was a very unhappy man. He swept through the corridor, a black-eyed, wrathful devil. His temper was not improved by the fact that Stanhope was close upon his heels. He had been trying to get rid of her since he stepped off the spiral staircase, but it was no use. She hovered in his wake like a lost puppy, the motor of her infernal machine whining fretfully. More than once he had felt a soft tug as her wheels grazed the hem of his cloak. If he got back to his chambers tonight and found a rend or a scuff, the girl would have detention until her final breath. He longed to whirl around and spew his curdled venom into her stoic face, but he didn´t dare, not when his emotions were so volatile. There might be another...loss of control, and he was sure Stanhope would not lie a second time.

"What do you want, Stanhope?" he snarled.

"Nothing, sir." Bland. Polite. Fastidiously inoffensive. Utterly infuriating.

"Then go away. I neither requested nor wanted your company."

The pace of the chair slackened but did not cease. She was still behind him. He could sense her there, an invisible weight upon his shoulders. Merlin, why didn´t she go away? Did she think he owed her something for keeping her word in there? That would be typical Gryffindor.

She´s hardly proven a typical Gryffindor. How do you know she´s Gryffindor at all? She could be Ravenclaw.

Well, she was certainly intelligent enough for it.

Or Slytherin.

She was most certainly not Slytherin material. She lacked the bald ambition, the cunning, the unabashed ruthlessness of his House children. She could never be one of them.

Does she? What drives her through all those hours of detention, if not ambition? You´re blind if you don´t see that. She reeks of it. The only person who might be more ambitious is Draco Malfoy. And don´t hand me that claptrap about cunning, either. She´s got that aplenty, too. Look how she managed that rosehip vial.

Snape scowled. So she was ambitious and cunning. That proved nothing. She still didn´t have the requisite ruthlessness for his House.

Oh? Lock her in a room with McGonagall for a few hours and see what happens.

Yes, that was most peculiar. Minerva was generally beloved by her students; she was their stern, yet protective matriarch. They knew they could depend upon her. Yet Miss Stanhope did not share in the popular sentiment. The look she´d shot McGonagall in the Headmaster´s office had been so ugly, so full disdain that it had taken him aback. It was not the look of a loyal, headstrong, fearless Gryffindor. It was the furious, brooding face of...

A first-year Slytherin.

Bollocks! This was ludicrous. The girl absolutely did not belong in Slytherin.

Why not?

Because. Because she isn´t Pureblood, he thought, unable to come up with any other answer.

No charity for the child that kept her word, then?

He didn´t need to be reminded of that. His stomach cramped at the thought that now he owed a child he despised only slightly less than Harry Potter twice. Sometimes honor was a disgusting thing. He made a strangled hiss of frustration deep within his throat. The girl was maddening. What did she want of him? What was behind her inexplicable need to defuse McGonagall´s artillery, to take his side, however tacitly, in this little tug-of-war? This went beyond some warped sense of Gryffindorian honor. Most of the Gryffindors would have happily handed down his death sentence, probably eating strawberries and cream all the while. Something else was motivating her, driving this misplaced instinct to protect.

Maybe she recognizes something in you, some part of herself.

Don´t be ridiculous! We´re nothing alike. I´m not one to wallow in self-pity.

Even as he thought it, he knew this wasn´t true. As much as he hated to admit it, they were alike in many ways. More ways than he was comfortable contemplating. He saw the similarity in the little things. It was in her expressionless white face, her idiot refusal to let him into her mind. It was in the defenses with which she surrounded herself, in the smooth stone wall of her indifference. It was in the way she watched things from beneath half-closed eyes, assessing, determining, labeling, and cataloguing without giving herself away. He even saw it in the fleeting sneer she fixed on Potter in the Great Hall during supper, the scorn that passed over her face like white shadow when she saw him with his sycophant friends.

Her reaction to Potter was intriguing to say the least. As the father had been, so was the son. He was the Golden Child, revered by his schoolmates for his unmatched talent on the Quidditch pitch, his bravery in the face of the encroaching Voldemort menace and adored by most of his instructors for his politeness and good manners. To this day, Colin Creevey followed him around like an orphaned gosling, despite the fact that Potter had made it clear that he was not going to be accepted into the Holy Triumvirate. McGonagall, much vaunted by legions of former students as the no-nonsense, laissez-faire lioness who refused to play favorites, had bestowed upon the boy a new, state-of-the-art racing broom paid for from her personal account. Such clandestine gifts were expressly forbidden, as stated in the Hogwarts employment contract, but when he had pointed this out to the Headmaster, Albus had done little more than smile at him. The normal rules did not apply to Harry Potter.

He drew everyone to him with his light. Everyone who loved the Light, that was. The children of darker things fled from him, shied away from his luminescent aura, fled into the gloom to nurse their sordid hatreds. Draco shunned him because he had achieved all that the Malfoy fortune could not buy. He, Snape, turned away from him because he could not face the recollections he inspired. Now Stanhope, sent into the bosom of the Light without any other passport than Dumbledore´s trust, was turning her face from him. He wondered what that said about her.

It could be nothing more than simple jealousy and resentment. It was not an uncommon thing. He suspected that many of the students here held a bit of contempt for Potter, though none would confess to such a thing, not even under threat of death. To speak against Potter was a form of blasphemy. Be that as it may, Potter was wizarding royalty, a rags-to-riches story of the first order, and it was only natural to resent someone who went from nothing to everything in the blink of an eye while you struggled for every scrap of recognition. Even Weasley, Potter´s stalwart best mate, had succumbed to bitterness for a time during the Tri-Wizard Tournament. The only true fans of fairy tales were those lucky enough to have lived them.

Whatever lives inside her, it isn´t simple resentment. It´s much, much stronger, more bitter.

He could feel it emanating from her as she rolled behind him, a crackling, swirling mantle of unfocused but frighteningly virulent vitriol. Right now it was latent, waiting patiently, going before her like an invisible barrier; back in the Headmaster´s office, it had been concentrated, vibrant, searching. It had come off her skin in undulating waves, and for an instant he had been reminded of steam rising from scorched, rain-dampened pavement. Then Dumbledore had asked his gentle questions, and it had dissipated, shrinking back into the pores of her skin to await the next eruption.

The steady whirr of her chair was driving him to distraction. Its soft whine drilled into his head like an auger, a voice of confusion, of disorder. He whirled to face her. He had to get away, had to think. If he could think of a subject other than this defiant changeling child, all the better.

"Miss Stanhope, please stop following me. Your chair is not the slightest bit soothing," he snarled.

"No, sir, it isn´t." she agreed drily. "I wasn´t following you, sir."

"Then why have you been dogging my steps ever since I left the Headmaster´s office?" he demanded.

A few paces behind her, McGonagall was frozen in place, watching them. Her hand gripped her wand tightly, as though she were preparing to bring it to the fore at once should he pounce upon the unsuspecting Stanhope. Her obvious suspicion grated on him like sandpaper.

"Oh, for Merlin´s sake, Professor McGonagall, I´m hardly going to murder the girl. Grievous bodily assault will suffice," he muttered.

McGonagall stalked by with a curt "Good day, Professor Snape," and as she passed, he watched Stanhope very closely.

Her eyes followed the trail of McGonagall´s robes, and he saw the stony glimmer of mistrust in them. Her gaze was flat, reptilian, and he felt the anger coalescing around her again, falling over her like a warm, greasy fog. The knuckles of her hand were white as she gripped her joystick. He heard the dry crack as one of her nails broke. She appeared not to notice.

"Why, then, have you been dogging my heels?" he repeated, more loudly than he had intended. He just wanted to rid her of that strange, unnerving stare.

She started, as though pulled from some deep trance. "I haven´t, sir. This is just the way to Arithmancy."

She looked at him with her angular, thin face. There was no guile in it, no malice. Her eyes were watchful but not dull. She had not retreated fully behind her fortress walls, but she was prepared to fall back if the need arose.

What are you hiding behind that face of yours? What don´t you want the world to see?

"Well, get on with it, then," he said irritably, put out at not having noticed the obvious.

"Yes, sir." She veered around him and continued down the corridor.

He watched her go, pondering the secrets she hid behind her mask, and he resolved to himself that before he drove her out, he would discover them, even if he had to strip that calm veneer away a piece at a time.

Minerva McGonagall had concerns of her own, and while Severus Snape pored over his dour imaginings and wielded his implacable lash over a group of cowering third-years, she pondered them. None of her charges were aware that her mind was not fully upon the lesson she was teaching them. Like all teachers, she was an expert poker player, able to wear the guise of authority and control even when she felt anything but. Her lips never faltered and her pointer tapped the blackboard in all the right places. She was cool and collected and a million miles from her Transfigurations classroom.

She was still in the Headmaster´s office. She was thinking of Severus. Of Stanhope. Of both of them. There was something between them, some connection that bound them together. The way they looked at one another spelled it out quite neatly. A secret had passed between them, elusive as dust in sunlight but potent as slow poison. Two blank slate faces threw off furtive sparks like tiny warning flares. Then the walls had gone up, and the moment had passed. Stanhope had turned her frail face to Dumbledore, and Severus had watched her with his sullen, predatory gaze, waiting to see what she would do.

What were they hiding, concealing behind stone countenances, one by will and the other by force of will? Had Severus done something to her? Had the legendary temper slipped? He prided himself on his self-control; he had flaunted it over the years, smiling or scowling at the countless aspersions cast at him by the students and staff, shrugging them off with a bored blink of his eyes. It was his sole vanity. But Stanhope rattled that aplomb, shook it to its very foundations. The cool detachment he affected with everyone else was useless against her. She burrowed beneath his skin, as relentless and silent as a chigger. He could not help but respond. Perhaps that resentment at being unable to break her, stifle her beneath his heel as he so effortlessly did with the rest had at long last compromised that rigorous self-discipline, and he had lashed out at her.

It wouldn´t surprise her if he had. Whether Headmaster Dumbledore wanted to admit it or not, Severus was a very angry, bitter man. Personally, she thought him dangerous. Sometimes when she sat at the High Table, though she was a seat separated from him, she felt the rage coiled in a tight, rancid ball at his core, seething and twisting beneath his pasty skin, infecting him, contaminating him with its icy, burning touch. There were times when the weight of his anger was so intense and so terrible that she had to fight the urge to push back her chair and flee. On those days, the fury would shine from his eyes like a malignant beacon, and she would look at Dumbledore, eating contentedly, and think, Albus, can´t you see? Why won´t you see?

Her mouth told the tale of turning buttons into bonbons, and her mind, as agile and cunning as the Animagus body she often inhabited, continued its thoughtful prowl around the conundrum of the living enigma that was her colleague and the waifish child so recently entrusted to her care. The ties that bind were often ethereal, yet so very strong. She saw it again, that calculating momentary look. Secrets made strange bedfellows, but she had to concede that this was the strangest pairing she had ever seen.

Severus had made no secret of his enmity of the young Rebecca Stanhope. He had been against the acceptance of a transfer from the outset, glowering and muttering each time the subject was brought up in staff meetings. "We can barely teach the pupils we have now; why accept another from a backwards country just beginning to emerge from beneath the thrall of rampant Puritanism and the hysteria inspired by repressed lust and the fugue of suspicion?" he had muttered, taking an ill-tempered sip of Earl Grey. Dumbledore had murmured a reassuring vague platitude and moved on to other matters.

To be fair, he hadn´t been the only one to voice such concerns. Flitwick had spoken up, too, and she herself had plied her old friend with dozens of questions, some of them downright rude. Only Binns had declined to join in the discussion, opting, as he always did, to sit in his chair by the fire and think on things done in his more corporeal years. They had gotten no answers to their queries, of course, none that they could hang their hats on. Albus had let them find out what they needed to know for themselves, and it was proving to be a most interesting and enlightening experience.

Most of the teachers, while taken aback at first, had adjusted quickly. Flitwick came into the Headmaster´s office at the end of her first week for the twice-weekly staff meeting practically singing her praises. She was quiet, he said, well-mannered, surprisingly skilled at Charms. Whatever reservations he had held, they were no longer of concern to him. Vector, too, was pleased, remarking on her attentiveness, her willingness to take instruction, and her ability to stay on task.

She had not offered her opinion. In truth, she had none to offer. She hadn´t known what she thought, and she still didn´t now. She had never been faced with a student like Rebecca before, and, though it pained her to admit this, proud as she was of her richly deserved reputation as a problem-solving, level-headed woman, she had no clue how to handle her. The child was not disobedient; she caused no problems in class. She did her work as quietly and as efficiently as she was able. In short, she was a dream student, yet she wasn´t. She made her unaccountably nervous.

Each class, she waited for the warning tremors of disaster, for the sticky slowing of time that presaged calamity. Every time there was a quick, indrawn breath or the heavy crack of a dropped textbook, she fought the urge to spin around with her hands clapped to her mouth in horror. She fully expected to see Rebecca on the floor, her thin, twisted limbs dancing jerkily in the grip of convulsion, drool flecking her face and glistening on her chin. There was no reason she should think such a thing, but the thought clung to her all the same, like a thick coat of cloying humidity. Sometimes, the feeling of anticipation made her fingertips throb and tingle, tiny pinpricks of electric fear crawling beneath her nail beds like the tickling, microscopic feet of ants. Such a scene had not yet greeted her eyes when she looked back, but the possibility was there, like ominous, swollen thunderheads gathering on the horizon.

Fear that she was going to collapse and go to her death in the middle of the Transfigurations classroom wasn´t the only thing that unsettled her about the girl. Her behavior outside the classroom was strange, often disturbing. She rarely spoke. She secreted herself in her room with her house elf companion or hid in the shadowiest corner of the Common Room with her nose in a book. Sometimes, she played Exploding Snap with Neville or Seamus, and the Weasley twins were always welcome for a chat, but the others were silently rebuffed. She had yet to say a single word to any of the members of her dormitory, and as far as she could tell, she never engaged in friendly gossip. A frosty smile was her only social contribution to Common Room chatter.

She was such a cold child, and that was a shame. She had seemed far friendlier at their first meeting, and then something had shifted. Her eyes, bright with curiosity and happy enquiry, had dulled, grown wary. Formality came to the forefront, polite and guarded, but most clearly not inviting the aimless, meandering talk of people getting to know one another. Then Fred and George had come, and the coldness had thawed, but only for a while. The minute she had returned to the car, the formality was back, glazed over her hollow, disconcerting face like cooling porcelain.

Well, no mystery there? How did you expect the girl to feel? You were ogling her shamelessly.

Well, she thought defensively, it not as if it was a new experience for her. Surely I wasn´t the first person in the world to be curious.

No, but you are old enough to know better.

That was hardly the point, and it had nothing to do with her current worries. Right now, she was preoccupied with Severus Snape and his potential to do harm to an already bitter, impressionable mind. The man was as tactful as an undersexed rhinoceros. The devastation he could cause to the psyche and self-image of that girl was immeasurable in her estimation, and Severus would blithely destroy her and not give a bit of a damn if he did.

She found it highly suspicious that he was spending so much time with that girl. There had to be more of a reason behind it than civic concern for her academic future. Altruism was not a word to be found in his lexicon. There was a darker motive behind everything the man did, even if you couldn´t decipher it.

Dumbledore would disagree with you.

Toss what Dumbledore thinks.

She loved the man and would follow him unto the ends of the earth and past the gates of Hades should he ask it, but he was so single-minded that he often failed to see certain risks. Voldemort was an enemy as old as time, and after decades of waiting and patient watching, Albus had discovered many of his ways, shed light on some of his polluted idiosyncrasies. He had concentrated so very hard for so long on the head of the great, evil serpent that daily twined its noisome length ever tighter around their world, but for all his intensity, for all his devotion to this most worthy of crusades, he still knew dangerously little about the daily workings of Death Eater operations. He was so desperate for information, for clandestine entrance into that secret and terrible world that he was only too willing to accept one of their wayward children into the fold. Even after all this time, it still turned her stomach.

Dumbledore placed so much trust in Severus, and she couldn´t see why. As far as she could see, he hadn´t done much to earn that confidence. For all his claims of gathering vital information against their enemies, she hadn´t seen much difference, much improvement in their situation. They still knew precious little, still blundered in the dark for answers and for hope. Innocent people still died, their mangled corpses left to greet the dawn. Voldemort´s way of letting them know that he knew they were watching, of thrusting their impotence back into their faces.

Yes, Severus was tortured, sometimes horribly so, if the grunting moans that drifted from the Hospital Wing were any indication, but so what? He was a Death Eater, former or otherwise, and though she had tried to expunge the brutal thought from her mind, tried to supplant it with mercy, with empathy, and with dignity, she could not shake the notion that it was no more than he deserved. He had to pay for his sins somehow. He had chosen to have that repulsive mark seared into his flesh, had probably worn it as a badge of honor in the not too distant past. So why shouldn´t he be tortured? He had earned it.

Dumbledore´s voice sounded dolefully in her head. Oh, Minerva.

She shoved it aside. He could lecture her about conscience and compassion all he liked, but she was never going to be able to muster much for Severus. Even if she wanted to, the perpetually bruised outline of that obscene brand upon his arm precluded it, quashed it beyond hope. Too many good, honorable souls had died because of it, fallen before its merciless, eyeless face. She would share a table with it because she had to, but she would not pity it.

Now Severus, with his soul that festered like the blackest of bile, was stalking Stanhope. He sensed her weakness, her vulnerability. Perhaps bitterness called to bitterness. Maybe he sought another soul to twist and corrupt, to drag into the never-ending darkness of self-hate and pity. Maybe he had discovered that the redemption he claimed to seek was beyond his reach, and he had decided that if he could not have it, then he would drag another soul down with him.

There was no call for him to keep the girl for four hours or more every night. He hadn´t done so with Neville Longbottom, who needed all the help he could offer and more. Nor had he done so with Potter, who he despised. It must be exhausting for her. Potions was precise work, and Severus was unrelenting. It was just another example of his petty cruelty. But then, what else could you expect from a former Death Eater?

What was he doing with her? He could be being cruel for cruelty´s sake; he was a hard man, and he took joy in tormenting his students. Yet there had to be another, more substantial reason for keeping her to the exclusion of all others. Before she came, he assigned more detention than all of the other faculty members combined. Since, only one name appeared night after night beneath his name on the disciplinary scrolls. He wanted her alone, but for what?

Perhaps he is sexually abusing the girl.

The thought was so stark and sudden that she trailed off. She didn´t think it likely or even possible. Severus had never shown the slightest interest in the opposite sex, or in any sex, for that matter, and Stanhope was hardly the candidate for wanton seductress.

She is the perfect victim, though. She´d never fight him off.

Even so, it was ridiculous. Rebecca had shown no evidence of physical abuse of any sort. She had been at ease with him in the Headmaster´s office-no cowering, no frightened haunted eyes. Severus Snape was a great many things. A sex fiend was not one of them.

"Professor?" came an anxious voice from the back of the room.

"Yes?" She shook herself.

"Are you all right?"

"Quite. Just getting dotty in my old age." She forced a small smile.

That brought a smattering of laughter. She resumed her lecture, and when she found her rythmn again, her mind drifted back to its musings.

What do you want with her?

The question was fast turning into an obsession.

Do you honestly think he´s up to nefarious misdeeds down there, that he is meticulously, methodically poisoning her mind with ways and ideologies he swears he´s surrendered?

She didn´t know, but he could. Stanhope had her own wellspring of gall and wormwood, her own pet prejudices to nurse, her own deep-seated mistrusts. Any one of them could be the minute fissure that would allow him in, the single flea bite that begot the plague. If it was there, Severus could find it. He was patient. He was calm, insidious, water wearing away at the unbreakable stone.

But he hates her. Do you really think he would impart his darkest, most arcane secrets to someone he has crucified in public?

She wasn´t so sure of that, not anymore. Not after this morning. Yes, he still disliked her. Quite strongly, in fact. But the hatred was no longer as pure as it had once been. There was something else now, something akin to thoughtful curiosity in his eyes when he looked at her, as though he were studying a beautiful but particularly deadly flower, as though he were figuring out how to draw the poison from it without harming himself.

Bit paranoid, don´t you think?

No, she didn´t. Not after everything that she had seen over the years. Not when Peter Pettigrew, James Potter´s best friend, could betray him to his death. Not when she had sat two seats removed from an agent of Voldemort at the High Table and never known it. Nothing was too paranoid in these times. She hadn´t seen the dangers before, but she was going to be ready for them now. She would watch, and sooner or later, one of them would tip their hand, and the truth would come out. There would be no second Peter Pettigrew.

So, she did watch. When Stanhope arrived just after lunch, she observed her throughout the lesson, puzzling over her every move, her every expression. As always, Rebecca was quiet and still. Her eyes followed her path around the room. Her expression was flat, contemplative. She looked so much like Severus that she had to make a conscious effort not to stare.

She knows I´m watching her. She´s not giving anything away.

She deliberately paced around Stanhope´s desk several times as she lectured, letting her well-practiced teacher´s instinct discern her mood. It was all very casual and unobtrusive. The girl´s gaze matched her track, sliding to the right until observation was no longer possible. She did not turn her head when she passed behind her, nor did she react when she placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. She stayed attentive and seemingly at ease.

Her body might have betrayed nothing, but McGonagall sensed a subtle change in the air around her. Expectancy hummed. She felt it brush the sensitive flesh of her cheeks like the inquisitive tap of a cat´s paw. She continued her calm circuit around the room and fumbled inexpertly through the random swatches of feeling emanating from her strangest student.

It was difficult. The walls she had built around herself over the years were thick and heavy. She couldn´t imagine what could have formed such forbidding defenses in one so young. Grizzled old Aurors were not so insulated. Still, there were fleeting chinks in the defenses, hairline cracks that let some of what she was feeling escape. If Stanhope knew they were there, they wouldn´t last long. She would patch them, shore them up. For now, though, they were there, and she groped among them, seeking answers from their jagged gouges.

She concentrated carefully, calling upon all her experience and all the students she had ever known. An emotion she wasn´t quite sure how to interpret was rolling off the child. It was strong and bitter, like chicory coffee. It was wary, watchful. There was sadness, too, sorrow that she could not quite grasp. Anger, relentless and cold and embedded in the very root of her, pulsed beneath her skin. There was no hatred, not yet, but the seeds were there, waiting to germinate and spread their corrosive pollen.

Just then, Rebecca turned her head and looked at her. The gaze was so frank and so direct that she almost took a step backward. Trying to find your way in, Professor? Her mouth twitched in a wry smile. It was not friendly.

You´re going to be a delicate one to handle, aren´t you? I´m going to have to be quick, very quick, to catch you out. Well, see if I don´t.

She moved to Rebecca´s desk. "Miss Stanhope, now that I´ve explained the theory, why don´t you give it a try?"

"Yes, ma´am." Not the slightest bit flustered.

Rebecca´s hand moved painstakingly to her wand, which lay on the edge of her desk. McGonagall watched her effort with interest. She never did anything quickly. Everything was slow and measured and desperate, and each hurdle passed was an accomplishment unto itself. The thin, gnarled arm inched painfully outward, an earthworm creeping out of its hole beneath the shadow of a goshawk. Then, five pallid fingers flexed tremulously outward to wrap around the fat, smooth shaft of her wand. They snapped closed again, engulfing it in cool flesh. The arm retreated. Her eyes flickered upward in triumph.

She held the wand over the specimen to be Transfigured, a ferret. Her blue eyes locked onto her own appraising hazel ones, and when she received an encouraging nod, she proceeded. Her wrist moved jerkily as the hand rotated. It was a singularly ugly motion, devoid of any fluidity whatsoever. Up. Right. Down. A wide, uncontrolled arc. She would never earn points for form. It was like watching the straggling movements of a worn Wizard photograph.

Graceful or not, her jerkings were effective. She murmured, "Subuculus!" A pink flash heralded the change from ferret to shirt. Where the lithe animal had been, there sat a crinkled tan shirt. Not a trace of ferret hair to be seen. She put down her wand.

"Well done, Miss Stanhope. Ten points to Gryffindor."

There were happy smiles at this from the rest of the Gryffindor contingent. Stanhope actually earning points in their favor was a rarity. Usually, she was on the losing end. Snape´s deductions had been catastrophic. Even after almost three weeks of hard work, the House was still in negative territory. Minus one-hundred-and-thirty-five, to be exact. Some of the more cynical members of the group had taken to calling her Relapse Rebecca because each time it seemed Gryffindor would manage to regain its footing, Snape would strip another eighty points from beneath their feet. The epithet was never used to her face, of course; Gryffindors were kind in their cowardice.

Rebecca did not smile at the compliment or reward. She looked at her for a moment as if gauging her sincerity. That strange, unpleasant smile surfaced again, and then she turned and faced the front. Nice try, Professor.

Realizing that things had reached a stalemate for the time being, McGonagall fell back and retreated behind her own walls to formulate her next plan of attack. Something told her that it was going to be a long and ferocious battle, a psychological war of attrition between three formidable minds, and whoever succeeded in cracking Stanhope´s defenses first was going to come out the winner. Severus had quite the head start, and she had the sinking feeling that she had entered the game too late.

Draco Malfoy was also watching Rebecca Stanhope, but he had absolutely no interest in finding out what lay behind her eyes. He had no stake in her psychological state at all. She could be absolutely mad for all he cared. He was watching her because he couldn´t not watch. She compelled him the way the meaty, stinking reek of death compelled the vultures and carrion crows. He was repulsed by her, by the very thought she could exist, and yet she fascinated him.

She was ugly. She was the ugliest Mudblood he´d ever clapped eyes on; she beat out Granger in a landslide. It made his eyes hurt to see her. She was so distorted. She went against every dictum of taste he had ever been taught. So small and wasted and trollish. Each time he saw her, he shivered. Sometimes he wondered if she wasn´t a glamour. No human being so hideous could be part of the natural order.

Her hair was beautiful, though. The Fates were funny that way. It was like liquid sunshine. Smooth as new satin and a shade darker than his own. It was incongruous on her otherwise mangled form. It was like finding teeth on a duck. It glittered in the sunlight that streamed through the cut glass windows. It had a queer, prismatic quality to it, gathering the light and refracting it into a thousand tiny, golden points. It reminded him of visits to his family vault at Gringotts. Gold everywhere, twinkling with its own mysterious power.

He still remembered their encounter on the train. He never forgot a grudge, not a single one. He kept them in a ledger in the deepest corner of his mind, and sooner or later, he balanced all accounts. They went back to his earliest years, to his toddlerhood. The majority of the older debts had been collected. Red lines crossed neatly through long-forgotten names. A few were still outstanding, but rest assured they would be brought to date before long. Crabbe and Goyle, for instance, were still paying. Only one name held his attention now. It was burned into the pages. Rebecca.

The train had been most educational. Who knows what he might have learned had not prudish old McGonagall interfered? Stanhope was difficult to provoke, but Professor Snape proved it could be done. So did the cinnamon bun in the Great Hall. She was trenchantly, recklessly loyal, a trait she shared with the insufferable Harry Potter, and it was her one weakness, at least the only one he had found so far. He could get to her through her friends. It would be easy.

The thing was, he didn´t want to take the easy route, not with her. Taking the simpler path with Potter and his insipid little friends had inured him against the simpler pleasures of malice, filled him with languid ennui. He wanted something more challenging, a cleverer mouse to make the kill more satisfying. And Stanhope was becoming a most interesting mouse.

People often thought him unobservant, brashly cocksure, but that wasn´t true. He was cocky; even he wouldn´t deny that, but he was not unobservant. On the contrary, he liked to study things, especially opponents. He was careful, so very careful. He never let anyone know he was watching, gathering, filing things away. He let them think he was careless. He was loud, strident, and ostentatiously arrogant. He distracted them with his mouth and his cool, smirking face, and while they were fuming and grumbling and brandishing their wands at him like detachable codpieces, he was quietly taking inventory, evaluating strengths and weaknesses. He was getting ready.

He never went for it all in the first confrontation. That was a quick path to certain defeat. There were too many variables. You never knew what could happen. He instigated small, inconsequential skirmishes first and watched his foe react. It didn´t matter if he won or lost. What was important was the information. It was better to lose. That way, while his adversary was busy preening and crowing about his victory, he was left in peace beneath the ignoble but concealing cloak of the temporarily bested. They all thought he was licking his wounds, but he was really analyzing and categorizing, preparing for the next opportunity. They were all looking for short-term results, quick gratification. They didn´t understand. He was more concerned with the long-term. When the bloodshed ended, and the piles of rotting corpses swayed over the landscape, he was going to be on top of them, grinning and holding the reins of power in bloody hands.

Stanhope wasn´t going to be easy quarry. It was almost a pity that she was such a foul waste of life. From what he had seen, she was much like him. She was patient. She knew the importance of the watch. She saw everything. She, too, was a gatherer of information, a collector. He imagined she hoarded each bit of knowledge just as he did, and he suspected that she could be ruthless enough to use it as a formidable weapon if she wished. She would make the game fun. If by chance she proved hardier than even he had imagined, there was always her physical weakness to attack. He could snap her limbs and listen to her scream. A tad less gratifying than the utter mental victory for which he hoped, but as his father so often told him, a win was a win.

He wasn´t sure when the opportunity would present itself, but he knew it would. If he was patient. He smiled to himself and returned his attention to Professor McGonagall´s explanation of the magic process behind ferret Transfiguration.

Rebecca was a watcher-child, and she was well aware of the eyes on the top of her head and drilling into her back. She had been observing Professor McGonagall for the entire class, a silent soldier sizing up the opposition. Her dislike for the woman sharpened and settled into the pit of her stomach like the beginnings of an ulcer. Her mouth twinged with the desire to sneer.

She was trying to get into her head, trying to see, trying to steal her secrets. The old marm was not very subtle. Her pryings were clumsy, amateur. She could sense her curiosity, her urgency, a pheromone in the stale air. She was too desperate for the answers. She would overlook things, misinterpret them in her haste. She was not patient. Not like Professor Snape.

Professor Snape. Her first and favorite nemesis. She almost smiled at the thought of him. He knew more about her than anyone else on the staff. Unsurprising since she spent so much time in his company. He was harsh and he was cold, and his eyes glittered with ill-concealed malice, but at least he was truthful in his hatred. He did not hide it behind politics or propriety. He held it up in all its ugly glory. She knew exactly where she stood with him and what to expect, and she respected him for it, was comforted by it. She could sooner respect an enemy she knew and feared than an ally she ridiculed.

The same went for Draco, though she couldn´t say why he was staring at her.

Perhaps he finds you attractive.

She coughed behind her hand to discourage a spate of giggles. If that had any chance of being true, then it also held true that any moment now she was going to leap from her chair and dance about the room with breathtaking grace. Draco Malfoy was attracted to no one but himself, and even if he were capable of tearing his eyes away from the task of perpetual self-admiration, she would be the last person on his list of people to ogle. He was a rich, arrogant, pampered little ass who was enthralled only by physical beauty, and that was not one of her attributes.

Even if you were physically perfect, you´d still be a Mudblood.

There was that. She turned her head to try and catch a glimpse of him. She could just see a sliver of platinum hair and a flash of smooth cheek. He was beautiful, and it grated on her. It wasn´t fair. Spoiled little jerk had everything-money, status, an assured future thanks to his wealthy father. He shouldn´t have Davidian beauty, too. The scales should even out somehow. To have all of that and beauty would not be permitted by a just God.

Who ever told you God was just? You know better.

She was living proof of God´s injustice, and even if she could look past the evidence of her own limbs, she had lived among other examples of his cruelty for nearly all of her days. The blind. The deaf. The crippled. The warped souls struggling through their individual journey with bruised, faulty brains. Each was a victim of the stacked deck handed them along with their birth certificate. If God could be so miserly with some, it stood to reason that he could be exceedingly generous with others.

McGonagall ended the lesson, and some of the tension ebbed from her body. Her relief was not to last. Before she had put her chair into motion, McGonagall´s voice cut through the shuffle of feet and the creak of desks as students filed out.

"Miss Stanhope, may I see you a moment?"

"Yes, ma´am." The bile in her gut began to churn. Draco passed by, his eyes flicking between the two of them, the cool, appraising smirk glued onto his face.

When everyone was gone, McGonagall motioned for her to approach the desk. She did, biting on the inside of her cheek to maintain the veneer of unruffled implacability. She was sure she wouldn´t like what the professor had to say. She was looking at her with that expression of benevolent condescension that made her head pound with frustration. Her left hand curled into a fist again.

They surveyed one another across the desk for a few minutes. Rebecca could feel her groping for an opening, for a pleasant entry into the conversation. She was also looking for a flaw in her defenses, a means of attack. Rebecca battoned the hatches and smiled.

"Miss Stanhope, is there anything you wished to tell me now that we are alone?"

Bitch.

The thought was vicious. It was a mental stab at her adversary, wild and jagged. Undiluted anger surged through her veins. Blood beaded beneath her fingernails. Dislike spiraled toward hate.

Did she really think I´d turn tail and confess everything? Did she? I´ve got more spine than that. She underestimated me. Even if I wanted to screw Snape, I wouldn´t. Not for her.

The urge to turn and leave without answering was an overwhelming compulsion. She had to stuff her hand beneath her leg to keep from reaching for the joystick. Blood pounded in her temples. She looked at her teacher´s face and willed herself to take deep, even breaths. She willed her chest and throat to loosen.

Don´t tip your hand. Don´t give her the victory.

"No, ma´am," she said quietly.

McGonagall stared at her a moment longer, perhaps hoping she would change her mind. Then she said, "My door is always open, Miss Stanhope."

Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, she thought.

"Thank you, ma´am. Will that be all?"

"Yes. You may go."

She left as quickly as she could. Ahead of her, a cunning mind plotted revenge. Above her, an even more brilliant mind sorted through her motives while cursing her name. Behind her, her protectress searched for guidance not to be found. Fortuna´s wheel began to spin.

The circle of Fate tightened around them all.