Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Thirteen

They made a pitiful sight hobbling down the corridor. The only saving grace to the whole sorry affair was that the rest of the pupils were trapped within the snug confines of various classrooms and thus could not see their lurching, limping progress. The only witnesses were the portraits that lined the walls. Some gawked in open-mouthed surprise. Others looked on in thin-lipped disapproval. A few disappeared from their frames, hurrying to tell friends not fortunate enough to see the spectacle for themselves. All of them stayed wisely silent. They were keenly aware of Severus Snape´s temper, and none of them wanted a set of unbecoming scorch marks for their ill-timed mirth..

Rebecca saw nothing funny about the situation. Absolutely nothing. She felt weak, nauseated with the horror of what had happened. Of what she had done. And make no mistake, she had done it. The reasons didn´t matter, the circumstances didn´t matter. All that mattered was that she had done this terrible thing. The red, scalded flesh of Professor Snape´s legs told the only story that needed to be told.

She wept as she rolled, soundlessly, without even hitchings and snivelings to give her away. The tears were warm and thick, like blood. She made no attempt to wipe them away. She let them trickle down her face and drip off the end of her quivering chin. They belonged there. They were markers of her sin. They came ceaselessly, one after the other, and each one stung her eyes like the tearing bite of the knotted lash. She welcomed the pain, both the physical and the emotional. It meant that she could still feel, still care about someone other than herself.

Until the remorse for what she had done had cut through the veil of numbness that had dropped over her the instant she opened her eyes, she had begun to suspect that she was losing her ability to feel, to empathize with the people around her. From the day that Judith Pruitt had slit her own throat, she could feel it slipping away, drop by drop, heartbeat by heartbeat. Things that had once made her throat constrict and her heart thud with empathy no longer moved her. Tear-filled eyes no longer stirred compassion. It was as though everything inside her had turned to ash and settling dust. Then she had seen Professor Snape´s grimacing face and his red, swollen legs, and the feeling she had presumed dead in her returned in a crushing avalanche. Glory, glory hallelujah.

So her compassion was not dead. Life at D.A.I.M.S. had not squeezed the last drop of kindness from her gnarled bones. That was sparse comfort. Useless knowledge, too, because after this, there was no question that it was going to get another chance. Her reprieve, her chance to escape from the cold clutches of its sterile white walls, was finished. There would be no pardon for this, no forgiveness, no understanding. Not even McGonagall, the patron saint of rationalization, would be able to excuse it. And if she tried, she would spit in the woman´s face. Even she, desperate and miserable and humiliated, knew there was no justification.

What happened to her didn´t matter to her just then, not really. The only thing she could see, the only thing the tunnel vision of her guilt would let her see, was what she had done. She had hurt someone, caused them pain. What she was had injured another. Her body had betrayed her, overthrowing the reins of her always-precarious control, and bringing pain and confusion in its wake. It had exposed to the world and to her peers what she had always secretly known. She was not in control. She was a soul trapped inside a body that followed its own whims, heeded no will but its own.

You meant to do it.

The thought was so appalling that she nearly ground to halt, but then she remembered that Professor Snape was using her push-handles for support. If she stopped suddenly, he would bump into her battery case and hurt himself still more. No, she would hurt him more. So she kept going, her clammy hand jittering on the joystick as she willed herself to keep the chair straight.

I did not.

Oh, yes, you did. You meant it. Don´t you remember?

What are you talking about?

Then she did remember. It came back to her with dizzying clarity. The first night of detention, as he was walking her back to Gryffindor Tower, deliberately leaving her behind in the darkness, she had wished him ill. She had wanted him to suffer, to know pain and impotent rage. She had been ashamed afterwards, but the feeling had been there all the same, as fleeting and seductive as slipping her hand between the bedsheets in the breathy silence while everyone else slept.

Oh, Jesus, you know I didn´t mean that. I didn´t.

If you feel something, you mean it, even if you only mean it for five seconds. You know that.

I only thought that because I was angry.

And that same anger made you push that cauldron onto him.

No!

It was true that over the years, in the darkest corner of her mind where the ugliest resentments festered, she had often dreamed of watching the guileless, stupid walkers that stared as they passed the windows of the "´tard" school as they were struck down by a vengeful God finally awakened to the feeble cries of His weakest children. She had dreamed of seeing their perfect bodies bending and contorting as the burdens of the victims were foisted upon the shoulders of the tormentors. She imagined what it would feel like when that weight left her, imagined the cessation of cramps, the lightness of her breath as she breathed in the way of the whole, unthinkingly, unfettered.

Sometimes, in her darkest dreams, she imagined that it was she who shifted the balance, she who meted out justice. She saw herself reaching out her righteous hands, instruments of the Almighty´s divine retribution, and passing her afflictions on to them like deadly contagion. She saw their bodies twist and wither while hers blossomed and grew strong. She saw all these things, and in her dreams, she smiled.

But they were only dreams. Nothing more. She would never act upon them, not even under pain of death. To believe in dreams too strongly, to cling to them too tightly, was dangerous. She understood her dreams to be unhealthy, dreams born of fever and of unthinking, reflexive hatred. She recognized them as cankerous poison, and she fought to excise them from her spirit. She would never give in to them. Never.

For Snape you would.

No. I wouldn´t.

Yes, you would. He pushes you harder than anyone else ever has, and you hate him for it.

No, I don´t. Not anymore.

Yes, you do. You hate him because he walks. That´s all the reason you need.

That isn´t true.

Isn´t it? Why didn´t you move away from him?

I tried-

You could have moved away the moment you felt the strange sensation. You chose to remain where you were. You stayed because you knew what would happen.

NO!

How do you know? How can you be sure?

Because I know who I am. I know what I am. I may hate, and I may dream of things better left undreamt, but I am not yet so cold or so dead as to harm another. No matter what you think. There´s a world of difference between dreaming and doing, and I swear upon my life that I will NEVER cross that line.

That´s a promise you can´t keep, little girl. Her grandfather´s voice. Sooner or later, before it´s all over, you will spill blood.

What? What are you talking about?

His voice fell silent, and before she could ask him again, Professor Snape spoke.

"Stop, Miss Stanhope."

She stopped, and from behind her came the sound of him leaning heavily against the wall. Though he tried to suppress it, she heard a muffled groan. The sound cut her already stricken heart like a razor.

Oh, God, what have I done?

When she thought it was safe, she slowly pivoted the chair around, bringing it to a stop against the cool stone wall. She let her head rest against it. Maybe the cold air would soothe her fevered mind, numb the incredulous horror that seized her system with shock. From where she sat, she could see far too much, but she did not turn away. She faced the consequences with red, weeping eyes.

He was leaning heavily against the wall, his eyes closed against a stab of pain. His wet robe clung to his legs like a mutinous second skin. His lily hands rested on his knees, bunching the fabric between his long fingers. Through the gap between the hem and the top of his exotic leather boots, she could see a flash of angry red skin that was already beginning to pucker and bubble. She swallowed a dry lump. Oh, Christ.

She knew where they were going. She had traveled the route before. Professor Snape was her regular escort, as a matter of fact. They were going to the Headmaster´s office, and when they got there, things were going to be very bad indeed. She was, she knew, going there for the last time. If they made it that far. At the present, Professor Snape looked in no shape to go anywhere.

"Sir, perhaps you should go to the Hospital Wing." Her voice was unsteady and thick.

Oh, brilliant, Bec. He can´t make it to the Headmaster´s, but you advise him to go to the Hospital Wing, which is just as far. Outstanding.

What else was there? He couldn´t go on like this. The pain was clearly well-nigh unbearable. She had never seen him move so slowly, so hesitantly. His usual grace was shattered, lost among the seared skin and quivering, insulted muscles. She couldn´t go on this way. Watching him was painful. It was all she could do not to reach out her hand and touch him, to try and comfort. She didn´t dare do it; she knew the consequences too well, but the temptation, the need, was still there.

Ah, the truth comes out. You don´t want to see him like that anymore. Always so selfish. Thinking of yourself and not him.

All mercy is selfish at its heart. You know that. The people who give it are looking for absolution of one kind or another. I am. There´s nothing altruistic about guilt.

It was a bitter thought, but not entirely true. It wasn´t just for her own benefit that she wanted him to go to Madam Pomfrey. She was bitter, cold, sometimes savage in her unspoken indictments of those around her, but she was not intentionally cruel. She would never knowingly inflict pain upon anyone. Pain was the one thing she understood perfectly and feared. She knew its potential, its efficiency as a tool of vengeance, of hatred, and she had sworn never to use it as such.

No matter what the unflinching, merciless voice in her head told her, no matter what the pale, insinuating voice of her long-tormented conscience whispered inside her head, she knew that her need for Professor Snape to be seen to was more than just a sinner´s uneasy cry for pity. She hated seeing the change she had wrought in him with a single uncontrolled jerk of her arm. He was her bane, but he was a beautiful bane. Even as she had wished him pain and misfortune in a thousand different guises, she had admired his sleek, sensual, incongruous grace. People with greasy hair and sallow skin weren´t supposed to inspire aesthetic appreciation, and yet he did. And she had ruined that, stripped it away like a careless carpenter hacking fine varnish from the remains of a priceless antique table. She had peeled away his veneer and left shabbiness in her wake, and if they didn´t get moving soon, everyone was going to know it.

His eyes flew open and he stared at her in savage fury, his lip curling in disgust. He gripped his wand convulsively, as though he longed to bring the smooth wooden tip to her throat and release a Killing Curse. "One more word out of you, Stanhope, and you will have a very nasty accident." He spoke softly, calmly, but his words carried the terrible weight of absolute surety. After a moment, he pushed away from the wall and staggered forward. "Move on," he hissed, gripping the handles once more.

"Sir, please, can´t we go to the infirmary?" She had to try again. The suffering was too awful too see, made worse by the fact that he was trying to hide it.

"Silence!" No further argument would be tolerated.

Incredibly, she felt her mouth opening again. "Please, sir, you need help! Please!"

You have a death wish, child.

The tears came faster, inflaming her raw cheeks. Her emotional control was slipping. She could feel the hitherto unmoveable bedrock of the fortress she had built brick by brick from the terrors and doubts of her past shift. She could almost hear it, furtive, chuckling, the grinding of huge psychological tectonic plates as they passed on a dangerous fault line. She gripped the armrests of her chair, trying to hold on to herself amid the inner turmoil.

She set her teeth against a shuddering gasp. "Please, sir! Please! Go see Madam Pomfrey." Tears, real tears of fear and frustration, welled in her eyes and spilled over. She wasn´t going to move until he agreed to go to the Hospital Wing.

"I will ask you just once more to get moving, Miss Stanhope."

She sat obdurately in the corridor, head bowed, looking every inch the obstinate mule he would accuse her of being so often through the years. She was well aware that she was inviting the wrath of the gods with her refusal to yield, in particular the ire of daemon fantastique standing behind her, but she had chosen her course, and she would hold it until the last.

In a barely audible voice she said, "Please, sir, please go to the infirmary to get treated. I´ve nowhere to hide."

She heard the creak as he leaned down. Then his breath, hot and smelling of gourmet cheese, tickled her cheek. "Your protestations of concern for my well-being will change nothing. You will be expelled."

Hard as a stone, child. Hard as a stone.

She twisted her head to look at him as best she could. "I don´t give a damn about that! Do whatever you want with me afterwards, but first get help. Sir," she added, a hasty afterthought.

He gave her an unpleasant smile. "Sixty points for insubordination. Can´t bear to see what you´ve done?"

"No," she croaked. "I can´t."

"Why ever not? I should think you would be dancing in the streets of Hogsmeade at my misfortune."

She blinked at him. "You think I meant for that to happen? Sir, in spite of what you think, I would never deliberately harm you. Never."

"Of course not. You´re a Gryffindor. Gryffindors don´t sin." The impact of the last retort was undermined by a grunt of pain when he shifted his weight.

She turned to face him, moving slowly so that he could find new handholds. "Sir, please. If you were to fall on the rotating stairs, I would never be able to-,"

"To what?" he spat. "Give me the proper shove?"

The anger and bitterness in his voice and swirling beneath his skin were like a slap, and she recoiled, her mouth opening in surprise. The urge to seize him and shake from his soul the poison that colored his vision deep, pestilential black rose up again, and she had to coil her wrists around the cheap vinyl of her armrests to keep them from flying to his face.

"Oh, sir," she managed.

The foundations of her emotional stronghold shifted again, but this was not a gentle shift. It was a cataclysmic buckling. Fissures formed where once impregnable, flawless walls had stood. There was a thunderous crack as the center column, the one that cemented everything together, exploded. It swayed precariously for a few seconds, tenacious to the end, and then toppled, spraying everything with its lethally sharp fragments, gouging even more grievous breaches into the rapidly crumbling walls.

In the dwindling moments before the roof came down, a single coherent thought anchored itself in the shambles of her mind. He broke me. It wasn´t the way he wanted it, but the bastard broke me.

"Wha-oh, sir!"

She folded in on herself, tucking her arms close to her abdomen. She wanted to have a bit of room should she need to retch. As it was, her curtain of blonde hair was grazing his midsection, hissing softly against the black fabric. The smell of him invaded her burning nostrils, and it was a welcome invasion. She clung to the calm, rational smell as though it were a life preserver. She felt mad, as if she´d suddenly gone insane. It was mental vertigo, and she groped in the darkness for some center, any center. There was only the smell, and she held on to it with all her strength.

She had stopped. At the very last instant, she had stopped. She had very nearly asked the question that was on the tip of her tongue, but even in the grips of this strange madness, she could not bring herself to pose it. She knew intuitively that he would not understand it, would search with all his power for some terrible hidden meaning, for the pulverized shards of weaponry that a question like that must surely conceal. He would seize it and turn it against her because that was all he knew.

What have they done to you? That was the question that had nearly slipped past her tongue. She bit down on it until the copper tang of blood filled her mouth. She was teetering on the thin edge of hysteria. She was feeling too much, too fast. She hugged herself tightly, cowering from the barrage of feeling her newly razed defenses let in. It was like being struck with a heavy mallet, and she coughed on a groan.

All those years and all that time crafting the thick barriers to keep people out, and she had never suspected the devastating erosive power of compassion. Or maybe she had. Maybe that was why she had tried so hard to shut it out. After her best friend had been stolen in a long and helpless torment, and after she had seen Judith Pruitt´s bloody, lifeless corpse being wheeled down the front ramp of D.A.I.M.S., she had quietly pulled the plug on it, shoving it as far back into the vault as she could, leaving it there in the hopes that the cobwebs and dust would cover it forever. After those things, it had simply proven too costly.

Now the most unlikely person imaginable had resurrected it, had thrown the battered and warped steel door that had imprisoned it for so long wide open. Professor Snape, the bastard she had alternately hated, feared, and respected. Its long hibernation had not affected its potency, and she gagged on it, fighting it. She made a passing attempt at grabbing it and stuffing it back from whence it came, but it was useless. The beast was loose, its cage overthrown.

This was the choice you made when you chose to count yourself with the group again.

I didn´t want this. I only wanted friends.

Ah, but this was part of the price. Everything has two sides. If you accept one, then you must take the other. No getting around it.

She felt very heavy, and when Professor Snape called her name, she stayed where she was. She couldn´t sit up. It was too much of an effort. She would just sit here and wait until the numbing shock wore off and the world made anesthetized sense again.

"Miss Stanhope." Louder, sharper.

"Yes, sir?" she mumbled from between her knees.

"Sit up. Now."

She sat up slowly. She was sorry to do it. His rich smell left her, and without it, her last anchor disappeared. She swallowed heavily.

"Are you finished?"

She nodded weakly.

"Then let us continue." His eyes narrowed. "Have you hurt yourself?" He lifted a hand from her armrest and brushed his fingers across her mouth. He scowled when she flinched, inspected his fingers, and scowled again. "What happened?"

"I don´t know, sir." It was true. Everything after the sight of him clutching his knees was a foggy blur.

"Open your mouth."

She did as she was told, and he peered inside. He gave no sign as to what he saw, but after a moment, he slowly moved his hand into his robes. When he brought it out again, he was holding a handkerchief.

"Wipe your face. You´re a mess. I´ll not have you before the Headmaster looking like that." He held it out to her.

She took it and swiped and dabbed at her face, grimacing as the fine cloth touched broken skin. She probably did look frightful. She felt damaged beyond repair, as if her body had been rearranged without her consent. Even the simple act of wiping her face had taken on Herculean proportions. When she was finished, she stared at the handkerchief as though it were something she had never seen before. She squinted, letting the synapses carry scrambled, logy messages through the morass of jumbled emotions that her brain had become.

"Would you like it back?" she said slowly, peering up at him through red, scoured eyes.

He snorted and plucked the crumpled cloth from her grasp, holding it gingerly so as not to soil his fingers. He put it away without looking at it. He eyed her face for a moment, his lips pursed into a moue of disapproval. "Not much of an improvement, but it will have to suffice," he muttered. "Get moving."

She turned slowly, letting him get behind her and readjust his grip on the handholds. When she felt his insistent push, she started forward, the chair whirring mournfully as they went. Her hand shook as she drove, seized by a numb ague. She could see her fingers clutching the joystick, but she couldn´t feel them. It was like they belonged to someone else, and she was only a passing observer.

Inch by inch, they were drawing closer to inexorable justice. Maybe it was better this way. She was tired. She was beaten, and she was smart enough to know it. This wasn´t the movies. There was not going to be a last second reprieve. Mercy was not going to rain down from above. No hero was going to burst in with proof of her innocence, and she found that she didn´t want them to. In real life, there were consequences, and if any decency still lived and breathed in her, she would meet them with as much dignity and grace as she could muster. She could do that, at least.

She was a failed experiment, and knowing that, the pressure she had been struggling under for weeks left her, bursting like a rancid pustule. She no longer had to worry about failing to meet the lofty expectations of starry-eyed disabled Wizard advocates who had hailed her as a brave pioneer who would change the face of magical society by her mere presence in this venerated institution. She could go home and resume her mundane life, live and die as nothing more than what she was-a normal human being just trying to make it along the bumpy, snarled thread of her life.

She was disappointed, but any regret she felt was swamped by the feeling of shamed relief. Hogwarts was a wonderful place, and she would miss it. She would miss its stately stone walls and grand, sweeping turrets. She would miss the teachers, who had challenged her more than she had ever dreamed possible. She would be sorry to leave the friends she had made here, and it would pain her to tell Winky, her wrinkled little mother hen, that she was leaving. But in spite of all of those regrets, she could not deny a lightening of her burden.

The integration of disabled wizards into mainstream schools and society would be hampered, of course, set back by as much as a decade, but she was far from concerned about that. It wasn´t her problem. Self-preservation was her problem, and if that meant leaving the best opportunity she had ever had, then so be it. D.A.I.M.S. had made her a survivalist, and a scant month outside its sphere of influence wasn´t going to change that.

D.A.I.M.S. For all its faults, she was beginning to see that it had its benefits. It might have worn you down and drained you of your zest for life, but it also offered a blessed numbness, a welcome insulation from the burden of emotion. You never felt what it was doing to you, what it was stealing. You floated in a blissful, narcotized haze, and one day you awoke to find that it was all over. You went from eleven to one hundred and twenty in the blink of an eye, and by the time you thought to ask what had happened to the rest of your life, they were lowering you into the cool embrace of the earth. It would be nice to sink into that liquid nitrogen numbness.

The selfishness returns.

The selfishness never left. It´s always been there, sleeping inside every human being.

I never figured you for a quitter.

I´m not a quitter. I´m a realist.

Oh, is that what they´re calling it now when someone turns tail and runs when things get hard?

It´s not like that. There´s nothing I can do. Nothing I can say will convince him that I didn´t mean to do it.

So you´re not even going to try?

No. I know an exercise in futility when I see it.

Whatever happened to the fire in your belly, the one that made you tell me to shove it up my arse when I tried to make you eat au gratin potatoes?

I hate to break it to you, Grandpa, but those flames flickered and died a long time ago. It´s hard to stoke them when nothing ever comes of your anger.

Why does this bother you so much, girl? You´ve had accidents before.

Yes, I have. I´ve pissed on the floor. I´ve started my period in white pants. I´ve dropped plates of food on the floor. Those were accidents. This goes beyond accident. This time I´ve hurt someone, hurt them badly. I never wanted to do that. I wanted to get through life without screwing it up. And I screwed it up big time.

He´ll live.

That´s not the point. It should never have happened.

Well, it did. What are you going to do about it?

I don´t know. It´s out of my hands.

You keep saying that. It´s never out of your hands.

What would you have me do? Obliviate him?

No. Explain to him.

There´s nothing to explain. I fucked up. End of story.

You´ve seen suffering before, pain and grief in excess of anything happening now. Why shed tears for this?

Because it´s mine! I did this. Me. This is the work of my hands. His pain is different because it shouldn´t be. It´s unnatural.

As opposed to yours?

I was born into mine. It is an accepted part of who I am. I´ve never known otherwise. It fits me well, ugly as it may be. I´ve learned how to cope. People like him don´t wear pain well. They fight it. You´ve seen him. You know.

The internal argument might have gone on indefinitely had not Professor Snape spoken. "Turn left." Just those two words.

She opened her mouth to say that left led to the infirmary, then closed it again. He was well aware of that fact, and why in the world was she looking a gift horse in the mouth? She pivoted cautiously, praying that she wouldn´t graze his legs and wincing when she heard his ragged breathing, tight with pain. She almost wished he would cry out, find release for the discomfort. His heroic silence was as difficult to watch as the evidence of his injury. But he only hissed and hobbled forward.

She was ashamed to admit it, but even as she was writhing in mortified torment at what she had done, she drew comfort from his presence. The smell of him was thick around her face, and though it drove more tears from her raw eyes, it calmed her, too. It had not changed; it was as steady and stalwart as ever it had been. This will be but a passing thing, it said, and she believed it and was glad. It didn´t matter that she wouldn´t be here to see that promise fulfilled.

They made it to the Hospital Wing after a grueling thirty minutes. Ten paces from the door, it was a very near thing. He let out a sharp bark of pain and stumbled, his chest smacking against the back of her head. It was remarkably solid beneath the heavy cloth of his robes, and she hiccoughed in surprise. She had expected him to be far more ethereal, willowy, like dreams and dust. He certainly moved that way.

After that nonsensical thought came another, more practical one. Oh, no. If he falls out here, I´ll never be able to get him up.

Go get Pomfrey if it comes to it.

I can´t just leave him lying here.

He would hardly appreciate if you let his pain continue because you were too vain to call for help, her mind pointed out.

No, I guess he wouldn´t. Pomfrey it is.

Thankfully, the race for help never came to pass. After a moment he recovered, renewing his grip on her push handles and heaving himself upright again. He stood for a while, panting from the exertion, and then he tapped her lightly on the shoulder. He wanted her to go on.

She moved as quickly as she dared, her heart hammering in her throat. Though he had moved away from her, the weight of his chest still pressed against the back of her scalp, imprinted there in the indelible ink of tactile memory. She wanted to brush her fingers against it, swab it away, out, out damn spot, but she dared not raise her hand. She just kept going. The sterility of the infirmary couldn´t come fast enough.

The smell hit her the instant she crossed the threshold. It was overpowering, driving away the soothing smell of him. The stinging, pungent stink of hospital. It burned into her nostrils like acid, and she turned her head away. There were other, lighter smells, too, lemongrass and lilac, but they couldn´t cover up the reek of artificial cleanliness.

Underneath those scents lurked another, truer smell. Her nose picked it from the air with the ease of long acquaintance. It was the sickly stench of corruption, of old death. It clung to the walls and floors in an invisible miasma. No amount of scrubbing or scouring would ever get it out. It had permeated the stone, insinuated itself into the viscera of the rock like a parasite. It was a part of it now. Death never gave up its place.

After her best friend died, the bed in which he had lain and died, the bed that had eaten him, always smelled of rot and disease. The school laundry had washed the linens a thousand times, but the odor never went away. It stuck to everything, even the curtains above his headboard had stunk of it. She smelled it in the cool, white metal. Eventually, the bed and all its linens were taken out and burned. For sanitary reasons, the head nurse had said, but she knew the truth. The nurse had been afraid of that bed, too. She always gave it a wide berth when she passed it, and her eyes always drifted uneasily to it when she worked in the evening. She knew about the bed. That´s why she had it thrown out.

A thousand years of death blanketed these floors. A thousand years of loss, of blood, of all the things that came with the business of leaving this world. The smell would always be there. It would speak to what this place had been long after the plaque on the wall had rusted and tarnished to nothing, long after the surrounding walls and foundations had returned to dust. Nothing would ever grow in the soil beneath these floors.

Maybe that´s why the bed came here.

Her head jerked to the place where the deathbed sat, separated from the others by three feet and a thousand miles. It looked innocent now, serene, but that was because Death was not here. It was waiting. For a moment, it seemed to her that the sheets rippled, grinned, and then they were just bedclothes again.

It wasn´t the same bed, certainly, but it looked the same. Right down to the scratch on the foot of the bed, made when she had clipped it during the last days of her friend´s life. If she rolled to it now, would she find the same glitter blue paint that had graced her chair at the time? She thought she might.

"Here there be tygers," she said faintly.

"What?"

Snape, who had collapsed onto the nearest bed as soon as it was within range, looked at Rebecca sharply. He hadn´t caught what she´d said, but she was sitting there with the oddest expression on her face. Her eyes were far away, glassy and distant. She was staring at the bed tucked into the furthest corner of the room, riveted to it with unsettling concentration.

It´s almost as if she expects it to move.

That was ridiculous. Beds did not move, and if Miss Stanhope thought they did, then she was in need of far more help than he could offer. In spite of his question, she hadn´t moved, hadn´t even turned her head. It was as though she hadn´t heard him at all. She was still staring at that bed. In fact, she looked a bit mad, and he felt a grudging pang of worry. Had the incident upset her that much?

It bloody well should have, he thought angrily.

It had certainly upset him. Upset wasn´t the proper word. Anger didn´t even begin to encompass what he felt. Neither did fury. They both fell well short of the mark. He didn´t think there was a word in any tongue to describe what he felt. It was enormous, so enormous that it could not fit under the scope of his vision. It blurred around the edges, and the fact that he could not articulate what he felt frustrated him still further. Words were his second passion, and he was as deft with them as he was with the cutting knife, the cauldron, and the alembic. That he could not bend them to his will now when he most desired it was the final indignity on this horrific day.

There was anger yes, anger white and seething. He was not surprised at this. He had expected it. It was a state and a feeling as natural to him as the skin on the palms of his hands. But there were other things, too, feelings he had not anticipated, for which he had not prepared. Chief among them was disappointment. He could not account for it, but it was there, nested in the midst of his anger like a fragile egg.

He had begun to believe in her. Against his will, even as he had plotted her dismissal and reveled in the acts of cruelty his position as instructor afford, he had begun to be intrigued, even a little amazed. She had never quit. Never. No matter how late he kept her, no matter how hard he pushed, she had never whinged, never begged off. She had worked until he said stop. She would work until she dropped, he suspected, and more than once he had been tempted to test the notion. It was "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," all night long. And if he kept her past the appointed time set by the Headmaster, she never so much as blinked. And now this.

Dammit.

You never should have believed, especially not in her. You knew better.

Yes, he had, but it had been so tempting. He had sensed something in her that he had not seen in the others, except perhaps in Draco. A certain awareness, a calculating view of the world that he found disturbing and strangely exhilarating at the same time. She was bent and twisted, but she understood the way of things very well, was on more than nodding acquaintance with the harsh reality lurking outside these cocooning walls. She was pragmatic.

She had respected him, too. She had given him his proper due and made no secret of the fact that she understood her place. She acknowledged him as the supreme ruler of his classroom and the subject he taught. He was under no illusion that she liked the situation. He knew that she didn´t, but whether she approved of the way things were on not was wholly irrelevant. What was relevant was her conduct, and until now, it had been flawless.

He still wasn´t sure what had happened. A sudden motion had caught he eye, and when he had turned, he had seen her clutching and flailing. Though he had remained outwardly unflustered, his heart had skipped a beat, and the thought had crossed his mind that maybe she was having one of those seizures and McGonagall was always fretting about. Visions of her choking on her own tongue had danced in his head, and he searched frantically for the proper way to handle it. Then he had caught a glimpse of her face, and the specter of a fatal fit vanished. Her eyes were wide and agonized, but not vacant. She had been there for whatever was happening to her.

He had taken two steps forward, his voice cracking across the frozen classroom, telling her to stop. He had seen her hand scrabble for the stick, and then something, a huge bolt of pain, had ripped it away. In the next instant, his legs had been bathed in boiling potion, and pain had swallowed everything.

The pain was alive and ravenous, clawing up his legs and burrowing behind his knees. It had eased momentarily when he sat down, but it was healthy and thriving now. He was nauseated with it. He swallowed his gorge. He could feel the flesh puckering beneath his robes. Where was Pomfrey? Ordinarily, she never left the Hospital Wing.

Maybe she´s hiding from you.

The thought nettled him. He was her most frequent and worst-mannered patient. By the end of a session with him, she was as ill-tempered as he was. It was no small feat to sour the disposition of the normally placid Mediwitch.

I can´t help it if I´m a discerning patient, he thought peevishly.

You´re a right prat when you´re ill, Severus.

He couldn´t help it. He was independent, strong-willed as the four winds. He was accustomed to doing things for himself, being master of his own destiny, and lying helpless in a bed certainly did nothing to further that image. It drove him mad, being at the mercy of the will of others. Twenty-four hours was enough to have him climbing the walls. He couldn´t see how Stanhope could stand it. He would have slit his own throat by now.

She was still staring at the bed in the far corner in vacant horror. Her left hand opened and closed dreamily in a loose fist, and the right swiped compulsively across her bloody lips. It frightened him to see her that way.

"Stanhope," he barked, "answer me at once."

She jerked so hard that he thought she was going to come out of her chair. Her had swung to him, and he saw her eyes clear of that terrifying nothingness. Wherever she had been, she was back now.

"Forgive me, sir. I didn´t hear you."

"Obviously," he snapped. "What did you just say?"

Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Did I say something, sir? I don´t recall."

He snorted. He wasn´t surprised. He barely recalled the long trip here. "Satisfied with your handiwork, Miss Stanhope?"

Her face clouded and crumpled. "No, sir," she said thickly, "I´m not."

He saw that she was weeping again. The tears never seemed to stop. They came from an apparently inexhaustible source. Her eyes and cheeks had been scourged by them; the flesh was bright red, chapped. The salt in them must have made her skin scream, but she wept without sound. Inhale. Soft, sighing exhale. The mournful patter of falling tears.

The tears infuriated him. She had hurt him, and she had the nerve to weep. She wasn´t the one suffering the agony of burnt flesh. What reason did she have to weep? Did she think that the tiny, sparkling drops of regret would move him to compassion? She had hurt him. Worse yet, she had disappointed him. For that, she had to pay.

"No? Sorry you missed my face?"

The sound that came out of her was indescribable. It was low and wounded. It came from the deepest part of her. She pressed her teeth together, and the sound passed her lips in a choking whine. It was the sound of something dying, something shattering. Her chest spasmed, and her thin hands gouged deep scratches into the vinyl of her armrests. She was fighting hard to suppress the sound, struggling valiantly. Her head shook.

"No, sir," she managed in a strangled croak. The sound faded.

Even as he felt a stab of satisfaction for the hurt he had inflicted, a kernel of shame lodged in his heart. She was fighting so hard to preserve her dignity, still treating him with respect in the face of imminent expulsion.

Maybe she thinks it will win her clemency.

Well, it wouldn´t, but the struggle was something to behold. He was strangely moved by it. Even in the face of his fury, his cruelty, and her own simmering shame, she had not resorted to sniveling. She was behaving with as much dignity as she could muster under the circumstances, something grown adults often failed to do. He was beginning to suspect she possessed a steel spine.

Annoyed by his unwilling admiration, he snapped, "Where in the blazes is Pomfrey?"

"Madam Pomfrey, goddammit!" Rebecca shouted at the top of her voice.

He gaped at her. "Thirty points for insolence," he murmured, momentarily stunned by the sound of quiet Rebecca Stanhope cursing loudly at an adult.

Madam Pomfrey appeared, her face a mask of disapproval. It deepened when she saw Rebecca.

"There is no need for such language, Miss Stanhope, and I´ll not have it. Points ought to be deducted."

"I quite agree," he said drily.

Madam Pomfrey´s eyes widened when she saw him. "Good heavens, Professor Snape! What happened?"

"It was all my fault," Rebecca said quietly. "I knocked a boiling cauldron onto his legs."

"I didn´t ask you, Miss Stanhope," she retorted waspishly, bustling over to inspect the damage.

"Be that as it may, she is entirely correct," he said calmly.

Pomfrey lifted up the hem of his robes and grimaced. "It´s quite bad, but luckily for you, I´ve just the thing. Good thing you restocked our Potions stores a few days ago." To Stanhope, she said, "Well, what are you standing about for? Out with you. There´s nothing you can do here."

Pomfrey hurried off to get the Incendi-Soothe from her storage cupboard. Stanhope remained where she was. He noticed the mask had been slipped on. The tears were gone, only the red blotches to give away that they had ever been there. The opaque windows had drawn down over her eyes again. There was neither pain nor fear in them now. She had distanced herself, closed herself off. She was a mere observer.

He realized that he had seen her, the real her. The shock of what she had done had torn it off, or perhaps now that the game was up, she had simply chosen to take it off, to offer him a shot at the exposed flesh. Her penance. She had let him see, and now she was waiting for his judgment, Pomfrey be damned.

She doesn´t have to see. Why does she stay?

Because this is part of it, and she knows it. She´s going to see it through, no matter how ugly it is.

Damned Gryffindor honor.

She´s damned either way. If she flees, you curse her as coward. If she stays, it´s mawkish Gryffindor honor. She can´t win.

Bugger off.

It´s respect, Severus. She owes you that much, and she´s going to give it to you, one way or another.

Madam Pomfrey returned with the jar of Incendi-Soothe and stopped short when she saw Rebecca still sitting there.

"I thought I told you to be off," she said shortly.

"Yes, ma´am, you did," Rebecca answered, but her eyes were still on him. Watching.

She´s waiting for me to tell her to go or stay. As far as she´s concerned Madam Pomfrey is in another universe. My word is the only thing that matters.

Slowly, deliberately, he said, "I want her to stay here, see the consequences of what she´s done."

It was true. He did want her to see, to squirm on the pike a bit longer before he brought the killing blow down, but he also wanted to study her, to pry at her inner workings. He needed to be sure of what he had seen.

Pomfrey sniffed, but he hardly heard her. He was the professor, and she was the nurse, and that was that. If she didn´t like it, she could take it up with Albus. Something might get done if he stopped plying her with sherbet lemons long enough, but his petulance was legendary, and more likely, it would be waved off.

The pain vanished as soon as the gel made contact with his skin, and he let out a slow, relieved breath. He saw Pomfrey smile smugly.

"What?"

"Feeling better?"

"A piranha attached to my genitals would be an improvement after what I´ve endured," he spat.

There was a surprised huff from Pomfrey, and from Rebecca´s corner came something that sounded suspiciously like a snort of laughter. When he looked, her face was composed, but there was a telltale twitch in her jaw.

"I see no need for such coarseness," Pomfrey protested.

"Don´t you? I´ve nearly had my legs burnt off by a grossly incompetent student. I think I´m entitled to a bit of grievance. Now, if you´ll excuse us, I´d like to discuss matters with Miss Stanhope. Privately."

"This is my infirmary. You can´t just-,"

"Indeed it is. As no one else is here, this will do nicely." He glowered at her.

She set her jaw. "As you wish, Professor Snape. You should be fine. If you´d like, I can give you a cane."

"I´d rather crawl."

She nodded tersely. I´ll be in the next room if you need me." She left, muttering something that sounded perilously close to "insufferable prat."

As soon as she was gone, he put a Silencing Charm on the room. Then he turned to face Rebecca Stanhope. They looked at each other for a very long time, neither one of them saying a word. She was watching him somberly, gravely. She was utterly still.

"Well, Miss Stanhope, what shall we do with you?" he asked quietly.

She ran her fingers through her hair and said the last thing he expected. "You need to send me home, sir."

He had anticipated whinging, unseemly begging, empty promises, defensive explanations. The baldness of her statement took him aback.

"What?" he asked stupidly.

"What other course of action is there? I deserve nothing less. Oh, Christ, look at what I did to you, sir!" She leaned forward and buried her face in her hands.

The mask shattered into a thousand pieces. Her heard it splinter behind her hands. That low, wretched noise was coming from the pit of her stomach. Her shoulders shook, and she rocked back and forth in an unconscious motion.

She´s weeping. Merlin. She´s not crying. She´s weeping. For me.

Looks like you´ve got what you wanted. You´ve broken her.

He had, but it was a hollow victory. There was no satisfaction in it, only a sick feeling of loss. He had admired her stoicism, and to see it washed so completely away was like seeing a great monument toppled. Now that it was gone, he wished for it again.

He sat in stupefied silence, watching as she wept. Never in all his years of teaching had a student shown remorse for what they´d done to him or said of him. It was a badge of honor to injure him and those who defied him were eyed with quiet respect. Potter was revered for his disdain of him. If Potter had been the one to do this, he and his friends would have been capering in the aisles. Now, a student, a Gryffindor, was weeping before him.

Leave it to Stanhope to make things difficult.

"Stop your blubbering, girl." He pulled out his soiled handkerchief and held it out to her.

She raised her head, treating him to a glimpse of her tear and mucus-stained face. She sat up and rolled to where he sat on the bed, hand outstretched.

"Thank you, sir," she mumbled, and went about cleaning her face for the second time.

"Tell me what happened," he said when she finished.

She took a watery breath. "I don´t know, sir. I was going about my work, and my legs started to sting. I tried scratching, but it only got worse. It was like a thousand hornets. It was terrible pain. Then I saw you, heard you. I tried to back away, but my arm was on fire. It was like something was holding it. I couldn´t. I wanted to. I couldn´t." She was on the verge of dissolving again.

"I see." An image formed in his mind. Her hand reaching desperately for that control stick, straining for it. "Like hornets, did you say?"

"Yes, sir."

The wheels of his mind were turning. He was beginning to understand. A Curse, one she had fought as best she could to get away from him. But who could have done it? Then he knew. Malfoy. The little bastard would do something like this, and he had reason to. He had extracted his pound of flesh, but unfortunately, he had taken it from the wrong person. He would deal with him later. Slytherin to Slytherin.

What about her?

His first impulse was to bring down the killing blow, to tell her to pack her bags and crush the last of her will, but he hesitated. Disjointed images passed through his mind. Albus hugging a sniveling, vomiting twenty-year old who had realized too late the horror of what he had done. Albus giving him his confidence when no one else would. Stanhope quietly choosing not to destroy his career. Her wide, horrified eyes at the sight of what she had done.

In the end, it was the first words out of her mouth that spared her. You need to send me home, sir. No begging, no rationalization, no cajoling. Just calm acceptance of consequences and recognition that they must be lived with.

"I´m going to investigate your claim, Miss Stanhope. As I trust you´ve never lied to me, I expect I shall find proof of what you have told me. If I don´t, I´ll fetch you from Gryffindor Tower and escort you to King´s Cross personally."

She stared at him.

"Is that clear?"

"Yes, y-yes, sir."

"Good. Then I consider the matter closed. Dismissed."

She had the good sense not to thank him. She nodded and rolled toward the door.

"Miss Stanhope?"

She turned.

"I expect a twenty foot parchment on Potions safety in one week."

"Yes, sir."

He noted with satisfaction that she had paled at the length of the essay. He hadn´t gone soft, after all.

The debt is paid, he thought as he watched her leave. The scales are even, and we´re back at the beginning. Pray we don´t end up here again. My cup does not run over. Goodness and mercy do not follow me. Everything has a price, and you will pay it.

He stood and straightened his robes. Time to go explain things to the Headmaster. No doubt word of the incident had spread. Feeling strangely light, he left the infirmary and closed the door behind him.