Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

To Jesus, because I loved you. I still do.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Draco Malfoy sat in the Slytherin Common Room in a state of delirious happiness. Nor was he the only one. Slytherin House was beside itself. The normally silent room was abuzz with the low murmur of excited conversation. By the fire, Parkinson was twittering madly to a seventh-year girl with an unfortunate mask of purple acne. He kept his gaze down so that she would not mistake his observation for flirtation. He hadn't felt this good in ages, and he didn't want to ruin it by fending off her latest romantic charge.

Even Goyle was enjoying himself. He was hunkered on the sofa beside Millicent Bulstrode, trying, he supposed, to flirt. He had a peculiar, vacant expression on his face that Draco had last seen on a poleaxed house elf. Then again, perhaps he was reading too much into it. It could just be Goyle's more customary stupefied glaze distorted by the flickering firelight.

If it were truly love he was looking for, he was to be sorely disappointed. For years now, Bulstrode had been groomed for Vincent Crabbe. That was the way things worked in the wealthy Death Eater families. Marriages were arranged based on suitability and station; love had very little to do with it. It was too unreliable, left too much to chance. Goyle should have known better, but things often took a great deal of time to sink in with him.

You don't particularly relish the idea of yoking yourself to Pansy Parkinson.

Of course he didn't. No one in their right mind would. It would be akin to tethering a fine thoroughbred to a seedy cow. It simply wouldn't work. She was stupid, ugly, and unbecomingly soft in all the wrong places. Her breasts were bulbous, lacking in the alluring feminine curves he found so appealing. Her face was an exercise in architectural myopia, squashed, misaligned, as though a careless hand had brushed it from the cosmic workbench before the corporeal sculpting clay had set. She was everything he was not, and she would never complement him as she ought.

Why his father couldn't see that, he had no idea. The man never missed a trick anywhere else. Yet he insisted on the eventual union with distressing vehemence. It was a mantra at the family table, and he mentioned it in every tedious letter. Draco often wondered if he were privy to inside information about the Parkinsons. As far as he could tell, they had nothing to offer his family. The Malfoy family was attached to a great deal of money, most of it inherited from previous generations. It was also very old, traceable for a thousand years at least. It was the standard by which every other wealthy family judged itself. If his mother bought a gown, the other wives of the inner circle would have the same in three days' time. They had nothing to prove.

The Parkinsons, on the other hand, were little more than pitiful hangers-on. They were a Pureblood family of long standing, it was true, but they were new money. Pansy's grandfather, an eccentric old coot by all accounts, had gained handsomely by speculating in the wizarding bond market. There were also tantalizing rumors that he had also been involved in the illegal import and export of sundry contraband, including dragons, trolls, and half-breed giants. No one could ever prove the allegations, of course, and in any case, however he came by it, the fact remained that the old codger somehow ended up with an obscene amount of money. Nothing to touch the Malfoy fortune, but enough. The old man had snuffed it a few years before he and Pansy started at Hogwarts, and since then, her family had been reveling in their newfound riches.

They may have garnered wealth beyond the telling, but unfortunately they had inherited none of the poise and aplomb dealt to the historically monied families in spades. They were boorish. Madam Parkinson often surreptitiously picked the spinach aspic from her teeth with her long, exquisitely manicured nail when she thought no one was looking, and Mr. Parkinson laughed far too loudly at his father's drawing room humor. They were greedy, unapologetic social climbers, and he suspected that, if it came to it, they would all too happily plunge the silver dagger into his father's back.

They're proper Slytherins, then; give them that much.

Even if those things were not so, he still had not the remotest inclination to seduce Pansy because, well, she was Pansy. If familiarity bred contempt, then he knew no one better. He had once seen her foraging in her left nostril for bogeys, and that image had remained with him ever after. She had been little older than six at the time, but that was irrelevant. It had colored his perception of her for good and all and quashed any romantic notions he may ever have entertained. Thinking of her stirred no passion, only a cold revulsion.

Ugly, simpering, pug-faced Pansy. It wasn't fair. He was entitled to better. His name said so. That he should be deprived of it on his father's unreasoning whim incensed him. He didn't want her. He wanted a gorgeous nymph he could drape on his arm like a living trophy, much as his father had. Someone seductive, with beauty to rival the goddesses secreted on the misty peaks of Mount Olympus. Intelligence and love were of no consequence. His mother was possessed of neither, and she had never fallen to harm for their lack. Indeed she seemed quite content with the false adoration and prestige his father's name awarded her. As for father, that which he could not get from his mother, he found in the arms of his mistress, a well-bred Pureblood tart he housed in an opulent flat in London. As far as he could see, a man could live very well without love, as long as he had his money and a beautiful woman.

Ah, what did it matter now? Marriage was still a lifetime away; there was plenty of time to wriggle out of the arrangement, and he was sure that if anyone could do it, he could. He had been manipulating his parents for years, though his father was far more difficult to shift than his mother, and if it came to it, he could always poison Pansy or shove her off the staircase in the entrance hall. Problems like that could be dealt with. Besides, Slytherin was celebrating tonight.

Potter had at long last toppled from his ivory pedestal, felled by a poison arrow. He smirked at his sparkling wit. How delicious it had been to watch him wilt against Professor Snape like a shorn and dying rose, the life and spark draining from his face with an almost heartbreaking languor, those fierce green eyes glazing with the stunned realization that his name was perhaps not synonymous with immortality, after all. When he had folded to the floor in a graceless, unmoving heap, lifeless as brittle driftwood, the Slytherin side of the room had seethed and rippled with exultant incredulity. Very discreetly, naturally. It wouldn't do to tip your hand before the enemy. Stoic faces, gleeful hearts.

No one dared believe it, especially not the Gryffindors, who had sat rigidly in their seats, as though their half of the room had been struck by an Immobility Charm. Quite comical, really, all those bulging eyes and slack lips. In the blink of an eye, they had been rendered mental defectives. Hermione Granger in particular had been a sight to behold, rocking mindlessly in her seat, hands digging into the shocked white flesh of her face. The way she'd been carrying on, one would've thought she and Potter had something going.

Maybe they do; no accounting for his tastes. His friendship with the Weasleys proves that.

Righteous, do-gooding Potter. No surprise that he'd cast his lot with that merry band of fire-headed fools. Father had told him all about the older Potters, James and his precious Lily. Smug, self-assured, certain of their moral rectitude. Just like Harry. Father had once snidely referred to them as Knights of the Order of Right, a bit of nomenclature that had made Draco want to cackle wildly, but he hadn't dared because Father had been positively venomous. From what Draco had seen, insufferable posturing was as inheritable as genetic superiority.

He looked around the Common Room at his fellow Slytherins as they chattered amongst themselves, and smiled. For the first time since his arrival at Hogwarts, the House was proud of its heritage. He saw it in every face, the sly, pleased glow that made them seem taller somehow, more substantial. There was no skulking tonight, no drooping shoulders. Everyone moved confidently, with the air of people who had thrown off long infirmity and embraced the bloom of health. They walked with chests jutting so that the Slytherin House crest could be plainly seen. A long-standing pall had been lifted.

He was glad to see it. For too long, they had been forced to wear their House affiliation like a mark of shame. They were the dirt dwellers and dregs, unfit for any other House-too stupid for Ravenclaw, too resourceful for Hufflepuff, and too damn self-minded for Gryffindor. The other Houses and the wizarding world in general looked down their long, bland, sanctimonious noses at them, consigning them to the realm of the irredeemable and untrustworthy simply by virtue of the silver serpents embroidered on their robes.

That was fine by him. Redemption was an asinine concept as far as he was concerned, though you would never know it by the way most of the professors prattled on about it whenever a Slytherin had an open ear. They were always going on about making the right choices, choosing the right paths. That ancient crackpot Dumbledore had made reference to it in his end-of term speech last year, admonishing them all to "remember Cedric Diggory." What a load of rubbish. Cedric had done nothing worthy of remembrance. He was no more than a stupid Hufflepuff who had simply gotten in the way. That homage should be paid to his idiocy was a notion only a sentimental, addled old Gryffindor could possibly endorse.

Frankly, he wasn't sure what need he had for redemption. From what did he need saving? Clear thinking? A desire for a future free of the human filth that currently infested the streets in an endless, streaming tide? The innate instinct to save yourself at all costs? He was quite comfortable with who he was; he had absolutely no desire to be molded into a prefabricated vision of what the bovine majority considered acceptable. He was Slytherin. It was as much a part of him, of his blood, as the mysterious gene that had given him the trademark platinum hair, and he would not be ashamed of it.

The peons didn't understand, of course, and they never would. To them, Slytherin was a bad place, a place to which no one in their right mind would want to be sentenced. It was purgatory, if not Hell itself. He supposed it had never occurred to them that those who lived their lives beneath the shadow of the serpent had chosen it of their own free will. They had elected their path just as the Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Gryffindors had, and they had done it gladly. Their choice had not been made by their bloodlines, as most people thought and indeed hoped, but by the silent volition of their hearts. They had willed themselves into Slytherin. Nothing more and nothing less. They could have just as easily traveled another, safer road, but that was not what they desired, and the Sorting Hat, for all its tattered and frayed threads, had known it all too well.

Tonight the most denigrated and underestimated House had struck back, and knowing this spread a glorious warmth through his body. He rested his head on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes, relishing the peaceful feeling in his soul. They had done something, finally done something instead of waiting for events to unfold. That was how it should be. It was high time they seized the reins of fortune. The fact that Potter was the one to bear the brunt of their unexpected leap to action was merely a bonus.

Speaking of which, where was Professor Snape? Draco had expected him to be here, but he wasn't. He should be here celebrating with the rest of them. He had, after all, been the one to bring about this momentous occasion. Not that he was known for his displays of emotion. Indeed, Professor Snape was the most stoic man he had ever encountered. Aside from a frequent smirk, his face seemed wholly incapable of demonstrating feelings. Even his father was prone to outbursts to anger or frustration, but Professor Snape was cold, cold as tundra permafrost, and Draco admired him for it.

He wondered where he'd gotten to. Normally, he would have stalked here just after class and remained until dinner, marking parchment in his cramped, dingy office and snarling at anyone who disturbed his solitude. But the Common Room portrait hole remained closed. He was probably in Dumbledore's office trying to explain what happened.

What an interesting story that promises to be. There aren't that many ways to interpret what happened. It's the quintessential locked room mystery. The Potions Master administering poison from a locked storage cabinet, a cabinet only he can open. Not much to explain there.

And yet, somehow, he was sure Professor Snape would explain it satisfactorily, to Dumbledore at least. He must have woven some mightily impressive tales in the past to retain his position; some of the things he had done were not strictly pursuant to Hogwarts' disciplinary guidelines. He was positively certain that forcing ugly Rebecca Stanhope to clean up her own piss wasn't exactly a sanctioned punishment, but he had done it all the same. No, Professor Snape would have no trouble with that fool Dumbledore. The Ministry, however, was another matter.

Though it was rife with secret Death Eater spies, and therefore well represented by the Slytherin contingent, officially Slytherins were persona non grata. They held no posts of any significance; the only known Slytherin to be employed by the Ministry was an enfeebled old man whose sole job was to sort the incoming and outgoing mail. Apparently, for all its braying that Death Eaters were bogeys from the past that had vanished along with their vanquished Dark Lord, they were taking no chances. The fact that a Slytherin with purported Death Eater ties had brought down Harry Potter was bound to attract notice.

There would be an inquiry. Even if imbecilic Fudge wanted to keep things quiet, word would get out soon enough, and when it did, the hue and cry would be immediate. The outraged public would demand an investigation, and Minister Fudge, eager to curry favor, would certainly oblige them.

Ministry inquiries were nasty affairs, according to Mother. Father had been the subject of one not long after his birth. After the unforeseen fall of Lord Voldemort, they had rounded up all avowed Death Eaters for trial. One by one, they were tried, with mixed results. Some, like the Lestranges, had been loyal to the end, but others, like Father, had been smart enough to follow the more profitable course. Thanks to the clever Imperius Curse defense, he had been acquitted of all charges, but the stigma of suspicion had remained.

Not that it bothered Father much. He had never given much thought to the opinions of those beneath him, which meant that he cared for no opinion but his own. Life went on just as it had before the trial. Forgiveness came easily as long as you could be useful, especially in the financial sector. Monetary donations were a more than satisfactory penance for those whose sins could never be proven.

Unfortunately for Professor Snape, things would not be so simple. He was monied but badly connected, having never mastered the subtle art of persuasive association. He wasn't adept at ubiquitous flattery; his tongue was crafted for dissection, a slicing silver scalpel, not a soothing trowel. Sarcasm and dark wit were his tools, and they would hardly avail him now. He was alone, trapped by a choice made long ago.

There was no family to help him, either. When Father was under investigation, Mother was manning the front, hiring the best solicitors and haranguing the Ministry on an hourly basis to be sure that he was well-maintained. She brought him books and fresh robes. If Professor Snape were detained, he would have no ally to keep vigil over him, no strident voice braying in the Ministry corridors about mistreatment and impingement of basic human decency. He would sit, day after day, hour after miserable hour, in the same dank, fetid holding cell in Azkaban wearing the same drab, filthy robes. No books, no visitors, just the monotonous drip of the faucet and the silent passage of time until a smug Auror arrived to escort him to his preordained judgment. Nor would there be anyone to weep for him when the sentence was read. Oblivion would come for him with no fanfare, and in time, days perhaps, his name and face would be forgotten.

Well, not entirely. The Death Eaters would remember him. He would be the first martyr of the second coming. The Dark Lord would hold his name on high, venerate it along with the Lestranges. If Potter died, his name would have no equal. Future Death Eaters would inscribe it alongside the names of their ancestors in the family Bible. Children would hear of his greatness, his sacrifice to the cause. The name Severus, rare now, would have a resurgence; it would, for a time, serve as a marker of fraternity.

It did not surprise him that Professor Snape would assume the role of martyr. He was well-suited for it, one could almost say destined. His stoicism would serve him well in the long, lightless years ahead when the voracious maw of Azkaban swallowed him whole and he was ground to pieces in the belly of the beast. In an odd way, the same isolation that would damn him now might very well save him later.

He had always admired Professor Snape, and after tonight he revered him. No one else would have dared, had such audacity. It was incredible. All the planning, all the covert plotting, all the murmured meetings in Father's drawing room, and Professor Snape had trumped them all under the very nose of Potter's highly touted guardians. Using the most obvious method at his disposal, no less. It was brilliant, worthy of a Death Eater, and it made his father's cautious, reserved machinations look absolutely ridiculous.

He must have a set of solid brass, he mused, stroking the fingers of the left hand with the fingers of his right.

Where was he? Even if he were being roasted over coals in Dumbledore's office, he should have been back by now, if for no other reason than to spew his venom at the more giddy revelers. He supposed it was possible that the Headmaster had already summoned the Aurors to take him away, but he thought that unlikely given his penchant for keeping the more unsavory incidents at Hogwarts quiet. Professor Snape's absence disturbed him. The man was a creature of habit, and only something truly catastrophic could have kept him from his nightly sojourn in his office.

Maybe he's venting his considerable frustrations on that wretched Stanhope creature. That always brings him joy.

Draco relaxed. That would certainly explain things, and Rebecca Stanhope certainly qualified as a catastrophe. Professor Snape was obsessed with her, had been since the beginning of term. Everyone saw it. There was something between them, something mysterious and untouchable. Lessons were a silent battlefield now, one with no clear battle lines. The weapons could not be seen, but they could be felt, whickering through the heavy, stale air with ferocious precision, striking at exposed wit and careless inattention with backbreaking force. There had been no casualties yet, but that was only a matter of time.

The eventual outcome of the battle was hardly in doubt. Professor Snape would crush her beneath his heel when he tired of the game. He was too cunning, too quick to be deterred by her feeble resistance, though Draco had to admit that she had lasted far longer than he thought she would. It was like watching a mortally wounded gazelle struggling against a healthy, hungry lion. There was no real contest, and deep within its lacerated, bleeding belly, the gazelle knew this, yet it fought all the same, lashing out frantically with its delicate, dying legs, clinging to the ebbing fragments of its life because that was what its instinct demanded of it. But instinct was not enough. Power was the only thing that could save it, could save Stanhope, and she simply was not strong enough to resist the iron jaws of Professor Snape.

If he was secreted away in the Potions classroom with his favorite twisted little nemesis, then he would not return until far past midnight, and it was pointless to wait for him. There was nothing to hold him here, and besides, he wanted to send a letter to Father detailing everything. He most certainly would want to know, and maybe he could buy Professor Snape a bit of precious time by causing confusion at the Ministry. He had always respected his ruthlessness.

He rose from the couch and headed up the stairs to the fifth-year boys' dormitory, narrowly avoiding a revolting and poorly executed come-hither glance from Pansy. He moved with purpose, his back straight and his gait graceful and quick. He wanted to get the owl off as quickly as possible. For all his self-assured musing, he had the distinct feeling that Professor Snape was going to need all the help he could get.

Back in the Gryffindor Common Room, Rebecca very closely resembled the terrified gazelle that Draco Malfoy thought her to be. She sat in the darkest corner furthest from the fire and watched the rest of her House through wary eyes. It was cold, but that was fine. It meant that they would stay away, and that was exactly what she wanted. There was safety in isolation, safety and space to think, and she craved both.

The Common Room was quiet, resembling a psychological trauma ward. Wax figures that blinked and moved and occasionally spoke sat stiffly on couches or in chairs, staring blindly into the fire and fiddling absently with locks of hair or frayed bits of cloth. The few who were moving about did so slowly, jerkily, as though their joints, barely twelve years in service in some cases, had suddenly grown old and stiff. Dennis Creevey sat awkwardly in a chair, back ramrod straight and gangly knees pressed tightly together. His hands were clutching his knees so tightly that he had driven all the blood from his fingertips. His eyes, like all the rest, were dazed and unblinking.

His posture reminded her of an illustration she had once seen in a book on Victorian etiquette for young women. She could remember nothing else about the book, not even the title, but that picture had stayed with her. The young woman, a flawless specimen of feminine propriety, had sat much the same way, smiling sweetly amid a group of gentlemen gathered in a drawing room. She was, as all proper ladies should be, protecting her decency.

The idea of Creevey safeguarding his decency made her want to laugh, but she was afraid that if she started, she wouldn't be able to stop, and then she might start screaming, and if that happened, she would never stop. She would scream and scream until they took her to St. Mungo's and left her there to rock and howl and cower from the images whirling in her brain.

So she stayed silent, hiding, eyes darting restlessly around the room. Silence and invisibility were her enemies and her allies, and at a time like this, she was grateful for them. If she could have, she would have retreated still more, but behind her was unyielding stone. She tucked her head and rounded her shoulders and lowered her eyelids until they were nearly closed. She wanted to be away. She thought of retreating to the dormitory, but facing Winky's inquisitive eyes seemed worse than facing her Housemates. Winky knew her better than they did, and she would ask questions, worry, and try to drag her to the Hospital Wing for inspection.

She hasn't got a nostrum in her storage cabinet that can fix this. I don't think Professor Snape does, either. No one does. It's a job for Freud. It could take him years to figure out. Maybe he never would.

You don't need him to figure it out. You never did. Besides, since when have you trusted the opinion of those overpaid mental plumbers? Seventy-five bucks per half hour to theorize that the reason you hate cabbage is because it smells and tastes like your old man's beer farts. You know why you saw what you did. You just don't like the old memories it dredges up from the bottom of Recollection Lake. You though you buried them deep enough, but you didn't. I'm not sure you could have, if anyone could have.

She shuddered, biting back the slimy, bitter taste of unwanted memory. Grandpa was right about that, as he usually was. She understood all too well what she had seen, and it made her feel sick and unclean. She shivered as an icy draft found a chink in the tower wall and danced lightly over her skin, puckering it into gooseflesh. Everything seemed hypersensitive, the delicate wind scouring her flesh like sandpaper. Her nerves felt bruised and shocked, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not pull away from the abrasive, smothering clutch of her robes.

A light, tickling touch, fingertip skittering across the gossamer blonde hairs of her right forearm. Just enough sensory input to keep her from succumbing to the numbing insistence of her subconscious that she withdraw into her memories. It would only shield her for so long. When late evening fell and exhausted sleep overtook her, there would be no defense, nothing to prop up the barriers of her fortress. The memories would come to her then with the surreal vividness only dreams could achieve. She would have no choice but to face them.

Will I wake up screaming? she thought with woozy detachment. Will I wake up bathed in sweat and thrash in the pitch darkness like an ensnared animal? And if I do will the howls be loud enough to bring McGonagall running and my dorm mates scrambling from their beads in bleary-eyed, tousle-haired disbelief? She suspected she might.

Memories brought with them night terrors beyond the telling. They had since she was a small child curled in her bed and listening to the muffled sounds of her parents fighting. The night carried with it a darkness apart from and deeper than the absence of light. It held in its secretive bosom sinister truths not seen by the deceptive light of day. The ancient ones had been right in thinking that the barriers were thinner after the sun slipped from the sky and the world tumbled senselessly into the land of dreams, but they were misguided as to which were left unheeded. It was not the veil between the living and the dead that was frayed and weak, but the unseen gulf between carefully constructed logic and truer dream.

Maybe that was why people so often forgot their dreams. Logic was quick to reassert itself with the coming of the light, to shore up the barricades that had been so easily thrown down, to replace the polished template of acceptability that had been knocked askew in the course of the mind's wanderings. Except that her dreaming truths no longer seemed to be adhering to that neat little arrangement. They were slipping from their nocturnal confinements too easily, roaming the dayscape, and they hadn't done that in a very long time.

Exactly why the membrane between the land of shadows and the land of waking illusion had ruptured, she could not say. Stress, maybe. As much as she enjoyed the mental chess with Professor Snape, she could not deny that it was grueling, far more so than she would ever admit. Her mind, usually the last thing to tire, felt stretched, loose, as though it had been ransacked. Her thoughts, ever ordered and linear, living models of detached, often unassailable logic, tottered and veered along newly discovered paths, paths that twisted and contorted far from the known thoroughfares.

They had gone down unknown paths before, in the fevered months before her friend sank beneath the relentless waves of his disease. But such wanderings had been expected then. People were supposed to go a bit crazy when their best friend wasted to nothing before their very eyes and left nothing behind but a desiccated husk and a few brown hairs trapped between the mattress of their deathbed. So when the screaming started, no one was terribly concerned. They just prescribed sleeping pills strong enough to render an ox comatose and jotted it down in her file. Nor did they worry when Dinks spent half the night deciphering her terrified ramblings about the things that came for you in the night. It will pass, they said, and eventually, it had.

Now, the wanderings had begun again, and they were no longer confined to the tranquil watches of the night. Her febrile mind and its innermost demons walked in the light, unheeding of the hour and the circumstance. Perhaps they had grown weary of their long segregation and wished to see what lay beyond their twilit borders. They were definitely stronger, and that made her afraid.

It's not just them. It's you. You're getting lax. A consequence of letting down your guard. You've put all your energy into dueling with Professor Snape, and there's nothing left to keep them out. It's this place, too. There is old magic within these walls, magic so old it has no name. The Founders may not even have known it was there. Some magic just is, like the ancient energy that surges through Stonehenge or the brief tingle you get when you brush your fingers against a dawn-dewed leaf. It's in every stone in this castle, embedded in the foundations. You feel it every time you breathe.

That was true. She did feel it. It ran through her like a low-grade electrical current, made her teeth vibrate they way they sometimes did when she passed too closely by a power line. The blood seemed run more quickly and freely through her veins. Her feet, an ugly, mottled blue since she could recall-her grandfather had called them Smurf Feet-were a pale but undeniable pink. Things flourished here. Plants were greener and healthier. On Halloween, she had seen Hagrid carrying a pumpkin as large as a wheelbarrow towards the kitchens. The Earth knew it, too.

But if I feel it, everyone else has to. She looked at her Housemates, careful no to establish eye contact, initiate conversation. They all sat in silent reveries of their own, occasionally in pairs but mostly alone. They were quiet, and their hollow eyes bespoke terrible loss, but none of them were cowering upon the sofa, pulling in on themselves to ward off unseen blows. No one sobbed and gibbered on their knees. No panic, no blind terror, just a taut, thrumming uncertainly that weighed them all down and held them in place, miniature figures in an exquisitely crafted tableau.

I'm insane. That's the only explanation. The stress of the transfer has proven too much, and my mind has gone on permanent vacation. I just need a nice long rest in St. Mungo's, that's all. No one else can see what I see.

Of course they can't. No one else has lived what you've lived, and what you saw when young Potter keeled over goes back a very long way. This isn't the first time. You recognize it for what it is. And maybe the energy here is feeding your perception just as much as your blood.

I don't want to think about that.

You don't have a choice.

An image shutterclicked through her mind, one that made her squeeze her eyes shut and grip the armrests of her chair. A shocked, white face, stiff as cold marble, and beneath that something writhing and stretching, shifting until colorless, slack lips pulled into a predatory, lupine grimace. She pushed it away, but another one came, this one of horrified green eyes spiraling to unseeing, burnt-ash black.

Losing your mind. Absolutely going bonkers. You did not see that. Did not.

All right, let's say you didn't. Let's say it was a figment of your formidable imagination. What difference does that make? Your imagination has always been a damn good representation of your intuition, and your intuition knows very well what was happening in that room. You know what's coming.

The finger on her forearm was racing, swathing a red mark across her skin. Her mouth had gone dry. She knew what he meant; no denying it. The lynch mob was coming. She had seen the first ghostly traces of it in the faces of her classmates, the burgeoning, feral bloodlust glinting in their eyes like private mania. When the initial numbness wore off and the raw wound of seeing their savior collapse began to heal, the mob would gather, clutching their blood-slick stones and savage pikes and crying for atonement as red and rich as mulled wine.

The blood is in the water now, and they smell it. He slipped and cut his foot on the jagged rock and he'll pay dearly for it. They'll give him no quarter.

She snorted wearily. Professor Snape was just intractable enough not to ask for it, either. Stiff-lipped and stiff-necked, that was him. He would hang without a word, patiently strangle on his silence. He would simply watch the proceedings from behind disinterested onyx eyes, and when the judgment was passed, he would not shy away from it. He would rise from his seat without a murmur and go to his death with nary a whimper.

Part of him wants to let go. Part of him welcomes the burden of damnation. It's one weight, one stone too many, you see, and if it is foisted upon his shoulders, he can at last falter and stumble, fall into the cooling muck, never to rise again. He is tired, so very tired, and if they damn him, rest will finally be within his grasp.

He knew about the waiting mob. He was too astute not to. Kneeling beside Potter, his pale face expressionless but his black eyes burning with the deepest confusion, he had looked into the collective face of his pupils and seen his doom there. Then for the briefest of moments, she had seen anger there, fresh anger, not festering, stale, aimless rage. He had been furious at them, enraged at their doubt, and seeing it there had given her hope, but then it had guttered, leaving only the old, familiar despair.

He knows he can't beat them, can't convince them that he didn't do it. He's smart enough to see they'll never believe him, not after everything he's done, and you can bet your boots he's done a far sight more than you'll ever see. He's not clinging to any false hope.

In other words, he will not fight them.

Not likely.

The hand rubbing her forearm snapped closed. She was so damn tired, and none of this made sense. Her dinner, a kidney pie which she had barely touched, sat heavily in her stomach. Why couldn't she think this through, dissect it, break it down into its component parts? There was no pattern, no rhyme or reason. She needed sleep, but she knew that if she went to bed now she would only lie awake, tossing, turning, and sorting through the discordant images in her head with clumsy fingers. Not to mention that eventually Filch would come calling to escort her to detention.

Filch isn't coming tonight. Maybe not tomorrow or the day after that, either. Professor Snape is in very deep trouble, and dealing with you is no longer his number one priority.

That made sense, but at the same time, it failed to fit the professor she knew. She was not stupid enough to believe that she was anything more than an interesting diversion for him, but she was a diversion he liked, and Professor Snape was a creature of habit. Once he grew accustomed to something, he did not give it up lightly. She had a feeling that if there were any way for him to continue their nightly sparring sessions, then he would.

She found the thought heartening. Detentions with him had become woven into the fabric of her life, as much a part of it as dinner or her pre-bedtime bath, and she had grown to need the surety of their presence. If they were gone, if he were suddenly absent from her nocturnal landscape, it would shake her fledgling sense of security to the core. As long as he was here, things would be all right. He had become her barometer of the status quo.

What will you do if he succumbs?

She recoiled from the thought. That was simply inconceivable. He had to fight. How could someone with such an imposing, confident demeanor just go quietly? Surely he was of sterner stuff than that. Even if some cowardly part of him longed to surrender to the crushing inevitability of the conviction that would come when he was tried, everyone was imbued with an instinctive drive for survival, to be left standing when the dust cleared. If he gave in, then he would not quit life on his terms, and the desire to do just that, the knowledge that such a power was well within his grasp was what made those black eyes glow with such irrefutable, arrogant fire.

He would hold the course because she could not imagine him doing anything less. It was a hypocritical thought; had the shoe been on the other foot, she had little doubt about what she would do. She would put up a feeble struggle, but her heart would not be in it. She would in all likelihood look forward to the end, embrace the moment when she could lay her burden down and sleep for the ages. She was so very tired, so tired that the weariness poisoned her heart against the life it carried, and if someone had unknowingly offered the chance to slip unnoticed from the bonds of her life, she would have seized it with both joyous hands. It wasn't suicide if someone else tightened the noose.

But what she would do was unimportant. She was not Professor Snape. He was better than her, stronger. He would persevere, weather this storm just as he had all the others before. It would scar him, leave an indelible mark upon an already scarred soul, but the wound would not be mortal. Life would not leave him yet. She clung to this idea, repeated over and over again until it became an unwitting prayer. The wound will not be mortal. Life will not leave him yet. Polysyllabic tendrils of faith moving over a desperate rosary.

Why does it matter?

Because if he falls, I fall. There will be no help for me. And because I've seen it before.

The air shifted beside her right shoulder, and she realized that Seamus was there, head resting against the stone wall, arms folded across his chest He was watching her gravely.

"Hello," she said quietly.

He nodded once in acknowledgement. "You all right?' he asked. "Been hiding in this corner all night."

"I'm doing okay," she lied, deliberately avoiding his face, afraid of what she would see there. "Any word on Harry?"

"Nothing. McGonagall said she'd keep us informed."

She grunted. No doubt she would. Probably dole out hourly updates on his condition. Potter would cause as much distraction lying toes-up and unresponsive as he did walking around on two sturdy legs. The world would grind to a halt while they waited for him to awaken.

The boy didn't ask to be poisoned. Have a bit of compassion, her grandfather groused.

She was being cynical, but it was hard not to be after years living with the sick and dying. Death and the struggle against it were no longer shocking. They were an everyday part of her psychological landscape. Where she came from, life went on in spite of the imminence of death. It did not assume a holding pattern while it waited for the dirty business to end. It kept going, hoping to outrun the ever-advancing shadow.

You didn't think so smugly when it was your friend on the sacrificial altar, did you?

No, she hadn't. She had fought and clawed and bargained with God, and when none of that had worked, she had wept, hard, keening screams that bubbled up from a reservoir of hate and terror. There had been no clinical detachment then, no numbing shield against irrevocable loss. It had been raw and alive, and when her friend was gone, she had expected the world to stop because it had stopped for her. The sun had frozen in the sky, and the air had stunk of grief and death.

But the world had not stopped, and it never would. It kept grinding along, spinning on its axis and casting off those too weak to maintain their grip. No reprieve, no timeout, just unceasing life. Potter's friends would learn that lesson eventually, though they would rue the knowledge and count it bitterest of all wisdom.

They'd learn something else, too, something shameful and ugly that undermined all the dithering of the ancients about the greatness of man and his unique ability to sacrifice for his fellows. For all the prattle about love and loyalty, should Death offer them the chance to follow Potter into the eternal darkness, they would not take it. Their eyes would weep until they bled, and their hearts would shatter into a thousand pieces, but they would refuse the proffered, skeletal hand and flee once more into the safety of the light.

Just like I did.

"What will happen now?' she heard herself asking.

"Don't know. The Ministry will probably send Aurors to arrest Snape. They'll probably hold him for trial at Azkaban, and when it's over, he'll be Kissed."

"Kissed?"

"You don't have Dementors over there, do you?' he asked, cocking an eyebrow. "Anyway, a Kiss is when a Dementor sucks out your soul. Your body keeps on living, but you're just a shell, really."

She stared at him, horrorstruck. The possibility that they would reduce Professor Snape to the level of a breathing vegetable and not allow him at the very least the dignity of death had not occurred to her. She saw him in a cramped, filthy cell, lank hair matted and tangled in snarled clumps, rocking and crooning in his own rancid shit with no thought to who he was or even his humanity. She suddenly felt like throwing up.

"They wouldn't really-," she began weakly, and then trailed off.

"Yes, they would, and it would be no more than he deserved," Seamus declared fiercely.

She fought to hold her ground. The urge to turn tail and flee was a ravenous compulsion. The muscles of her arm twitched with it. She was seeing it again, just as she had in the Potions classroom and on a day long before that when another lamb had been summoned to the slaughter. The tang of fear and the salty smell of blood winnowed into her nose and throat, and she whimpered in her throat.

"You all right?" the wolf that wore Seamus' face asked, the lupine, glistening grin belying the concern in its voice.

"I th-th-think I'm going to be sick," she stammered, and without another word, she lurched past him and up the stairs to the girls' dormitory.

She crawled into bed without her customary bath and shivered, listening for Filch's impatient rap upon the portrait, but it never came. She was not surprised, and the cramp of unease in her stomach tightened. One by one, her Housemates came to bed, their shadows twisting and writhing as they undressed in the flickering candlelight. Furtive puffs of breath, and then darkness, a darkness that encroached and stalked, squeezing and clutching with insistent, greedy fingers.

She lay awake, listening to their rasping, uneasy breaths and the occasional moan as dreams veered into the territory of nightmares. When exhaustion finally overcame her, she dreamed of feral, lupine grins and dead black eyes that rolled as jaws opened wide. She dreamed of spiders and flies and whispered lullabies, of shining mahogany hairs embedded in a mattress made of bone and soaked with blood. She dreamed of Judith, and of Seamus, whose teeth were too long and too sharp. Just before she woke, she dreamed of Professor Snape, ivory neck thrown back to expose a ragged hole where the throat had been. They had come for him in the night, and they had claimed him.

When she awoke the next morning, unrested and wary, her pillow was damp, as though she had wept in the night. She went to breakfast without a word.