Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Twenty-Three

To Heywood of the GAFF board. Because everyone forgets.

While Rebecca was dueling with her demons behind fluttering, uneasy eyelids and Draco was sending an owl to his father filled with glowing details of Slytherin's triumph, Snape was hunkered in the Potions classroom, meticulously measuring the contents of every one of his jars and phials. He sat at his desk, his face hidden behind a barrier of distorting glass, and poured fine white powder into his measuring scales. His own ghostly image scowled back at him from a dozen smudged glass jars.

Nine hundred and twenty-four point two grams. He checked the number against the results recorded in the ledger by his left hand. Nine hundred and twenty-four point two. Just as it should be. He crossed arsenic from his list of poisons to be measured and sat back with a sigh, running a hand through his hair. Already his eyes were strained and hot; the inside of his eyelids seemed to have been replaced by sandpaper. He still had a long night ahead of him. He had been through one hundred and twenty jars, but there were still well over seven hundred to go.

He knew he should keep his nose to the grindstone, but he was just too damn tired. Perhaps the weight of what had happened was settling on his shoulders, a leaden mantle of assumed guilt, but he was filled with an inexplicable ennui. It was much easier to sit here in this chair and watch the shadows consume the walls and swallow the wavering torchlight. His squinting eyes relaxed, dissolving the minute stress lines there. He closed them, slowly rotating his head to release the tension coiled in his neck. Maybe he would sit here all night, until the torches guttered and sent their spirits spiraling toward the heavens in an acrid wisp of smoke. He would wilt with them, match them inch for inch, drooping lower and lower in his chair, finally slipping bonelessly to the floor to join the puddling darkness there. In the morning, when Filch and the others came to look for him, they would find only his black robes, his cloak, and his boots. The rest of him would have escaped this madness, slipped beyond the reach of Potter and of this castle.

But escape would not be so easy for him. He had obligations, and he could not shirk them. Even when he was a full-fledged Death Eater, he had taken his oaths seriously. If Voldemort ordered him to kill an adversary, he did it, regardless of the risk to himself or his personal repugnance for the task. He had considered it part and parcel of the unwritten contract he had signed the night he had seared his flesh and his soul with the Dark Mark.

To complicate matters even further, you've developed a distressing sense of morality.

Oh, I've always had morality, just not one with which most would feel comfortable. If I recall, it was really much simpler. I did whatever was necessary to keep myself alive, and to hell with everybody else. Quite a tidy philosophy.

Much tidier than the maelstrom of conflicting emotions he felt now. He supposed he had Albus to thank for that. Albus, with his beatific nature, his fathomless ability to forgive and trust, and his frightening wisdom. Damn that man. Damn his pity and his unwavering faith. If it weren't for those things, the solution would be so simple. He would leave a note of resignation and flee, shrug off the unwelcome constraints of ethical responsibility and exile himself to Albania, Transylvania, or some other godforsaken wasteland where he could surrender to the constantly tugging emptiness.

Part of him still wanted to do just that. The old inclinations still lived in him, though they slumbered. The fact that he had chosen the narrower road did not mean that he wasn't tempted to let his feet stray to the surer road, step over to the easier, downward path. He could hide, and maybe if he ceded to the anger and selfishness that had governed him for so long, he would sleep more deeply, at last draw from the well of inner peace from which others drank so freely. The effort to rein in his darker, more honest nature was taking its toll. He felt far older than his thirty-seven years, and at times like these, he remembered his years of cold depravity with perverse fondness.

But he had expended too much effort on his grudging redemption to turn back now. It would be inexcusable cowardice. And, try as he might, he could not shake Albus from his mind. Albus wouldn't understand. He would grasp the logic of his betrayal; he knew better than anyone the agonies he suffered in the name of expiation, saw the aftereffects of them with pained blue eyes. But in his heart, in that shining, pure wellspring from which his presence radiated, he would lament bitterly, question why the man he had trusted so fully had wronged him.

So acquiescence to his first instinct was out of the question. As was wasting any more time in useless pontification. He sat up and reached for the next decoction on his list, wincing as the joints of his wrist creaked. He turned the jar's label toward him and read it. Atropine. A Muggle substance used to treat heart attacks, as he recalled. He'd ordered it specially, intending to see if its individual properties could be distilled, but with the workload and trying to prepare utterly catatonic fifth-years for their O.W.L.S., he hadn't managed to find the time. Yet another way in which the little ingrates sapped the life from his bones and the vigor from his spirit.

He carefully unscrewed the jar, set the lid on the desk, picked up the jar, and poured its clear liquid contents into a graduated cylinder. He waited for the sloshing to still, then read the line at which the atropine stopped. Five point three fluid ounces. He cross-referenced with his records. Five point three fluid ounces. As expected.

This was absolutely ridiculous. He was certain that no one had touched the contents of his toxic stores. He took far too much care. What opportunity would they have possibly had?

If you truly believe that, then why do always feel as though there is something you've forgotten, something just beyond your reach, a subcutaneous itch you can't quell? Why must you constantly fight the urge to pace and tap your chin, two things you always do when doubt assails you?

Because it was Potter, that was why. A sound of self-disgust escaped him at the admission. Had this been anyone else, he might have been confident enough in his recollections and his procedures to assert his innocence, but because it was Potter, he had no choice but to check everything. Hatred for the boy rose in his throat in a lump of greasy bile, and he swallowed with an effort. In spite of all his blustering about refusing to treat the boy any better than anyone else, he had fallen into the same mothering, overprotective trap as his colleagues.

He thought back to the nearly compulsive handwashing with fierce loathing. He would never have thought himself so weak, but there he had been, mincing about like a newly weaned intern. He snorted and shoved his leather-bound records ledger from him. Of course, he'd rationalized it with a bunch of palaver about hygienic conditions, but the truth was that he had known all along that he was behaving contrary to his normal modus operandi.

Well, good to see that the time-tested Slytherin tenet of covering one's backside is still alive and well in you, he thought furiously. A chuff of sardonic mirth slipped from his mouth.

He looked at the endless sea of glittering glass in front of him and groaned softly. This was hopeless. Five days was not enough time. It would take him at least ten, and that was with the help of a well-trained seventh-year, which was how he normally took inventory. Without an assistant, it would take two weeks, maybe more. He sighed and pulled the next jar toward himself.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the empty classroom, and he suddenly felt strange being there without the improbable form of Miss Stanhope dancing on the periphery of his vision, without hearing the steady clop of her cutting knife as she toiled. She had become a fixture, and the eerie stillness of her absence was stark and unsettling.

You've come unhinged, pining for the biggest calamity ever to curse these corridors.

All the same, he wished she was there, if for no other reason than to have someone at whom he could snarl and snipe and direct his unfocused rage. He considered sending Filch for her. The old coot would hiss and grouse, but Snape could give a damn. Filch's personal comfort was not his concern. What mattered was that he would come with Stanhope in tow, and once she arrived, he would no longer be alone with his troubling thoughts.

Since when have you needed company, protection from your own musings? Solitude is your sanctuary, in case you've forgotten.

He hadn't forgotten. In fact, he was more acutely aware of that than ever, but having her there seemed natural, a sign that all was normal, and he sensed that he would need that illusion very much in the days to follow. He could take sparse comfort from the mental chess they played, distract himself from the looming threat he faced. He could make good use of his time rather than fritter it away conducting a fruitless search of obscure poisons, some of which had clearly not been opened in months, even years.

She would come. In spite of the late hour and the lengthening shadows, she would obey the summons. She would knock on his door, and when he bid her enter, she would lurch in, hair tousled and eyes bleary with sleep. She might even come still garbed in her nightdress, and there she would sit, blinking owlishly at him and awaiting further instructions, and when he churlishly and unreasonably ordered her to begin a Camoflous Draught at half past eleven, she would do it without question. And he was sure that when her cutting knife took up its monotonous cadence, his jangling nerves would quiet, and the real thinking could begin.

Perhaps he could put her to work helping sort through this mess. He quickly dismissed the idea with a derisive snort. Her coordination was abysmal, and the first time a torch popped or sputtered, her scrawny, malnourished arms would flail and knock everything to the floor in a tinkling avalanche of broken glass and a dust cloud of scattered powders. With his fortunes of late, she would likely inhale a lethal toxin and have to be carried, frothing and convulsing, to the infirmary, where she would be laid beside Potter, another unwarranted mark against his name and another knot in his noose.

Still, he could not rid himself of the desire to see her gaunt, pointed face and those too-perceptive eyes that followed him wherever he went. She knew something, he was sure of it. Whether she was aware of what she knew was debatable, but he thought that if he prodded her enough, she would tell him. For reasons he couldn't decipher, she had decided to leave her razed defenses as they were, at least as far as he was concerned.

Making excuses to see your mirror, are you?

She is not my mirror. She's a sphinx, an unbreakable, unreachable, indecipherable enigma. She knows, but won't say, damn her.

He thought back to the eternal seconds before pandemonium had erupted in his classroom, the hanging, heartbeat moments when her frenzied eyes had locked with his, and she had mouthed, Get away, get away. Quick and soundless, a fleeting cipher. There had been bleak, inescapable knowledge in her face, and in her terror she had looked at once ancient and young. There were answers in her riddles, but he could not interpret them.

Runes and allusions, that was what she was handing him, doling them out precisely, like a trail of rough pebbles that led inexorably to preordained truth. She had been doing it since the inexplicable vision in the Potions classroom, when she had seen and heard things he had thought only he would ever know, memories not to be seen until he brought the devil his dowry. Later that night in his parlor, she had held out a tantalizing, shining pearl, but before he could grasp it, McGonagall had intruded, and Stanhope had snatched it away again, returning it to the deep well of cryptic musings from whence it had come.

She wants...

(I don't think I can save you)

Get away, get away.

The more he pondered them, the less sense they made. He was accustomed to logic, to cool calculation, to exact measurement. Disjointed mutterings and esoteric imagery were the province of Trelawney or Vector. He cursed himself for his inability to piece together the puzzle. The fact that he lacked all the pieces was of no consequence. He had solved more with less. He was simply overlooking something. But what?

Call her. She'll tell you, and if she doesn't, you can make her talk. You have ways.

He stiffened, his jaw setting in a hard line. It would be a cold day in Hell before that would happen. Occlumency, was, to be perfectly blunt, a crude mind-fuck of grotesque proportions, and while he was quite content to use it on Lord Voldemort, he could not bring himself to inflict it upon her. It would be a far worse sin than the bruise he'd branded into the thin flesh of her shoulder or the perverse predations which undoubtedly played themselves out in McGonagall's mind. That was an avenue he refused to explore.

I might as well just go to Gryffindor Tower and have my way with her if my mind is sniffling those tracks. It would be kinder.

He knew more than he cared to about violation of the mind; Voldemort was an excellent teacher who had no qualms about teaching his pupils through firsthand experience. He could no longer count the times he had knelt before his former Lord, whom he loathed with every fiber of his being, and was forced to divulge the secrets of his mind, heaving them up with violent emotional retchings. He remembered the feel of cold, inhuman fingers tearing at his mind, prying at the locked doors and sealed vaults with arrogant entitlement and malignant avarice. He shivered. So far, the fortress where he hoarded his most dangerous memories had withstood Voldemort's rapacious plunderings, but he constantly feared the collapse that must surely come. No structure could hold up forever. Eventually time and use would wear it down, and his stronghold had seen much of both.

Such a torture was crueler than mutilation or death, especially to those who held their minds sacrosanct. Stanhope was her mind, a consciousness, a sentience living in a ramshackle frame, a will stronger than its housing. If he broke her mind in a moment of careless blundering, there would be no salvaging it. It was a delicate, interlocking mechanism, each part drawing its strength from another. If even one were to be damaged with the tiniest hairline fracture, then the whole thing would come crashing down, imploding in a cloud of rubble and dust. Where once a shrewd, formidable young woman had sat would be little more than a tottering husk. As a teacher, as a man, he could not justify such needless destruction. It reminded him too much of earlier days.

Who's to say she'd break? She might resist you.

It certainly was possible that she would sit patiently through his explorations and never reveal a thing, never waver beneath his scrutiny. He could well imagine her flat, appraising gaze, her silent endurance as she rebuffed his assault. She was strong and had not yet been sorely tested, but her very youth might well undermine her, and that was a risk he was not willing to take.

All this is a rather eloquent way of saying you owe her.

He bristled. He supposed he did, though he would have preferred not to be reminded. He liked his conscience better when it was buried underneath layers of resentment and practiced indifference. Heeding it was an uncomfortable, unfamiliar action. His mind conjured up a Muggle fairytale he'd read, "The Princess and the Pea." At the time, his only comment had been to snort at the gormless child's stupidity for sleeping with a blasted pea beneath her mattresses and toss the book into the bin, but now he could almost sympathize with her plight. His conscience's pressure was gentle but insistent, and it annoyed him to teeth-gnashing distraction.

You're becoming uncannily Gryffindoran in your reasoning.

A low growl escaped him. He'd go to the Dementors bearing roses and wine before he started spouting platitudes of self-sacrifice and unthinking courage. It was just that he could not blot from his memory the knowledge that, when offered the opportunity to invade the deepest, most vulnerable part of him, she had chosen not to seize it. She had simply gripped the door handle and swung it shut. He could still hear the echo of the heavy wooden door connecting in its frame, the finality of that clunk. For it, he would leave her undisturbed.

Stop this ridiculous pontificating and call her. She'll either tell you or she won't, but you'll never know if you keep waffling like an indecisive twit.

He very nearly did it. He was out of his chair and halfway to the door before his mind caught up with his purposeful feet. A glance at the hourglass on the far edge of his desk told him it was nearly midnight. It would be folly for him to wake her up at this hour, even if he did want company for his misery. McGonagall would hear of it, no doubt, and start a flap in the morning, one just obnoxious enough to attract the attention of the rest of the staff and the gossip-hungry students gathered over their porridge and toast in the Great Hall. Even Albus would look at him askance. Students out of bed after midnight were seldom up to noble deeds.

Brilliant. Yet more grist for McGonagall's unending mill of suspicion.

Exactly. Not to mention would the Ministry would make of it.

The Ministry. Ministry officials had just enough imagination to make them dangerous. In their minds, brooding Slytherin professor plus impressionable young female student equaled either contamination or sordid collusion. Simple detentions would be perverted into hideous, diabolical cabals in which he and Stanhope partook of blood and the flesh of infants. She would be dragged off for every physical and psychological examination under the sun, and he would be bombarded with stupefying quantities of Veritaserum, and they would both be systematically torn to pieces until the truth was uncovered, or at least a version of the truth that best suited the powers that were. That he and Stanhope had been reduced to mindless, quivering wrecks of humanity in the process would be of no consequence.

She would have to stay away, much as the oppressive emptiness of the room and the unwelcome cessation of their duel pained him. If he let her in tonight, he ran the risk, however infinitesimal, of contaminating any exculpatory evidence. When the inspection was complete, their sparring sessions could resume, but until then, Miss Stanhope would cease to exist.

And if the Ministry hauls you off to Azkaban before that happens?

That was an eventuality he would ponder when he came to it. For now, he had to concern himself with proving that whatever had felled Potter had not come from his stores. Which he would never do if he persisted in letting his mind meander along these absurd paths. He returned to his desk and sat down with an irritated thump, pulling his ledger and another jar toward himself.

Row after row of small, neat handwriting greeted him, and he smiled bitterly at it. That tidy penmanship had cost him dear. It was one of the few things his father had insisted upon; other than that, he took no notice of his only son. Virtually invisible until it was time for his writing lessons. Then he filled his father's world, and for him, Snape, there had been nothing beyond that heavy desk and the ominously blank parchment in front of him. Touch quill to ink and quill to paper and write until the page was filled. Wrist twined and floated across paper, and beneath its susurrating, furtive caress writhed supple serpents wrought of simple thought. Serpents filled with poison from the first coil to the last.

From the age of six until he fled his father's house forever at seventeen, that had been the ritual between them every afternoon. His father, from whom he had inherited his nose and complexion, would summon him to the study and set before him that single blank piece of parchment. Then he would sit quietly while he watched his son fill it from first to last. One mistroke, one hesitation, and the parchment would be ripped from beneath his scrabbling quill, replaced by another pristine sheet. Not until one complete sheet had been filled without error would he be permitted to leave. He had gone to bed hungry on many nights.

His wrist throbbed with bitter memory, and he slowly flexed his fingers to ease the cramp. How he had hated those writing lessons, how his stomach had burned and knotted each time his reluctant feet led him to the door of his father's study. The cold brass of the doorknob had scorched his fingers, and the heavy, musty reek of the obscenely red carpet had clogged his nostrils like a miasma. The first thing he had done upon inheriting the house was rip out that carpet and burn it. A weight had loosened in his chest at the sight of it being immolated, running like tacky blood into the starving soil. Then he had sealed the room. He had never set foot in it again.

Now, twenty years since he had last taken up that galling quill, his neat, elegant handwriting stared back at him. The irony that something beautiful came from such horrid, unrelenting tedium was not lost upon him. Indeed, he had carried that principle with him into his chosen profession. What was potions-making if not the crafting of the exquisite from the mundane, the tedious?

Stanhope could have appreciated the veracity of that statement. She was well-versed in the mind-numbing minutiae of the trade-the cutting, the grinding, the measuring. That she was nothing short of appalling in their actual execution was wholly irrelevant. She understood the importance of the mechanics, even if she hated them. Had not Fate been so capriciously cruel, she might have made an excellent Potions Mistress.

In truth, seeing her hunched over her jackal meat with such earnest concentration often gave him a nasty start; in her attitude, she reminded him forcibly of his own youth, crouched and silent and fierce as she persevered in her unspoken defiance. In his less guarded moments, he could almost applaud her cheek. It was his hauteur reflected through the echoes of time, undiluted by the passage of years, and it was fascinating. The same harshness, the same careless, unrepentantly selfish sense of self-preservation; it was all there, looking out of a face too young to know so much.

Pushing the uncomfortable recollections and abstract musings from his mind, he set to work, weighing and assessing one jar and phial after another, the motion of his reaching arm becoming fluid and automatic. He no longer saw the individual containers, only a label and a weight. The light heft of glass in his hands, the cool press of metal or the earthy warmth of cork against his fingertips as he opened them. There and gone as one supplanted the next. Time ceased to exist for him, and he did not hear it when the torches sputtered and hissed. He was blind to the skulking shadows that swallowed his walls. The entire scope of his world dwindled to jars and scales and an immaculately penned ledger.

He had been keeping the ledger for as long as he had been teaching Potions. He could still clearly remember buying the first of many at Flourish and Blotts. They were always the same, glossy chestnut leather with delicate, gilt-edged pages. A bit ostentatious for their use, perhaps, but their dignified, utilitarian elegance appealed to him. He always felt a smug prick of pride when he glanced at his bookshelf and saw them there, well-oiled bindings gleaming in the shimmering torchlight.

He kept them to assure the safety of his feckless, negligent charges and to protect himself from situations such as this. Every two weeks, he inventoried the toxins in his possession, counting every last granule. An accounting was also taken after any class in which poisons were used. It was a system that had served him well for seventeen years; no student had ever fallen ill on his watch.

Until now.

He shifted in his chair, banishing the thought. Reach. Grab. Inspect. Open. Pour. Weigh. Consult. The pattern repeated itself, and soon the numbness of unconscious industry reasserted itself. Sharper concerns faded into insignificance. He became acutely aware of the motion of his hand drifting across the page as he signed his name to verified weights, the graceful, whorling lilt of the S, the sensuous plunge of the V. The crisp scratch of his quill etched itself into his ears, and the work ground on.

Hours passed, and the shadows grew longer, stretching forth spidery fingers to caress his cheek. Soon, even the torches could not stay the cold, and it crept beneath the doorframe to wrap around his ankles and settle on his chest. His breath plumed as he worked, hanging in the frigid air a moment before disappearing like slow-moving smoke. He made no move to warm himself. He was accustomed to the cold and considered it part of his penance. When the icy glass of the jars and phials burned his fingertips, he ignored it, pressing the chapped flesh yet closer to its torment with masochistic indifference.

His eyes burned as he pulled the next jar toward himself. He was tired, and he knew he should stop and get some sleep, but the motions of his toil had taken on a life of their own. They simply happened, independent of his thought or will. He wondered briefly if he would be able to stop, or if his hand and arm would reach and pull all night, until the last of the jars was gone and the surface of his desk was once more a barren plain. Maybe they wouldn't stop even then. Perhaps they had become so taken with their appointed tasks that they would continue to reach for things no longer there, phantom phials only they could see.

An image of his hand floating dreamily before him as he taught first-year Potions, fingers twitching and grasping daintily, paddling the air like disoriented spiders, came to him, and he snorted incredulously.

You must be tired, Severus, if you're turning such ridiculous fancies. This is your last jar.

He unscrewed the lid and carefully poured the contents into the waiting brass scales. His hand trembled with fatigue, and he gritted his teeth in frustration until it steadied. The last of it slipped into the scale with a dry, wintry puff of white powder. He set the empty jar down with an exhausted thump and gently calibrated the slowly swaying scales. When they stopped, he squinted at the miniscule numbers, forcing his blurring vision to focus. One thousand, three hundred and forty point ninety-three grams. His gritty eyes trailed to the ledger, where his finger was already tracing a line from the word cyanide to the last recorded measurement.

His heart, which had been larruping briskly inside his chest, suddenly seemed to freeze, thudding painfully against his ribcage. His vision doubled, then trebled, and he blinked, trying to dispel the illusion before them. His hands, which had moved so deftly all evening, now carried a thousand pounds, and he let them sink to the desktop, where they opened and closed feebly. His eyes fastened to the number on the page, his acuity so painful that he could detect individual pores on the parchment, see where the ink had infused to the paper.

It cannot be.

His heart, heavy as a brick, spasmed with confusion and a slowly coiling fear. He couldn't stop looking at the number. It burned itself into his retinas. He closed his eyes in an attempt to regain his precarious equilibrium, and it danced and shimmered against the darkness of his eyelids. He swallowed and coughed as the thick spittle lodged in his throat. He opened his eyes and looked down at the page that would damn him.

One thousand, four hundred point forty-seven.

Fifty-nine point five grams were missing. A more than lethal dose. It was impossible. No one had opened that jar for anything other than inventory purpose for more than a year. Cyanide was not a very common potion ingredient, at least not in educational circles. It was too potent, too dangerous. It was used primarily in potions of torture or permanent incapacitation, neither of which was in high demand at Hogwarts. He had been the last person to use it, and he had made absolutely certain that he had measured it in triplicate before putting it away. And he would swear on Albus Dumbledore's life that there had been exactly forty-nine point four ounces in that jar the last time he'd put it away and turned the key.

That's not what the scales in front of you say.

He slammed his hands down upon the desk, sending his quill clattering to the floor. The glass jars tinkled merrily, unmoved by his blind fury. His palms throbbed in wounded remonstrance, so he slammed them down again, punishing them for their unwelcome temerity. In a fit of uncharacteristic histrionics, he seized the ledger and threw it across the room. It struck the opposite wall with a satisfying smack and sank to the floor with a heartbroken hiss, its mangled pages sticking out like broken limbs.

Well, that achieved absolutely nothing. You're behaving like a put-upon child, he chided himself.

He leaned back in his chair and exhaled slowly, bringing his fingers to his throbbing temples. His arms felt like knotted marble, and he willed them to relax. Giving in to panic would get him nowhere. Now, more than ever, he needed to exercise his vaunted self-control. Sniveling and charging off half-cocked was something Sirius Black would do. He had done many egregious and ill-advised deeds in his lifetime, but conducting himself like addled, impetuous Sirius Black would never be one of them.

He rose from his chair, his knees crackling like dry brush, and moved wearily toward the ledger. He flexed his toes inside his boots, sending blood and warmth to his cold feet. As he drew closer, he turned the problem in his mind, looking for a suitable explanation, some obscure revelation that would set things to rights again, make sense of a world gone temporarily mad. Dexterous fingers riffled swiftly through the labyrinth of his memories, searching for the innocuous key that would unlock the mystery. Where was it? It was here. It had to be here. He had always been able to find whatever he needed here. It had sustained him, kept him strong, even after he had shunned the trappings and comforts of the outside world.

Memory after memory, he searched through the crannies and dusty recesses of the dimly remembered moments of his past. Staff meetings, private tutoring sessions with hopeless Slytherins, detentions before they became the exclusive domain of Rebecca Stanhope and her watchful, knowing eyes. Had there been anything, even the slightest probing tug on his lifeforce? Had there been any moment when those stalwart defenses had been breached, any time when he could have been distracted from the telltale twinge of interlopers treading on forbidden ground?

Something snagged between his fingers and wriggled there, slippery as a greased eel, but when he tried to drag it to the surface, it retreated, diving once more into the murky depths of little-noted subconsciousness. He reached for it anyway, hoping to snatch it from the black pool, but it was gone. He hissed through gritted teeth, his hands unconsciously fisting at his sides. Never quite fast enough. That was becoming a disturbing trend as far as he was concerned.

If only I'd been a bit quicker with Potter, I wouldn't be here now.

That was useless self-blame, and he knew it. There was nothing he could have done to save Potter. His fate was sealed the moment that potion crossed his lips. He had never seen it coming. Short of heroically knocking the phial from Potter's grudging hands and making a complete ass of himself, what options did he have?

Well, you could have done exactly that.

He snorted. The very idea was repugnant to him. He'd be roasted on an ungreased griddle before he'd flit about the classroom dithering balefully and forlornly about inevitable doom. That was Sybil Trelawney's forte, and any competition was likely to turn her myopic Inner Eye green with jealousy. As it was, there had been no reason to behave that way, no sign at all that anything was amiss.

You should have checked it before you gave it to him.

His pace quickened as anger took hold again. He had checked it, dammit! He had done both a visual and an olfactory test. The Advanced Sleeping Draught had been clean on both counts. There had certainly been no trace of cyanide in it when he had handed it to Potter, no tart, lingering scent of bitter almonds.

What about after, when he collapsed? Was it there then?

He froze in mid-step and let his upraised foot drift bonelessly to the floor. His hands relaxed, and he brought them together, the thin fingers twining sinuously in languid concordance with his thoughts. Had there been? His eyes narrowed as he forced himself backward through the tortious passages of time, fighting against the natural compulsion to move forward. Bare stone, cool and damp, scraped against claustrophobic shoulders, and the weight of apprehension settled on his chest like a corrupted familiar.

The eerie silence enfolded him again. Bewildered eyes stared back at him. They were as real now as they had been then, and he resisted the urge to shiver. Trapped in a moment of total recall, he could feel the clammy solidity of Potter's chest beneath his hands, and the bruising sting of the stone floor under his knees. He tasted salty sweat on his upper lip, heard the whistling of air past his ear that was the only sound in the absolute stillness. The weight of the looking glass had returned.

Where? Where was it? He groped for it. In front of him lay the twinkling, jagged shards of the broken phial, and he understood that the mocking fragments held the answer between their cutting, glistening fingers. His vision sharpened, and he saw minute beads of potion clinging to the serrated edges, dangling there like lethal amber pearls. He tried to reach for it, bring it to his nose and inhale its fragile, murderous secret, but his hands were cemented to the flesh of Harry's chest. A chest that logic told him should not be there.

This is a flashback, only a flashback. You can leave it anytime you wish.

The thought was intended to be reassuring, but he was no longer certain it was true. He willed his arms to move, his hands to break their flesh to flesh pact, but nothing moved. The bits of shattered glass with their precious beads of truth remained out of reach, and he gave muffled howl of exasperation.

Use your nose.

Of course. A discerning nose was the prize instrument of any Potions Master, more necessary than scales, calibrators, or alembics. His nose, derided all his life, had served him well over the years, allowing him to perfect his craft, become pre-eminent in his field, and it would do no less for him now. Relief washed over him, making him weak. His hands sank into Potter's chest, and the boy's sternum creaked.

He took a deep breath, imbibing the myriad scents that wafted on the unseen air, smells that would have gone unnoticed by anyone else. He drank them in, letting the sodden air wash over his nasal passages in a flood of spices and salts, light perfumes and obtrusive tangs. His sensitive nerve endings worked frantically to sort and classify the tide of information.

At least, that was what should have happened; the sensory lines were standing by, thrumming expectantly, but nothing happened. There was nothing to sort out, not even the musty, dry wheat smell of dust. The air, the unseen transport of even the faintest of odors, was utterly clean. Even sterile operating salons, expunged of the least trace of contamination, carried a smell, a pungent reek of antiseptic. But this air, the close air of a dungeon room filled with thirty horrified, fear-glazed bodies, was blank.

Not yet breathed. Not yet made.

Don't be a fool. It's only further proof that you're hallucinating.

Oh, how he wished that were true. He wished for it with all the formidable force of his will. But if this really was a hallucination brought on by exhaustion and ill-digested guilt, why, then, was there not some lingering vestige of reality beneath the illusion? Why couldn't he feel the chill that just a few minutes ago had fogged his breath and cramped his toes inside his boots? Why couldn't he smell his own sour sweat?

It occurred to him then that perhaps he had become ensnared in his own mind, had fallen through the fine mesh that separated past and present, reality and recollection. He had transformed, through a conglomeration of frayed nerves, an uneasy conscience, an undeniable fact written in his own hand, and an unhealthy preoccupation with a silent sybil that watched his every move, into an organic Time Turner. The idea was so patently absurd that he reeled, and he suddenly found himself suppressing the urge to titter. It was such an alien sensation that he nearly strangled on it.

I'm losing my mind, he thought calmly, still frozen on the floor of the Potions classroom and looking up at thirty pairs of eyes that he knew were not there, eyes that in the world he knew to be, fluttered and dreamed beneath the impassive watch of Morpheus.

The logic of the assertion did nothing to dispel the illusion. He remained rooted to the floor, and the students that weren't stayed in their seats. The smooth, unyielding surface of Potter's chest was still beneath his palms, rising and falling gently. And now there was something new, a steady, sonorous pounding, the sound of which incited an inexplicable terror. The spittle of his mouth soured and dried, and a resonating echo of long-forgotten pain sliced across his temple.

I've done this before.

Though he could not remember it, it felt true, and he did not question it. A sense of cold familiarity settled over him, and his heart squeezed inside his chest. He had done this before. With her. With Stanhope. But she had been with him then. She was on the other side of the castle and eight stories above him, wrapped in slumber. How could this be happening?

Is she a natural Legimen? Can she see me even now, through eight floors and two dimensions?

Such a possibility made him furious, and he tried desperately to seal off his mind, pushing against her as hard as he could, his head and neck throbbing with the exertion. He waited for the scene before him to waver, for blessed reality to re-establish its grip upon his senses, but things remained as they were. Not even the slightest ripple disturbed his surroundings.

It's not her. Calm down. You're having an anxiety attack.

If I am, it will be the first.

His internal discourse was interrupted by renewed pounding, closer now, and the shadow-pain spiked into his temple a second time. His eyes involuntarily squeezed shut, his rigid body's only defense against the onslaught. It did nothing to dull the noise, a deep, doomsday throb that came with unflagging predictability. Two bass drums, beaten in tandem.

He tried to rip his hands away from Potter's chest, to clamp them over his offended ears, but it was no use. It was as though they had been fused in a cataclysmic coupling that could not be undone. He hated the boy, irrationally, blindly, hated him for unwillingly binding their fates. He tugged and tugged, determined to extricate himself, to escape. He pulled until the flesh of his fingers shrieked in protest, but he could find no release.

The measured booms reached a reverberating crescendo, and then Headmaster Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey appeared in the doorway. The moment they crossed the threshold, the noise ceased. It didn't fade; it simply no longer was. Dumbledore's robes tickled his cheek as he passed, but there was no smell, no puffing of lavender-scented laundry soap and warm silk. Madam Pomfrey bustled by to crouch at Potter's head, and the astringent smell of lemongrass that usually followed in her wake was absent.

There was something else amiss as well, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Something with their appearance. They looked flat, worn out, like badly made cardboard cutouts. Dumbledore's robes, which should have been as bright and vibrant as Fawkes' scarlet plumage, was drab, and his eyes, for as long as he had known him a brilliant sapphire, were clouded and vague, cracked marbles pushed into his eye sockets.

It's wrong. It's all wrong. It's a terrible farce. I want out. I want out of this memory, this perversion of my memory.

He tried to bring his mind back to the present, but like his body, it could not move. It was wedged firmly in the blind passage between what had once been and what was. The stale air that had not wanted to permit him retreat now refused his advance. He threw himself against the invisible barrier that blocked his way, but it remained firm. He was close to panic now. Before and after had ceased to exist, it seemed. This moment was all that was left.

I want to leave. Why can't I leave?

There is something you have to see.

What? What can I see? Everything is wrong here.

Find what you are looking for.

The patience in that circular reasoning made him want to throw up his hands and shriek in impotent rage. How could he find what he was looking for when he wasn't sure himself? Even if he had known, there was no guarantee it could be found here. This was not where things had happened; it was a gross parody, the work of a child trying to recreate that which it did not understand. The perspective was skewed, and looking at it was giving him a headache.

"What happened, Severus?" the Headmaster asked, fixing him with what would have been a benign stare had not the eyes been so dull, so lifeless.

He closed his eyes, blotting out the travesty. "I don't know, sir."

Oh, but that was a lie. You do know. The ledger tells the story, and you're going to swing for it. The Dementors will feast on your soul.

"I think it's very important that we find out," said Dumbledore gravely.

It was, but not for him, not anymore. Either way, his road had wound to its inescapable end. He was going to a traitor's death, either as a Death Eater who had betrayed his Lord, or as an undeserving wretch that had shunned the last hope offered him, repaying kindness with malignant cruelty. His future was a moot point.

A new sound disturbed the sepulchral silence that had descended on the room since the arrival of the Headmaster and Pomfrey. It was little more than a whisper, but it grated on his ears like sandpaper. He turned his head to see Stanhope pressed against the wall, hunched shoulders quivering. She was looking at him, the glistening tracks of tears sliding down her face. In the queer, shifting light, it looked like blood. Her white face stood out in painful relief, and her eyes were blazing with frantic need. His brows knitted in puzzlement.

"Do you see?" she asked, casting a fearful eye in the direction of the glamours parading around as Pomfrey and Dumbledore.

"See what?"

"What you came for?"

"No. I can't find it. Where is it?"

She was clearly disappointed. Her shoulders sagged. "I don't know, either."

Her eyes darted between her frozen classmates and the front of the room. Her lip curled in a snarl, and she recoiled, pulling away from the rest of the students. "I think it's time for you to go," she said.

He tore his gaze away from her and was horrified to see that Dumbledore and Pomfrey were disappearing, fading like sun-bleached portraits. He could see the back wall of the classroom through the Headmaster's midsection, and Pomfrey's feet had dissolved into the floor, making it look as though it had swallowed them. The sight made him dizzy, and he averted his eyes.

The dream is losing cohesion. It's almost over.

Not exactly. Look at the students.

In front of him, the watching pupils had grown brighter, crisper, more defined. It was as though they had leached the vitality from the castle walls and fed on it. Organic vampires. Their faces had changed, too. They were no longer stony, waxen, and impassive. They were wolfish, furtively expectant. Some were gleeful. A heavy stone dropped into the pit of his stomach.

"I think you should go now," Stanhope said from her corner, more insistently this time.

"I can't," he snapped, irritation bubbling to the surface like an unlanced boil.

She gave him a look that clearly said she thought he could, and then he felt a tremendous shove in the small of his back. He pitched forward, praying he wouldn't smash his nose on the floor. That was an indignity he would not have been able to bear. The bottleneck trapping him between the past and the present let go with a vacuous pop, and he lurched forward, pinwheeling into a desk. An empty desk.

He stood over the ledger, trembling violently. He had somehow closed the last few feet between himself and the terrible truth without knowing it. He swayed, feeling hollow and drained. He was so bewildered that he nearly sank to the floor, but his innate sense of dignity would not allow it. Instead, he stared drunkenly down at the ledger with its mutilated pages and blinked, trying hard not to vomit.

It had happened again. Just like in the Potions classroom. He was terrified. These visions, these hallucinations were like being torn in two and forced to watch as the halves struggled to rejoin. It was cognitive dissonance. He felt fractured and raw, and even as he pondered the reasons behind it, he knew he didn't care enough to go through it again.

He stooped to pick up the ledger, feeling seventy instead of thirty-seven, and as he straightened, his fingers smoothed out the wrinkled pages. It was an absent, compulsive gesture, but it also felt sane, reasoned, and so he embraced it. He left the room, closing and locking the door behind him. It was time to tell the Headmaster.

Upstairs in her bed, Rebecca began to weep the tears she would find on her pillow in the morning.