Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Gryffindor Common Room, morose and sepulchral since their beloved avatar's collapse, exploded in a maelstrom of conjecture and speculation that night. Snape had not been seen at dinner, and most took this as a sign that he had indeed been whisked away to Azkaban. The younger students pressed eyewitnesses for each prurient detail, crowding around the teller with the excited rustle of shifting cotton. Even some of the older students gathered round. Lee Jordan's prominent black mop loomed above a gaggle of first-years crowded breathlessly around Parvati Patil as she recounted the afternoon's drama with unsettling relish.

The prevailing mood was one of disbelief and cautious optimism. Snape was a tyrant and a bully, the bane of the weak and shy, and the thought that he might soon be banished from their lives like the lifting of a long-suffered curse dangled before their eyes, a watery ray of light parting the bilious clouds of their torment. They gave no thought to what would become of him. What was more, they didn't care. They were young, and he was evil, and the concept of death and its terrible finality was as remote from them as the biting, violating sting of the hypodermic or the rough crudity of an enema.

Rebecca, who had experienced both these things and many more, sat in her customary corner, slouched more than usual with the weight of fatigue and diffuse worry. Her jaws ached from constant clenching, and her eyes felt gritty and strained, as if she had been straining over fine and ancient print. Or weeping. She blinked rapidly, trying to coax her natural tear reflex, bringing up a frozen hand to swipe listlessly at them.

She knew there would be no detention tonight. Filch always arrived at ten minutes until eight, and it was already half-past. She had waited for the knock, hoped against hope for it, crept around the Common Room on the lowest possible speed setting so she would hear it over the furtive, perpetually surprised growl of her chair and the simmering din of hushed conversation, but even as she had prowled and paced and bitten her bottom lip until it was raw and tender, she had known it was not coming. Now that her gut feeling had come to fruition, she felt like weeping. Despite the sandpaper dryness of her eyes, the need to cry massed in her frail chest like a cramp, lodged behind her breast like the stealthy stirrings of a killing tumor. She drew a deep breath, but the crisp November air inside the Common room did little to dispel the urge; the icy, aching burn of it coated her mouth and throat, and the urge to weep tightened its vise.

She could not articulate, even in her own mind, why she wanted, needed to cry. The desire simply existed, starting in the soles of her feet and swallowing her whole, enveloping her skin in a clammy, prickling coolness. She trailed her fingers along her forearm to rub the sensation away, but it was merely displaced, and it returned the instant her finger continued on its path.

Looking at her Housemates as they milled and chatted was like watching the world from behind fever glaze. Everyone seemed to be moving too quickly or too slowly. The sounds were warped as well. Laughter sounded like screams, and the melancholy pop of the torches sounded like bones on desert sand.

Roll them bones, she thought, and rested her head against the chilled stone behind her.

There was a rousing game of Exploding Snap by the fireplace. The twins and Seamus had invited her to join in when it became apparent that her gleefully miserable escort was not coming, but she had politely declined, opting for the barren comfort of her shadowy corner. Celebration struck her as grotesque. She started at a victorious shout from Seamus, who had just bested Fred for the third time.

She closed her eyes against a wave of sudden vertigo. She felt mad. The world had tilted on its axis, not a gargantuan lurch that sent everything into spinning chaos, but the tiniest incremental degree. Up was still up, down was still down, and in the morning the sun that rose in the sky would still be a hazy lemon-yellow, but things were different. The center on which her wheels had always been so firmly planted had shifted, and where once bedrock had been was treacherously shifting sand.

The creeping sensation of impending madness was unwelcome, but not unfamiliar. Ugly memories bubbled in her reluctant subconscious, their age-blackened tips and edges parting the desperate layers of forgetfulness into which they had been packed, glistening in the unforgiving light of recollection before sinking again. The finger rubbing her forearm was moving faster now, trying to shore up failing defenses, scour the past from its rightful place with a pendulum sweep of flesh on flesh.

I don't want to think about this. She bit the inside of her cheek and dropped her gaze to her lap.

I know you don't, but you have to. You're going to, whether you like it or not. Her grandfather, the gentleness in his gravelly voice belying the steel of absolute conviction.

Why? she whined, knowing she sounded like a petulant child and not caring. She was tired, far too tired to cope with the specters rattling their chains and pounding on the walls in unrequited lamentation. She just wanted to sit here and think and watch, and as soon as was acceptable, seek the warm refuge of her bed, where she could listen to Winky hum and squeak as she tucked her beneath the covers and pretend she hadn't seen the wolves circling their prey with grinning, dripping jaws.

Fine. You can do that. You can go to bed and act like nothing happened, and in the morning, you can go into the Great Hall and stare at that empty chair. Can you still pretend then, or will the food catch in your throat and harden into concrete in the pit of your stomach?

She already knew the answer to that. What little she had managed to eat was still lodged in her stomach like greasy stones, and each time she moved, her stomach lurched and lolled, occasionally sending out a growl of protest. She suspected it would make a rather ungraceful exit before sleep gained a foothold tonight. She hadn't tasted a bite of it, registering its passage to her stomach as tasteless lumps of varying temperature. She had been so consumed with the empty seat at the High Table that she had raised her empty spoon to her mouth several times before George nudged her in the ribs and asked if she would like a bit of mash with her metal.

No one else had paid it more than a cursory glance as they took their seats, but she hadn't been able to tear her eyes away from it. Sturdy oak and rich green cushions, silent and pathetic as an unmarked grave. It had made her want to scream, flee the Hall and leave the terrible apparition at her heels, and more than once she had to chase the untasted spoonfuls with sips of warm apple cider to keep from choking.

You weren't the only one noticing that chair. Stupid vanity to think so. Dumbledore noted it well enough. Don't think his elbows ever crossed the plane from his place at the table to where your Potions Master's plate should be. McGonagall didn't fancy looking at it, either. Never seen a woman more interested in her victuals.

And then there were the Slytherins, of course.

She shivered and wrapped her Gryffindor scarf more tightly around her throat. The Slytherins. How could she forget them? To a man, they sat at their table and stared at the empty chair. There was no conversation, no harsh, snide laughter ringing out across the Hall, just two hundred pairs of eyes riveted to the High Table. It was as though they were waiting for the commencement of some great and secret show, to see their Head of House appear in a puff of varicolored smoke and take his customary seat. Nothing of the sort happened. The seat remained empty, and the elegant clank of cutlery on china reverberated the length of the Slytherin table, a secret message only they could comprehend. When one of the younger Housemates made an ill-advised attempt at conversation, he was summarily silenced by a withering glare from his neighbor.

Even Draco had been silent, his pale, aristocratic face devoid of his usual smug hauteur. Pinched, he had been, his thin, pink lips pressed into a tight line, smudges of grey beneath his eyes. The food on his plate had gone largely untouched, his whipped potatoes unharrowed by either fork or spoon. He had stared at the professor's chair in unflinching concentration, as though willing Professor Snape to take form before his eyes, and when no such miracle occurred, he scowled at those around him in disgust.

He had caught her staring at him. Weariness and stress had made her lax, and she looked a split second too long, lingering over the porcelain skin and crown of impossible platinum hair. Grey eyes had met curious blue, and they had glared at one another across the distance. Her first instinct had been to avert her eyes; she hadn't meant to ogle him, but her stubborn pride refused to allow it. She knew if she dropped her gaze, he would count it as submission, so she jutted her chin at him in an expression of quiet defiance.

Had he decided to get up and bridge the gap between them in the name of answering her half-hearted challenge, things would have gone badly for her. She had been-and still was-utterly exhausted, wrung out from the frenzied speculations whirling through her mind, and a duel would have been a catastrophic farce. She doubted she could have managed to reach her wand, much less raise it to ward off the attack.

Maybe he had simply been too preoccupied with his missing Head of House to bother with her. Perhaps he considered sparring with her beneath him, the equivalent of scrapping with a leper. Whatever the reason, he hadn't moved, hadn't even shifted his position. The corner of his mouth had curved upward in a desultory, dismissive smirk, and then his eyes had found the empty chair again. Before she could stop herself, hers had joined them.

Never thought I'd have a damn thing in common with Draco Malfoy.

The hell you didn't. You've got more in common with him than you want to admit. You're both survivors.

No, I'm a survivor. He's a parasite.

He might be. But he's still alive, and he sees. Just like you.

She snorted, scrubbing her rapidly numbing cheek with the palm of her hand. Grandpa could prate until he was blue in his long-dead face about the similarities between her and Draco Malfoy, but she wasn't going to believe him. It just wasn't so. Draco was a greasy, snotty, simpering, spoiled little rich boy who had gotten everything by virtue of his name and his father's wealth. The clothes on his black sprung, not from the sweat of his brow or the toil of his hands, but from the seed between his father's thighs, or more reasonably, the fortuitous seed from betwixt thighs that had last walked the earth a thousand years ago. Her father had worked his hands to the bleeding, weather-beaten raw to give her the things she had.

So he did. But you haven't worked a day in your life, either. Your hands are as smooth as his.

You know damn well why. I'd work if I could. Malfoy would slit his own throat before he lifted a single dainty finger.

You going to think about it now?

Nice change of subject, grandpa. Ducking a point you can't refute?

Just know when to save my breath. You've got to think about it sometime, girl.

Why? What good will it do to dredge that up? Why can't I leave it alone?

You'll need it before the end.

End of what?

There was no answer to that, and she was glad. She was weary of riddles and dreams and specters that gave her no peace. Her soul felt thin, overextended. She was being pulled in opposite directions, and she had no desire to explore either. She just wanted to study for her O.W.L.S. and be with her friends. What was happening with Professor Snape was none of her concern, and if she tried to intervene, that was exactly what they would tell her.

Besides, who was to say he hadn't done it? She'd only been here a little over two months; surely the other students and staff had a better, firmer grasp of Hogwarts' reality than she did. They had been with him for years, seen him outside his professional capacity. They had lived with him, eaten with him. Some of the older professors likely taught him. They must be better attuned to his temperament, better able to gauge the things of which he was capable. They all mistrusted him at the least and loathed him at the most. They couldn't all be wrong.

Maybe they just don't care. They've been handed the means by which to be rid of an inconvenience, and they intend to make the most of it. Just like Deidre and her lackeys. They knew Judith Pruitt didn't deserve to be ridiculed, shunned, torn apart, but it didn't matter. She was ugly and weak, and that was all the justification they needed. When pangs of conscience plagued them in the middle of the night, they told themselves that she brought it on herself, that she needed it. That which didn't kill her would make her stronger. They never considered that she might not be strong enough, that it would kill her, and when it did, they told themselves that she was better off. And believed it. Like you did.

She winced. She could remember thinking the same thing herself, and she hadn't been one of the tormentors, only one of the silent witnesses. It was what she had told herself as she'd sat, dry-eyed and bored, beside Jackson Declan at her memorial service. Better off. Better off without her to weigh us down. She'd twisted a useless tissue in her hands, braiding a paper hangman's noose.

Like a millstone. That's how I thought of her. Might as well have been a bag of rocks in that casket for all I cared. She felt dizzy with shame. But McGonagall and the others wouldn't think like that. They're adults. They know better. They have to.

Why? You know better, and naiveté won't help you now. Walking adults can be just as petty and vengeful as crippled children, more, if truth be told. They can go their entire lives without depending on anyone else. No need for caution.

What if they're right? What if he did it?

Do you really believe that, deep in your guts, where you hold everything that matters?

She rested her chin on her upturned hand. Images coalesced and evaporated in her mind, one following the other, a mental heartbeat. The dead, wrenching blankness in Professor Snape's eyes when he thought she was too absorbed in her work to notice. The fleeting horror in them when he saw his fingers branded on her shoulder and the surprising gentleness with which he'd tended her. The stupefied incredulity stamped on his pallid face as Harry Potter, Golden Child and Holy Savior without a choice crumpled in his arms. The dazed helplessness as he regarded his dumbstruck pupils, who were already gathering the stones of accusation.

No, I don't. She scratched the bridge of her nose. But so what? My opinion carries no weight. I'm just a transfer student, and except for Professor Snape, people here think I'm sharp as a spoon. If I go to McGonagall with my gut instinct, she'll just pat me on the head and chivvy me out the door, convinced that Professor Snape has warped my fragile mind.

Go to Dumbledore.

And tell him what? That I know Professor Snape didn't do it because I see it in his eyes? I'm sure that'll clear things up straightaway. Unless I have proof, I won't have to worry about checking myself into St. Mungo's to ride out the next bout of hormone-induced visions. The green-robed Medi-witches will be happy to escort me.

So you're just going to let it happen? Just going to sit and watch like you did with Judith? If he goes, there won't be any memorial service, no place for you to express your regret or lack thereof. There won't even be a body.

What do you want me to do? She wanted to scream and beat her fists against her knees. The urge to weep, slumbering while she pondered, awakened with a miserable throb inside her chest.

Do something. Anything but nothing.

I'm fifteen, she whined. And I'm not a crusader. I believe that's in Potter's job description.

You're old enough to make choices, he snapped, and I thought I raised you to make the right ones. Potter is a mite indisposed at the moment, so I'm afraid someone will have to take up the slack.

Why me?

Who else is going to do it?

She eyed her Housemates in silence. The room had begun to clear, the younger ones scuttling to bed, but those that remained showed no sign of surrendering the celebration. Indeed, it had intensified. Fred, George, and Seamus were still playing Exploding Snap, their shouts and catcalls making her head ache. She squinted against the noise and catalogued the faces she saw.

Hermione and Ron still hadn't returned from visiting Harry. Nor had the Creevey brothers, who had trailed after the dispirited pair like baleful stewards. No doubt they had gone to tell the sleeping Potter the news. Lee Jordan and Dean Thomas were huddled in the far corner, scribbling furiously on a parchment. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown had sequestered themselves in the girls' dormitory with the somnolent pronouncement that they were going to Divine the Potions Master's fate, which was sure to be suitably tragic. Rebecca's hands had ached to seize them by the collars of their robes and hurl them headlong out the nearest window.

No, there was no one else for it, and that realization made her stomach sink. More terrible still was the knowledge that such total indifference wasn't born of inveterate callousness and cruelty, but of the professor's own unrepentant churlishness. He had pushed everyone away, by necessity or preference, and now that he needed them, there was no one to step forward, to speak for him.

Even if she could persuade someone of his innocence, there was no guarantee it doing any good. Her knowledge of wizarding law ended at the common sense edict that magic was not to be performed in public, and certainly never to be used to the malicious detriment of another. Other than that, she knew nothing. It was entirely possible that Professor Snape had been dead for hours, his body sundered from his sentience the moment her rear wheels crossed the threshold into the corridor.

Whatever a Dementor is, I doubt they keep them tucked in their robes. The way Seamus talked, they sounded like a banshee, and there wasn't one lazing in the corridor when you left.

They could've used Avada Kedavra, her mind persisted, refusing to be derailed by logic.

Don't be ridiculous. That's an Unforgivable. They can't use those.

Oh, yes, they can. They can do exactly as they please. Who's going to reprimand them? It's see no evil, hear no evil, and if you didn't see or hear it, then you certainly can't speak of it.

Dumbledore would not let them kill him without trial.

Who said he had a choice? His hands might have been bound by the law. The Ministry signs his checks, after all. Maybe there was nothing he could do.

There had to have been something. He's the Headmaster. If he couldn't do anything, then what makes you think I can?

She covered her face with her hands, blocking out the light and the Gryffindor furniture that suddenly reminded her of blood. She swallowed against her heaving stomach and pressed her palms against her burning eyes. She wished she were once more in the land of the sane, where her most dire concerns were whether or not to eat the stale cookie that passed for dessert in the D.A.I.M.S. cafeteria and if she should bathe before bed or first thing in the morning.

Moisture dripped onto her palms, and she blinked, startled. Somewhere along the winding discourse of her thoughts, she had begun to weep. She wiped the tears away with a wry, watery snort. That would help matters. Cry a few tears and look pitiful, and the world would fall into place. She snorted again, louder this time. What would Professor Snape think if he saw her like this, weeping and wringing her hands like an ineffectual, witless child?

He'd say plenty, all right, none of it pleasant, and not all of it with his tongue. A reproachful, furious glare from his black eyes was more effective than any weaving of words could ever hope to be, and when he turned from her in disgusted dismissal, the angry stiffening of his thin shoulders would wound as deeply as a blow.

Pull yourself together, Miss Stanhope, he snarled inside her head. One can hardly be a Gryffindor martyr with mucus streaming down their nose. Wouldn't do well for the front page of the Daily Prophet.

What little comfort she might have drawn from the thought of his omnipresent sarcasm in the face of her dewy-eyed self-pity was dashed by the one that followed it.

Assuming he's still capable of such vituperative retort. Or any response whatsoever.

The idea was so heinous that a soft, hysterical titter escaped her, and she clapped her hand over her mouth before it degenerated into a breathless sob. It was time to go to bed, regardless of the time told by the hissing, serpentine breath of the hourglass. She needed to think, hide beneath the sparse shelter of her down comforter and Winky's soothing, singsong squeak, and let her mind work unencumbered by her heart's interference.

You'll dream tonight.

There was no doubt about that, just as there was no doubt that her spare and reluctant supper would make a surprise reappearance before the rising of the sun, but she would take her chances with the familiar bogeys of her nightmares rather than sit here and stare into the face of the monstrosity waking life had so swiftly become. It reminded her too much of former, uglier days.

She started toward the girls' dormitory and nearly screamed when a hand fell on her shoulder. Jerking her control stick hard right, she almost crushed Neville Longbottom's toes beneath her wheels.

"Christ in a sidecar, Neville," she rasped, sagging in relief when she saw his round, earnest face.

"Christ in a sidecar?" he repeated, his brow knitted in consternation at her odd turn of phrase. After a moment, he gave it up and fixed her with a concerned gaze. "Are you all right? You look a bit off."

She opened her mouth to tell him she was fine, that she was only tired and needed to go to bed, then closed it again. It was untrue, and if she looked a fraction as bad as she felt, he would certainly see through it. He was retiring, not stupid. Besides, she could use a confidant, someone to help her sort through the muddle of supposition and raw emotions ricocheting through her head. There was no law that said she had to tell him everything, and she was on more than nodding acquaintance with the necessary lie.

"No, Neville, I'm not. I'm about twenty miles from all right," she said quietly, her voice wavering. "But I can't. Not here." Her eyes darted to the table by the fireplace, where the twins and Seamus were cackling at some shared joke.

His expression of concern deepened, and it was so endearing that she managed a weak smile. He bit his lower lip and gently sucked it into his mouth. It was clear by the faraway drift of his eyes that he was lost in thought. Then the hand resting on her shoulder gave it a reassuring squeeze, and the misty veil lifted from his eyes.

"I know where we can go," he whispered abruptly. "Come on."

She gaped at him, taken aback by the unexpected confidence in his voice. It was so unlike the timid, perpetually waffling boy to whom she'd become accustomed that she wondered if the entire conversation wasn't a vivid, stress-bred hallucination. Then he was striding toward the portrait hole, head down and eyes to the front to avoid drawing the notice of the others. When he reached it, he turned and waited, beckoning her with the fingers of one hand.

Don't know where we're going, but it's got to be better than here. Before she could talk herself out of it, she followed, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder to be sure they had avoided roving eyes. Heads were still bent over cards or textbooks, and nobody moved when the Fat Lady swung outward.

"Where are we going?" she asked when the portrait closed behind them. She spoke softly, keeping a watchful eye out for Filch and Mrs. Norris. The curfew would go into effect any minute now, and she pitied the person foolhardy enough to be caught out.

"A place I know," he murmured vaguely. "It isn't far. Come on."

He set off again, wand clutched in a sweaty, white-knuckled grip, and she hurried to keep up. He stopped directly opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and turned to her.

"Think of the thing you need the most," he said.

"What?"

"Just do it. Hurry, Ron and Hermione will be along soon." He looked up and down the corridor to be sure they weren't being observed.

She shrugged. She wasn't sure where he was going with this, but he had cared enough to ask, and that counted for something. It couldn't do any harm. Maybe this was his attempt at cheering her up, of distracting her from herself. Maybe it was a game or an illusion. She searched his face for a hint of amusement or secret mirth-the errant twitch of lips or the devilish twinkle of the eye-but saw only increasing urgency.

"Hurry!" he pleaded, bobbing on the balls of his heels in impatience.

"All right, all right!" she huffed. "I've got it."

"You sure?"

She rolled her eyes. "If there's one thing I do know, it's my own mind."

"Right. Now touch the wall and come back three times."

She blinked. This was ridiculous. She was tired and confused and in no mood to be doing the wheelchair equivalent of suicide runs. She crossed her arms across her chest and fixed him with a flat, red-eyed gaze.

"If this is your idea of a joke, Neville Longbottom, it isn't funny. I'm tired and sore and plain old pissed off." And scared sick for the bane of your existence.

"It's not a ruddy joke! I'm not having a go at you. If you really want a place to talk where we won't be found, you'll just have to trust me." His tone was a mixture of plea and indignation.

For the second time that night she stared at him in astonished admiration, a brief smile curving the corners of her wan mouth. She had never seen him display such chutzpah, and it sent a warm glow into her tempestuous belly to know he was doing so on her behalf.

"Three times, you said?"

He nodded once.

She rolled forward and let her trainer-clad feet graze the chill stone, then did an abrupt volte-face and moved away. She skidded to a stop at Neville's feet, the strident click of the directional magnets echoing in the empty corridor. Another about-face, and she was barreling toward the wall again.

Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, mulberry bush, mulberry bush, she thought as she spun around again.

Neville was shifting from foot to foot as she brushed his feet for the third pass. When she came to a stop, he looked past her and smiled. "Outstanding."

"What is?" she asked, and turned to see.

She was startled to see a door where solid wall had been seconds before. Its polished brass knob gleamed in the rheumy torchlight, throwing off brilliant sparks of light. The wood was smooth but blackened with age, sturdy as the pillars of Samson's temple. There was something familiar about it, though she couldn't say what. So close that she couldn't see it.

Before she could ponder it further or ask Neville about its sudden appearance, the scraping shuffle of footsteps sounded in the hall. They both froze, their ears straining to gather even the slightest detail. They were heavy and stumping, the tread of someone burdened by weariness and leaden despair. They waited for Filch's nasally rasp to pierce the air, to hear him mutter to his beloved familiar about the ungrateful brats over whom he was forced to watch. Instead, they heard at least two pairs of shambling feet, then a high, tear-choked voice.

"Hermione!" she and Neville hissed in unison.

"Quick!" Neville whispered, lunging for the miraculous door. "In here!" He wrenched it open and dashed inside, standing aside so she could enter.

The moment her rear wheels cleared the arc of the door, he slammed it shut and fell against it with a sigh.

"That was close," he panted, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his robe.

"Won't they see the door?"

He shook his head. "No. It disappears once you close it. No one can see it but us."

"How did you-," she began, but she trailed off when she noticed the expression of dazed repugnance on his face. "What's wrong?"

"Is this what you wished for, Rebecca?" he asked slowly.

She spun around to take in her environs, and for a long while, she said nothing. She simply sat and stared at the room in front of her, torn between blessed comfort and a bruising ache that settled onto her chest like the onset of croup. A breath hitched in her throat, then another, and a hard knot lodged there. Warm tears slid from her raw eyes.

"Oh, my God," was all she could manage.

All the blood drained from Neville's face. "Oi, I'm sorry, Rebecca, it's never done this before. It's supposed to give you the thing you need the most." He stepped forward and placed a leading hand on her forearm. "We'll go somewhere else."

"No." She tore her arm from his well-meaning grasp and rolled out of reach, eyes still riveted to the scene before her. "No," she said a trifle more calmly, wiping her streaming eyes. "This is fine."

It was the Potions classroom, down to the last detail. Professor Snape's desk presided over the front of the room, the hourglass that ticked out the seconds, minutes, and hours of his penance and her punishment hunkered on the corner like a forgotten sentry. His eagle feather quill jutted defiantly from the stolid black inkwell, standing at attention lest he should enter and catch it unawares. In the center of the desk lay two sheets of parchment covered in neat, precise script, but she was too far away to read them.

She moved in for a closer inspection, pulling up to the desk she occupied in the classroom eight floors below. It was just as she remembered it. The faint ink stains from when she'd let her quill wander from the parchment were there, just visible in the wavering, uneven light. So were the countless tiny nicks left by her cutting knife over endless hours of toil. She reached out and caressed the smooth wood, the knot in her throat drawing ever tighter.

She tore her gaze from the desk and rolled to the cabinets where Professor Snape stored the cheap spare cauldrons. No one ever used them except for Neville, though hardly a lesson passed when he didn't scurry to their cabinet, quailing beneath a malevolent glower from Professor Snape and the sting of a thirty-point deduction.

She leaned down with a grunt and opened it, gritting her teeth as the hinges emitted an ear-splitting squeak. She peered inside to find a dozen pewter cauldrons arranged in neat rows. She smiled at the reminder of the professor's pedantic neatness, but the flicker of amusement was quashed by the looming knowledge that he and his stiff Victorian pedantry might not be long for this world, may in fact have left it already.

"What are you doing?" Neville asked, as she reached for one of the cauldrons with a trembling hand.

"What I always do," she snapped, pulling the jittering cauldron onto her lap and slamming the door.

She went to the professor's desk and picked up the pieces of parchment, careful not to draw too close and scratch the finish. Her head knew that it wasn't really his desk or his room, that she was in a room she had never seen before with Neville Longbottom, a room that only appeared when needed, according to him, but the illusion was so complete that her heart didn't care. As far as it was concerned, this was the Potions classroom, and she had a job to do.

"Neville?"

"Yeah?"

"Count off three minutes, please."

"Why?"

"I can't explain now. Just humor me."

"All right, I'm starting now," he said dubiously.

She tore the parchment into pieces and wadded it into balls, her movements slow and methodical. She wanted them to be just right. The fact that he wasn't here to see it didn't give her an excuse to do shoddy work. The harsh purr of tearing paper filled the otherwise silent room, and it soothed her jangling nerves and roiling stomach. It was a good sound, a normal sound, and she clung to the illusion of normalcy it offered. Rip. The coarse edges of the paper against her palm as she crumpled it. Everything in its place.

"Three minutes." Neville's voice, timid in the shadows.

Her head snapped to where he stood, his quiet proclamation startling her from her cocoon. She was angry at him, furious. He had broken the spell, jolted her from the place she had built for herself to stave off the monstrous confusion that threatened to swamp her teetering defenses. It didn't matter that she had told him to interrupt her; he should have known better. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

None of this is fair or right. Life isn't that way, and it never has been. Why should things be different now? Change of place doesn't always equal change of fortune. Just because you're in a fairytale castle doesn't mean you get to be the princess. So get a grip and stiffen your spine.

She took a deep breath and forced her fisted hands to relax. Her grandfather was right. Whatever was happening to Professor Snape, whatever had happened to him, it was none of Neville's doing, and yelling at him served no purpose.

"Thank you." She forced her teeth to unclench. "Take these and put them in that wastebin, please." She thrust the crumpled bits of parchment at him.

"All right." He took them from her, his warm hands brushing against her frozen fingers. He flashed her an uncertain smile as he turned and tossed them into the wastebin beside Professor Snape's desk.

That look says it all. You can read his face like a billboard. Mad as a hatter, proceed with caution. Holy creeping Jesus. How long until he sends for the orderlies at St. Mungo's?

When he had thrown the last bit away, she said, "Start the count again."

"The count?"

"Three minutes."

When she was sure he'd started again, she reached down and fished out the balls of parchment, cramming them into her cauldron to line the bottom. All the while, she felt the weight of Neville's disbelieving eyes on her scalp, and she wished it belonged to another pair of eyes, eyes blacker than coal and bright as burnished onyx. She swallowed with a ragged click.

Steady, girl, steady. Go to pieces now, and you'll be picking the paper out of the trash for the rest of the night, because you'll never get any further.

When the wastebin was empty, she straightened with a muffled groan, closing her eyes against a cramp in her lower back.

"You all right?" Neville asked, his eyebrows knitted in concern.

"Yes," she answered, with more asperity than she intended. "Just cramps. They happen all the time."

She turned away from the desk and the wastebin, went to the blackboard, and picked up the pointer stick. Then she rolled to the shelves containing the common potions stores. Cauldron tucked securely against her stomach, she set about gathering the ingredients for the Camoflous Draught, her body falling easily into the familiar pattern of reaching, grabbing, and placing.

"How much time, Neville?" she asked without taking her eyes off the assortment of jars and phials in front of her.

"Um, thirty seconds, I think."

She grunted in acknowledgement, irritated by his vagueness. Thirty seconds, I think. How hard could it be to watch an hourglass? There were thirty seconds left or there weren't. It wasn't rocket science or potion-making. She bit her tongue to stifle an acid remark. If she wanted a confidant, especially one for a sensitive situation like this, it wouldn't do to offend him.

More flies with honey than with vinegar.

She couldn't hope for Professor Snape's precision from sweet, bumbling Neville, much as she might wish it, so she consigned herself to best guess and finished collecting her ingredients. She rolled to her desk in silence.

"What are you doing?" Neville sat atop the desk beside her, his wand in his lap.

"I told you. What I always do," she said tersely, and set out her jackal meat.

"Oh."

"Turn the hourglass and count forty-five minutes." She was tired of false pleasantry.

If he asks me why, I'm going to strangle him, confidant be damned.

He slid off the desk, crept to the hourglass, and turned it over with a careful flick of the wrist. Then he returned to his perch and rested his wand across his knees. "You do this every night?"

"Yes." She did not look at him.

She gritted her teeth as she worked and wished with every fiber of her being that it wasn't Neville who was with her, but Professor Snape, tall and thin-lipped and graceful in his billowing black robes. She waited to hear his nightshade voice slice across the quiet gloom, laced with contempt. Clop. Clop. She deliberately scraped her knife across the wood, and the dull scratch of metal harrowing pine filled the room. But no scathing reproach sounded from behind the professor's unoccupied desk.

"Dammit!" she shouted, and slammed her knife onto the desk so hard that it rebounded and clattered to the floor.

"Rebecca, what-," Neville cried in alarm, and he reached for her shoulder.

"Don't! Don't touch me," she snarled, and he recoiled at the sudden venom in her voice.

She shoved the potion ingredients aside and rested her forehead on the cool desktop, the sting of reluctant tears burning her tear ducts like mild acid. Her chest hitched, and a strangled hiccup of grief escaped her.

"I never thought the room was that awful," Neville said, and the honest bewilderment in his voice made her snort with unexpected laughter.

"The room? You think that's what upset me?" She sat up and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her robe, leaving a damp, glistening trail. She frowned at it and dropped her arm to her side. "Hardly. This was what I asked for." Her red, swollen eyes darted to the empty chair behind the desk at the front of the room. "Almost," she amended bitterly.

"You asked for Professor Snape's classroom?" He sounded as if she'd just told him she enjoyed setting fire to newborn puppies. "Why?"

She shrugged, an inelegant, abrupt hunching of her rounded shoulders. There was no way to explain to Neville, who hated and feared Professor Snape only slightly less than Potter did, the comfort she drew from this room and the man who had made it his private fiefdom. It was cold and drab, and he was unyielding and utterly pitiless, but it was a haven to her all the same, the one place in this sprawling castle where the fluid, catch-as-catch-can rules of magic were absolute, where she knew the rules of the game beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt.

"I just feel safe here."

He looked at her, then gazed at the damp walls and the light that never seemed to reach them. "Here? I'd feel safer in a tomb." He shuddered.

She grunted noncommittally. She hadn't expected anything different. He had no reason to care about this room. To him, it was just a classroom, his least favorite classroom. Five years of insults and cruelty had been heaped upon him in this room. That it had been in the name of preparing him for the grim realities of these solid, shielding walls made little difference. Cruelty was cruelty, and that was that. Not too long ago, she had felt the same, trembling in knock-kneed fear at the very though of this place and its sour warden. She knew better now, though the price for her awareness had been steep.

"How did you find this place?" she asked, neatly sidestepping philosophical polemic for the time being. She scrubbed her hands over her face, pressing her fingertips into the flesh of her jaw in a futile attempt to ease the throbbing ache there.

"I need a place to go sometimes. To think."

She had never heard him sound so melancholy. She shifted in her seat, uncomfortable with seeing him so dispirited. He was always so cheerful around her and Seamus that it had never occurred to her that he might have skeletons of his own. After all, he walked about on two sturdy legs, attracted no undue notice from the others except when at the hub of a Potions cataclysm, and was not expected to hoist the world onto his plump shoulders. What could possibly trouble him? So she had thought until now.

It was a stupid stance to take, she realized, the stance of a self-absorbed fool so intent upon her own path that she noticed nothing around her. Evidence that a healthy body did not equal a life free of regret or lingering suffering was all around her. One look into Professor Snape's haunted, dead eyes had told her that. In fact, the stark anguish of his silent hopelessness had toppled the iron walls of her resistance in one fell swoop. And yet, somewhere along the way, she had forgotten that lesson, disregarded it because it was too frightening to contemplate.

Back at D.A.I.M.S., the ability to walk, to move without hindrance from one's own body was the cure for all the ills that befell them. They would sit in a loose, informal circle in the Reading Room and discuss all the things they would do if granted sudden liberation from their twisted, gnarled limbs. They would leap up, naturally, and caper and dance until no breath remained in their brittle bodies. They would run until there was no more earth beneath their feet and revel in the hot, needling stitch that sank its teeth into their heaving sides and the burning heat of overstretched calves, and then they would throw back their heads and raise their hands to the sky and laugh.

With their newfound freedom would come wisdom. The old confusions would drift away, brought to heel by the power of movement and the glorious epiphanies wrought by sore and well-used feet. Uncertainty and formless anger would forsake them, and in their stead would be confidence and peace. There would be no more cowering in dark, cramped corners so as not to offend the hale with their shriveled, pallid bodies, mo more timorous, disingenuous apologies for having the audacity to live. They would live and be proud of it, and they would not avert their faces from curious eyes.

They knew this utopian vision of able-bodied paradise was ridiculous. They had spent more than enough time on D.A.I.M.S.' front lawn in the spring and fall and beneath its shady, if not hideous, salmon awning in the summer torpor observing the passersby as they sunned themselves to realize their folly. They saw the pettiness, cruelty, and mind-boggling selfishness so-called "normal" people perpetrated on one another, but they chose to ignore it, told themselves that, were they granted such a gift, they would never abuse it. After all, they had once lived in the unwatched shadows and knew what it was like not to matter.

Now, sitting beside her with his wand in his lap and his chin resting on his folded hands, Neville had destroyed that lofty notion for good and true. What little hope for its ultimate truth not destroyed by Deidre Clapham and her successor was crushed by the lost, exhausted expression on his face, an expression she had never taken the time to notice before because she had been too preoccupied with her own concerns.

Her tongue, so quick and vital with the need to cut just moments ago, suddenly felt dull and heavy in her mouth. She wasn't sure she had the right to ask him what it was he needed to ponder alone, but she couldn't see how to not ask. She shifted again, stiffening at a twinge in her back, and rubbed a clammy finger over her forearm.

"Think about what?" she ventured.

"Things. My parents." He did not elaborate.

She made no answer. She couldn't think of one. She understood what it was like to have secrets that were entirely your own, memories and events that were for you and God and none of the world's damn business. She did not press him further.

They sat in awkward silence for several minutes before he spoke. "So, why aren't you all right?" He picked up a ball of parchment from her desk and rolled it between his hands.

Another shrug. "I just can't be there now."

"The Gryffindor Common Room?"

"Yeah. I don't understand how they can all be so happy."

"Professor Snape is a miserable old git. He hasn't exactly made friends," Neville pointed out. No accusation, only simple statement of fact.

"I know that." She rolled her eyes. "How could I not? But I don't think he deserves to die for it." Irritation crept back into her voice.

"I never said that."

She rounded on him. "Yes, you did. One day at breakfast, you told the twins, Seamus, and me that you wished someone would kill him," she snapped, anger rising in her throat and coating her tongue with acid.

He goggled at her, and then he shut his mouth with a snap, a guilty flush creeping into his cheeks, "I didn't really mean that," he sighed, and harrowed his fingers through his hair. "He just gets me so mad sometimes. Nothing I ever do is right or good enough. He's always putting me down." His voice rose with every word. "He likes it you know, thinks it's funny. I see it in his face, in his eyes. Well, it isn't. I can't help it that I'm rotten at Potions. What else could I be, with him breathing down my neck all the time?" He was nearly shouting. Then, as though he were coming out of a trance, his shoulders slumped. "Course, according to Gran, I'm rotten at everything," he muttered.

Being surprised by Neville Longbottom was becoming a regular occurrence, and to cover her confusion, she studied her hands. She'd always known that Neville disliked Professor Snape; there weren't many who didn't, but she had never suspected this deep and potent reservoir of bitterness. She supposed she should have, given the spectacular malice Professor Snape showed him at every possible opportunity, but after his sweet concern for her on the first day of Potions and subsequent counsel to not let the Potions Master get her down, she had presumed that he'd found a measure of acceptance. Obviously not.

He was right, of course. Professor Snape saved the choicest maledictions for him and made certain that the entire class heard them. He snapped and snarled at him without provocation, and he seemed to relish every mishap, great or small. Yet for all of that, she couldn't stop seeing his tired face hunched over a stack of parchment and aged fifteen years by the milky glow of the torches or shut out the incredulous misery etched on his face in the millisecond after Harry's collapse, when the world had ground to an unceremonious halt and he had found himself staring into the unified face of foregone conclusion.

"I still don't understand how they can be so giddy about it," she insisted.

"He's had it coming, and besides, they don't understand." Neville folded his arms across his chest and hunched his shoulders, as though he were trying to shielding himself from a sudden gust of frigid wind.

"Understand what?"

"What will happen to him."

"And you do?" She had meant it as harmless inquiry, but weariness and anger made it snide.

His lips thinned. "I've got a good idea."

"Sorry, Neville," she said, and held her hands up in a placatory gesture. "Didn't mean it that way. I'm just...tired."

He nodded.

"What will they do to him?" she asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

"He'll be Kissed."

"I know. Seamus told me Dementors sucked out your soul, but what does that mean?"

"Just what it sounds like."

"Does the body die?"

"I don't know for sure, but I don't think so," he answered slowly. "I think your body keeps on going-breathing and blinking and shambling around. I went to Azkaban once with my Gran, and I saw some of the prisoners. They looked right at me, but they never blinked, and their eyes were empty. They dribbled and sicked on themselves, but they never noticed, just kept on bumping into the doors of their cells and staring at me."

She stared at him, horrified. "W-Why would you go to a place like that?" she stammered.

"Gran wanted to talk to Professor Moody, I think. Only then he wasn't a professor. He was an Auror. Don't know what for."

"What about your parents?"

Neville paled, and his mouth worked, and she knew instantly that she had ventured into forbidden territory.

"Never mind. Not my business," she said hastily, knowing there was no graceful exit. "These Dementors, what are they?"

"They're sick," he muttered, avoiding her eyes. "They're in St. Mungo's. Death Eaters tortured them. I was there, but I don't remember it."

It took a moment for it to register in her churning brain that he was referring to his parents and not Dementors. "Oh." She felt small and lost. There was nothing she could say to make it better. She had learned early that pithy platitudes offered no comfort to the grieving. "I'm sorry. Hospitals are terrible."

Oh, outstanding. He'll take that gem to his grave, she berated herself.

"That was extraordinarily lame," she said, and fought the inexplicable urge to titter.

"Yeah, it was," he agreed.

He doubled over and exhaled into his knees, and for a panic-stricken moment, she thought he was weeping. Then he raised his head, and she saw that he was laughing, great soundless chuffs of air.

"You're an oracle, you are. How would I ever have guessed that hospital was awful without you?" he cackled, rocking back and forth on the desk.

She yodeled laughter, clamping a clawed hand over her mouth and howling at the ceiling. She knew this was not healthy laughter, the carefree laughter of teenagers in a secret hideout sharing secrets and vulgar jokes; it was the laughter of people clinging precariously to their place in a world gone mad, but she didn't care. It felt good to laugh and to do it with someone else. Shared laughter meant it wasn't the baying of a lunatic. So she pressed the hand not covering her mouth against her knee and shrieked laughter until her throat ached and tears streamed down her red face.

Several minutes passed before they regained a semblance of composure. The baying tapered to choked sniggers as they wiped their wet faces and clutched their bellies, hot and sprung from their bout of hysteria.

"That is some of the most practical advice I've ever gotten about my parents, though," he conceded between ripples of exhausted mirth.

"Glad to help. I'll be here all week. Eighty Galleons per half hour." She wagged her finger at him. She felt drunk, giddy after their shared mirth, but the feeling was eroding quickly, displaced by remembrance of why they were there.

"A bargain, that," he snorted, but his smile faded.

She picked up her cauldron, looked inside at the yawning emptiness, and put it down again. "What if he didn't do it?"

"Who, Snape? You mean, what if he didn't poison Harry?" He scratched the underside of his nose with the side of his finger.

"Yes." Her finger resumed its dreamy drift over her forearm.

"Come on, Rebecca, who else would be smart enough to poison Harry? And who else would know how to get into that bleeding cabinet of his? He's been after Harry for years, and he finally got him."

"I know, I know. Everything you say makes sense, but I still don't think he did it. If he's smart enough to do that, then why would he be stupid enough to poison Harry in front of witnesses? Why not slip it to him when no one realized?"

Neville pondered this. "I don't know," he said at last, and stretched. "Maybe he just couldn't wait."

She snorted. Of all the things Professor Snape had ever struck her as, blindly impetuous was not one of them. It didn't add up. "But, Neville, didn't you see his eyes?"

"I see them all the time, and they're always the same-empty of everything except hateful spite." He fisted his hand in front of his mouth to stifle a yawn.

She sighed. This was getting nowhere. As much as Neville might like her, he wasn't going to believe Professor Snape was innocent. He had been the brunt of unfounded torment too long to forgive so easily.

She squared her shoulders. "I better clean up," she said stiffly, and began gathering the jars and phials on her desk, most of which had never been touched.

It's funny how two people can look at the same thing and see two different things.

He's Gryffindor. The world is either absolute black or absolute white. No grey, no exceptions, no maybe. He sees what experience tells him to expect. Would you have seen anything different in his shoes?

"Listen, it's not like I want to see Professor Snape get his soul sucked out, but he did this to himself."

"I don't want to discuss it anymore," she nearly shouted, on the verge of tears again. She knew she was being unfair and childish, but she suspected she was going to be called upon to act far more adult than she ever wanted to before the dust settled, and she wanted one last chance to behave as a child.

Soon everything was returned to its place except the rosehip phial. Professor Snape had always replaced it on the topmost shelf, staunch in his refusal to allow her the use of magic. She thought about leaving it on the professor's desk, but her mind, entrenched in the well-established routine, balked.

She turned to Neville. "Could you Banish this to the top shelf, please?" she asked brusquely.

He shuffled his feet. "I'm awful at Banishing Charms, but I'll take it over." He took the phial from her cold, outthrust hand and replaced it on the shelf.

"How do we get out of here?" She concentrated on the floor.

"Just open the door." He stepped forward, twisted the knob, and the door swung open to admit strong torchlight, bright after the gloom of the misplaced Potions classroom.

They crept out, blinking and squinting, moles forsaking shadowy, hidden burrows, and hurried toward the portrait of the Fat Lady, who snored daintily in her frame. Neither of them spoke.

"Bugger, I've forgotten the password," Neville swore when they reached her.

"Leonis obscurus," she mumbled, and the Fat Lady opened her bleary eyes long enough to let them enter. The snoring resumed before the portrait swung closed.

"Well, goodnight, then," Neville whispered, reverent of the stillness.

"'Night." She flapped her hand at him and ascended the stairs to the girls' dormitory, moving slowly so the constant growl of her chair did not rouse the others.

Winky was waiting for her, her tiny voice murmuring gentle admonishments as she undressed her. She only half-listened, too tired to care. She knew them all by heart. House elf or human, the words were the same. Too late, too cold, too dangerous, not old enough or well enough, what did she think she was doing? Neat, harmless words, that when bound in that fashion created a gilded cage from which she could not escape.

For the first time in her life, she wondered if she wanted to, or, even if she did, whether she should.