Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Thirty-Five

Later that night, Rebecca sat in the Common Room with Seamus and Neville, watching the Aurors dismantle everything. They rooted through the carrels and thumbed through the textbooks. The sofa cushions were deposed and tossed onto the hearthrug. A chubby, sandy-haired Auror was pawing student rucksacks. The entire process was silent and serene. There was no urgency, no overt malice, only coldly efficient order.

Seamus looked up at a thump from overhead. A small cadre of Aurors was busily ransacking the dormitories, and from the sound of it, they were going about the task with far more gusto than their downstairs counterparts.

"The whole place will be a ruddy mess by the time they're through," he muttered out one side of his mouth.

"I don't doubt that," agreed Neville, his fat toad clutched in both hands. "Can't be as bad as the Slytherins got, though. I heard they reduced the whole Slytherin Common Room to kindling. Took the upper years hours to repair all the damage."

"Why am I not surprised?" Rebecca said wryly.

"If there is any House that deserves it, it's the Slytherins." Seamus sidled from foot to foot and watched the chubby Auror dump his rucksack onto the floor and examine the contents.

Rebecca looked at him without expression. "Why?"

Seamus snorted. "Because I've never met a bunch of greasier wankers, prats, and arseholes," he said bluntly.

She grunted. She was too tired to argue, and besides, there wasn't much she could say to that. Her experiences with the denizens of Slytherin had been less than amenable. Draco went out of his way to insult her whenever they crossed paths, and Pansy Parkinson, the shrill, pug-nosed debutante of Slytherin girls, had more than once called derisive attention to her increasingly ragged appearance. Even Professor Snape, whom she respected, treated her with disdainful tolerance and little more.

"Well, with a great git like Snape at the helm, what more can you expect?" chimed in Dennis Creevey, hunched in a tattered, overstuffed chair with his knees drawn to his chest.

"Professor Snape," she murmured absently.

"What?" Seamus and Neville blinked at her, and Creevey surveyed her in mild surprise.

"It's Professor Snape," she said, careful to slur her words lest prying ears were listening. Her eyes darted to the corner where she had seen Aurors installing Listening Charms.

"Not anymore, he isn't," said the chubby Auror in a merry, singsong voice that made Rebecca's chilled flesh crawl. "Stripped of everything, he was. His Professorship, his Head of Houseship, all gone. Just desserts for what he's done." He wore a dreamy expression as he reached for the next bag.

She stared at him, her teeth grinding uselessly in her mouth. She didn't trust herself to speak. She curled her hands around the armrests of her chair to keep them from wrapping around his bloated neck. Blood roared in her temples. The acid churned in her empty, aching stomach, and greasy bile rose in her throat.

Feel nothing, she told herself, swaddle yourself in the anesthetizing comfort of pure hatred. Righteous anger and compassion are weakness now. You can't let them see what lies beneath. They'll use it against you. Survive anyway you can.

She forced her hands to relax, and conjured a vague, unfocused smile, which she flashed at the loose-lipped Auror. "Oh. I didn't know that. Guess what he did was pretty awful, huh?"

The Auror paused in his perusal of a schoolbag, his brow knitted in consternation, and then his eyes drifted to the slender, sturdy bulk of her chair, and relieved comprehension flooded his pudgy, shiny face.

Bastard. But she stretched the gormless smile wider still. This was exactly what she needed if she were going to have a chance. She had to thrive on that which she despised-their ignorance and inveterate bias.

He gave her an indulgent smile. "You don't know the half of it, young miss," he said gaily, and his barrel chest swelled with perverse pride. "We gave him what for. He didn't look so superior after we was through with him."

She composed her face into what she prayed was an expression of avid, morbid interest. "Really? What did you do to him?"

He leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "You know those daft and lordly robes of his? The ones that make him look all poncy like?"

Rebecca frowned. She didn't think Professor Snape's robes made him look poncy in the slightest. Truth be told, she wasn't sure what that word meant, though, judging from his tone, she suspected it was not intended as a compliment. Whatever its denotation, she thought the Professor's robes imbued him with a dark, magisterial beauty. But she merely nodded and waited for him to continue.

"Well," he confided gleefully, "we tore them straight off. Not so proud then, was he?"

"That's enough," said a tweedy Auror who was replacing the sofa cushions.

"Oh, erm, right, sir." He bent to his work again. "Off you go, miss."

She managed a nod, but it was a horrible parody, the frozen, graceless jerk of a re-animated corpse. Her teeth were locked together, and try as she might, she could not force them open. The ability to move had been smothered by the lurid image of Professor Snape's elegant, billowing robes being ripped from his body and cast aside like offal. Flickering candlelight on chapped white skin and black eyes glittering with humiliation.

What have you done? she wanted to scream, but the cry was lodged in her throat like sour gristle.

Feel nothing. Nothing. Lose yourself in the hatred. It's safe there. You've done it before; do it now.

"Rebecca?" A soft Irish brogue, tinny and distant, as though muffled by dense fog.

"I think I'd like to play Exploding Snap," she said. "Yes." Anything to distract her from the tidal wave of wormwood loathing scalding her stomach.

"All right," said Neville a trifle too enthusiastically, and he scurried over to arrange one of the Common Room tables so that she could pull up to it.

She backed away from the Auror, watching him all the while, and as the distance between them grew, so did her anger. It stood every detail of the fat Auror's face in exquisite detail, and she memorized it. From the oily droplets of sweat on his cheeks to the delicate quiver of his jowls as he moved. She imagined him laughing at Professor Snape's exposed vulnerability, those beefy jowls jiggling like molded gelatin, and for a split second, she saw herself laughing at Judith Pruitt as she sat covered in her own shit.

That's what Judith saw when she looked at me.

The thought was so bald that her jaw sagged in a boneless gape, and she swiped the back of a trembling hand over her mouth. Her stomach heaved, and for one wild moment, she was sure she was going to be sick. She didn't dare put her head between her knees, for fear that it would attract a gaggle of concerned and curious Aurors. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, and waited for her seesawing equilibrium to stabilize.

The idea that someone could view her with such hatred-and have every reason to do so-knocked her precarious emotional underpinnings from beneath her in one clean sweep. Until this moment, staring into the face of her unsuspecting nemesis, she had always consoled herself with the comforting belief that, wrong as it may have felt, what they had done to Judith was right, that she had brought it upon herself with her weakness and her fear and her nauseating self-pity.

It was better this way, they had told themselves as they watched the grinning jackals in young-girl faces tear her apart. They even told themselves that it was a mercy. After all, Judith was weak, and, worse yet, aware of her helplessness. Why else would she weep and cower when they came for her; why else did she offer no defense against their malicious laughter and cutting tongues? Because she had known that it was what she deserved.

Now, on the other side of the unflinching looking glass, she finally understood, and the fact that the epiphany had come too late tasted of despair and wormwood on her tongue. Judith had surrendered, not because she was weak and spineless, but because there had been no choice. They had worn her down through unending attrition, bloodletting by claw and tooth, and no matter how hard she struggled, the end result was the same. The walls had closed in, and everywhere she looked, she had seen only dull, disinterested faces. When she had reached out in a last desperate bid for help, they had all taken a single step backward and watched the fatal blow come down.

No help. There was no help for her.

History was repeating itself. The jackals and carrion fowl were circling the wounded cobra, and they would carry him off if they could, just as they had taken Judith in the end. And there was no help for him, not here, in the dispassionate faces of her friends and Housemates. They viewed him as an onus, a weakness and blight with which to be dispensed. Things will be better without him, they told themselves, and troubled themselves no more.

She who had once done nothing was now charged with the impossible task of doing everything, and the staggering mantle of isolation Judith had worn for so long was now hers. She felt impossibly small, and she was seized with fury at the oblivious Auror for making her see that which she did not wish to see. Had it not been for him or for Umbridge with her bloated, smirking face, or for Harry, lying still and cold in the Hospital Wing, she never would have come to this.

Her fingers twitched with the desire to hex him, to pull her wand from her robes and utter the words that would divest him cruelly and permanently of his smug surety and render him as lost and confused as her. She wanted to knock him from his perch and sneer into his upturned, terrified, blubbering face that he did not look so lordly now. But she knew it for folly, and so she held her tongue, and her wand remained tucked inside her robes. She would hold the delicious fantasy of the Auror writhing at her feet close to her heart until the end, and until then she would savor it like the finest wine.

Beneath her anger was a tiny, shimmering kernel of relief at the knowledge that all was not lost, that the long road to Damascus was not barred against her. It was too late for Judith, but it was not too late for her. She could atone for one wrong by righting another, and even if the grim, gaunt specter of Judith never forgave her, maybe at the end of all of this she could forgive herself.

"Rebecca?" Neville called from behind her, and she jumped.

"Sorry," she said slowly, careful to slur her words, "I was thinking."

She pivoted her chair toward the table, certain she had heard a sly snigger from one of the Aurors clustered around the sofa. Neville had already set up the cards, and Seamus was examining his with furtive concentration. She rolled into the slot made for her by Neville and turned off her chair.

"We playing for anything other than shits and giggles?" she asked, and cracked her knuckles.

Seamus roared with laughter. "No lady, you," he snorted. "But no, we're not playing for anything but bragging rights."

"I guess untold riches will have to wait for another day," she sighed.

Seamus stopped thumbing through his cards and made a great show of investigating the pockets of his robes. "My riches consist of a moldy Bertie Botts Every-Flavor Bean, a ball of lint, and two Knuts," he announced. "What about you, Neville?"

Neville plunged his hand into the pocket of his robes and withdrew it a moment later. He opened it to reveal a wad of tissue, a half-melted chocolate frog, a Galleon, and four crinkled gum wrappers. He hastily closed his fingers and shoved the contents of his hand back into his pocket.

"What are earth are you keeping all of that for?" Seamus asked. "Chuck the rubbish into the fire."

Neville shook his head, blushing furiously. "Er, no. I'll do it later," he insisted, and Rebecca noticed that his hands were fisted on the tabletop.

Seamus eyed him in quiet speculation for a moment, then decided not to press the issue, for which she was glad. She had the feeling that he had inadvertently blundered into something to which they were not meant to be privy.

"Suit yourself," Seamus said amiably. "It's your go."

Soon the game developed a rhythm of sporadic chatter and the snap of playing cards, and the anger that had permeated her mind like senses-dulling smog drifted away, supplanted by detached observation. She watched those around her as they drifted in and out of her field of vision. Parvati flitted around the Common Room and whinged to anyone who would listen that a careless, slip-fingered Auror had broken her "crystal orb" as she called it, and then had the audacity not to render an apology forthwith. On the opposite side of the room, the twins and Lee Jordan were huddled in whispered, urgent conference.

Ron was sprawled in front of the fireplace with a Transfigurations book beneath his nose, but she knew without looking that his mind was a million miles away, perched in a hard, comfortless chair in the Hospital Wing. He would have visited Potter tonight if he could have, but the searching Aurors had forbidden anyone to leave, as if they feared that an escaping Gryffindor would carry away potentially damning evidence. Which was ridiculous. Ron Weasley would have brought them the proverbial smoking gun wrapped in golden paper were it within his power to do so.

A few feet away, Hermione was poring over books on poisons and their antidotes that she had taken from the library, scribbling notes on a sheaf of parchment. She was as bent on saving Harry as Rebecca was on rescuing Professor Snape, and the strained terror on her face reflected the gnawing fear in Rebecca's bones. Hermione's eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, and her bushy hair was dull and brittle on her scalp. She had chewed her fingernails to pieces, and her fingertips were raw and frequently bloody from the unceasing assault of her teeth.

Much as she found Granger to be a shrill, overbearing idealist, she could not help but feel a pang of reluctant empathy. They were both scrabbling in the dark for the keys to the mystery that had swept them all away, searching in the places they knew best. Granger turned to her books, and she to her instinct and her hatred and her watchful, inexorable patience. They were working toward the same goal, though Granger would never see it that way. No, if she knew what Rebecca was doing and thinking, she would graduate from house elf-torturing ghoul to twisted, deluded menace in the Granger lexicon in no time flat. Their kinship would have to remain unspoken.

She snorted and wrestled a six of diamonds from her hand of cards. She tossed it onto the untidy pile of rejected cards in front of her and picked up the three of spades that Neville had just discarded. Beside her, Seamus chewed his lower lip and exhaled through his nose. His fingers hesitated first over one card, then another. Finally, they drifted to the first and plucked it from the fan of cards. He threw it down and drew another from the deck.

"Dammit," he muttered when he saw what he had drawn.

She gave a commiserating cluck and let her eyes wander again. They fell on the pudgy Auror once more. He was almost done now. She still hated him; her lip still longed to curl at the sight of his florid, pouchy, sweaty face, and her tongue curled and twitched like the tail of an impatient cat with the need to curse him, but free of the impetuous reign of anger, she could see how he could be useful. He was short on brains and long on lip, and if she were careful, she might be able to turn it to her advantage.

Now you're thinking like a Stanhope. Her grandfather sounded pleased.

No. I'm thinking like you. The Stanhopes don't have enough brains between them to power a light bulb.

No, but they're good people all the same. They know how to keep their mouths shut and their eyes open. Something to be said for that. Saved you more than once.

She had just thrown down a nine of clubs when the portrait swung open and Auror Dawlish and Madam Toad arrived. Dawlish, as was his custom, was absolutely inscrutable, eyes lifeless as brown pebbles beneath his thick, graying eyebrows. He carried his wand at his side, and he scanned the room constantly, as though he expected to be set upon by a mob of angry Gryffindors at any moment. But none of them moved.

Umbridge stepped forward, clipboard in hand. "Miss Stanhope, dear?" she said, a false honeysuckle smile stretching her lips.

"Yes, ma'am?" Rebecca put down her cards. She knew why she was here. It was here turn to stand before the Inquisition.

Umbridge rested her stubby, splay-fingered hand on her shoulder, and she fought the urge to shake it off. "Would you come with me, please? "I've some questions to ask you."

I'll just bet you do. "Of course, ma'am," she said, her voice tremulous and thick as syrup in her mouth.

She pulled away from the table and from Seamus and Neville, who were watching her in mystified bewilderment, and she took special care to ram into a chair, the legs of a passing Auror, and the skinny shanks of a first-year sitting on the floor behind her as she made an unnecessarily wide three-point turn.

"Sorry," she mumbled to the unfortunate first-year, who was glaring at her and rubbing his wounded buttocks. She hid a smile of triumph behind the blonde curtain of her hair when she saw a look of dismayed consternation pass from Umbridge to Dawlish. The stupider they thought she was, the better.

"Erm, yes, well...let's go over here, shall we?" Umbridge gestured to a cluster of empty chairs hunkered disconsolately in a gloomy corner of the Common Room.

"Yes, ma'am," Rebecca said, and followed dutifully.

Umbridge, she noted, was careful to keep the heels of her clunky, square-toed shoes at least two inches in front of her front wheel, as though she feared she would speed up and clip her from behind. Tempting as the thought was, she kept rolling at a jerky, lumbering pace, and all the while, she kept the image of the writhing Auror fixed in her mind.

"Well now, here we are," Umbridge said unnecessarily, and stopped in front of one of the overstuffed orange chairs.

Rebecca gave a gormless titter. It seemed expected of her.

Umbridge sat down. "Three chairs for three...," she trailed off. "But then, I forgot. You've brought your own. How handy." She laughed in appreciation of her own wit.

Rebecca mustered another dim-witted grunt of amusement, though she longed to slap the self-congratulatory smirk from Umbridge's face. Even Dawlish, who did not strike her as the most politic or compassionate of souls, was eyeing his superior with discomfited disbelief. Not that he would actually speak up. For him, the display of disapproval was enough.

The fat Auror writhing and screaming, wallowing in his own piss. Hold that thought. Hold it tight. Don't let go, or everything is lost.

"Now then, dear, may I see your wand?" Umbridge held out her hand.

Rebecca bobbed her head in drunken approximationof a nod. "Yes, ma'am."

"Er, dear," said Umbridge suddenly, "are your hands clean?"

Rebecca clamped the inside of her cheek between her teeth and struggled to maintain a countenance of logy befuddlement. Remember that, do you?

"I think so," she said dreamily, and held out her hands, stiff and chapped from the cold.

Umbridge leaned forward to inspect them. "Your nail beds are blue," she observed.

"Yes, ma'am. Blood doesn't circulate so well in the cold."

"Ah." There was an awkward silence while Rebecca continued to hold out her hands. Finally, Umbridge said, "Well, get out your wand. I'm a busy woman."

Rebecca took a long time wrangling her wand from her robes. She let it slip through her fumbling fingers half a dozen times before she seized it, and even after the reassuring heft of the wood pressed into her palm, she hunched, red-faced and panting and seized with a suicidal urge to cackle, over her knees and watched them from behind the fortuitous fall of her hair. Only the tantalizing image of the Auror convulsing in the grip of wicked retribution kept her from hooting in sardonic glee.

Umbridge was watching her in mortified silence, her squat, blocky hands clutching her toadstool knees, the gaudily bejeweled fingers digging into the fabric of her robes like diseased roots seeking wet darkness. Her lips were puckered in an expression of frozen revulsion, and her eyes tracked her every tortured movement with avid fascination.

Don't like me much, do you, Madam Toad? Well, the feeling is entirely mutual. She jiggled her wand ineffectually inside the pocket of her robes, though she could have brought it out at any time. Umbridge shifted in her seat, and Rebecca could see impatience warring with rapidly crumbling professional civility. She could almost see Umbridge's poison tongue twitching behind her teeth.

Come on, come on, say it, you miserable old bitch, Rebecca pleaded, but the old bag held her silence, and so she continued her deliberate struggle. She would keep it up for as long as it took for that sculpted mask of maternal sweetness to slip again, just as it had in the Great Hall. Whatever it took to throw her off balance.

Dawlish, seated to Umbridge's left, was watching her as well, his eyebrows knitted in curious concentration. His wand rested on his knees, cupped beneath one rough, tanned hand. The other twitched restlessly on the arm of his chair.

Rebecca dipped her head to hide another smile. He wants to help, to end this, but he doesn't quite dare. Just a little more, I think. Sure enough, Dawlish's eyes darted to Umbridge, and she saw the question in them as surely as though he had voiced it.

Do I help her?

Rebecca redoubled her "efforts" to extricate her wand, jabbing its tip ponderously against the lip of the pocket. She pushed hard enough to coax an ominous purr from the seam, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Umbridge wince. Dawlish's feet tapped nervously against the floor.

I can do this all night.

"Do you need help, dear?" asked Umbridge sweetly.

Rebecca shook her head. "Oh, no, ma'am," she cried jovially. "The pursuit of the goal is half the fun."

"Indeed," Umbridge muttered, though she sounded anything but agreeable.

Rebecca fell to it again with renewed gusto. If she had to go much longer, she was going to give in to the riotous laughter twining its fingers around her throat with slow, insistent pressure.

They think I'm crazy as a loon.

Nor, she suspected, were they the only ones. Her antics had come to the attention of most of the Common Room, and most eyes were trained on her as she continued to fumble and blunder in her pockets. Even the Aurors were watching, abandoning their perfunctory searches of drawers and students in favor of the bizarre spectacle unfolding before them. The Auror who had so effortlessly become her icon against foolish missteps gaped at her, a riffled schoolbag drooping dispiritedly between his fingers.

At their table, Seamus and Neville were transfixed, the card game they had continued in her absence forgotten. Seamus had pulled one of the cards from the deck and was bending it double in his palm. Neville had pushed his chair away from the table and scooted to the edge of his seat, preparing, no doubt, to come to her rescue.

Oh, Neville, I love you, but please, please don't get up. It would be the worst thing you could do. This is a dance meant only for two.

Umbridge coughed and made a strange noise in the back of her throat, a prissy, irksome, hiccoughing chirp that reminded her of angry squirrel. Across the room, she saw the soles of Neville's trainers plant against the floor, saw his body stiffen and unfurl as he got ready to stand. She closed her eyes and felt her heartbeat thud against her ribs in a desperate, painful rhythm.

Please, God, let Umbridge break before Neville stands. Please. She has to. Please. She has-

"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" Umbridge snapped. "Dawlish, get the girl's wand."

Rebecca fought to quash a jubilant yell.

"Yes, ma'am," Dawlish said, and sprang from his seat. "Let me help you, miss." He reached out and brushed her hand aside.

The instant he touched her, she let out an agonized yell and recoiled, clutching her hand as though he had crushed it in the grip of fiery fingers. Startled, Dawlish stumbled backwards in chagrined panic. His heel clipped the bottom of the chair in which he had been sitting, and he tumbled into it with an ungainly flop. His wand flew from his hand and struck the side of Umbridge's face with an authoritative smack.

Umbridge clapped a hand to the side of her face and stared at Dawlish in mute outrage. "What in the name of Persephone are you doing, you twit?" she seethed, her eyes blazing with fury.

Dawlish, sprawled in his chair, blinked owlishly at her and cast longing glances at his wand, which had slipped onto her lap. "I don't know. I just touched her, and she started howling fit to burst."

The plaintive perplexity in his voice and stamped onto his formerly stoic face undid Rebecca, and an exhilarated guffaw escaped her. Thankfully, it sounded like piteous weeping, an impression enhanced by the fact that she had doubled over and buried her scarlet face between her knees.

The sound diverted Umbridge's attention from the hapless Dawlish, who was still trying to recover his tattered dignity and his wand from the front of Umbridge's robes.

"What is the matter with you, you stupid, clumsy girl?" Umbridge spat, chest heaving. Then, as it slowly dawned on her that the entire Common Room was watching, she hitched a solicitous smile onto her face and patted her hair in an attempt to smooth stray locks into place. "Oh," she said, "what I mean, dear, is are you all right?"

Another howl of perverse amusement nearly escaped her. Oh, yes, I'm sure that's just what you meant. Your mask is lopsided.

Yours will be, too, if you don't get a grip on yourself, her grandfather chided. This is too important for childish hysteria. If you still think it's funny, you just remember your Potions Master stripped naked as the day he was born and put on display for a bunch of gawking government officials.

That sobered her, and she sat up and wiped her streaming eyes. "Hmm?"

"Are you all right, dear?" Umbridge repeated, with emphasis on every word, as though she were speaking to a retarded child.

She opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, a shrill voice interrupted.

"Is you all right, miss?"

Winky was standing on the bottommost stair to the dormitories, small leathery hands wringing and twining like restless serpents. Her eyes were huge inside her tiny face. She looked from Rebecca to Umbridge and back again. One foot hung above the riser, suspended in mid-step.

"Yes, Winky, I'm fine," she soothed. "Just an accident."

The elf looked dubious. "You is sure?" Her hands came up to tug her ears.

"Absolutely. Go on upstairs. I'll be up as soon as I finish my chat with Madam Umbridge and Mr. Dawlish. I'm awfully tired."

Winky nodded. "Yes, you is looking dreadful, miss. I is going to get the bed ready." With a last reproachful look at Umbridge and Dawlish, she darted up the stairs again.

"Now then, where were we?" Umbridge muttered impatiently when Winky was gone. "Ah, yes, your hand. Let me see it, dear."

Rebecca shook her head and pulled it tight against her stomach. "It will be fine, ma'am."

"I insist." There was a hint of steel in Umbridge's voice now. She held out her hand.

Rebecca shook her head again and shrank into her chair, her shoulders hunched against invisible threat. "No, ma'am. My skin is hypersensitive to touch. Handling it may make things worse," she lied, and did her best to look forthright and unsettled all at once.

Umbridge looked as if she were going to pursue the subject, then said abruptly, "Your wand, please."

This time, Rebecca fished it from her pocket with a minimum of struggle and handed it over, thankful for the gloom that concealed the distinct lack of either bruise or weal on her flesh. Dawlish withdrew parchment and quill from his robes and settled himself into his chair, eyes wary and strained.

"State your name for the record, please," ordered Umbridge, and every trace of motherly affection had vanished. It was cold and commanding, the voice of a veteran interrogator.

I'm going to have to be very careful with you, aren't I? You make look like a bumbling, matronly yeoman just trying to do your job, but there's a whole lot more happening behind those bulging eyes of yours than you let on. Arbeit und Ordnung, that's you. Jackboots and black wool would suit you well, I think.

I think a retreat to the fortress is in order, offered her grandfather.

Yes, I think so. I've played this game a thousand times before with headshrinkers and doctors and pundits of the pill and scalpel. I understand the game of mental chess and all the voodoo that goes with it. So we'll play again, and I'm pretty sure my fortress will outlast yours.

So she retreated behind the walls she thought she had forsaken and barricaded the doors. The color faded from her world and the warmth from her bones, until all that remained was scoured slate and the surety of observation unfettered by vested interest. The shimmering haze of exhausted hatred fell away to reveal everything with hellish, clinical clarity. She could see the minute cracks in Umbridge's appalling fuchsia lipstick, tiny fissures that mirrored the age lines spreading across Dawlish's face. They were fading statues crumbling beneath the weight of time.

"Rebecca Stanhope." Slur on the "s", and a slight wobble of the head.

"And this is your wand?" Umbridge held it up.

"Yes, ma'am."

Umbridge pressed to tip of Rebecca's wand to her own and muttered, "Priori incantatem!"

Rebecca watched dispassionately while the Charms that guided her through the gauntlet of stairs and narrow doors and unreachable library books streamed from her wand in a gossamer, undulating thread-Automus Wingardium leviosa, Reducto, Finite incantatem, Accio book, Accio parchment, Augeo fortis, Evanesco, Desaperecium, Scourgify. One by one, they served as indelible minutes of her march through life. Dawlish marked them all down on his parchment while Umbridge watched with growing boredom.

When the ghosts of incantations past had continued in the same soporific pattern for several minutes, Umbridge tapped wand tips again and said, "Finite incantatem. The wispy golden stream stopped. Another tap. "Priori cursus!"

The ephemeral, wavering images of ever place to which her rolling wheels had carried her since the arrival of the Ministry passed beneath Umbridge's prying, greedy gaze, the illusive topography of where she had been and where her rounded rubber feet would carry her again. Classrooms and bedrooms and bathrooms, oh my. My Life as a Hogwarts Student, by Rebecca Stanhope.

She watched and blinked and said nothing. There was nothing for them to find. She had not trod on forbidden ground, skulked in dusty secret passageways. She had gone from lesson to lesson and classroom to classroom as reliably as if her wheels had been bound to the path. Only her mind had strayed from its appointed places, and that, thank God, was beyond the reach of Umbridge's scrutinizing wand. At least with that spell. If thought were as deadly as deed, the bodies of the Aurors would already teeter toward the heavens.

Umbridge's investigation of her daily treks yielded much the same as her inspection of prior spells, and when it became evident that no startling revelation would be forthcoming, she ended the spell and returned Rebecca's wand with a sniff of disappointment.

"You were in Potions the day Harry Potter collapsed?" It was not a question.

"Yes, ma'am." Nothing else.

Umbridge waited for her to continue, but she merely plucked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her robe and counted off the seconds as they spun into the expectant silence. She would give them nothing through haste. Dawlish shifted in his chair and drummed the end of his quill against the back of his hand. Umbridge raised an inquiring eyebrow at her. Rebecca offered her an insipid smile.

"Well?" Umbridge prompted, and folded her plump hands over her knee.

I've been through Professor Snape. You're going to have to do better than that. "Well what, ma'am?" That empty, sunny smile again.

Umbridge's nostrils flared, and she wrenched a coaxing smile onto her face. "What happened in class that day?"

One potato, two potato, three potato, four. See the Auror a-writhing on the floor. Tell you a secret, and you won't get any more.

"We were supposed to be testing Harry's Advanced Sleeping Draught, but something went wrong." She scratched the bridge of her nose and gazed at her interrogators as though she had revealed a great secret.

The vein in Umbridge's temple throbbed dangerously. "We know that, dear. What we need to know is if you saw anything unusual that day."

Five potato, six potato, seven potato, eight. Only as strong as the strength of my hate. Beg me a secret, and you'll be made to wait.

She pretended to consider the question, cocking her head to one side and reaching up a hand to massage the back of her neck. "Well, Colin Creevey came in with a note from Professor McGonagall just before it happened," she offered.

Umbridge and Dawlish leaned forward in their chairs, their eyes alight with sudden interest. The latter was pressing the tip of his quill to the parchment so hard that it was in danger of snapping.

"And what did the note say?" Umbridge demanded.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four. See the Auror a-writhing on the floor.

Rebecca shrugged. "I don't know, ma'am; I didn't see."

Umbridge wilted with disappointment and sagged into her chair, and behind the walls of her fortress, Rebecca smiled. Her face, however, remained impassive, and she eyed the plump woman across from her with heavy-lidded disinterest.

"How did he react to the note?" Umbridge had recovered herself.

"Who?" Rebecca wiped a runner of saliva from the corner of her mouth with the handy sleeve of her robe.

There was a flicker of ugly fury in Umbridge's eyes, but her voice remained calm. "Snape."

"Professor Snape?"

There was an exasperated, phlegmatic cough from Dawlish, and the rheostat of Umbridge's temperament bulged in the hollow of her temple. Rebecca continued to beam placidly at them.

"Yes, dear." Umbridge spat the words as if they were bitter as vinegar in her mouth. Dawlish gave her an uneasy sidelong glance.

Rebecca gave no sign that she had heard the scorn in the affirmation. She smiled brightly and said, "Oh! He told him to get out and deducted all the points from the Gryffindor House point glass."

The lurid eagerness that had guttered a moment before in Umbridge's protuberant eyes sprang to hideous life again. "He did?" Triumphant and thoughtful.

"Yes, but he does that all the time. Between me and Neville, the thing empties about twice a week," she told them helpfully, and giggled.

"I...see," Umbridge managed after a moment of stewing, thunderstruck silence. She was white with frustration, and the rings on her fingers clinked together as her stubby fingers shook atop their flabby foundation of middle-aged knee.

To her left, Dawlish paused in his meticulous transcription of the questioning to eye her with growing trepidation. When several seconds passed without her leaping upon Rebecca in screaming, throttling harpy rage, he resumed his scratching with nervous, jerky strokes.

Umbridge cleared her throat, that odd chirruping sound again. "You have nightly detentions with Professor Snape, yes?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And what does he do?"

"He makes me brew Camoflous Draught."

"Nothing else?"

"No, ma'am."

"Does he speak to you?"

"He asks me questions about potions and their ingredients. He tells me to work faster or to shut up. Sometimes he tells me I'm incompetent." There was a snort of suppressed mirth from Dawlish.

Umbridge, too, bore an expression that said she rather agreed with his assessment. "Have you ever noticed anything strange during your time with him?" she asked idly, and offered a smile that suggested she thought Rebecca incapable of noticing her own existence, much less the subtle nuances of impending treachery.

Oh, I see everything. I watched him night after night while I worked and kept him mean, comfortless company in the dark and the cold. I saw the misery and the worry and the dim terror every time he looked at the sand in the hourglass on the corner of his desk. I suspect he's afraid of running out of time. He'd catch it in his hands if he could, trap the tiny grains of it between those entrancing fingers and force it to give him all he demanded of it, but he can't, and it infuriates him. I see these things and many more, but I'll never tell. Not yours to know. Not mine, either, come to think of it. But it will never go any further.

Rebecca flashed a vague, toothy smile and shook her head. "No, ma'am."

"Has he ever done anything to hurt you?"

Her shoulder twinged with guilty memory, and an image of a black and purple hand branded into white flesh flitted across her mind's eye. Then mortified black eyes and the feel of gentle lily fingers soothing a dull and throbbing hurt. She had told him the matter was closed, and she had meant it, and if she had not told McGonagall or the Headmaster, then she would not break her silence now, to this terrible, soulless woman with the eyes of a frog and the tongue of an asp, who would hear no truth save the one she had been sent to find.

"No, ma'am."

Liar, liar.

That was true, but strangely, she felt neither shame nor guilt, only deep, giddy satisfaction. She knew that it was not the first, nor would it be last lie she would tell in this intricate dance of liars and watchers and cutthroats. It was, in fact, going to be a liars' cotillion, and only the best would be left standing when the music stopped. She intended to be on top of them all.

Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies. Besides, all's fair in love and war.

And which is this?

You know the answer to that.

""Is there anything else you wish to tell me, dear?" Umbridge said.

"No ma'am."

"Very well, then." But neither she nor her stenographer nee Auror moved.

Rebecca was quite used to this tactic. The psychiatrists and counselors at D.A.I.M.S. used it all the time in a lame and futile attempt to plumb the minds of their unwilling patients for their most succulent and closely guarded secrets. It had never occurred to them that those with nothing to hope for save the passage of seconds, hours, and days that never changed saw no reason to hurry. She could wait forever.

A full minute elapsed, then two. Rebecca began to hum tunelessly, and Dawlish fidgeted and plucked on a curling edge of his parchment. Umbridge was doing her best to fix her with a penetrating stare, but the intended effect was ruined by the comical bulging of her eyes, which made her look like a terminally surprised frog.

"Thank you, Miss Stanhope," she said, and stood. Dawlish scrambled to his feet, the transcript of the interview clutched in a large, hairy-knuckled hand. He seemed distinctly relieved.

"Thank you. I hope I've been helpful." Rebecca held out her hand to Umbridge.

Umbridge made no move to take it. Her lip curled in a minute sneer. "Yes. Most helpful," she said weakly. "Well, goodnight, dear."

She and her cohort made a beeline for the door before Rebecca could respond, and she watched them go with a furtive smirk of her own. When Umbridge's squat backside had disappeared through the portrait hole, she rolled to the table and rejoined Seamus and Neville.

"Still playing?" she asked.

"Yeah," Neville said, and dealt her a hand.

Seamus, however, was regarding her with worried befuddlement. "What're you doing?"

"I beg your pardon?" she said blankly, though she knew very well what he meant.

"That over there," he said, and jerked his head in the direction from which she had come. "What were you screaming for?"

Though most of the Aurors were gone, some still lingered in their search. She could still hear a pair of feet tramping in the dormitories above.

"I'm dancing, Seamus, dancing to beat the devil," she murmured in a low voice. "Now shut up and play."

They did indeed play. A half dozen hands, as a matter of fact, and during that time, neither boy noticed any marks on Rebecca's hand. So they were surprised and dismayed to see three readily apparent finger marks there the following morning, as though someone had pinched her in an iron grip. They were equally surprised, when for the first time, she went to Madam Pomfrey of her own volition. If anyone had asked, they could have told them how strange it was, but nobody did, and soon enough, they forgot it altogether.