Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Forty-one

Snape stared at Rebecca, his face an inscrutable mask of cool disinterest. She was nestled in her improbable conveyance, swallowed by it, in fact, and he could see the fingers of one hand opening and closing, groping uselessly for something in the pocket of her robes. She was gaping at him with the unmistakable awe of one who has lain eyes on the resurrected dead.

She was thinner than the last time he had seen her, though he would not have thought it possible, her cheekbones brittle pikes beneath her skin. Her hair was no longer the improbable, dazzling gold he remembered, but a dull, tarnished brass, limp and brittle. Only her eyes were the same, driven and bright as polished sapphire in her pasty, drawn face. She was currently watching him with rapt amazement, but he was certain that once the shock abated, she would regain her customary disquieting, knowing countenance. At least he hoped she would. He needed some shred of normality in the unrelenting madness his life had become.

"Professor Snape," she said again, and her voice was a strangled, reedy wheeze. Her fingers snapped convulsively around the fabric of her robes, and all the color had drained from her face.

"I am well aware of my identity," he snapped. "You look appalling."

Her reaction was not what he expected. Instead of flinching from his scourging tongue, she clapped a hand over her mouth and screamed laughter, doubling over until the tips of her hair grazed the scuffed toes of her trainers. Her other hand remained rooted in the pocket of her robes, opening and closing like blind pincers.

Bloody girl has gone to pieces. Then, on the heels of that thought. She sounds oddly relieved.

He rose from the sofa and crossed the room in half a dozen strides, his robes billowing behind him like onrushing night. He stopped in front of her and crouched until his eyes were level with the crown of her head. It shook softly with the force of her hysterical mirth, a parched wheat field in the throes of a monumental earthquake, and this close, he could hear the soft, desperate intake of breath before it was expelled in another gale of laughter.

"How pleased I am to note your pleasure at my present circumstances," he hissed, each word as quick and stinging as a slap. He rocked back on his heels and waited for her to respond.

The keening laughter ceased in mid-warble, as though an invisible hand had seized her throat, and she lifted her head to meet his gaze. Her eyes were red-rimmed and moist, and the fading outline of her fingers was still visible at the corners of her mouth, where she had pressed them into her thin flesh in an effort to regain her composure.

Not totally cracked, then, he thought, and though he would never admit it, even to himself, he was relieved.

"Pleasure at your present circumstances, sir?" she repeated quietly, as though he were speaking in tongues. She swiped a hand across her eyes and straightened in her chair. "Absolutely not. I just didn't expect to find you here."

"Oh? Why ever not? These are my chambers, after all." He gestured carelessly to the barren walls and austere furnishings. "Or have you forgotten?" he sneered.

"Of course not, sir." All traces of hysteria had vanished, though she was still gazing at him with wary reverence. "I just thought you might be elsewhere."

He did not need to ask her where "elsewhere" might be. "You were hoping that I was in Azkaban, then, writhing and screaming in my own piss?" he spat at her, and he felt a lurid pang of satisfaction when she flinched and grew paler still at the thought. She was not, as he had begun to fear, inured to him, not yet complacent. Good.

"Severus," the Headmaster murmured in gentle reprimand.

He ignored him and grasped a hank of her hair, dry as straw between his squeezing fingers. He let it drop in disgust, stood, and whirled to face the Headmaster, who was standing unobtrusively in the corner.

"So this is my champion?" He jabbed an incredulous, accusatory finger at the hunched child behind him. "This is my salvation?" he scoffed. "Clap me in irons and have done with it, if you please," he snarled, and thrust out his arms.

"Melodrama hardly becomes you, Severus," was the Headmaster's only reply, and Snape sputtered in inarticulate fury. His head throbbed with the terrible promise of a migraine, and he reached up to knead fiercely at his temples.

No Anti-Ache powder, either. Fudge and his merry bastards took everything, even the all-purpose flour and the sugar.

"Melodrama?" he murmured through gritted teeth, and a vein in his temple pulsed dangerously. "Here I sit, a prisoner in my own rooms, at the mercy of a feckless twit and his slavering minions, and you chide me for my melodrama?" He snorted and ran his fingers through his hair.

"There will be no irons for you," the Headmaster countered reasonably, and scratched the bridge of his nose.

"Why? Because of this sainted chit?" He favored Rebecca with a derisive sneer. "Look at her. She's a wreck."

The Headmaster looked from him to Rebecca and smiled. "Appearances can be most deceiving, as well you know," he said. If I am not mistaken, she has already surpassed your expectations on a number of occasions, and I expect she shall do so again. Now, I must be off; I've a favor to ask of Sinistra, and I'd like to catch her before her next Astronomy practical. I'll leave you to it."

"Leave me to what, Headmaster?" he demanded, as Dumbledore swept to the door in a swish of red-robed beneficence.

"As you are her professor, I will leave that to your discretion, though I am certain you have much to discuss." With that enigmatic pronouncement, he disappeared through the doorway and dissolved into the waiting shadows of the corridor.

A pox on him and his blasphemous optimism, he thought savagely as the door closed with a furtive snick.

The Headmaster's parting words echoed in his ears. As you are her professor... The mocking phrase scalded his ears, and he swore under his breath. He was no longer anyone's professor, as Fudge and Albus himself had made quite plain. A Prefect had more authority than he did. What did he expect him to do with her? Teach her? A farce, that. Even if he wished to-which he most assuredly did not-he had not so much as a pot to his name.

He turned and found that she was watching him intently. The slack-jawed amazement had departed, and in its stead was the familiar stoic, solemn curiosity. Gone, too, was the frenetic clutching of her pocket. Both hands were folded on her lap, clasped primly over bony knees. She was watching, waiting, gazing at him through considering, half-lidded eyes.

It infuriated him. She had no right to be here, to see him disgraced, stripped of his rank and left with nothing but what the Ministry and Albus' charity deigned to allow him. Merlin only knew what she was thinking behind the cloistered citadel of her face. Perhaps, behind that bland gaze, she was laughing, reveling in the fact that the tormentor had so suddenly and decisively become the tormented.

A vision arose in his mind of her in the Gryffindor Common Room, surrounded by her wide-eyed Housemates as she regaled them with the tale of his imprisonment, laughing as she told them of his emptied bookshelves and his barren cupboards. Her lips were curved in a savage, triumphant leer, and her canines glistened with saliva. Her eyes were polished glass inside her face, and her malice afforded her an eerie radiance. Shoe's on the other foot now, the phantom Rebecca crowed to Ron Weasley, and the raw glee in her voice made his stomach churn.

If she's enjoying the proceedings, she is hiding it remarkably well, countered his professorial logic. She's held together by miracle and temerity beyond reason. A good shove will break her in half.

But he shoved the voice aside. He did not want to hear it. It was much easier, much more comforting to believe that her presence here was another elaborate joke on the part of House Gryffindor than to entertain the notion that she truly wanted to help him. The former was a dynamic he understood. Gryffindor was the House that had crushed the feeble hopes of his youth into powder, had spawned the hellions that for twenty-six years had dictated the path of his life. From the age of eleven, it had been the embodiment of them, the oppressive, privileged elite that destroyed the dreams of those they deemed unworthy and trampled them into the dust. He had seen firsthand their fairness, their idea of justice, and he knew in the embittered marrow of his bones that she was here for no good purpose.

What if she is? She's shown herself to be anything but amenable to Minerva's "guidance". Indeed, she loathes it. Isn't it possible that, just this once, there are no ulterior motives, that what you see is what you get?

Balderdash. There was no such thing as charity for charity's sake. There was always another face beneath the smiling façade of succor freely given, a hidden price that must always be paid, whether it be in Galleons or in blood. That was the first lesson he had learned as a Death Eater, and the fundamental truth of it had never yet been controverted. Even Albus, with all his lofty, seductive talk of friendship and trust and sacrifice for higher ideals, only wished to save him now because he was useful as a spy. The old man could tell himself otherwise all he wished, and he, Snape, could cling to the myth with both hands, but all the wistful desire in the world would not mask the ugly, ignominious reality of the situation.

What she wanted, he could not say, nor did he care. It was enough to know that she wanted and that she would not find it here. He would not be another feather in the well-decorated Gryffindor cap, another trophy at which they could point and proclaim their magnanimity. The House that had torn him down would not build him up again. He would not allow it.

"Well," he snarled, and her gaze, which had begun to drift, sharpened.

"Yes, sir?" Alert, respectful, eager.

He scowled. "Have you found my salvation?" he demanded, irritated by her renewed aplomb.

Her wasted face darkened. "No, sir. I wish I had." Plaintive and exhausted. "Every answer leads to another question." She brushed a strand of hair from her face with one withered, blue-nailed finger. "All I know for certain is that someone set you up."

"Oh, splendid. Come, Miss Stanhope, let us take this illuminating revelation to Fudge. I'm sure that, as you are a member of the illustrious Gryffindor House, your testimonial will lead to my immediate release. I am saved." He folded his arms across his chest and stared down at her in undisguised disgust.

She had the decency to blush, but she did not cower, and when she spoke again, her voice was steady and clear. "Headmaster Dumbledore says you think it was cyanide that poisoned Harry, cyanide from your stores." Her fingers curled around her control stick in a dreamy, hypnotic rhythm.

He gritted his teeth and gave a jerky nod. "So it would seem."

"But how can that be, sir? That cabinet is locked and warded when not in use. How could someone enter it without your knowledge?"

"If I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn't be here," he hissed, and turned away from her. He was tired of her puerile questions, and he wanted her to go away.

"Forgive me, sir. I was thinking out loud," she said, and her unflappable civility inflamed his already smoldering temper.

He rounded on her with unrepentant savagery, his hands fisted at his sides. "I have no interest whatsoever in your thought processes, you mangled, unwholesome creature. You have been an anathema from the moment you fouled my classroom for the first time, and since then, you have failed to demonstrate anything remotely resembling intellect. I have wasted three and a half months of my too-short life trying to teach you to brew a Camoflous Draught, a potion any fifth-year should be able to achieve, and yet, despite my private tutelage, you have made not one iota of improvement. Even Neville Longbottom, incompetent as he is, has done better. So tell me, Miss Stanhope, why should I listen to a word that comes out of your malformed mouth?"

She goggled at him, and he knew from the bright, uncomprehending pain in her eyes and the pinched, bleached complexion of her gaunt face that he had struck his mark, that she had not raised her formidable defense. In all likelihood, she had seen no reason to do so. In the month prior to his incarceration, they had reached a bizarre truce, an unspoken agreement. In an instant, he had shattered it, broken it with the velvet iron of his tongue, and her Gryffindor sensibilities had clearly not prepared her for it.

Not fair, not fair, chanted a voice inside his head, and amid the maelstrom of anger and the blind desire to inflict hurt was a spark of shame, but it was overwhelmed by the fury built up over nearly a week of isolated privation, and it guttered and died before reason could reassert itself.

Now she knows what betrayal tastes like, he thought ruthlessly as he gazed into eyes wide as tea saucers. Did she expect that I would drop to my knees and kiss her twisted feet in sniveling gratitude? So sorry to disappoint her.

She opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off. He had to finish it. If he were going to be beholden to yet another Gryffindor, then he would exact his pound of flesh. "Is it not what you expected?" he purred in feigned sympathy. "Did you perhaps think that I would be grateful for your meddling, pleased to see you? Much as it pains me to deprive you of your adolescent fantasies of being my knight in shining armor, I must tell you that the five days I've spent without your malignant presence have been the most relaxing and peaceful I've known. I don't want you here, nor do I want your help. Take your Gryffindor sanctimony and your sense of entitlement and get out," he snapped, his voice little more than an icy whisper.

She was perfectly still, and she was staring at him in agonized disbelief. "Professor-,"

He tried to stop himself, to rein in his venomous temper, but he was too far gone. The need to break her, make her as wretched and miserable as he was a mania, an erotic compulsion he could not ignore. He was not her teacher now; there could be no official sanction from Albus or anyone else, and all he could see was the Gryffindor crest sewn onto her robes, bright as a beacon for all his festering resentment. He made a final effort to hold his tongue. He pressed his lips together as a barrier against that which, once said, could never be unsaid, but the dry flesh of his lips was no match for his misplaced hatred, and in the end, he let them pass.

"I am not your professor, and I never was," he spat, and the shame returned, stronger now. He smothered it with an impatient snort. He had gone too far to turn back now. "See yourself out and do not blight my chambers again."

"But sir, they'll see me," she said in a small, crushed voice.

"That is not my concern," he said coldly, and spun away from her.

Too far! Too far! shrieked the weary voice of his conscience, and he swallowed against a wave of nausea. In his mind's eye, he saw her in the infirmary on the day she had burned his legs. Her face was in her hands, and tears of contrition coursed down her face like blood, the first honest tears anyone had ever had the audacity to shed for him.

And this is her reward.

Come, child, I will not harm thee. I carry only death in my arms. Damnation's lullaby.

He spared her a last blank gaze before he retreated to his study and slammed the door in her stricken face. When the heavy door closed with a doleful creak and hid her shocked face from view, he tottered to his bed and sank on to the hard, unyielding mattress. His legs, he found with no surprise whatsoever, were numb. He let out a ragged breath and buried his head in his hands.

The shame was bitter bile in his throat, and try as he might, he could not swallow it away. He strained his ears, listening for the telltale sounds of wounded grief-sussurating, ragged breath, wet sniffles, the stifled keen of a rabbit caught in a hopeless snare-but there was nothing, not even the forlorn growl of her chair. If she was there, she was being silent as a ghost.

She'd be damned before she let you see her break beneath your ruthless tongue, and you know it. She'd strangle on it, the stubborn little chit, and won't that be fun if Albus or Kingsley should stumble in and find her dead on the floor, purple as an overripe plum, tongue lolling from her slack mouth like a dead earthworm? Oh, yes. The Ministry would sing as they carried you away. Not to mention what Albus would think.

He scrubbed his face with his hands and wished with all his might that there was still a bottle of rye in night table drawer, but it was long gone, confiscated by Aurors along with everything else. He knew he should go out and do something, but he had no idea what, and the only sensible option-apology-was simply beyond him, appropriate as it might have been. Even Albus, his beloved and hated father figure, was hard-pressed to get one from him, and the man was singularly responsible for saving his worthless life. Even if he could have mustered a half-hearted, meaningless plea for forgiveness, his legs still refused to move, lifeless as stilts below the knee.

"Salazar's balls," he muttered, and began to rock back and forth on the edge of the bed. "Salazar's ballssalazar'sballssalazar'sballs."

She hadn't deserved that, not by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, she had behaved as she always had, as though nothing had changed and she was simply there to consult her professor. She had even addressed him as such, something only Shacklebolt continued to do. To everyone else, he had become "Severus," or, more demeaning still, "you". By her staunch, eye-popping intractability, she had brought a shred of normality into the chaos, wrapped in that one word. Professor. I am still here, it had said, and I, at least, am unchanged. I am ready to begin the game anew.

For all that, he was furious with her, not just because she had been allowed to see him at his lowest ebb, but because, in the heart-stopping seconds after he had first heard her voice and turned to see her there with Albus, gaunt and irascible as ever, he had been glad to see her, filled with a heady relief so profound that his legs had turned to water and it had been all he could do not to seize her by her scrawny arm to be sure that she was real. The realization that he had wanted to see her appalled and frightened him. It meant that she had gouged a chink in his supposedly impenetrable fortress.

So he had seized the first and truest weapon at his now limited disposal and vented all of his fury on her unsuspecting head, made the cruelest of cuts in an attempt to drive her away. He did not want to wish for her, to admit that, in the deepest recess of his mind, he had been hoping she would come, if for no other reason than he would no longer be alone with his thoughts and his suppurating hatred. He had been alone all of his life, and now, on ground that should have been as familiar as the contours of his own face, when the previous thirty-seven years of isolation should have served him best, all his safeguards were failing.

Because you weren't really alone. You could have returned from your self-imposed exile at any time. All you had to do was reach out your hand, and someone-Albus, like as not-would have taken it. You were alone because you chose to be. Now there is no choice, and there is a world of difference between isolation by choice and being alone because there is no other way. It has been taken from your hands, and you, who have always prided yourself on your ability to choose, even when you made the worst choices to be made, cannot stand it.

So you lashed out at the nearest target, because that was a choice you could still make, and now you're ashamed of your cowardice because you know that if you manage to lever yourself off this bed and open the door, she will still be there, swollen eyes and all. And if you order her to follow you, she will say, yes, sir and come without batting an eyelash. She has decided to help you, come what may, so it's safe to hurt her, isn't it?

He snorted. She would, at that. He had no doubt that she was still out there, still as marble in her chair and waiting for him to open the door. He could scream and curse and scourge her all he liked, and it would change nothing as far as she was concerned. She had made up her mind, and her mind was all but impossible to change. Merlin knew he had tried, with his detentions and his brutality and his casual malice, and in the end, it had been his mind that had changed, been torn, kicking and screaming, from its nest of comfortable prejudice and forced to see her as something other than a set of rubber wheels and a waste of misaligned flesh.

Sweet, screaming Merlin, he thought, and laughed, a harsh, brittle caw. She's raving. Any sane pupil would have been overjoyed to be rid of me.

Yes, and you are glad of it.

He pushed the thought aside. "Stubborn, mad, unwaveringly foolish strip of a girl," he said to the empty room.

The only response was an indolent pop from the torch housed in a rusty bracket above his wardrobe, and he watched as a shower of sparks swirled in the frigid air like fireflies for an instant and then flickered into darkness. His gaze followed the cinders as they drifted lazily to the floor and scattered over the dusty top of the wardrobe. There was no danger of fire; he had Charmed all of his furniture against fire upon first moving into the castle.

It was ludicrous to be musing upon his strange relationship with his gnarled, enigmatic pupil when he had matters of far graver import to ponder, namely the ominous and protracted silence of both Voldemort and Lucius Malfoy. The skull and serpent seared into the flesh of his forearm had not throbbed and burned since before the start of term, and save the brief and pittering missive from Lucius about Draco's wholly unsurprising decision to join the ranks of the Death Eaters, there had been no correspondence from Malfoy Manor.

Nor was there likely to be. Not with Aurors nosing about. Though Albus was most assuredly trying to keep the Ministry enquiry out of the press and avoid the avalanche of reporters that would no doubt descend upon the school gates the moment they learned The-Boy-Who-Lived might not very much longer, it was a given that every Slytherin worth his Sorting had dashed off a report of the affair to their parents, and Draco, whatever else he might have been, was undeniably every inch the Slytherin. Even if the boy had shown an appalling lack of judgment and failed to send a letter, word would have reached Lucius from the tightly woven gossip network of wealthy Slytherin wives. Lucius was an unrepentant misogynist, but he knew a useful tool when he saw one and never missed an opportunity to pump Narcissa for information gleaned from the chatter of the ladies' drawing room after one of their lavish soirees.

If ignorance was not his excuse, then it stood to reason that Lucius had not written because he had chosen to sever his ties with him, no pun intended. And he knew very well what that meant. Voldemort was wearying of him. The lies and half-truths and tight-lipped avowals of loyalty were no longer working, and he was growing suspicious. His, Snape's time was running out, and Lucius, always the first to smell blood in the water, was distancing himself. His loyalty, after all, had never been in doubt-it was and had always been to himself.

From the frying pan to the fire. If, whether by the machinations of the changeling outside my door or sheer dumb luck, I escape the deadly, greedy caress of a Dementor, I'll have another, more patient executioner waiting for me, and my death will not be quick.

Were it not for the fact that the surrender of his life would be used as a grim trophy with which to pad that imbecile Fudge's inauspicious laurels, he would have confessed to whatever they wished to hear, including the death of Merlin if it made them happy. But he knew his penance was not yet finished, and if he was to die, he would rather die a reviled, traitorous bastard than a martyr unnoticed.

You could always refuse the summons.

He snorted. It was physically possible to resist the summons, it was true. Karkaroff, the coward, had done so last year. There would be a price, of course, pain beyond calculation, but if you could weather the agony, you could stay away. Resisting the psychological impulse was another matter altogether. His hand strayed to his left forearm and kneaded the scarred flesh there in an attempt to soothe away old memories.

He hated the Dark Lord and his blind, unquestioning followers. Each meeting he attended for the past fifteen years had been spent trying to keep the sneer off his face and the hatred from burning a hole in his guts. Even the air he breathed tasted different there, tainted and foul, greasy on his tongue, and more than once he had fought the urge to retch as he bent to kiss scabrous feet, hard as ivory beneath his trembling lips.

And yet he could not forget that he had once been one of them, just as eager and full of fanatical zeal, could not resist the faint, dusty stirrings of kinship as he stood or kneeled with them. His reasons had not truly been their reasons, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was that he understood them, even after the distance of years, and the faded empathy drew him in even as it repulsed him.

And then there was Albus. If he refused to go and cowered here in the castle, Albus would lose his eyes and ears into the inner circle, myopic and hindered as they might be, and he wanted to give the venerable old soul all the advantage he could before they struck him down. What was more, he was always afraid that if he didn't go, if he shirked his terrible duty, then he would miss the one important clue that would end the killing once and for all, as well as the single, shining shred of atonement that would let him rest at last. So he would go when the inevitable summons came, even if it meant he would not return.

This train of thought served only to increase the knots of tension in his neck and shoulders, so he pushed it away and scowled at his still-nerveless knees. He wanted to do something to distract his mind from the matters of his ultimate fate and the child hovering silently in his parlor like a sentinel ghost, but he could not find the energy to rise from his bed. He was so tired, not just physically, but emotionally. His hearty reserves of the famed British stiff upper lip were all but depleted, and he was as lost and frightened and furious as he had been as a fifteen-year-old boy, when Potter and his friends had driven him to his knees and filled his mouth with soap just because they could.

"Potter," he spat dispiritedly, "always Potter."

His gaze landed on the shadowy outline of his boots in the wardrobe. They were his oldest and most cherished pair, bought with Galleons from his first wages as a Hogwarts professor. The Aurors would have taken them had they known of their personal significance, but to them, they had only been worn bits of leather and wood, and so they remained undisturbed, a symbol of covert triumph, a knowledge that they had not taken all of him away with them.

He suddenly wanted to polish them, to work the leather in his hands and feel it yield beneath his fingers. Top to bottom in thoughtful, sensuous circles, his fingers scraping over the delicate leather, the sensitive tips covered in bootblack. His hands would work, and his mind would drift, and perhaps his subconscious would disentangle the snarled threads of his thoughts, ease the cramp of misery in his chest.

It had always been that way. When he was a small boy, before Potter and his friends had crushed his love for Quidditch, it had been a broom he had polished, an ancient but immaculate Cleansweep 450. He had spent countless weekend hours closeted in the school broom shed with a rag and a can of polish, crouched in the cool dirt, inhaling the stale odors of old straw and rat droppings and the brighter, more vital scent of the polish, humming tunelessly as he let his hands drift and his mind wander happier paths. Later, after Quidditch had soured, it had been cauldrons he tended. Then, at twenty, it had been the boots, all black leather and respectability, and three times a week for the past seventeen years, he had polished them, let them carry him away from his troubles.

It was an alluring idea, but his legs refused to cooperate. He tried to stand, only to find that they were stiff, ungainly as marble. He swore at them and at the unwanted burden of inexplicable conscience that had no doubt precipitated the mutiny. It had been a scolding, not a lynching, and they-and he-were being ridiculous. He flopped onto the bed again with a teeth-clacking thump, and his feet, bloodless as stone, prickled, minute darning needles against the soles of his feet. He stomped them on the stone floor to further encourage the return of sensation.

Call her in to fetch them. You might as well do something with her if she's going to be here all night. At the very least, you can see if she'll come.

Rebecca Stanhope, knight-errant and homely handmaiden, he thought, and spluttered in sour amusement. I've no need to see if she'll come; I already know she will.

Maybe, but it'll will keep her from nosing about your private quarters without supervision.

She wouldn't dare, and he knew it. She was too obedient, too attuned to his temperament to be so recklessly foolish.

Too respectful?

That, too. His lip curled in disgust at the unspoken admission, but the voice had given him the excuse he needed to ask for her company without conceding that he longed for it.

"Stanhope," he barked.

Rebecca, who had been sitting resolutely in the same spot in which he had so unceremoniously left her, turned her head at the sound of his voice. The tears that had been threatening to spill from her aching eyes remained unshed, and without stopping to consider the angry, betrayed voice inside her head screaming for her to ignore him, she rolled to the door that led to his bedroom and study.

She leaned forward until her lips were scant inches from the door, and she wrinkled her nose at the memory of old varnish. "Yes, sir?"

"Stop nosing about my private quarters and get in here," came his voice from behind the door.

She leaned back and snorted. It had never occurred to her to go poking through his meager possessions. Prison or not, this was still his home, and willing as she might have been to cast the rules of decency and fairness aside for everyone else, she could not forget them here, with him. She was, whether he liked it or not, acknowledged it or not, still his pupil, and she would hold him in all the esteem a professor deserved.

She took a deep breath, reached out, and twisted the tarnished doorknob between frozen fingers. It was glacial here in the dungeons, and her blood was sluggish in her veins. Each breath was suspended for an instant in the air, and when her stiff fingers brushed the heavy knob, the cold sank jagged teeth into her knuckles. The door swung open with a gentle displacement of air, and by the dim light from the torches in the parlor, she saw her Potions Master.

His face was little more than dim fancy looming out of the shadows, but his eyes were as vibrant as ever, onyx fire in the gloom, and they were fixed unblinkingly upon her face. She sensed movement and heard the faint shift of wool, but he made no move to rise. Instead, his fingers harrowed through his hair and descended to his lap again. He did not speak. He simply stared at her. She closed the door behind her, folded her hands over her knees, and waited.

"Well, come closer," he hissed, and scowled at her.

"Yes, sir." She rolled into a pool of light cast by a desultory torch bracketed above the wardrobe, and stopped.

Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and she saw him, truly saw him, for the first time. She wanted to cram her frigid knuckles into her mouth and weep, fold herself over her knees and cry until she was hollow, but she didn't dare. He eschewed pity, and he would interpret her tears and cries as just that-unwanted pity from an unwanted savior. So she swallowed the howl of stunned outrage and shock that had risen in her throat and forced herself to look him in the eye.

His robes were as neat and crisp as ever, and beneath the smell of allspice and parchment dust was the smell of lavender laundry soap. The white collar of the linen shirt he wore beneath his robes was immaculate, the edges clean and sharp. His boots gleamed in the wavering torchlight. His face was an inscrutable mask, white as bleached bone.

That, however, was where normality ended. He looked...ravaged, for lack of a better word. His face was haggard, the skin drawn tightly over his cheeks, and his eyes, for all their fire, were bleak and desolate. She was sure that if she gazed into them long enough, she would see the great fortress of his indomitable will crumble, the foundation collapse upon itself in a mushroom cloud of bitter surrender. And on the collar of his robes were two pinprick holes where his dignity had once rested.

What did they do to you? she wanted to shriek at him, and she fought the urge to plunge her hand into her pocket and crush the pin coiled there between her fingers. She longed to draw it out and return it to its rightful place. Though her rational mind knew it was ludicrous, heart was convinced that with that single deed, everything that had come after would be expunged, the cosmic clock reset and the cruel pendulum of Fate stayed before the killing arc.

But things didn't work like that, not even here, where magic was law and strong as the desire of the soul that wielded it. If they did, Headmaster Dumbledore would have waved it all away with a merry flick of his wand. Harry would be alive and whole, and Professor Snape would still simmer with mesmerizing, wormwood vitality, not wear his robes like a shroud. She wrapped her trembling hands around the armrests of her chair, bit her tongue until pain flared, bright and coppery in her mouth, and watched each breath billow from her nostrils in a fog of spent life while she waited for the silence to be broken.

"Are you cold?" he asked abruptly, and the bedsprings creaked as he shifted his weight.

"Yes, sir," she said, and her body shivered, as if to prove the point.

"Where are your cloak and gloves?" he murmured. Then, an afterthought, "Stupid girl."

She shrugged, and his shoulders stiffened in silent reproach. "It's twenty degrees warmer on the seventh floor, sir. I'm sorry."

He snorted. "Typical Gryffindor. Willing to charge anywhere at all with no thought of preparation or consequences." He tugged irritably on his own cloak and spared her a baleful, contemptuous glance. "Bring me my boots," he snapped. "And as I have no desire to have your self-inflicted death by hypothermia added to the list of charges brought against me, you may bring one of my traveling cloaks as well. The ones on the left only-the ones on the right are for formal occasions and worth more than your mind-boggling life."

"Sir?" she said blankly, uncertain that she had heard him correctly.

"You heard me, Stanhope," he snapped, and this time there were traces of the old, familiar dangerous vitriol in his voice, much to her surreptitious glee. "Bring the boots from my wardrobe and one of my traveling cloaks. At once."

She struggled to maintain a neutral expression while she pondered the fact that he had just offered her his clothes, clothes that would undoubtedly smell of allspice and parchment dust and wrap her in a cloud of temporary protection against the frigid, finger-stiffening cold and the demons with human faces that lurked outside these rooms. She swallowed a bewildered giggle and reached for her control stick with pained, delirious precision.

"Yes, sir," she said, and inclined her head in a curt, acquiescent nod.

His wardrobe was as organized and precise as his classroom, and as she stared at the neatly partitioned row of cloaks, robes, shirts, and trousers, she could not suppress a surge of admiration. No space was wasted. The white linen shirts hung beside the utilitarian black robes, and the crisp trousers were arranged beside the flowing cloaks in a perfectly symmetrical line. Not a thread was out of place.

Only thing I don't see are his underwear, she thought absently as she reached for the cloak on the far left of the wardrobe.

Hoping to see them, were you? muttered her grandfather coyly, and her cheeks prickled with embarrassed heat.

No, actually, I wasn't. More familiarity than I want, thank you. I don't need to see Professor's Snape's tighty whities.

Maybe he doesn't wear any, the voice suggested with gleeful pragmatism.

That was not a line of thought she needed to pursue at this date, or any date, for that matter, so she set it aside with an affronted snort and concentrated on coaxing the cloak she had chosen from its hanger. The wardrobe was too tall for her to grasp the cloak from the top, so she tugged gently on the hem bunched between her cold fingers. The hanger swayed drunkenly on the rod, but the cloak did not budge. It simply hung there, stolid as a wall.

"Dammit," she swore under her breath, and tightened her grip in preparation for a more vociferous tug.

"Tear that cloak, Miss Stanhope, and I will deduct its value from the Gryffindor point glass at the earliest opportunity," Professor Snape purred, his voice as dark and sensual as the fabric between her fingers, and she shivered.

"Yes, sir."

She tugged again, harder this time, and though the thin copper hanger bowed at the insistent pressure, the cloak refused to yield its tenacious grip. She let it go with an infuriated huff, and the hanger resumed its former shape with a merry, mocking twang.

"Your incompetence is truly remarkable," he said matter-of-factly, and she heard the muffled groan of bedsprings as he rose, then the sharp clack of impatient boot heels on stone. She did not need to turn to know that he was standing behind her. She felt the predatory, invasive pressure of him between her shoulder blades and in the small of her narrow back.

"It's a bit high, sir," she said, aware that if she leaned back, her head would graze his abdomen. She could feel the heat of him through the fabric of his robes, and she swallowed with a dry click.

"Spare me your excuses." He sounded bored. An alabaster hand shot out and plucked the cloak from its hanger with a ruthless, efficient snap of his wrist, and he dropped it onto her lap with thoughtless grace. "Now, Miss Stanhope, my boots. Preferably before I succumb to the infirmities of age." The hand disappeared, but the unseen weight of him did not.

"Yes, sir," she said, and folded the cloak so that the hem was tucked against her knees and in no danger of scraping the floor when she moved again. Her hands, though cold and blue, were suddenly slick with sweat.

She leaned down, each breath cold and sharp in her throat, and reached for the boots in the bottom of the wardrobe. Her back gave a strident, warning twinge of protest, and she willed the cramped muscle to relax. If she had an attack now, she would scream, and if she screamed, then Dawlish and Shacklebolt would burst through the door, find her in Professor Snape's bedroom, and waste no time in dragging him off on charges of torture and molestation of the disabled, never mind that they were both still clothed. She pressed her lips together and breathed through her nose to cut off the groan of discomfort before it could form.

You're here, you're with Professor Snape, and you're both all right, she told herself, and the cramp departed with a final, petulant twinge, a promise of darker things to come.

She lifted the boots gingerly from the bottom of the wardrobe, her fingers digging into the soft felt lining inside to keep them from slipping. The smell of old, well-cared for leather stung her nostrils, a rich, vinegary spice that made her eyes water. She cradled them on her lap, surprised at their heft, and turned to face Professor Snape, who had never moved.

He was standing, as she had expected, with his feet wide apart and his arms crossed in front of his chest, and he was looking down his nose at her with lazy malice. She held out the boots without a word.

He plucked them from her and rested them in the crook of one black-robed arm. "At last. Only took seven minutes. Are you tired, Miss Stanhope? You're breathing like a wounded Crumple-Horned Snorkack," he snapped.

She panted and swiped the back of her hand across her forehead. "A bit, but I'll be all right, sir."

His lip curled in a savage sneer, and in the dim torchlight, she could see the glint of saliva on one crooked canine. "Your endurance is appalling."

She didn't know what to say to that, so she settled for the unpunishable "Yes, sir," and waited for him to elaborate.

He spun away from her, stalked to a night table beside his bed, opened a drawer, and pulled out small, thin can. Then he slammed the drawer with an irritated thump, strode to the foot of the bed, and sat down again. "How do you expect to save me, stupid child, if you have the constitution of a cosseted houseplant?" he demanded sharply. He was not looking at her now, but at the can in his hand, unscrewing the top of it with a languid twist of his fingers.

Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Sir?"

He spared her a triumphant there-you-see look as he set the now open can on the bed beside him and reached into his robes. "You have always been an offense to the eyes, but your present state is nothing short of monstrous. Your hair is filthy and brittle, your eyes are sunken pits inside your face, you look like a bundle of sticks inside your robes, and you're decidedly addled." He pulled a chamois from his robes and dabbed it into the can.

"Addled?" she repeated, a trace of petulance in her voice.

He looked up sharply, the chamois poised over one of his boots. "I did not stutter, Miss Stanhope," he said coldly. "And I will not tolerate impudent whinging." He stared at her in mute challenge for several moments, daring her to contradict him, and when she offered no further protest, he dropped his gaze to his boots again. "What excuse could you possibly have for looking so wretched?"

She sighed and harrowed her fingers through her hair. "I've had trouble eating or sleeping lately, sir," she said quietly.

Ethereal lily fingers stopped their melancholy drift over supple leather, and he looked up at her. "Is that supposed to inspire me to sympathy?" he murmured, and narrowed his eyes.

She shook her head, once to the left, once to the right. "No, sir." She bit the inside of her cheek to smother the suicidal addendum, I doubt anything in heaven or on Earth could make you remember what that feels like.

He snorted, but his squinting eyes relaxed, and his hand resumed its hypnotic, rhythmic caress of the leather. His lips pursed in a contemplative moue, as though he was pondering his arsenal of vitriol and deciding the choicest morsel, and then they relaxed again.

"Whatever useless, inane histrionics you are engaging in, stop. You are of little use to me as it is, but you will be worth nothing if you're prostrate in the Hospital Wing. Contrary to the opinion of your severely over-inflated ego, you are not a saint, merely a student with a blatant disregard for rules, propriety, and sense, and as such, have no right to wage a ridiculous fast. Your mind needs balanced nutrition to function properly, and judging from the deplorable condition of your hair, you are on the edge of collapse. If you ever come before me again in such poor shape, I will turn you out, Headmaster or no. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir." She was torn between indignation and dumbfounded amusement.

"Mm," he grunted. His eyes drifted to the cloak still bundled on her lap and hardened. "Why haven't you put that on?" he snapped.

She flinched at the acrimony, bitter as anise, in his voice. Clearly, he had taken the cloak's continued presence on her lap as another sign of gross impertinence, not as the simple forgetfulness that it was. "Sorry, Professor, I'd forgotten," she said, chagrined, and groped in the dim light for the clasp.

His fluttering hands froze in mid-circle. "I told you, Miss Stanhope," he spat, each word wrenched through gritted teeth, I am not your professor, and I never was."

Her own hands drooped into the fabric of the cloak in her lap, the fingers curled loosely around the tiny metal clasp at the neck. She looked at him for nearly a minute without speaking, knowing that if she said what was straining at the fraying tether of her caution, he would bring the full brunt of his wrath upon her head. He had proven that his tongue was just as cutting and potent as ever, as he had so admirably demonstrated in the parlor, and irritated as she was by his caustic petulance, she was not certain she wanted to risk an unchecked fullisade, not the least because he was right. Officially, he wasn't her professor, and he could do as he pleased, say as he pleased without fear of reprisal. These walls were deaf, dumb, and blind, and whatever came to pass here would stay here.

She was face to face with the tiger now, and there was no safety line to pull her away from crushing jaws.

In the end, she said it. Against her better judgment and the voice of self-preservation that wailed piteously inside her head, she let the tether snap, because to not let it snap was tantamount to admitting that she was of no consequence, that she meant nothing, that everything his unfaltering cruelty had taught her was irrelevant, an unintended side effect, and that possibility was too painful to entertain. She could not bear to relinquish the tattered belief that a grudging respect had blossomed between them. So, she walked to the crumbling precipice of safety, peered over the edge into the abyssal maw of unknown consequences foretold, and stepped off.

"Begging your pardon, sir, but that is not for you to decide." She bowed her head and waited for the inevitable.

Please, Jesus, let me make it out alive, she thought, and her heart thudded painfully against her ribcage.

A silence so complete she thought she had gone deaf fell over the room. Even the ragged, stricken hiss of her own petrified breath was muted, and she wondered for a moment if the hand of God had reached down and stuffed swatches of gauze into her ears. On the periphery of her vision, she saw Professor Snape staring at the crown of her head, his left cheek hollowed, as though he were biting it to stifle an acid retort. The hand holding the chamois hovered above one half-polished boot, and the fingertips were smeared with the faintest traces of bootblack. Ivory and oil.

She waited for the volley of livid, scathing insults, each as beautiful as a nightshade lily, to fly from his lips, which, in the extremity of his disbelief, had disappeared into his face, but it never materialized. He simply put the chamois down on the bed, set the boots on the floor beside his feet, and rose in a swirl of doomsday black.

I've pushed him too far, she thought with stark, swooning horror. He's going to hit me.

That was all she had time to think before he was upon her. She recoiled from the expected blow, but his hand did not come up to strike her face; rather, it reached down, seized the cloak folded haphazardly on her lap, and snapped it open with the strident crack of starched wool. "I told you to put this on," he snarled. "Lean forward. Now."

She was so relieved to be in possession of all of her limbs and her flagging spirits that she floated forward bonelessly, limp and uncontrolled as a rag doll. Her robes were plastered to her back by drying sweat. Only instinct prevented her from resting her head against the shelf of his groin, an act that would no doubt precipitate another, more lethal verbal assault. Her nose was a hair's breadth from the voluminous folds of his robes, and before she could stop herself, she inhaled deeply.

Warmth enveloped her, and she was swaddled in the comforting itch of wool. His voice cut through her blissful stupor like a serrated blade.

"Stop indulging in your profoundly disturbing predilection for my robes and sit up," he hissed.

"Yes, sir." She sat up, grateful that the chagrined flush of her cheeks was concealed by abetting shadow.

He pressed his fingers beneath her chin and tilted it up with a brusque jerk, and she winced as a muscle in her nape gave a disapproving twinge.

"Stop whinging," he muttered, and fastened the clasp at her throat.

"Yes, sir," she squawked. She decided not to tell him that he had buttoned it a trifle too tightly, for fear that he would rue his mild response to her earlier audacity and take upon himself to tighten it still further and rid himself of her onerous persistence. She waited until his back was turned and wedged a finger between the fabric and her neck in attempt to loosen its grip on her windpipe.

"Sir," she began when he had settled himself on the bed again and picked up his boots.

"Silence! I have had enough of your incessant palavering for the time being."

She knew better than to press her unbelievable luck, so she lapsed into a respectful silence and watched him work. The motion of his hand was slow and constant, and the sound of the chamois on the supple leather reminded her of the sound her grandfather's brush had made as he scrubbed the knobbled pine boards of the kitchen floor, a soft, scouring shushshushshush that spoke of cleanliness and care. The combination of warmth from the cloak and the familiar noise of his polishing was soporific, and she wilted in her chair, her eyelids pleasantly heavy.

Shushshushshush, she thought drowsily, and wallowed in the scent of allspice that wafted from the cloak in a dry, seductive cloud. Wonder if he knows how relaxed he looks now? Probably not. Wouldn't let me see if he did. The thoughts were hazy and unimportant, and she let them drift through the scrutinizing filter of her mind like tendrils of dissipating mist.

He did look relaxed, though, almost serene. The deep lines of worry etched into the corners of his mouth and creeping stealthily from the corners of his eyes were not so profound. It was as though he was smoothing away years of toil and trouble with every stroke of the chamois in his hand. His lips had reappeared, and they were parted just enough to give her a glimpse of tooth. And she thought, lolling gormlessly in her chair, that was how he must have looked as a young man, before life had crushed him beneath a mountain of seething hatreds and bitter disappointments. It made her want to cry, and so she retreated into the smell of allspice and parchment dust and warm wool and closed her stinging eyes.

"Dribble on that cloak, and you'll spend the remainder of your time here washing it without magic in the lavatory," he muttered, not looking up from his boots.

"Erm, yes, sir," she said quietly, and straightened in her chair. The cloak was too long for her, and as she scooted her buttocks into a more comfortable position in the seat, the excess fabric, which had heretofore rested in an undignified bunch in the small of her back, caught on her shifting shanks and tightened the noose around her neck. She sputtered and dug her finger into the collar again. "Sir?" she ventured to make up for her breach of decorum. "What can you tell me about cyanide? I don't recall seeing it in any of the fifth-year Potions work."

She immediately wished she had held her tongue. His hand still moved across the boot in wide, dreamy circles, but all the years he had left behind descended upon him again, blighting his face and stealing the miraculous, youthful radiance that had temporarily suffused it. His lip twitched in a sardonic sneer.

"Cyanide is for use in N.E.W.T-level Potions work only, and then only sparingly because I cannot trust you frothing twits not to poison yourselves." His hand paused in its meticulous circuit of the boot. "As Mr. Potter so admirably demonstrates." He scoffed and renewed his attention to the boot.

"Is it used in any common magical products-cleaning products, maybe, or pesticides?"

His hand slowed again as he considered the question, and she could see the cogs and wheels turning in his head. "There may be. Pesticides are the province of Hagrid and Professor Sprout. As far as the cleaning supplies go, Filch, much as he loathes the populace of this school, would never use anything that might endanger the feckless student body. More's the pity," he finished drily, and reached for the other boot.

"Do you think it's possible that Harry accidentally poisoned himself in Herbology?"

He shook his head. "Cyanide acts too quickly. He couldn't have ingested it anywhere besides the Potions classroom." He finished polishing the toe with an ill-tempered jerk of his now unrecognizable chamois. "Even if it were possible, it would not account for the missing cyanide from my stores."

So much for that theory. She tried another tack. "Maybe someone poisoned him using cyanide from another source and stole the cyanide from your stores to make you look guilty," she suggested.

He stared at her in exasperation. "And where, pray tell, would they get it? Cyanide is a controlled substance, and no apothecary with a shred of common sense would sell it to anyone under the age of reason; most will only sell it to licensed Potions Masters." He straightened as he spoke, and she did not miss the note of pride that had crept into his voice as he imparted this last bit of information.

"Maybe they stole it from Professor Sprout's stores. How meticulous is her record-keeping?"

He was silent for a long moment, and then he said, "I don't know, but I have never had reason to doubt her skills as a responsible, prudent Herbologist." His voice was listless and drained, and by the protective hunch of his shoulders, she surmised that he did not want to talk about it anymore. "Her skills as a teacher are another matter entirely," he added wearily. "I'm certain the Ministry has examined her stores, as well as the stores of the rest of the staff."

Yes, but how thoroughly? Not much reason to look at her if they've already decided on a culprit, is there? she thought, but she said, "I imagine they had their hands full with Professor Moody, sir."

"Your wit is not appreciated, Miss Stanhope," he muttered, but there was no venom in it. Then, just within the range of her hearing, "Lucky to have all their bits intact when they left, I'd wager."

It suddenly dawned on her cautious, overwhelmed mind that the latter sotto voce comment was his singular brand of vituperative humor, and only the certainty that he would flay her alive with his barbed tongue if so much as a titter passed her lips kept her from braying laughter. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands to distract herself from the treacherous, feather-quill tickle of mirth in the back of her throat.

"Sir," she said, concentrating very hard on the mesmerizing motion of his hand, "Does cyanide have uses in any Muggle gadgetry that would blend in at Hogwarts?"

"Investigating Muggle technology is a waste of time, Miss Stanhope, and of late, time has become a most precious commodity where I am concerned. I'll not have you waste it chasing after every crackpot theory that enters your febrile mind," he snapped, and set the crumpled chamois on the bed with a furious snap of his wrist. "Merlin's beard."

"Just investigating all possible avenues, sir. Don't you ever watch Mugg-no, I don't suppose you do," she muttered. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and then she said, "How does the ward on the cabinet work?"

He fixed her with an incredulous, impatient stare. "Has it not occurred to you, you impossibly tiresome child, that I do not wish to discuss this anymore?" he said, and one hand came up to massage his forehead between his fingers and thumb.

She knew how he felt. Her own head throbbed like an impacted tooth, heavy and unwieldy on the thin, straining stem of her neck. She wanted nothing more than to let it sag to her chest and succumb to the exhaustion that filled her bones like hardened mercury, but the need for answers, for some shred of enlightenment, overrode the pang of empathy in the pit of her stomach, and she straightened her knotted shoulders and stiffened her spine.

"Yes, sir, I know. As you have so often pointed out, I see far too much for my own good. However, as you so succinctly put it, you have no time for such luxuries as self-indulgence," she said flatly, and her face was a mask of bloodless, clinical detachment. Her knees and stomach were hot putty beneath her skin, and for once in her life, she was grateful for the hard seat biting into her buttocks. Without it, she would have sunk to the floor in shock at her own audacity.

Way to go, Rebecca; you've just sewn your own burial shroud, gibbered the voice of outraged prudence inside her head, and looking at Professor Snape's blanched, pinched face, she could not disagree. Her mutinous stomach beat a hasty retreat to the safe harbor of her ankles, and she was sure that it had abandoned her dinner in its wake. That was churning and seesawing in the vertiginous void, no doubt biding its uneasy time until it could make a spectacular reappearance in the lavatory toilet later in the evening.

His eyes were flat, black milk glass, the lifeless eyes of an encroaching serpent, and it took every ounce of her will not to flinch. She curled her fingers around the armrests of her chair, and the cracked vinyl creaked as her fingers dug convulsively into the grooves that split it like age lines in a careworn face.

Say something, she thought feverishly, and her tongue was numb and bitter inside her mouth.

"I will make you pay for every liberty you take here," he said softly, malice dripping from every word like suppurating pus.

"I know, sir," she said, and covered her face with her hands.

Oh, Lord do I know it. And part of me prays for it because if you do, it means that I've done my job, I've run the good race.

She heard the furtive rustle of linen and wool as he shifted on the bed again, and for one panicked instant, she thought he was getting up to strike her, but then she dismissed the idea as too boorish. He would be far crueler, subtler in his vengeance. Besides, she was too tired to care. She had limited energy, and she could not afford to squander it squabbling with him.

"The wards," he said stiffly, "as all wards are, are linked to the caster. In essence, they draw their efficacy from me, from my biological rhythms. As each ward is bound to the caster, it bears a unique signature breakable only by the caster and well-trained Aurors. No one but myself should have been able to gain access to the stores."

She drew her index fingers over the hairs of her opposite forearm. "What happens if someone tries to breach the ward, sir?"

"They receive a shock that temporarily stuns them, and the disruption causes a corresponding jolt in the system of the caster, a jolt both exquisitely painful and unmistakable."

An unpleasant thought occurred to her then, and she swallowed against a wave of nausea. "Does that mean, sir, that when the Aurors broke your ward...," she trailed off. She didn't really want to know.

"Yes." A Curse as dark as unconfessed sin.

"Oh." That was all she could manage. "I suppose it would be ridiculous to ask if you felt any such jolt before Potter keeled over," she said weakly.

"Yes, it would," he snapped.

Before she could think of anything else to say, the door opened with a low, ominous click of turning tumbler, and her head snapped in the direction of the sound, her heart mortified thunder against her ribs.

Caught! Caught! she thought frantically as she swung her chair to face the door. Oh, sweet Jesus, I'm caught, and they're going to torture him for it. A strangled, helpless wheeze escaped her, and she cast a trapped, bug-eyed gaze at Professor Snape, who was gazing at the opening door with no discernible expression. Indeed, he was eerily calm, almost disdainful as the door swung inexorably inward.

Get a grip, girl, roared her grandfather, a roundhouse slap over the rising din of panic. It'll make things worse for him if you look guilty. Cool and steady now, just like with those lackwit psychiatrists back at the cripple ranch.

She snorted and plunged her hand into the pocket of her robes in search of her wand. If it became evident that they were going to haul the two of them away, then she would at least have the satisfaction of committing an offense worthy of the indignity. The panic receded and left only cold glee in its stead.

"No, you stupid girl!" hissed Professor Snape. "Do you want to end up in Azkaban?"

The contemptuous urgency in his voice drew her attention from the door, and she stared at him in abject consternation. "Sir?"

He swore softly and muttered, "Blasted Gryffindor vainglory. Shoot first and think later."

"That would explain why so many become Aurors," said a laconic voice from the doorway, and Rebecca jerked her head toward it so quickly that the tendons in her neck gave a violent twinge of protest.

It was an Auror, all right, the one called Shacklebolt, if she recalled correctly, and he was eyeing her with a mixture of wry amusement and diffuse concern. She opened her mouth to offer an explanation for her presence, then shut it again. There was no reasonable scenario she could offer, truth be told, and what was more, she didn't want to give him one. She did, however, long to deliver an agonizing curse directly between his eyes.

The doors of her fortress clanged shut with a rolling echo, and the blissful, clarifying numbness settled over her, sharpening her vision and soothing her tumultuous mind. Everything slowed. The hummingbird flutter of her heart slowed to a languid, drowsy thud, and all concern melted away, fog in the face of scorching sun. It was a relief to feel absolutely nothing after weeks of turmoil, and she sank into the embrace of emotional inertia with a grateful sigh.

I've been away too long, and it's good to be home. A sardonic smile ghosted over her lips.

The Auror must have sensed the sudden shift, because he raised his hands in a placatory gesture. "I mean no harm, Miss...Stanhope?" he said. "I'm just here to see that you're safely out of here before I go off duty. My colleagues won't take kindly to you being here."

"Are you?" Her voice was an uninflected monotone, and from the corner of her eye, she could see Professor Snape gazing at her with piercing scrutiny.

Another fleeting smirk. So he had not descended into unassailable apathy, after all. Good to see you again, sir.

"Indeed I am," Shacklebolt said implacably, his hands clasped behind his back. "Hiding in plain sight is a rather tricky business, and Headmaster Dumbledore asked me to help where I could. If you would come with me, I'll Disillusion you again." He offered her a polite smile.

"No. I don't think I will." Cold and dead as stagnant water.

She had no intention of allowing him to touch her with his wand. For all she knew, he was going to Stun her and summon his colleagues to behold the incontrovertible evidence of Snapian machinations. Granted, if that was his purpose, there was nothing to stop him from carrying it out, but at least she wouldn't lumber blindly into the trap like a mindless sheep. She tightened her fingers, which had never left her pocket, around the shaft of her wand and stared stonily back at him.

She wanted to hex him, hurl curses like sweet epithets, one after the other, until he and his blue robes were a disheveled heap on the floor. Her tongue prickled and burned with the taste of rebellion, sour as aged whiskey, and her hand caressed the smooth wood of her wand in an eager, sensuous rhythm. Just two words, or four, and she could realize her dream of seeing an Auror writhing on the floor, and that was one dream she would see fulfilled, whatever the cost.

From his seat on the foot of his bed, Snape watched the confrontation between Kingsley and his young changeling with avid fascination. From the befuddled expression on Shacklebolt's face, he had clearly not anticipated such ferocious resistance, and Snape could not suppress a stab of truculent glee at his bewilderment. Finally, something for which his extensive Ministry training had not prepared him-a stubborn, iron-spined pupil and uneasy ally who wasn't going to blithely accept edicts given force merely because of crisp blue robes and an air of entitled confidence. It would have been funny if it weren't so dangerous.

It was dangerous, about that there was no mistake. Something had happened in the five seconds between the click of the tumbler and the opening of the door, a cataclysmic shifting of the winds that mesmerized and unnerved him. Gone was the stricken, goggle-eyed child who had swung to face the door, and in her place was a misshapen, white golem with polished mica eyes, cunning as a fox and quivering with the unsatiated need to inflict hurt. She had erased all emotion from her face and posture as quickly and efficiently as if she had drawn a curtain, but he could still feel the enmity radiating from her in palpable waves, making his too-long idle fingers ache with tension and filling his sensitive nose with a pungent, primal reek.

She wanted to hurt Kingsley, longed for it. She was young, and too tired and too frightened and furious to make the distinction between ally and enemy. The blue robe was enough to damn Shacklebolt, to earn him a painful scorch mark or two before his steadier hand and vaster knowledge brought things to their inevitable conclusion. One more word or a sudden move from the Auror, and she would forget restraint and release her anger in a hail of red and yellow.

Well did he understand that desire, that feral, all-consuming ache to damage, destroy, and wreak vengeance upon the world around you; he had, after all, spent seven years in the corrosive red and gold shadow of Potter and his sycophants, choking on his impotent rage and stroking it away with swift, clandestine caresses beneath the cover of night. That rage had swallowed him up with dulcet promises of seeing his enemies broken before him, sniveling and helpless, as he had once been, and it had taken him by the hand and led him down the path to Voldemort's inner circle.

Which was why he could not let her do it, sorely as he was tempted to do just that. Voldemort would never recruit her, but he was not the only source of evil and depravity in the world, much as the rest of the wizarding world liked to console itself otherwise. When Voldemort was toppled, either by Potter or the treacherous wand of a former servant, another tyrant would rise to take his place, one only too happy to prey upon the unending wellspring of hatred that flowed through her veins and lent her a warped vitality. They would not be concerned with her grotesque frame, only with what her indomitable, daunting will could accomplish, and he had learned from their short, reluctant acquaintance that she could achieve more than enough to ensure calamity.

Kingsley was opening his mouth again, and if he uttered a syllable before Rebecca was brought to heel, there would be no stopping her, and that would not bode well for anyone involved, because if she cast a spell, it would not be a half-hearted attempt; it would be the most powerful spell at her disposal, and Kingsley, indoctrinated as he was by all the airy claptrap about fairness and the mighty showing mercy to the weak, would not retaliate until the damage was done. Woe be unto him if she chose a spell that incapacitated the victim on the first shot.

"Stanhope," he spat, his voice sharp as a whip crack in the pregnant stillness. "I have already told you to stop this foolish grandstanding. Do not make me ask you again."

Under normal circumstances, she would have jumped and bowed her head in immediate acquiescence, but she neither jumped nor lowered her head. Her nostrils flared, and the fabric of her robes rippled as she clutched her wand more tightly still. Her eyes remained fixed on Kingsley, who, it appeared, was finally beginning to grasp the gravity of the situation.

"Sir?" she said in the same flat, colorless voice she had used to tell Kingsley that she would not be complying with his wishes.

"Let go of your wand. He is not going to harm you; he is one of the Headmaster's faithful minions," he muttered drily.

"I don't trust him, sir," she responded.

I am not asking you to trust him, Miss Stanhope," he snarled, irritated at her obdurate refusal to stand down. "I am asking you to trust me, and if you cannot do so, then perhaps I and the Headmaster have misjudged you. Severely."

She did look at him then, and he saw with no surprise whatsoever that the doors of her impregnable fortress had slammed shut. Her face was reduced to the sum of its organic parts-wan strips of flesh over bone and stringy sinew, gelatinous bits of tissue with blue irises stuffed into bony sockets. The entity known as Rebecca Stanhope, bane of sanity and peace of mind, had retreated behind the ramparts, divested itself of bothersome quibbles of right and wrong, and devoted itself to the simple yet infinitely terrible act of self-preservation. In other words, Kingsley Shacklebolt was a very lucky man.

"Cooperate, now and in future. I'll not be the excuse for appalling Gryffindor histrionics." He smoothed a stray forelock of hair from his forehead and fixed her with a withering glare, which, he noted with dour unease, she weathered with startling equanimity.

"Yes, sir." She withdrew her hand from her pocket.

"Come here," Kingsley told her, and she went, a mistrustful cur being pulled on a throttling chain, her face a determined blank.

"Miss Stanhope?" Snape called. "Turn over your wand. We wouldn't want any mishaps in the corridors."

She stiffened, a growl of protest just behind her lips.

"Liberties, Miss Stanhope," he murmured, and she thrust her wand at Kingsley with a jerky lunge of her matchstick arm.

"Thank you," Kingsley said to her, and she returned his courtesy with an ill-tempered grunt. Then he turned to him and said, "Thank you, Professor."

You have no idea just how much you should be thankful for, he thought with sardonic relish, but he said nothing.

Kingsley was just about to perform the Disillusionment Charm again when he, Snape, realized that Rebecca was still wearing his cloak. "Wait," he ordered abruptly, and rose from the bed with an unconscious flourish of his robes. "My cloak, Miss Stanhope."

Some of the stoic bleakness receded from her eyes, and she blinked at him in logy surprise. "Oh," she said, "yes, sir." Her fingers drifted up and began to grapple indelicately with the clasp at her throat.

"Give it to me before you tear it with your bumbling," he muttered.

He strode to where she sat, and plucked the clasp loose with practiced ease. He gathered the cloak in his hands, dimly aware that the entrenched scent of his work and sweat was now overlain with the light odor of peaches. Disconcerted by how unexpectedly pleasant he found the combination, he held it away from him, as though he thought it contaminated.

In the instant before Kingsley tapped the top of her head with the tip of his wand, something flickered behind the closely guarded walls of her eyes, but before he could make sense of it, she was consumed by a wavering cocoon of nothing, as though the empty space of the room had reached out and devoured her whole. A moment after that, she was gone, truly gone, and he was alone in his room with the sound of a closing door ringing in his ears and a cloak in his hands that no longer smelled singularly his own.

"Miserable chit," he muttered disagreeably, but there was no malice in it. He put the cloak over the chair beside his bed, and when he went to sleep that night, there were no dreams.