Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Forty-Seven

While Lucius Malfoy was cutting a swath through Hogsmeade and the twisted labyrinth of his memories, Rebecca was hunched in the corner of the fifth-year girls' dormitory, watching with blank mica eyes as Madam Toad and Dawlish searched her belongings for the second time. Kingsley Shacklebolt stood beside her, one long-fingered hand on her knobby shoulder, and the urge to shake it off was a maddening itch beneath her skin.

"It will be all right, Miss Stanhope," he assured her in his rich, resonating baritone. "Everything will be left just as we found it."

"Oh, indeed it will," cooed Umbridge as she pawed through her underclothes with inelegant, pudgy hands. "Unless, of course, we should find something pertinent to our investigation." A high, fluting titter.

"Naturally, ma'am." An indolent, heavy-lidded blink.

Rather wide scope you've given yourself, isn't it? You can take anything you like, and there is nothing I can say. Well, no matter. I know what you're looking for, and you'll never find it. Never, never, never because for all your bureaucratic myopia, it's so close that you can't see it, and even if you could, you would never defile yourself by taking it. The very thought turns your stomach. There's no telling the pestilence I carry, is there? Behind her wan, inscrutable face, she smiled.

She shifted in her seat, and cold metal grazed her ankle, sharp and piercing as the fang of a serpent. The smile behind the mask widened, and she reached to quiet the furtive tickle of clandestine silver. Umbridge and Dawlish paid her no mind as they bustled around the bed. She was as inconsequential as a coat rack to them, and she liked it that way. Her bespoked warden had become ally. The Lord worked in mysterious ways, glory, glory alleluia.

She had slipped the Head of House pin into her sock that morning after her bath. There had been neither rhyme nor reason to the action, no hope of calculated subterfuge. At least, she hadn't thought so then. It had simply seemed imprudent and disrespectful of her to leave it buried among her oft-assaulted undergarments, subjected to the stale memory of old unintended voidings. Beneath her pillow had been no better. Winky was not the only elf responsible for the cleaning of the dormitories, and if one of the tidying house elves had discovered it stashed under her pillow, it would have been disastrous. Even if they hadn't, she ran the risk of some busybody chambermate happening by it in an inexplicable fit of solicitude, and there wasn't a soul among her Housemates who hadn't wished to see that accursed pin ground to so much glittering dust a thousand times over. So she had done the only thing she could and secreted it against her clammy, maligned flesh.

"You don't have anything you'd like to tell us, do you, dear?" Umbridge had forsaken the ransacking of her underwear in favor of overturning the bedclothes, and she spared Rebecca a shrewd, sidelong glance.

"No, ma'am." She watched impassively as her crisp bedsheets were tossed to the floor in a rumpled heap.

"Mmm." Umbridge patted the mattress in brisk, fluttering strokes, searching for suspicious lumps or indentations, and Rebecca was reminded of a malevolent Helen Keller groping sightlessly for her infernal walking stick. "If you did know something, child, better for you to make a clean breast of it. Better for you and for your conscience."

What would you know of conscience, you vicious old crone? Yours curdled years ago, if you had one at all. You bartered it for rank and the iron rod of authority, and you wear both like an honored mantle. Conscience to you is not a guide but a tool to be used against those who carry it. You wheedle, and you cajole, and you pervert their good intentions to your own end, but there is no milk of kindness in the marrow of your bones, no quiet voice to help you stay the course. Those bereft of consciences should not speak of them.

Rebecca merely shook her head and offered a vague smile.

What of your conscience? asked her grandfather, ever the devil's advocate.

A careless, internal shrug. What about it?

She shifted her gaze and watched Dawlish rummage through the contents of her night table with languid efficiency. Leathery, swollen-knuckled fingers picked through the conglomeration of wadded tissues, scraps of parchment, empty inkwells, and old quills. He picked up a stick of lip balm and pinched it between thumb and forefinger as if it were an interesting and heretofore undiscovered specimen of bug.

"Miss, what is this?" he asked gruffly, and turned the stick in a slow, contemplative circle. Umbridge immediately scurried to get a closer look, eyes bulging in salacious anticipation of another neck for the gallows.

Rebecca blinked in surprise. "It's Muggle lip balm, sir."

Dawlish turned the stick upside down and shook it. "Muggle lip balm," he repeated incredulously.

"Of course you realize that we'll have to take this for closer inspection," Umbridge purred, and her fat, pink tongue darted out to moisten her lips. She rubbed her palms together, sandpaper in desert heat.

"Yes, ma'am," Rebecca answered, and gave a brusque, jerky nod of affirmation.

Dawlish produced a small drawstring pouch from the voluminous folds of his robes with a grave flourish, and he slipped the balm inside, moving with the pompous reverence of a vicar giving the Eucharist, and Rebecca clapped a hand over her mouth to smother an unseemly spate of giggles.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been fifteen years since my last confession. I have had impure thoughts. I have dishonored my father and mother. I have taken the Lord's name in vain. I prefer the shower setting on pulsate rather than spray. Oh, and I've defiled myself with lip balm. In the name of the chapped lips, the cold sore, and the herpes simplex II, amen.

A treacherous chuff escaped her, and Umbridge, who was divesting her bed of its linen slipcover, paused and quirked one thin eyebrow.

"Did you say something, dear?" Careless, almost indifferent, but the reptilian glint in her eyes belied her. The rings on her fingers clacked like dried phalanges as she shook the linens.

Inexplicable laughter tickled her throat again, and she swallowed to wash it away. "No, ma'am. I was just thinking."

"Oh?" Umbridge dropped the slipcover and clasped her hands loosely behind her back. "About?" She rocked on the balls of her feet. Toe. Heel. Toe. Heel. A monument that wouldn't quite topple, and the rings clacked in morbid accompaniment. Toe. Click. Heel. Clink.

Ah, ah, have a care girl. This is where mice and angels fear to tread.

Men and angels, she corrected idly.

Her scalp prickled with the weight of Kingsley Shacklebolt's surreptitious gaze, and his hand grew heavier on his shoulder. He was watching, listening. Whatever she said now would be filed away for future reference and carried back to the Headmaster on swift feet. It was a test, too; say too little or speak too cryptically, and arouse suspicion, but speak in haste and remove all doubt. The clammy soles of her feet burned with the illusory pressure of a tightrope.

Stop looking at me, she wanted to snarl, but when her mouth opened, she only said, "Faith. And dinner."

Umbridge blinked, and her brow furrowed in consternation. "Faith and dinner," she murmured, nonplussed and not a little irritated. She fisted her hands on her squat hips

Clearly, she thought further elaboration was in order. Rebecca offered none. She sat and beamed at her in beatific silence. The grip on her shoulder eased infinitesimally, and behind Umbridge, Dawlish ceased his inspection of her night table to stare at them in burgeoning bewilderment.

"Faith and dinner," Umbridge repeated for the second time, as if she thought repetition would illuminate the mystery. Her toe tapped an impatient staccato on the stone floor.

Rebecca hummed to herself and began to rock to and fro in her chair, and all the while, she gazed at her adversary with an expression of vacuous serenity. The seat creaked and groaned beneath her in a dreamy, pendulous rhythm, and soon it blended with the clack of Umbridge's rings and the shifting scrape of perused belongings. Creakclackscrtcreak. Creakclackscrtcreak. It was hauntingly musical, an eerie symphony of secrets well kept and of dance steps cautiously ventured. A liars' cotillion and the devil's masquerade.

Yes, but will we unmask at the stroke of midnight, or will the band play on until we have neither strength nor wit and the web of deceit that we have woven strangles us all?

The thought brought with it not the cold terror she had anticipated, but a heady, whiskey-burn warmth in the pit of her stomach, and adrenaline filled her mouth like sour wine. She could dance until she met her end, dance the Liars' Waltz and the Enemies' Tango until reason fled and the memory of that for which she danced faded into insignificance. Exhaustion would sizzle in her ravaged muscles like acid, and still she would dance. She would lunge and pivot and dip until her enemy faltered, and when the stuporous mantle of too much anguish and too little time overcame them at last, she could surrender to the unending darkness knowing that she had given as good as she got. It would be an honorable death.

Gone nihilistic again, have you? her grandfather grunted. It's getting to be a habit.

She snorted and slumped in her chair. Hardly, you miserable old coot. It's just that dying with my teeth buried to the root in that wench's throat and her blood slathered on my chin is much more appealing than wasting away in some wrinkle ranch with rubber diapers and the smell of my own shit stuck to my backside, please and thank you. I'd like to breathe my last with a scrap of dignity.

Her grandfather uttered a sardonic chuckle. There is no dignity in death, girl. You know that. It is blind in a way justice and all the lofty conceits of man can only envy. Black, white, yellow, rich, poor, hale, infirm-its high, sweet stink pervades them all with equal avarice. The scissors of Atropos are fickle and cut where they will. I lived for seventy-six years and worked my hands to bone and weeping misery, and there was no reprieve for me when my hour came. Your mother found me facedown in the field, one arm flung over the high summer grass and my Sears and Roebuck teeth a few yards away, full of dirt and an industrious colony of ants bent on carrying them to their blind queen in useless tribute. I fought in two wars and fathered four children, and all that counted for a whole lot of nothing in the end. I was just as dead and just as cold as the worthless son of a bitch that never lifted a finger while he was vertical.

At least you were doing something when you died. Like as not, I'll spend my last days strapped into a crazed Barcolounger with tiny wheels and a vinyl seat, sucking applesauce through my left nostril and passing the time by counting the spackle marks on the walls. If I had my druthers, I'd go horizontal after a rare steak and spectacular sex, but barring that, I'll take a death that means something.

Laughter now, and there was an edge of cruelty in it. I'm telling you for the last time-there is no good death, no expression of noble sentiment as you breathe your last in decorous puffs. It's a sordid, merciless business, blood and phlegm and a death rattle like swamp mud in a percolator. Sour breath and bulging eyes and fingers curled into fists on the bedsheets as they try and cling to this mortal coil for thirty seconds more, one heartbeat more. Death is hard. You know that. I know you do. Or did you really think that Brad left this world with a sigh and flutter of eyelashes?

His words struck her like a blow, and she flinched. She had tried very hard not to think of her best friend's lonely final hours, hours she had missed because she had chosen that moment to avert her gaze. When she did think about it, she told herself that he had departed for the far shore of the universe borne on the numbing wings of nigh-toxic levels of anesthetic, that he had simply released his tenacious, raw-fingered grip on the edge of the world and let the current bear him away to peaceful shores and untroubled dreams. It was the sole delusion she had permitted herself, and she would have preferred to keep it, but her grandfather's gravelly, relentless voice had torn it apart. The dull throb of a headache was massing behind her eyes, and she brought a trembling index finger to drift back and forth along the crook of her elbow as if to massage it away.

I don't want to think about it. I'm sure it was brutal and ugly, and I'm also sure that he deserved better, but in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other, I'm going to tell myself that's the way it was. Even high-riding bitches need fairytales from time to time, and that one's mine.

All I'm trying to tell you, the voice said, and in her mind's eye, she could see her grandfather's leathery, tobacco-stained hands raised in a placatory gesture, is that all death is meaningless. It's what you do in the hours and days between your first breath and your last that matters. No one is going to give a fiddler's fart how you met your Maker, shed tears because you went out with your drawers around your ankles and your ass in the breeze. All they'll give a good goddamn about is whether or not you made your mark while you were here. So, you can battle to the death with Madam Toad all you want; just make sure you clear your Potions Master's name before you do.

Thank you for the soliloquy, Grandpa, she thought wryly.

Close as I can get to a kick in the ass.

She laughed, a brittle, exhausted sound in the silent room, and Umbridge, who had been surveying her in thin-lipped fury, pounced.

"Do I amuse you, young lady?" she asked shrilly, and one stubby finger shot out to wag furiously, scant inches from her face. "Well," she huffed, "I'll have you know that impeding a Ministry investigation is a severe offense and carries stiff penalties, including imprisonment in Azkaban." Her jowls quivered in indignation.

"No, m-m-," she began. She looks like a bulldog whose territory has been infringed upon by a rival male with a bigger set.

Oh, that was not a comparison she needed, no sir and no ma'am. She snorted with helpless laughter, her splay-fingered hands clutching her knees with white-knuckled force. It was the worst thing she could do, but it was also the only thing she could do. She was too tired and her nerves too frayed to present a stoic front. She lunged forward, and in her mind's eye, she saw two bulldogs regarding each other balefully as they circled in preparation for lethal combat. One lifted a stubby leg and urinated with inscrutable solemnity. Take that if you can.

She yodeled laughter, and through the din of her mirth, she realized that all other sounds had stopped.

It's intermission at the symphony, she thought nonsensically, and howled.

The laughter had long since ceased to be pleasurable. Indeed, it was an exquisite torture. Her diaphragm expanded and contracted like an overtaxed bellows, and the pleasant burn of welcome exertion had deepened into the serrated-tooth fire of an impending cramp. Her mirth had taken on a desperate, hiccoughing quality, and tears streamed down her scarlet face. The more she tried to stop the lunatic rush of air from her lungs, the more insistent it became, sliding past her clenching, grinding teeth with sinuous, diabolic ease. It had become its own entity, a ravening creature beyond her control. She clapped both hands over her impotent mouth, and still the breathless, choking, screaming chortles came.

You're about to prove an old urban legend, old girl. You're about to die laughing. Any minute now, you're going to topple from your chair and sprawl at Madam Toad's disbelieving feet, dead as a doornail and twice as stiff. Oh, they'll ascribe it to a gran mal seizure or a stroke or an allergic reaction to microscopic dust mites, and after years and a few stiff drinks, Madam Toad might even be able to make herself believe it, but we'll know the truth, you and I. Your quixotic crusade against the smothering Light came to an ignoble end in a puddle of spittle and a black-tongued rictus because you couldn't stop laughing at the image of two bulldogs in a pissing contest.

All of which was certainly true, but it did nothing to quash the laughter still shaking her tiny frame. Nor could the sharp, warning sizzle of the ball of Kingsley Shacklebolt's thumb pressed into the sensitive socket of her shoulder joint. The searing spike of pain raced down her arm in time to her giggles and watery snorts. He wanted her to stop, and she needed to stop, if not for the sake of propriety, then for the sake of her oxygen-starved brain, but needs and wants had temporarily been pushed aside in favor of simple automatic response.

Professor Snape ground the bones of my shoulder between his fingers once, she thought with sudden clarity.

"You don't have the right to do that," she snapped, and pulled away with a savage twist of her arm.

And then her heart froze inside her chest. Her eyes darted from the slack-jawed face of Kingsley Shacklebolt to the apoplectic visage of Madam Toad, who was so furious that the air around her crackled with malevolent energy. Her pink cardigan was so bright that Rebecca fought the urge to shield her eyes from the glow, a vulgar neon rheostat on the verge of cataclysmic explosion.

Please don't let them have heard. Oh, please. She resisted massaging her forearm by the narrowest of margins. Her appalled fingers curled around the armrests of her chair.

How could she have been so stupid? Her only saving grace was that no one knew what Professor Snape had done in the castle corridor, knew that in his blind, fury, he had coiled his supple, beautiful fingers around her fragile shoulder and ground the delicate joints together in a torturous game of mortar and pestle. No one knew that for three days, she had borne the mark of his hatred against her skin, a shameful brand of midnight black and sunset red. She had kept her part of the bargain, and now, in a moment of unthinking pique, her treacherous mouth had offered up another knot for his noose.

She waited, heart lodged in her throat, for Umbridge to seize the strand of unintended truth in her pudgy, throttling fingers and weave it into the Professor's burial shroud, but Madam Toad said nothing, mercifully deafened by her seething fury. Thirty second passed in utter silence, and all the while, Umbridge stared at her in incredulous, pop-eyed consternation.

Her mouth worked in a futile attempt at speech, and then at last, "Yo-you-you-," Rusty hinges in mournful autumn wind.

The movement was so fast that neither Rebecca nor the Aurors in the room saw it. One moment, Umbridge was glowering at her in whey-faced outrage, and the next, she had darted forward and seized the collar of Rebecca's robes in both hands.

"You impertinent, disrespectful, willful chit!" she spat, punctuating each word with a shake of Rebecca's thin shoulders. "You will have respect for this office, and you will have respect for me. For me! Do you understand, you misshapen little brat?" Umbridge was shrieking now, and spittle flew from her mouth to mist on the end of Rebecca's nose.

I have been anointed. Then, with dazed amusement, Don't impertinent and disrespectful mean the same thing? Hey, let's hear it for synonyms.

She opened her mouth to ask Madam Toad precisely that, but each time she tried, another shake would shut her mouth with a click of clashing teeth. The world pitched and yawed above her head with every convulsive jolt, and Umbridge's nails and the gaudy heft of her rings sunk into her flesh like the greedy, diseased talons of a carrion crow. She was terrified-her bladder was a hot, shriveled sac beneath her skin, but she was exhilarated, too. Blood and adrenaline surged through her veins in a heady brew, and the garish pink of Umbridge's cardigan had been transformed into the indolent, rosy haze of sunset. Behind her, the blue of Dawlish's ministerial robes was blinding, and she closed her eyes.

Shacklebolt was doing his level best to prise Umbridge's hands from her shoulders, but flesh had welded to flesh in a bond of clammy-fingered hysteria. Dawlish roused himself from his flummoxed stupor, an open jar of petroleum jelly still clutched in one hand, and rushed to quell the brewing fracas. Rebecca bounced helplessly between them, a hapless rag doll in the clutches of petulant children, and the only thing keeping her in her seat was the black, nylon seat belt that had draped across her thighs since she was old enough to sit up straight.

"Miss Um-Dolores," Kingsley panted, wedging his fingertips between her meaty palm and the fabric of Rebecca's wand, "there is-no need for this."

"Indeed," sniffed Dawlish." His voice was reedy and strangled, and his face wore an expression of surprised affront. "This is most irregular," he added lamely, and seized Madam Toad's wrist.

Umbridge paid neither of them any mind. She was staring at Rebecca with manic intensity, her lips pulled from her teeth in a feral sneer. Her breath wafted against Rebecca's flushed cheek and carried with it the stale odor of bread and bland porridge and the unmistakable, organic smell of wet human mouth, and Rebecca recoiled in distaste.

"Do you hear me, child?" Umbridge hissed, and gave her a vicious shake.

Rebecca did not answer. She was too busy groping for the fat stem of her wand. If she was going to be shaken to bits like a rat in the jaws of a terrier, then she was going to inflict a wound of her own. She was going to live out her fantasy and see a body writhing on the floor at her feet, bowed and jerking as the Cruciatus flayed them by inches with unseen knives. It wasn't an Auror, true, but it was a despised government official, and that was close enough. It would mean her expulsion from school and incarceration in Azkaban, and that was fine, too. Just fine. All that mattered now was inflicting untold agony.

But what about Professor Snape? wailed the voice of conscience inside her head. You can't just leave him to it.

Oh, but she wouldn't be leaving him to it, not really. With any luck, they have adjoining cells in Azkaban, and as the years passed and the monotony and the isolation stripped away their sanity and their hope with languorous, sadistic relish, they would tap out messages upon the mildewed walls and share clandestine whispers through hairline chinks in the damp stone. As ten years spun inexorably into fifteen and then twenty and dirt-blackened, ragged nails grew from cold, sun-starved flesh, as memory of warmth faded and awareness of self guttered and extinguished, they would rock and croon and serenade one another in the ululating, wailing language of the mad. Parting might be a sweet sorrow, but theirs would not be a long one.

She smiled as she fumbled for her wand with stiff, unruly fingers. It was such a comforting thought, that she might be with him at the end of all things. Her wand danced just beyond her reach, smooth varnish and potent promise. If she could only reach it, then she could mete justice in a wavering arc of the devil's red. Her straining fingertips grazed smooth wood, and for a moment, it was nearly hers, but then Umbridge jerked her forward again, and it slipped from her grasp. She swore, a garbled, unintelligible sound in the back of her throat. She was so very close.

"Do you hear me, child?" Umbridge hissed. She was nearly puce now, and the fingers snarled in Rebecca's robes shook with the desire to throttle or, perhaps, to slap.

Rebecca smiled. "You're touching me." There was no cunning to the statement, no calculated plan. It was simply the first thing that popped into her mind.

There was a thunderstruck silence, and then Umbridge released her grip with an audible creak of tendon and pop of bone. She staggered backward a few paces, overbalancing on one stubby foot for several pinwheeling seconds before finding her center of gravity with an ungainly lurch. She raised her hands to harrow her hair, but then apparently thought better of it, because she scrubbed them on the front of her robes instead.

Out, out damn spot, Rebecca thought with bemused detachment.

She was under no illusion that Madam Toad's revulsion had anything to do with her egregious breach of Ministerial protocol. Indeed, it had everything to do with the alarming and irrefutable fact that she, Dolores Umbridge, Grand High Poobah of Upper Buttcrack and All Regions In Between, had not only lost control, but had touched a cripple in the process. Oh, the horror.

I'm contagious, she wanted to shriek gleefully. I'm contagious, and now you're infected. You've caught the Crip.

She said nothing. The adrenaline that had flooded her veins and soaked her bones was already ebbing, leaving her drained and emotionally battered. Besides, shouting something like that at the top of her voice, fun as it may prove at the time, could cause more harm than good. The few Housemates that had befriended her might withdraw, and those that had regarded her with the nascent suspicion of the terminally paranoid would be vindicated by her own lips. Madam Toad would be only too happy to escort her to the infirmary and place her under full quarantine as an ostensible precaution against the spread of crippling disease, and there she would sit, prisoner of her own foolhardy caprice and utterly useless to Professor Snape.

As if you've been much use to this point, sneered a vicious little voice inside her head.

Oh, shut up, she thought wearily, and her fingers, which had at long last closed around her wand, relaxed inside the pocket of her robes. I believe we've already been over this. She slumped in her chair.

"Are you all right, Miss Stanhope?" Kingsley Shacklebolt's voice, breathless and more than a little bewildered.

She blinked at him in muddled disinterest. Why in the hell didn't you Stupefy the old cow?

The wholly justified question trembled on her lips, but she did not ask it. Instead, she muttered, "Mm? Oh, yes, sir. I'm...fine. Just...," she flapped a hand in a loose pantomime of a spinning top. A weak, tremulous laugh.

Shacklebolt eyed her in silent appraisal for a moment, then gave a curt nod. "Perfectly understandable, given the circumstances. I think we've got all we need, anyway. Don't you, Mr. Dawlish?" He looked at his flustered colleague in search of ready agreement.

"What?" Dawlish asked stupidly, and looked from Shacklebolt to his frothing, snorting superior in agonized consternation.

Deciding which ass to kiss, are you, Dawlish? Rebecca thought, and reached up to knead a not of tension coiled at the nape of her neck.

"Oh. Yes, right. So I should think," he mumbled, and cast a surreptitious, apologetic glance at Umbridge.

Umbridge, however, was far from amenable. At the mention of abandoning the search, her eyes widened, and she crossed her flabby arms over her chest in stiff-necked defiance.

"I hardly think-," she began, but Kingsley silenced her with an upraised hand.

"With respect, ma'am," he countered mildly, "things have gotten far more heated than is prudent, and no wise decision has ever come from rash behavior. I think it better to postpone further investigation until cooler heads can prevail."

"What if she hides crucial evidence in the meantime?" demanded Umbridge, not to be deterred by logic. She cupped her elbows in her palms and jutted her chin in a counter-that-if-you-can gesture.

Kingsley was only too happy to oblige. "Since we've turned her room inside out twice, I'll wager that the likelihood of that is low, indeed." He paused and tapped his chin with a graceful index finger. "Although," he continued thoughtfully, "I suppose she could be hiding incriminating evidence on or within her person." He nodded. "Yes, I think that's an avenue to be explored. As you are the senior member of the Ministry and the only female present, it falls to you to perform the body and cavity search." He smiled. "Shall I leave you to it, then?" he asked briskly, and started for the door.

Umbridge's color went from mottled plum to sun-bleached whey in the space of seconds, and Kingsley Shacklebolt took his rightful place in the pantheon of future world leaders, right alongside Neville Longbottom, Minister of Magic.

"N-no, no, that won't be necessary," Madam Toad stammered, and retreated several paces from Rebecca, as though she thought she might leap upon her in a sudden fit of madness. She gazed at Rebecca's bony legs in open revulsion, and her fingers rubbed together in dreamy strokes to rid themselves of imagined blight. "No need. It's quite clear that, aside from being truculent, uncooperative, and another in a long line of the Headmaster's pet projects, she has nothing to contribute to our inquiry," she sniffed.

Judgmental old bitch, Rebecca thought furiously, and her hand itched to draw out her wand and wipe the unpleasant smirk from her adversary's face, but sullen Prudence, temporarily unseated by adolescent pique, had reclaimed her throne, and thus, her hand did nothing more than give an indolent scratch to the bridge of her wan nose.

"Right, then," Kingsley said with absurd cheer. "Sorry to have disturbed you, Miss Stanhope." He touched the brim of his wizard's hat in farewell.

She gave a brusque nod of acknowledgment. She did not trust herself to speak. Now that the danger had passed, she felt weak and feverish, and as soon as they had taken their leave, she was crawling into bed and drawing the curtains to shut the world out. She would stay there until supper, or perhaps she would simply lie there in the soft sanctuary of her bed until night drew sable curtains of its own around Hogwarts and the air, sweetened by cold and the last breath of dying grass, crept through chinks in the castle stone to curl around her ankles and dance over her face in a gentle, oddly maternal eddy. Winky would make sure the winsome pink of a slight chill did not deepen to bloodless blue or the deadly, porcelain white of frostbite, and she could lay her cares to rest on the river of dreams and dance in the darkness with the children of Morpheus.

No, you won't. It's want you want to do and more than likely what you should do, but it's not what you're going to do. As soon as Madam Toad and her merry little retinue hie themselves from this tower, you're going to take your aching bones and your grinding teeth and your clanking, rattletrap wheelchair and pay Professor Moody a visit. He's got to put those charms on, the ones Flitwick gave you that day in Hogsmeade. Because very soon now, either tonight or tomorrow, you're going to see Professor Snape, aren't you?

The moment the thought crystallized in her mind, she knew it was true. As soon as she could slip away, she was going to steal down to the dungeons and pass the hours in the cold, damp, biting comfort of the dungeons, at the feet of her disgraced professor. She would sit in the sullen silence and listen to the crackle and pop of the torches while he polished his boots or stared listlessly into the empty fire grate. She would offer what scant solace she could and take his scorn in return, sour as wine on her secret-keeper's tongue.

Comforted at the thought of seeing him, all puritanical black and pale, pinched white, she smiled, a furtive flicker in the corners of her mouth. Yes, she would go, and it would be all right. The simple, undeniable weight of his presence would be enough. With his bile and his vitriol and his flailing, impotent rage, he would soothe her scalded soul and rein in the impetuous impulse to break his tormentors. I am still here, bowed, but not yet broken, he would say with every pass of the cleaning chamois, and she would carry the memory of it in the scent of allspice and parchment dust and boot polish that lingered in her nostrils.

Umbridge, who had been stumping to the door with dour, club-footed impatience, paused in her trek and turned to Rebecca. "One last question, dear," she said with careful nonchalance.

"Yes, ma'am?" The tension, which had begun to ebb from her aching muscles, re-established its iron grip, and she grimaced at a sizzling twinge at the base of her spine. Her fingers curled loosely around the armrests of her chair, and the cool silver of the serpent in her sock was cold fire against overheated flesh.

Umbridge took a few loping, predatory steps forward, and now she looked not so much like an angry bulldog as a starving wolf who had scented blood and rot on the wind. The fingers of Rebecca's steering hand twitched with the urge to pull back on the stick and retreat, but there was nowhere to go. The frozen stone was at her back, and she could feel the damp, anesthetizing chill of it through her winter robes. She willed her traitorous hand to relax and stared at Umbridge in mild inquiry.

"I was just wondering, dear," Umbridge mused, and clasped her hands behind her back as she took another inexorable step forward, "what you meant when you told Mr. Shacklebolt that he didn't have the right to do that?" So pleasant, and so full of hidden venom.

So you did hear.

The fledgling serenity in her breast withered, replaced by swooning dread and seething self-reproach. If only she had kept her mouth shut, tucked her chin to her narrow chest and said yay or nay until the tempest passed. It was the sure course of the prudent, and it had served her well over the years. But her anger and her arrogance had made her careless, and the piper had come for his two pence. There was nothing to be done for it but to set her heels, stiffen her spine, and begin the dance anew.

She gritted her teeth behind her closed lips, blinked at Madam Toad in vapid amiability, and said, "Well, he doesn't," as if it were the most obvious conclusion in the world.

Umbridge moved closer still, and from the corner of her eye, Rebecca saw Kingsley Shacklebolt curl his fingers around the door lintel in a mahogany vise. His other hand slithered into the pocket of his robes in search of his wand. Clearly, he anticipated another outburst. Dawlish, too, lingered in the doorway, chewing fretfully on his lower lip. He stepped forward as if to intervene, then thought better of it. One hand came up in supplication, but when Umbridge did not acknowledge the gesture in the slightest, he ran his fingers through his hair and let his arm drop

The bloodletting is over for today. She's done all the shouting and cursing she's going to. Losing her temper in front of her inferiors was the last thing she wanted, and she won't make that mistake again. This is just dancer's etiquette, her way of letting me know she'll be back. Nothing to fear. Just the feint and dip.

But she was afraid, and the fear lodged in the back of her throat in a hot, slick, sour ball. Madam Toad was arrogant and vicious, but she was also sly and patient as her secret moniker. She smelled the truth behind the lie, sensed it on the periphery of her vision, and she meant to unearth it if she could.

Still another step, and less than three paces stood between them. This close, the sweet, cloying musk of Umbridge's lavender perfume turned to the boiled-blood stink of old corruption in her nostrils. The desire to flee was an overwhelming compulsion, and her feet, undeterred by the cold, hard truth of six feet of implacable Scottish stone behind her back, scrabbled and scuttled on the worn plastic of her footrests in a futile bid for precious distance. God help her, she wanted away.

Trapped, I'm trapped, she thought wildly, and the reek of dead flowers made her gorge spasm in protest. Rabbit in a snare, that's what I am, and there is no valiant Neville Longbottom to save the day this time. The wolf draws ever closer.

"Well?" Umbridge trilled, and her livery lips pulled into a triumphant, lupine leer.

Rebecca's mutinous feet backpedaled in short, jerky half-steps, and she hated them. They belied her lie. She curled her hands into tight fists and tried to swallow, but her uncooperative throat clenched and sent a thick clot of spittle from her mouth in a warm, viscous spray. She raised her fist to her lips and swiped at the thick streamer of saliva on her chin.

No way out. Any lie you tell will be betrayed by the errant twitches of your body. The dance is almost at an end now. Round and round we go; where we stop, we soon shall know.

There is a way. There is always a way. Death is the only absolute in this world, and you've got a sight more to go before we reach that particular bend in the road. Think, girl. There is nothing too crass, no sacred cow. Use whatever you have to and worry about the consequences in the morning. There is no dirty fighting anymore. It's survival of the fittest, or, in this case, survival of the most ruthless. Sink or swim.

For a moment, nothing came to mind. Her bag of tricks and artful manipulations was empty. And then...

She smiled at her own artifice.

What I won't do... Oh, the cleverness of me.

"Yes, ma'am," she answered in a strained, tremulous voice. "I meant-."

She grunted and pitched forward in her chair, and her hands opened and closed in an arrhythmic snap. A fingernail broke to the quick, and she snarled at the brief flare of pain and the bright bead of blood that dripped from her fingertip. Her feet drummed a discordant staccato against the thin plastic of her footrest and the solid titanium of the wheelchair frame. She lurched upright again, fingers rigid talons against her palm, and arched, her back bowed at an impossible, Lovecraftian angle. A liquid, vibrato groan issued from within her chest, and in a final perverse touch, her bladder let go with a warm hiss.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jee-sus, sang a soft chorus inside her head, and she bit the inside of her cheek to stifle lunatic laughter. No shame. No shame now. Dignity is nothing more than a commodity. Sell it if you have to.

"Hngh blot," she grunted, her eyes wide with unspeakable anguish. Even in the throes of this fit, I'm trying to obey you, Miss Umbridge. See what a good girl am I? Another throttled wheeze of laughter.

Umbridge gaped at her in dim incredulity, and beneath the surprise flickered another emotion, uglier and truer. Fear. Not that she had possibly done grievous injury to a student, but that along with her temper, she had also lost her vaunted position as right hand to the Minister of Magic. Years of toil and backstabbing and shameless social climbing, gone, lost with a single shake of her wrist. In her wide, confounded eyes danced visions of inquiry and dismissal and penniless ignominy as the Woman Who Had Abused A Child. She saw the scalding brand of public opinion, and she shied from it.

"Miss Stanhope! Miss Stanhope, stop this at once. I demand it!" she ordered, but her voice was tremulous, devoid of its usual brisk authority, and she was none too steady on her feet as she lurched forward, hand extended toward Rebecca's shoulder as though to steady it.

Whatever she had intended, she never got the chance to put it into action because Kingsley Shacklebolt shoved her aside with teeth-clacking force.

"Bloody hell!" he swore, as he skidded to a stop in front of her chair. "Miss Stanhope, can you hear me? It will be all right." His hands tugged furiously at her lap belt as he spoke. "Dammit." The belt slithered from his frantic grasp, an unknowing co-conspirator in her desperate ruse.

Her hot, clawed hand scrabbled at his wrist, and she willed him to look at her. She could not stop the charade, not for love or money, but she did not want him to be afraid. Indeed, she wanted his help. He had to understand, and when the drama was over, he had to bring Professor Moody.

"Yes," he soothed as he wrenched the belt free. "Yes, it's all right." He was almost whispering now.

She shook her head, as much denial as false convulsion. "Nnnn-nnn," she moaned, and spittle flew from her lips.

He scooped her from her chair, and her nose was filled with the scent of starch, fresh linen, and old woodsmoke. It was not entirely unpleasant. Then he was moving, sprinting toward the door, Umbridge and Dawlish following in his wake like befuddled sheep. Out the door and down the stairs, past a sea of curious faces. It was now or never.

She seized the collar of his robes and tugged. "M'ster. Shak'bolt," she slurred, and this time, he did look at her.

"Yes?" Soft as breath, detectable only by the imperceptible movement of his lips.

She smiled. Moody, she mouthed, and then she went limp in his arms.

Before she closed her eyes, she could have sworn she saw him laugh.

Rebecca Stanhope was weaving a noose of her own.