Unfurling of a Rose

Chapter 9

Corielle watched Snape exit the Hall and was assaulted by a whole new bout of guilt. On top of everything else, almost all the people in the Hall, even Slytherins that respected, if not actually liked Snape, were slapping her on the back, shaking her hand, or kissing her cheeks (which applied to a rather exuberant Hufflepuff who had been endlessly terrorized by the antagonistic Potions Master).

The Hall was bedlam, but Professor Dumbledore stood up, and with the voice of his old energy, he shouted, "Silence!"

Immediately, the Hall was silent as a tomb.

"As entertaining as that was, I'm sure Miss Griffin would like to breathe with her fencing master. Professor Lupin, retrieve your pupil."

"Yes, Headmaster."

Lupin's wasted face sported the brightest smile anyone had seen on him for many years. He crossed the High Table and took Corielle's arm with pleasure. The crowd was reluctant to let her go, but Lupin pushed his way through them and into the Entrance Hall.

Shutting the great wooden doors, Lupin smiled and said, "Well done, Mouse, well done. You did better than I thought..."

But then he stopped as he saw Corielle's stricken face and scarf-less head. Unlike the rest of the Hall, he had not noticed that Snape had stripped her of her scarf; he had been concentrating more on the tactics used rather than the appearances of the opponents. For a moment, he was struck dumb by the sight.

He recovered quickly, taking vague notice of the distress of his protégé."What's wrong? You did well-- more than well, you fenced masterfully. I've never seen you so passionate in your attacks."

The word 'passionate' seemed to spark her shame, and Corielle was gasping for air as she attempted to suppress the lump growing in her throat. "I was him, Professor. I was my uncle. I took advantage of Professor Snape just as Uncle Willem took advantage of me."

"Oh, is that what's wrong?" Professor Lupin mused. He thought for a moment, staring at Corielle's hair as a focus point. Then he grabbed Corielle's shoulders and bent down until he could look her straight in the eye.

"Corielle, Seve-- Professor Snape entered that competition knowing full well that he would either win or lose. He was the one who suggested that I teach you to fence in the first place. He was overconfident, and he lost. He underestimated you, and he was defeated. It is his fault entirely. Your situation with your uncle, on the other hand, that was not your choice. You did not enter it willingly; your uncle coerced you with a power that gave him distinct advantage over you. Professor Snape's skills and your own power of fencing were evenly matched. The two wars are completely different.

"And besides," Lupin added, with a small grin, "Professor Snape needs to fail at something. He doesn't fail often enough. It's healthy for him to believe he is fallible."

Corielle gave a wavery smile, then embraced her teacher.

"Thank you," she whispered.

But, despite his obvious sincerity, she was not quite sure whether she believed him or not.

~888~

A week passed uneventfully. Corielle was actually in a fine mood; she had not had to go to tutorials with Professor Snape since the fencing match, and he had left her alone, ignoring her whenever she happened to pass him in the halls or corridors of the school or during class.

For his part, Snape was still attempting to recover from the sprain to his dignity and the change in Corielle. At first, he avoided her eyes, thinking they would be full of mirth or pity, both which he could not stand from a student he now considered his rival.

Nor was Corielle the only problem. Draco actually stopped by his office one day to apologize for the loss, and in the midst of the apology, he had burst into peals of laughter, leaving Snape in a very sour mood indeed. Draco had lost Slytherin House fifty points and was literally kicked out the door of the office. Snape did not know if he could bear the humiliation much longer without lashing out at Corielle again, though in rare moments of candor, he admitted to himself that it really was not justifiable to punish her at something in which she was obviously talented.

However, when he pondered the atrocious tortures he could administer to the famous Miss Griffin, his thoughts would then take an abrupt turn to her appearance.

He knew this probably was not the safest memory on which to focus, but he could not remove the sight of Corielle, upright, spirited, flushed red with satisfaction, face terrifyingly beautiful, that strange red hair draping her with its glory, holding the point of her sword against the tender flesh of his throat, fatalistically bewitching.

He would have to force his thoughts elsewhere.

Still, when he was sure she was not aware of his notice, he would watch her.

As he was watching her now.

She had stopped wearing the head scarves. He deduced that she considered them pointless after he had displayed what she had so long concealed. That hair. Now, it looked like crimson flame dripping with blood in the torch light, and he felt an inexplicable yet irrevocable desire to plunge his hands into her fiery hair, threading his hands through it, sweet and seductive like blood, twisting it, pulling her closer and closer and...

Snape swore under his breath and tore his gaze from her and put his hands to the side of his head. Now where did that come from? She was a student, for Chrestomanci's sake.

~888~

Corielle swung a length of hair from her shoulders, so that the entire mass flowed down her back. The freer movement was more exhilarating than she would have thought it would be. For a moment, she considered paying her thanks to Professor Snape, but she squashed that idea fairly quickly.

She was sitting down to a weekend lunch, talking with Marcie and Vic, laughing over a joke Vic had told them, enjoying herself as she had not for as long as she could remember, when they were distracted by the afternoon owl post. Owls of assorted shapes and shadows flew over each House table, dropping their letters, packages, and newspapers to all.

Corielle was not expecting any mail, though she always looked up to see whether her parents had heard of her Sorting. She hoped they had written and that they were not terribly disappointed at her placement in Slytherin.

So it was with pleased surprise that the Griffin family great horned owl swooped to Corielle's plate to deposit a small roll of parchment. Then the owl flew to Professor Lupin, and a letter landed on his plate.

Lupin opened his letter first, expecting it after his inquiry to the Griffins. But when he unsealed it, he was faced with just one sentences screaming at him in human blood.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, WEREWOLF!

Lupin gaped at the words, then stole a glance at Corielle as she opened her letter.

Dear Corielle,

I am being carefully watched as I write this. They threaten me with death if I give away too much. Your father and I have been captured by the escaped Death Eaters. They all wear masks, so I cannot tell you any of their names. They have been careful with their words, so I cannot tell you where they hide. I can tell you only one thing.

My brother is with them.

He has been promoted. Tell Dumbledore that Lord Voldemort is back. I don't know how, but the Death Eaters informed me that they were called. I just wanted to say your father and I love you very much, and we're sorry we did not see your plight when It happened six years ago.

We will be killed, Corielle. You will inherit everything and we- (this was blurred with tears)- you to know that we are extremely proud of your magical abilities of which Remus Lupin informed us. But one thing I wanted to say before, but thought I would have plenty of time to say it:

We would have loved you still if you had not had magic. You are precious to us.

They tell me to stop.

I love you a million times.

We will die fighting.

Love,

Your mother and father

Trying to take in the horror of what she had just received, Corielle let her mother's letter fall from her grasp. Two smaller pieces of paper fell out from the folds of the envelope. With a rising sense of dread, she picked them up and read. The first was short and to the point, signed with the Dark Mark.

We know who you are; we know where you live; you cannot escape us. Come to us, Corielle.

The second note sent chills through her.

I love you, my dear Elle. I want you in my arms again. I want to be in you again. And can you deny that you want me, too, deep within your spoiled, beautiful body?

Love always,

Willem

Corielle's hands shook so violently that the parchment was rattling. She took deep gasping breaths, but no air seemed to enter her lungs. Red spots blurred her vision, and she staggered slightly.

The letters, those letters that lay bare the long road before her, fluttered to the ground.

"Professor Lupin--" Corielle began to say, but only a choked sob escaped her throat.

Lupin ran down to Corielle. He began to say something, anything, but he immediately realized her state of mind was far more unsettled than his.

"Severus! Albus!" he yelled at the High Table as he read the last words of her second note that was written in the same hand as his own.

Snape and Dumbledore rushed to the call and Corielle stood, looking stunned. Her face was drawn and white; she seemed half-dead.

For the first time in a week, Snape looked her straight in the eye. She did not so much as flinch, but Snape doubted that she even noticed he was there.

And he wondered with dread what sort of news could elicit such a response from the fiery enchantress he had seen before, even if only for a moment.

He and Dumbledore perused the letter with a growing sense of terror.

"This explains the quick restoration of my health," Dumbledore muttered to Snape and Lupin. "My charm to stay alive as long as Voldemort lived is still in play. But how could he possibly... Voldemort was most certainly dead when I checked. You both saw him. It was his body; he had not disappeared like when Harry defeated him the first time. His body was cold. How can he still be alive?"

"Miss Griffin?" Snape murmured, noticing the increasing pallor of her face. "Miss Griffin, you must come back. Lupin, shake her out of that trance."

Lupin grabbed her shoulder and shook her hard. Corielle's eyes rolled up into the back of her head.

"No!" Lupin cried, shaking her harder. "Don't faint! That would be worse than death for you! Come back to us, Corielle! Come back!"

A humming sound came through her lips, and her eyes closed. Yet she still stood straight. Both Snape and Dumbledore abandoned the letter in favor of watching the girl before them. She continued humming eerily, rocking back and forth on her heels.

"She won't respond, Headmaster. What is she doing?" Lupin asked, utterly baffled with this turn of events.

Albus Dumbledore glanced around him and saw that the entire Hall was waiting with bated breath.

"Not here," he whispered. "Remus, lead her to my office. We can discuss this there."

Lupin took her shoulder and tried steering her to the Hall doors, but she would not budge. He looked at Dumbledore and Snape blankly.

"How do I move her?" he asked.

Dumbledore looked at the two teachers urgently. "We'll have to carry her."

Lupin just stood there, his hands in front of him like he did not know where to put them. He looked at Snape helplessly.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Oh, for Chrestomanci's sake." He slipped his left arm under her knees and wrapped his free arm around her shoulder, cradling her gently. Her head lolled until it rested against his chest. She was still humming, and the sound vibrated strangely through his body like a gentle tremor in the earth.

The three teachers quickly headed out of the Hall filled with curious eyes and to Dumbledore's office.

"Jelly Slugs," Dumbledore gasped breathlessly. The gargoyle that guarded the entrance leaped aside.

Lupin threw open the door to the office, and Snape rushed in, immediately depositing her into sitting position on a high-backed armchair in front of the hearth. Then he stood back and looked at her.

She continued to hum, her eyes now wide open, her body swaying like a cobra with the fire from the hearth flickering in her blank gray eyes, empty as dark tunnels. Picking him up from his customary perch, Dumbledore brought Fawkes to her, whispering unintelligible words in the magical bird's ear. The phoenix settled onto her shoulder, rubbing his head against her white cheek.

"It's meant to calm her," Dumbledore said quietly, not turning his gaze away from the girl in front of them. "Fawkes should bring her back so that she can talk to us." As they watched, Fawkes crooned to Corielle, continuing to caress her. Corielle rocked back and forth, her humming not ceasing at all.

And Snape, Lupin, and Dumbledore waited.

Suddenly, the ground began to quake and wind began to swirl about the three in torrential gusts. Lupin grasped Dumbledore's shoulders to keep the old man from falling, and Snape braced himself. Then, lights began to flash around them and the office began to fade. Snape had only a brief glance of the fireplace, and a slight fear gripped his heart.

The fire was flickering as cheerfully as any fire. The smoke was curling vertically upward. It showed no sign of wind.

He cried out as something grabbed him and pulled him forward, lights flashed and lengthening as he was pulled faster and faster and faster...

And then, it stopped.

Snape steadied himself and looked around. He was no longer in the Headmaster's office, but in a little girl's room. Frilly pink curtains fluttered in a warm summer breeze and stuffed animals littered the floor. On a white bookshelf stenciled with ballet slippers, china dolls were displayed in their Victorian dresses and parasols. In a four poster bed surrounded by translucent white lace, a young girl slept.

A young girl with startlingly dark red hair.

A strip of light lit on the sweet face that Snape recognized as Corielle's, and Snape gaped.

"Where are we?" asked Dumbledore in a raspy voice behind him.

A bright flash, and Corielle stood across from the bed, looking down at her young self with Fawkes perched on her shoulder, his head cocked to the side in a gesture of confusion.

Snape turned and beckoned to Dumbledore and Lupin. He pointed to the little girl in the bed and Corielle standing before it. Their eyes widened as they, too, noticed the resemblance between the two.

A floorboard creaking from outside the bedroom immediately put the professors on their guard. Snape's head whipped to the door, where the strip of light had been obstructed by a shadow. The door creaked as a figure entered the room and shut the door. In the moonlight, the man's face was slightly hidden by shadow, but Lupin hissed in a sudden intake of breath.

"That's Willem Griffin."

Snape stared at the young man who had entered the room. He'd never met Griffin - never even really heard of him until the Daily Prophet had revealed his role in Corielle's life. But now he felt a burning interest in the man who had caused his student-- his Mouse-- so much pain. And an even greater, shameful curiosity to learn exactly what this man had done to her to shake her so.

Griffin approached to the girl's bed with silent steps and drew back the curtains. He pulled back the light blanket that covered the girl and slipped his hand up her nightdress. Little Corielle's eyes flew open and she started to scream, but Griffin covered her mouth, muttering a threat as he began to take off her clothes. Lupin and Dumbledore turned away in shock, but Snape just stared, enthralled. It was not anything he had not seen before as a Death Eater, but somehow seeing it done to his own student, someone he knew, made it much more shameful. Little Corielle groaned in pain, and something wispy issued from her mouth. It flew away from the bed, fluttering, a small, green bird.

Snape shared a glance with Lupin, who had uncovered his eyes in time to see the bird. Lupin shrugged, as in the dark as Snape. A noise issued from the real Corielle, and Snape turned to see a distinctive sneer of bitterness distorting her face.

The tornado encircled them again and Little Corielle's room faded away. There was a flash of light, and Lupin, Snape, and Dumbledore were in an expansive bathroom. A slightly older Corielle was taking a shower behind misted glass. The door behind them opened and in stepped Griffin. He did not even bother taking off his own clothes, but stepped into the shower and grabbed Corielle round the waist, his head dropping to her neck. The present Corielle let out a stifled moan, then turned away.

"This is obscene," Lupin whispered.

"These are her memories," Snape said flatly. "This is what she wants us to see."

Lupin began trembling as the tornado came back. "Albus, get us out of here. I can't... it's not for us to see."

Dumbledore, too, was shaking, but not from the memories. "I'm trying as hard as I can," he grunted.

The memories came faster now, sometimes shifting into dreams with expressionist houses and featureless faces, all of her uncle's sins against her, and Snape eventually realized that the green bird was the embodiment of her magic that would eventually return after Griffin had been imprisoned in Azkaban.

As the memories-- and the images-- flowed before them, Dumbledore, Lupin and Snape watched with horror. Both Dumbledore and Lupin turned away often, unable to see what was happening before them, shown by Corielle's memory. But Snape could not look away. Whether because he needed to see the truth, or because he needed to feel as she had felt, or because of some other reason he could not, did not want to understand, he couldn't look away. He had seen similar situations in his days as a Death Eater, but never had they been as poignant as they were now.

One memory in particular stood out in Snape's mind, and not just because it was the last one they saw:

Corielle was fifteen now, and she wore her headscarf like a religious object as Griffin entered her room, now drastically changed from frilly bows and lace to bare walls and neatness; school books littered the floor in place of stuffed animals, and the sheets on her bed were turned down. Corielle, however, stood beside it, illumined by the full moon. She wore only a long translucent robe that hid very little, though it reached the floor. Griffin was absolutely naked.

"Turn around," Griffin ordered, dark eyes sparkling lecherously.

The girl in the robe obeyed with eyes clenched shut, and when she had completed her obligatory circle, she said softly, "You chose it, Uncle."

"We have the house to ourselves tonight, Elle," he whispered, sliding his hands around her waist and pulling her against him. She flinched at the touch.

"It's full moon tonight, Uncle Willem. I don't know why you came."

He licked her ear with a lengthening tongue. "I thought it might be interesting to see how your body would take a werewolf. But don't worry-- I took the Wolfsbane Potion. No need to spoil your body anymore than it already is. Besides, I like you now, perfect. All mine," he purred in her ear. He laughed, and as the full moon illuminated him fully, the laugh transfigured into vicious, dominating snarls.

"Oh, gods," Corielle gasped as he tore off her robe and headscarf with hands that had turned to claws. He was a different kind of werewolf than Lupin, more man than wolf, but Lupin still gulped as the claws ripped at the skin and the wolf forced Corielle's legs wide open. Most of the sight was obscured by Griffin's immense body, but Snape could hear her screams of pain, and shame.

And Snape finally averted his eyes.

As Dumbledore's office came back into existence, Lupin fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands. Dumbledore collapsed into a chair, from exhaustion as much as horror. Snape leaned against the wall and shut his eyes. He had known Willem Griffin was a Black Dog, but he had had no idea of the atrocities Griffin had committed, worse than most Death Eaters. He wondered why Lord Voldemort had not promoted Griffin earlier.

For the first time, he completely understood what was behind Corielle's beautiful, frightened exterior, and he pitied her, one of three people in his entire life that he ever pitied.

He heard sobbing, and opened his eyes to see Corielle prostrate on the ground, crying as if her heart, mind, and soul would split. Her wails were like arrows straight into his black heart. He had never met anyone so free with emotion about what she had faced. Not even victims of the Cruciatus screamed with such passion because hers was a deep wound, acquired through years of scarring, physical, mental, and spiritual.

He admired her for what she had done to survive and the fact that she still lived. He admired her, he realized in surprise.

But then she stood and rammed her wrists against the edge of the hearth, causing the skin to rip and the blood to flow freely.

"Stupid girl," he shouted in surprise. He tore the bottom of his robes and wrapped her wrists tightly. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I want to die!" she cried hysterically. "He'll come back for me, I know he will, and he'll come to my bed and take me again and again and again..." She began to laugh wildly through the tears and the blood.

Snape knew the truth behind her words, and he knew that she would be powerless to stop him, though she had magic now. Her profound fear of Willem had obviously increased into a complex that left her helpless in her uncle's wake. But Snape was helpless, too, against Willem, and where Snape was fallible, he was angry. Now, that anger swelled into a more practical approach as he became more frustrated with Corielle's laughing. This was a problem he could solve.

Snape slapped her smartly across the face.

She froze, then whispered, "I need to go."

She rushed out.

"Stop her," Snape hissed. But after one glance he saw that neither Dumbledore nor Lupin was in any condition to get up, let alone run after a much younger witch.

Taking a deep sigh, he ran after her.

~888888~