Darkly Bound

27

The tutorial had gone exceptionally well. The three strugglers had managed to pick up the points they'd missed in class and I left them to finish up with Margot. They sat on the floor of my office, in front of the fire, their books and charts spread out around them.

I sat back down with a steaming hot cup of tea and picked up the stack of mail that had piled up on the corner of my desk. This was the 'later' pile, the one I kept hoping would get knocked off the corner, swept up and thrown away by the house elves. That never happened. I flipped through them trying to decide which would be most likely to offend. One kept catching my eye. It had arrived a few days ago and I had felt a surge of annoyance immediately upon seeing it. It had gone directly to the bottom of the pile that morning. It was from the American Embassy and I was sure it was either an over-late bureaucratic form of rushing in to the rescue or official castigation over the Azkaban incident. As much as I dreaded it, I decided to get that one out of the way first.

It started simply enough. Lots of moronic officious drivel, which looked impressive but meant nothing. The further I got into it, the more sense it made. The more sense it made, the more horrible it got.

Margot noticed almost immediately. "Miss? Is something wrong?"

I kept reading. I was gripping the teacup so tightly my whole arm was shaking. Soon I could only make out snatches of what I was seeing.

Pursuant to... required to inform...signature required...request for release of information...

"Professor!" Margot leapt from the floor and flew at me. I looked at her, then at the terrified faces of the younger students. They were staring at my hand. I held a mess of broken china and whatever tea hadn't run onto the desk and floor.

"Out! Now, all of you!" Margot hissed at the students. "Not a word of this to anyone. Go back to your dormitories right now." They got up and left without a word.

My eyes flew back to the letter.

Civil District Court, Parish of Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana... Upon approval...said documents to be forwarded...Solicitor's request...Offices of Marcus Cowley, Esq. London.

No! The scream started inside my head and grew until it couldn't be kept in there any longer. Once outside it started as a horse whisper "No!" and built slowly until the room was filled with a terrible shout that didn't seem to come from anywhere at all but everywhere all at once.

"Miss! Miss please!" The young voice in my ear was desperate. "Please. What's wrong? What's in that letter?"

"No! No! He can't do this! Why? Why are they doing this?" I looked at her terrified, tear streaked face. She was holding my scalded hand wrapped in a cloth napkin.

"Who's doing what, Professor?"

I struggled to regain some control. Terrifying students would not help anything. "Margot, you shouldn't be here." I knew she could have read that letter through my eyes if she'd wanted to and was grateful for her restraint. She was clearly uncomfortable. She wanted to ask but was afraid of prying. The feeling must have been overwhelming to her.

"What you are feeling is betrayal. Someone I thought I could trust absolutely has betrayed me in the worst possible way." I unwrapped my hand and flexed my fingers. My hand had turned an angry red. "Nescio." It wouldn't heal the burn, but would allow me to ignore the pain.

"You go now, Margot. Tell the others I'm alright. Tell them I just had some unexpected bad news."

"Yes, Professor. This person--"

She knew. Not what, but certainly who. I looked up at her. "I told you there were worse things than being alone."

"Yes, Miss." She left quietly and shut the office door behind her.

I marched through the dungeon corridors in a rage. As I approached his office I noticed a few students hanging around, looking like they were trying to get caught being late for class. Normally I would have found this funny, but this was no normal day. Three girls I recognized as 'friends' of Christina's lounged just outside the office door. I caught the hiss of a stage whisper warning of the approach of 'Professor Predictable'. I turned towards them. "If you all are not where you are supposed to be in five minutes, I'll see to it that every one of you has detention tonight." I rapped sharply on the office door and watched them beadily. One or two of them made token efforts to move. The bolder ones had the gall to look victorious. I opened the door a crack. Just before stepping inside I snapped at them, "You have wasted several precious seconds. You do understand that your detention will be with me." There was a sudden flurry of activity. In less than a minute the hall was clear.

I pushed the heavy door open and strode in to the office to meet Snape's wary stare. "That was quite a performance. Who was out there?"

"Your fan club."

"Pardon?"

"Oh never mind!"

"Not those same girls? They are incorrigible! Constantly in detention, nothing seems to get through to them. I assign the most menial tasks, some of them quite degrading. You would think they enjoyed it."

I looked at him incredulously. For just a moment my disbelief that he could be so naive held my fury at bay. I walked over and leaned across his desk. "Don't! Give! Them! Detention! Or send them to someone else! One night of having to gaze into Filch's rheumy eyes will get rid of them for good. You should have seen how fast they cleared off when they found out wouldn't be spending their evening with you, but with yours truly."

"Who can blame them for that? I nearly cleared off myself at that prospect," he sneered.

I ignored that. "How can you be so completely clueless?"

"Clueless, am I? Well then, why don't you explain it to me."

That reminded me why I had come in the first place and my anger flared up again. "Oh no. If anyone here is going to do any explaining, it's going to be you. Explain to me, why don't you, what this is all about." I dropped the letter on his desk.

He picked it up and began to read it. After just a moment he looked up at me. "Professor Predictable?"

"Just read!" My fingernails drummed a tattoo on the desktop.

"That's rather clever." He looked back down at the letter.

I was livid. "I suppose it did take more thought than what they call you: 'that miserable sodding bastard in the dungeon.' That's the staff."

He didn't even blink. "They're losing their edge. I've been called far worse."

" I'm going to call you worse if you don't start explaining why I got a letter asking me to sign a bunch of papers to release information about something I've spent years trying to forget! Whose idea was this?"

He dropped the letter on his desk, leaned back in his chair and looked at me, narrowing his eyes. "It was my idea, as you well know--now wait!" He'd anticipated that I'd come at him at that and was ready. "I know, we're going down those paving stones to hell again, aren't we? Just listen. Maybe you can tick them all off if you pay attention. Sit."

"No, thank you."

"Please yourself. I was speaking with Marcus. He asked about you. He quite likes you. Of course he hardly knows you, and hasn't seen you at your best, but we can remedy that and I'm sure he'll come to his senses. He told me that Olivia mentioned to him that you had a daughter. He asked if she was here with you at Hogwarts."

"How would Olivia have known that?"

"Because she's Olivia. That's like asking you how you know things. I tried to tell him as little as possible while at the same time seeing if he had any ideas about the situation. As it turns out, he did."

"As it turns out he did," I repeated in a monotone.

"He claims that if he can find any tangible record of her, anything at all, he can probably trace her adoption records."

"I have no desire to trace her adoption records."

"Why on earth not? Marcus said it wouldn't be difficult. Melpomene! You could find your daughter--you could see her again."

"To what end? She was two years old! She has no idea who I am. What would I say? 'Bonjour la! Rappelez-vous moi? Je suis votre mère. D'ailleurs, votre vrai nom est Rennie. And I'm a witch. So are you, well you were until I stripped you of your identity and any powers you may have inherited from me or your father, who was an evil wizard and was executed for murder.' No! I've already robbed her of one life. I won't take her away from one she's been given since then."

He watched me, expressionless, but I could feel disapproval oozing from him. I noticed that what he was watching was my absentminded habit of toying with the charm around my neck, the one that once held the tangibility of my daughter's life.

"Look at yourself!" he said in an accusing, hissing whisper. "You hang onto that thing like it is life itself, yet when offered the chance to reclaim your real, living child--"

"We have never discussed this! I would never have asked you to do this!"

"Why not? Why haven't we discussed this? What have you been waiting for? Don't tell me that more important things have gotten in the way. There is nothing more important than this! I know what you want me to do."

"Fine! I'll ask you now. I don't want to 'reclaim' her! I don't need to know where she is. I only need to know if she is. Will you break her father's curse? Can you? That's all I want from you! That's all I've ever wanted from you!"

"What kind of a mother are you?" The question was delivered in the quiet, mellifluous tone he reserved for his cruellest insults.

"I think that's been adequately demonstrated."

He glared at me. "If she were mine--"

It felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room.

"She is not yours! At least she has that small blessing in her favor!"

He shot forward, grabbed my shoulders an pulled me face to face with him. My head snapped back and I bit my lip. I tasted blood. "If she were mine, I would have tracked her down to the ends of this earth."

"That's exactly what I had to prevent! Her father was touched by an evil that changed him into a monster. You of all people should know what that evil can do to a person! When you turned away from it, he ran towards it. He was what you pretend to be. He was going to track her to the ends of the earth! I couldn't let that happen." I wrenched myself out of his grip, and turned my back on him. "If she was yours I would never have had to hide her."

It was quiet for a long time. Something had changed between us. It was palpable, hanging in the airless room like a pall, waiting for one of us to claim it.

I felt his hands on my shoulders and heard his voice in my ear.

"He's dead. You saw him die."

" Does a hate like that ever die? You thought you'd seen the end of one like that once."

"It lives as long as you let it."

"Can you break the spell or not?"

"No, not yet. There are too many pieces missing."

"I'm very sorry to hear that."

"Do you remember when you explained to me how a spell works? You told me once cast it takes root and entangles the mind. How long has this malignancy been festering here, " he laid one hand on my head, and place the other over my heart, "and here? We can keep searching. In the meantime, we can at least try to find out what happened to her after you gave her up. Muggles love a paper trail. Even if there was nothing before you brought her to them, there's certain to be plenty to find from that day on. Marcus can do that."

"He can't. Not the way he's going on. First of all, he's got the wrong name. You should know that, or haven't you dug that far into my mind?"

"The wrong name? You told me her name!"

"No, I didn't. I've mentioned 'Rennie'. That's all. You'll never find her looking for Rennie Claros, there's no such person. Claros is my name. It was never hers."

He looked at me as if I'd just made an unexpected move against him in a chess match. "You have covered you tracks well, haven't you? So tell me. Where shall I send Marcus now?"

"Send Marcus home."

He pushed a sheet of parchment and a quill towards me. "Her name. Her full name."

I stared at the quill. I felt torn. Part of me screamed a warning. To give him her name would set off a sequence of events that I knew I couldn't control. I could see them unfolding from the moment he looked at the page. The rest of me strained towards the quill, to write her name would be to make her real again.

I felt the quill being pressed into my hand.

I can't. I can't do this.

Her name. That's all you have to do, just write her name.

I looked into his eyes, pleading to be relieved of this simple task, but his gaze was unyielding. I gripped the quill, and shakily dipped it into the ink. Steadying my hand over the paper, I paused, then wrote:

Renata Aisling deCorbeau.

The letters vibrated on the page. The quill slipped from my shaking hand. Then I watched as from a distance as his fingers traced the names on the page. They seemed to stumble over the first name and glide over the second, then stop short on the third.

"Renata...but...of course. That I should have known. Aisling. A vision?"

A dream.

"DeCorbeau."

The raven. Her father.

"This is the raven that haunts you."

The parchment was snatched up and rolled tightly into a scroll. He paced across the floor, stopping and peering at me intently several times. I watched him fitting pieces together, as if he was working a jigsaw puzzle in his head. And to my horror, underneath the calculating and conjecture I could hear verses forming in his mind, words he was remembering, their rhythm and meter. I tried to shut them out.

Don't do this.

He stopped somewhere behind me and I heard him murmur, almost absentmindedly:

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! Quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and Take thy form from off my door!

I felt faint. "Please don't do this."

He turned me around to face him, and I felt it again. The astonishing power he usually kept so well hidden. If I'd closed my eyes I could have seen it. Even in the light of the room I could make out the glimmering aura surrounding him. "Are you sure? Are you sure you want to stop now? Think before you answer me, Melpomene of the ravens. We may be well on our way now towards the breaking of that spell."