Darkly Bound

28.

Professor McGonagall had been droning on for half an hour about something to do with revisions scheduling or scheduling revisions. There was considerable sighing and not a little bit of snoring coming from various parts of the room. I was trying to look attentive. I had torn the crossword puzzle out of the morning paper and slipped it between the pages of my appointment diary. I was now surreptitiously working it out with a fountain pen, which Snape had sneered at as an artifice, but as it didn't require constant dipping and tip shaving, it was perfect for my current occupation.

Graphorn.

I looked over towards Snape but he looked to be engaged in some ruse of his own. What?

Seventeen down. Graphorn.

Not enough letters.

I'm telling you--

I gave an exasperated sigh. One 'p' or two?

One.

Then it won't fit. Not enough letters.

It fits if you ink in that last square.

I made a much louder, aggravated snort and scanned the room. McGonogall was looking right at me.

"Is that not acceptable, Professor Claros?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Tuesday. We've all agreed on Tuesday."

I looked around. Everyone, except Snape, who was grinning maliciously, was nodding in agreement. "Oh yes, Tuesday is fine. Perfect. I've just been looking at the wrong page." I wrote across the top of the page of the diary in huge block letters 'TUESDAY???' in the hope it would remind me to look up the minutes of this dreadful meeting to find out what I was supposed to do on Tuesday. For that matter, on which Tuesday and at what time.

"Right, then," McGonagall said. "Shall we move on?"

I snapped the diary shut with a whimper of surrender. How long was this going to last?

What's happening Tuesday?

Tuesday?

Yes! Tuesday! What did I miss because of your idiotic graphorn? She said we'd all agreed.

I have no idea. I wasn't listening. You're the diviner.

I gave up. I was going to have to read the minutes and relive this whole thing again. It would probably be better just to listen to the rest. I leaned on the table and listened, while pointlessly doodling . After a few minutes I noticed a pattern was emerging in my drawing and I sat back to study it. It really was interesting, doodles like that can be read like tea leaves although it's not advisable to read your own. I pondered it for several minutes, chewing on the end of my pen while wondering just how much hotter it could possibly get in that furnace of a room and why there was no air at all in there, it was so excruciatingly frustrating to be pent up in that stuffy closet, when I felt some sort of odd claustrophobic attack coming on. I felt flush, my heart was racing. No, I realized suddenly, this didn't have anything to do with claustrophobia at all, this was more like, well, a delirium attack. I thought I might be on the verge of a trance, or worse. I fought to stay centered. I was just rocking forward to get a firm grip on the table when--

WHAM!

Everyone jumped.

Snape, looking very flushed himself, had slammed his hand down on the table so forcefully that several mugs of tea were now surrounded by widening beige puddles.

"Professor!" snapped McGonogall. "What, may I ask, you are doing?"

He wiped the sweat off his forehead and glared at me. But it was the look under the glare that stunned me.

I took the pen out of my mouth. Mortified, I placed it carefully on the table.

He recovered quickly. "Sorry, sorry. Just a spider. There was a spider on the table."

Moody piped up right away, either relieved by the interruption or eager for an opportunity to taunt Snape. "Was it a particularly menacing spider Professor? You certainly gave it quite a wallop. Was it threatening you?"

"No, Professor," he answered through gritted teeth. "It was just an ordinary spider." He looked back to McGonogall. "Please continue, I apologize for the interruption."

Unbelievably, she did. She picked up right where she left off as if nothing had happened.

What was that all about?

You know perfectly well what that was all about!

Someone's overactive imagination?

It was more than that! It was a damned tennis match. Don't tell me you didn't feel it.

Oh, I'd felt it, I just hadn't recognized it because it was the way he felt it. What had started in the back of his mind as an idle fancy had reflected back and forth between us until it had become a physical force.

It's your own fault. You and your dirty little mind. It's just a pen!

Well that's alright then, isn't it?

He glowered at me across the table for a minute then slumped back over his busywork. It seemed a forced glower.

A question occurred to me, but he headed it off with a definitive No!

That was a 'no'?

I was soundly ignored.

Da-a--amn! What's a 'yes' like?

He was laughing then, I just knew it.

The meeting lasted another hour.

It was finally over. Only just, and only due to everyone glaring meaningfully at Professor Flitwick just daring him to say, "If I might bring up just one small item, it won't take a but a minute". As people left, I noticed Madame Hooch talking to Moody. A menacing combination. Moody was ever vigilant of any opportunity to discredit Snape and Hooch was always up for what she considered a bit of 'fun'. I watched her approach. She leaned on the table in an attempt to block his escape path to the door.

"You look rather peaky after your run-in with that spider. It didn't take a bite out of you, did it? Do you need to see Madame Pomfrey? Spider bites can be very nasty."

"No, but I thank you for your concern," he answered in a voice dripping with acid-laced treacle. He managed to slip by her and left quickly, robbing her of any chance of hilarity.

I drew a sign in the air. On the underside of the table, a swirl of motion spun a little dust-devil from years worth of grime, which then broke into tiny globules, and each of those sprouted eight legs and began its way towards the light of the table top. One made straight for Hooch's hand. She brushed absently at it. The little spider made another assault. This time she looked down when she felt the tickle. She sniffed and flicked the spider off, following its flight path onto the tabletop where by now there were about a dozen of its kin scrambling about and more were making their way out from underneath. "Well! Will you look at that!" she exclaimed. "There must be a nest of 'em in here!" I watched her look around and under the table trying to find the source of the infestation. A couple of the others noticed her crawling around the table and came over to look. "Looks like a student's got hold of some sort of arachnia curse."

Moody looked at the spiders suspiciously. He squashed one of them with one finger but when he lifted it up to examine it closely, it was nothing more than a smudge of oily grime.

I shifted from my perch and wandered past them all, stopping to glance at the little plague on the table. "A student you think? If I were a student who'd managed an infestation curse I'd try for blast-ended skrewts at the very least. This is a poor showing indeed." I left them to it.

Moody's freakish eye stared through me and he tried to head me off at the door. I slipped past him, but he managed to mutter just within my hearing, "One day you'll take one step too far over the edge. I'll be waiting when that happens."

I didn't stop walking, but half-turned to face him. "Don't worry about me, Professor. I've been dancing on this edge for a very long time."

If the stifling atmosphere of the staff room and the unexpected run-in with my animus, for lack of a better term, hadn't demanded a breath of fresh air, this new threat of Moody's certainly did. I headed for the front doors.

It was late when I got back. I hadn't even bothered to come back for dinner. I snuck in through a back passageway and made a detour through the cellars. There was no one at all in the corridors. I knocked lightly on the door, found it was open and peeked in.

"May I come in, or am I interrupting something? You are certainly in a most charming state of dishabille."

"You are always interrupting something." Snape looked up at me from some dusty old book he was reading in a chair by the fire. "Where did you come from?"

"Do you mean in the cosmic sense? Or just now?" I shut the door behind me.

He looked back down shaking his head. I heard him mutter, "Why do I bother?"

"Just now I've been to the cellars." I held out two bottles.

He reached for one. "How much of this have you had already?"

I snatched the book he'd been reading. "Whatcha readin'?" It was probably some horrible old alchemical textbook, most likely written in Aramaic or runes. He had to get out more. I held it up to the light. "Ah! Arachnids I Have Annihilated by none other than the ravishing Mr. Gilderoy Lockhart!" I heard a muffled gagging sound behind me. "What were you looking up? Let me see...hmm... ah was it....arachnae excitus invisibilus: rare species visible only to the human male while engaged in rapturous fantasizing about the indescribably beatific model of all that is womanly sitting across the table from him during an endless meeting about nothing? Yes, that must have been it."

I turned back to meet a scowl. "Nearly right. Replace that last bit with 'addle-brained harridan with an eye-popping streak of lechery' and you'd have it spot-on."

"Hooch! Did she have a pen as well?"

"Give me that!" He lunged forward and grabbed the book. "You missed one. Let me see if I can find it for you." He riffled through some pages. "Does this sound familiar? 'Arachnae Fomentus; subspecies Meddlin: Able to infest an entire room in a matter of minutes. Nests on the underside of conference tables and subsists for years on globs of dust, grime and used chewing gum. Reverts to selfsame elements upon contact. Causes severe allergic ranting in cranky, semi-retired Aurors."

"Oops," I held out two glasses. "so you don't want to hear about my promotion."

"Oh, I most certainly do."

I circled around the back of his chair and deposited myself on his lap. "Our mutual friend, Alastor Moody, has decided that I am not, after all, a dark witch."

He raised his glass in salute. "Did he threaten you?"

"Not as such. Why? If you knew about the spiders you already knew he'd busted me."

"Stay out of his way."

"I intend to. It'll be easy this weekend. I'll be in London visiting Olivia. Is there anything you'd like me to bring anything back? As long as it's not dead. Or wet. Or smelly."

"That's my entire list." His hand made its way in a circling motion up my back and into my hair. I closed my eyes and tipped my head back. He was quiet for a long time. "When do you think it will it stop?"

"I have no idea. I didn't plan on this, did you? I think we'll have learn to filter the feelings the way we filter the thoughts. We can either fight it, or learn to adapt to it. We can try to pull against it, or work with it." I turned so that I was straddling him and looked into his eyes. "But think about this. In deep space there are two galaxies that have been colliding with each other for 100 million years. They're still at it. You'd think they'd have obliterated each other, wouldn't you? But something strange is happening. Astronomers have taken photographs of them. And yes, they're still two galaxies. There is a stream of matter being drawn from one into the other. These astronomers say that at the end of this stream there should be hundreds of new stars being created. But there isn't. There's nothing we can see. There is however an explosion of new stars in the second galaxy. The one that appears to be losing matter. There is a blaze of light where all these new stars are being created."

"Yet another paradox."

"Do you know where this is all happening? You won't believe it ."

"Try me."

"In a rather minor southern constellation named Corvus."

"The Raven. That I have to believe. No one could make that up." He took a drink, handed the glass to me, and slid both hands down my back, and pulled me in to him.

"So then, closer to home, right here and now, who is draining matter and who is birthing stars?"

"There is no need to get grossly literal," I finished the wine and dropped the glass. My hands began an exploration of their own. "I can't answer that yet. I need more information."

"What kind of information do you need?"

I grinned. "I need to know what a 'yes' feels like."