A Merciless Affection

Chapter 1: What a Change! You're Really Not a Bit the Gawkish Girl That Once You Were

No one was even hinting anything about Halloween night, let alone talking about it, Sarah Darkglass noticed. Whether it was the chat that each one of them had had with Professor Dumbledore, or Snape's threat of detention until graduation, everyone seemed to be pretending that it had never happened.

Sarah, however, was finding it difficult.

At first she thought it was just that...well, something as traumatic as being threatened with death would naturally addle a person's wits. And Halloween had, admittedly, been pretty frightening. But the fact that her central recollection of the event was a strong hand wrapped around her own, the subtle pressure of arms shadowing hers, a warm breath on the top of her head...that was just one of those quirks of memory. Strange quirks, for a strange event. She hadn't really expected to live through it. It wouldn't take a very strange twist of fate for a Death Eater to be the one to kill Malcolm Darkglass's daughter.

So for the rest of the week she put down her tendency to glance over at Professor Snape at odd moments--as if she needed to make sure he was the same person as he had always been--to the effects of trauma. It wasn't as if he had changed at all. Indeed, anyone would think that life-threatening adventures were a matter of course for him, when he came in and taught Potions the next day without a flicker of difference from his usual brusque style. Maybe that was why she kept looking. Maybe because she couldn't believe it. Maybe because that sort of experience ought to leave some kind of mark, and if she squinted just so and tilted her head the right way when she looked at him, it would come clear and she could be sure that her memories of Halloween night weren't just some figment of her imagination.

It wasn't until Saturday, during the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match, that it occurred to her that she was really looking at him far more than she could reasonably explain away. Not that she was all that mad for Quidditch. Living in the same dorm room for seven years with three raving Quidditch fans, who had only gotten worse since being picked as Chasers on the Gryffindor team, Sarah had developed a certain aversion to the game (and who wouldn't, listening to them talk about it all day and night?), and ordinarily nothing but a spirit of duty to the House would have driven her out here to watch. But she found herself using her Omnioculars to scan the rows of green-clad Slytherin supporters, looking for one particular familiar face...

There he was. Gads, he looked odd wearing green. A little less pale, really, but still...it made her want to transform his robes back to black so he would change into himself again. His expression was less guarded than usual, the sternness replaced with a look of concentration: his attention--unlike hers--was fixed on the players. At least he wasn't singing that inane song the Slytherins had got up. But when his House's team scored their third goal, his smirk was almost broad enough to masquerade as a real smile. Sarah felt her own lips twitch into a grin.

She put down the Omnioculars.

What was she thinking? Gryffindor was down by thirty, and she was pleased? Not about the goal, of course. Although it seemed that the new Gryffindor Keeper was abysmal compared to Oliver Wood, and it was difficult to summon up enthusiasm for ineptitude. But what on earth was she pleased about?

It was with a haunting feeling of guilt that she lifted the Omnioculars again.

Sarah sat in the empty stands, thinking.

When the fight had broken out, down on the pitch, he had left his seat in a hurry, his usual sourness in evidence again. The Gryffindor players were gone by the time he got to the Slytherin team, who crowded around him, pointing fingers toward their departed opponents and giving what seemed to be a very animated account of the incident. If anyone else had been trying that hard to excuse themselves, they would have been slinking away moments later with a detention. But of course, it was true that Snape favored his Slytherins above everyone else. Sarah had heard (endlessly over the past few days) about his dismissal of Alicia's complaints about being hexed by Miles Bletchley. She had almost asked--in her frustration at having the subject beat into the ground--whether Snape was really all that much worse during Quidditch season than McGonagall was. Only a well-considered sense of what she could get away with saying to the people she had to sleep in the same room with had prevented her.

While excited Gryffindors poured out of the stands, she had sat there still, watching until eventually he moved out of sight back toward the castle, in conference with a blond boy who kept holding his hand to his face. There was a Malfoy who was the Slytherin seeker. She had vague memories of a nasty little white-haired snot at some party or other, a long time ago. It could be the same person. Ugh.

Long after everyone was gone, she sat there, staring at the place where he had been sitting, at the end of the stand he had disappeared around, at the Slytherin banners waving their accusations at her. Traitor.

But to whom now?

This was quite mad.

Sarah leaned her arms on her knees, propping up her head with a hand at each temple, cupped like blinders.

It wasn't as if she'd never had a crush before. She had been dead gone on a seventh year, Martin Mickelson, for a good chunk of her own fourth year. And her weeks of effort to get Fred Weasley to take to her to the Yule Ball last year had ended only when he and his twin had disillusioned her of any growing assurance that she could tell them apart, in a scene so slight and yet so embarrassing that it hardly bore thinking about.

She'd even had a crush on a teacher before, if you could call it that. But several of the older Gryffindor girls had agreed that Professor Lupin was really unbearably cute, in a ragged kind of way. She had certainly never gone out of her way to attract his attention, the way some had.

But this...

It wasn't as if anyone in their right mind would call the man "cute." He and that word weren't even on speaking terms. Sarah took it as meager evidence that she was still at least somewhat in her right mind that she could look at him and see that his nose was more than a little beaky and that his face and hair would probably benefit from the application of soap instead of just water. He must wash. He wasn't dirty, not in any other evident way. She had noticed that much in the last few days.

The rather frightening thing was that she wasn't sure if it would have made a difference if he were. She hoped so. But if the fact that he truthfully was (in the common Gryffindor parlance) "an ugly git" was not dissuasive enough, she wasn't sure what would be. She had never felt quite like this.

It wasn't love, she was certain of that. Not the helpless devotion her mother had felt for her father. Not even the true affection that she hoped would someday be reciprocated, the substance of which her previous crushes had been a sort of foretaste.

No, this was more about the press of a hand in the dark, the warmth of a body at her back. A level of attraction that was so basic it had nothing to do with pretty faces and pink hearts. A desire that some bone-deep feminine wisdom assured her was nothing to wonder at, no matter how surprising its object.

Admit it, then.

Ok, so she was attracted to him. Snape. Professor Snape. Head of Slytherin House.

Add one more and that was a whole handful of problems. And there were any number of things she might add to the list. Not the least of which was the potential of ending up like her mother.

Sarah had made a point from the very beginning--a resolve that had been reinforced each year since she had turned thirteen by her aunt's back-to-school warnings--of avoiding any kind of interest in Slytherin males. The way they acted, it wasn't all that difficult to remember just what sort they were. Even the pretty-boys like Dirk were a little too transparent in their opinions of themselves to pose much of a temptation. She had begun to hope that, with school safely behind her, she would be able to pursue the rest of her life without constant exposure to the hazards of a romantic alliance with a Slytherin.

Fortunately none of them had ever been interested in her. She was persona non grata, as far as they were concerned, after having failed in her patent duty to become one of them. On her first day in Potions, Professor Snape had made the comment: "You appear to have been sorted into the wrong House, Miss Darkglass."

It had set the Slytherins snickering, and Sarah, still terrified that he might be right, had braved, "No, sir."

"One point from Gryffindor. You will not contradict your teachers!"

He had twitted her about it constantly after that, for at least the first month, after which he appeared to have gotten tired of the joke. But it had never completely died. The Weasley twins had instantly suggested, in some fit of cloak and dagger, that she had been planted to spy on a rival House, and idea seemed to have stuck long beyond any special desire to tease her. At least no one in the House had made a particular friend of her. She was ignored. Which was, in some ways, a blessing. Even now, Slytherins bent on mischief, having been reminded of her family connections, occasionally whispered, "Traitor!" to her in the halls.

Which was probably a fair assessment. The Sorting Hat had tried.

"Darkglass, hm? There's a name I haven't seen in some time. Cautious about your loyalties, I see."

Please not Hufflepuff, even if that would make Mother and Auntie happy.

"Bright in spots, but only as a means to an end."

Ravenclaw mightn't be so bad.

"Really, it all seems to add up to Slytherin. And yet..."

"I'll kill myself if I'm in Slytherin!" she had whispered back.

"Well, well, can't have that! Better be...GRYFFINDOR!"

And yet here she was, after all, mooning and moping about one of them.

Well...she took a long view on the problem...maybe it was for the best. Maybe this was ultimately the safest way to get it out of her system, to cheat fate, to lose whatever she had inherited from her mother of a weakness or desire for that awful breed. He would never reciprocate. He would never even notice. So then...it would be a school-girl crush on the teacher, and when it passed, as it surely would in a few weeks or months at most, this frustrating attraction-to-the-worst would be over and done with for good. And no one would ever know. Especially not Aunt Portia.

Having come to this conclusion, Sarah indulged herself just a little. She watched him at mealtimes all weekend, taking care that her head was not pointed directly at him, shifting her eyes elsewhere if he happened to turn his head in the direction of the Gryffindor table. Which he did, it seemed, with greater frequency as the weekend wore on. Sarah wondered guiltily whether it was true that you could sense it when someone was staring at you.

"It just isn't fair," Angelina was saying. "I could use some ideas here." Sarah felt a sharp jab in the arm. She jumped.

"What are you looking at?" Angelina demanded. "We have problems here."

"Just...daydreaming," Sarah said uneasily, turning her attention to her dorm mates.

Apparently, the fight after the match had gotten half the team banned from Quidditch for good. That was the edict from the new so-called Hogwarts High Inquisitor, Professor Umbridge, who had been passing out Ministry decrees like they were candy since her arrival to be the Dark Arts teacher. Although Sarah frankly didn't care that much. Professor Lupin had gotten them all through their O.W.L.s with creditable grades, and Sarah was only sitting for the N.E.W.T. because it seemed like a good credential in these uneasy times. Given that Umbridge's "Ministry-approved curriculum" was so worthless that she was unlikely to pass, she was thinking seriously of dropping the class after the Christmas holiday. Herbology, Potions and Astronomy were quite enough to be going on with. Although she suspected that Umbridge would take her abandonment of the class as a personal affront, which might make the boredom of sticking it out worthwhile, if it would prevent drawing the nasty woman's attention. Just a few more months of school, and she was quit of Hogwarts and whatever the Ministry was trying to do to it.

No, Sarah had no ideas for saving the Quidditch team, and no, she would not try out just to see if she had some unexpected talent. Angelina took this better than expected: they were doomed anyway, and nothing would do any good.

Potions was after lunch on Monday. Sarah was feeling more cautious by now. She had no intention of being obvious. Even if Snape was oblivious, other people might not be. She would have to keep the pins-and-needles sensation that she felt from the idea of being in his presence and listening to his voice for an hour and a half carefully to herself.

This was the last day they were spending on the rare plant ingredients they had gathered. They had already gone through the icecrop and the stony heath, and now they were dealing with the bitter saxifrage. It, however, had to be dried and powdered, a process that would take some time. Professor Snape lectured for most of the class on the benefits and deficits of various drying procedures. They were then to form into small groups, select the method they believed to be the most suitable for a particular potion of their choosing, and prepare their shared portion of the plant material for drying. It was a nerve-wracking assignment, since they were almost certain to be setting themselves up for future grief. The biting comments wouldn't end with Snape's evaluation of their choices today; they would be hearing about whatever they had gotten wrong for weeks, until the plants were fully dried and powdered and put into a potion to be graded.

Sarah spent the lecture taking more notes than she usually did. Typically she put down only vital information in the most concise form possible; no one who asked to borrow her notes ever asked again. But she tended to remember better if she paid strict attention, instead of trying to compose notes with half of her brain. Today, though, she sensed that she might not be making much sense of what her professor said. Besides, the rapid scratching of her quill on the parchment was a focus for the nervous energy that otherwise threatened to come out in some form of fidgeting.

It also kept her eyes down. Under the influence of his voice, her thoughts kept wandering off into memories, which melted into daydreams. It was easier not to look at someone with thoughts like that about them hiding behind one's eyes. Even as it was, it seemed like every time she did look up, he happened to glance over at her.

Once the group work began, her thoughts were less inclined to wander, since she had to present the merits of her own choice: a potion that, if sealed in a vial and thrown at someone, would, upon breaking, bring stinging tears to their eyes and sharp prickles to their nose and throat, effectively distracting them from throwing spells at you. She had run across it in some private research (motivated, though she didn't admit it, by what had happened on Halloween). The best method of drying the bitter saxifrage for potions that were meant to have a burning effect used the heat from a fire as part of the process. Considering the time of year, it was also the fastest method.

Edwin Dory concurred with her, although Olive Barnley and Billy Ferny argued that the standard method of free suspension was not only easier, it was suited, if not especially well for any one thing, then at least moderately well for a wide range of potions. Sarah didn't think that was the point of the assignment, and said so.

"What have you chosen to do?" Professor Snape said behind her. He had come to evaluate the group far sooner than she expected. The presence of him at her back brought both memories and daydreams to the fore again, leaving her too speechless to respond immediately.

"We're still deciding, sir," Edwin answered.

"We can't agree," said Olive Barnley, petulantly. "We've decided, but they won't agree with us, Professor."

Sarah rolled her eyes and sighed inwardly, knowing that Snape would take the other girl's side, just because she was a Slytherin. And chances were, when it was time to grade the assignment, she and Edwin would be blamed for letting their partners make a poor choice.

"And what have you suggested, Miss Barnley?"

Olive explained.

"And you have not been able to come up with any counter suggestions, Mr. Dory?" Snape asked derisively.

"Sarah thinks we should use the fire method and make Stinging Missile Serum, and I agree with her," Edwin said stoutly.

"I believe that the assignment I gave was to match a drying technique to a particular potion, was it not?"

Olive opened her mouth, as if make some reply; then, as if she realized her mistake, she simply stood there, looking rather like a surprised fish. Billy mumbled something Sarah couldn't make out.

"I'd better come back later, when you've had a chance to come to an agreement," Snape concluded frostily. He moved on to the next group, leaving Sarah with a cold absence along her spine. Had he actually hinted that Olive and Billy should admit that she was right?

In the end, they did. Luckily, too. Just before class broke up, after posting the reading homework for the next class session on the board, Snape took a list of their choices, and assigned individual essays in which they were to explain the procedure and defend their group's decision. Sarah didn't think she could have stood trying to defend Olive's idiotic interpretation of the assignment.

Olive got her own back, though. As she passed by Sarah's desk, she bumped intentionally against Sarah's bag, sending it tumbling to the floor, spilling books and packages of potion ingredients into the aisle.

Sarah sighed. It was not worth fighting over. She got down on the floor and started tiredly to retrieve everything, while everyone else hurried out. She was glad she didn't have any other classes this afternoon, or she would have been late.

"That was a rather interesting choice of potions you made, Miss Darkglass," Professor Snape said, as the last students' steps echoed out the door.

She was, she realized, alone with him, and she looked up, astonished. Perhaps he discussed such things with his Slytherin students, but she had never been on the receiving end of a conversational comment. Or was this just the opening gambit of a criticism about making Olive look bad?

"Are you aware that Stinging Missiles are part of an Auror's usual equipment?"

Sarah blinked up at him, where he sat behind his desk. He was studying her, as if trying to determine what she was really up to. Her conscience squirmed from her thoughts about him, but she schooled her face to perfect innocence; she felt no guilt whatsoever for anything about the assignment, including embarrassing Olive. If he was trying to make her uncomfortable for that...

"Yes, sir," she answered truthfully.

"Do you think you are up to becoming an Auror?" he probed more sharply. Dubiously. Was this about Halloween night, then? If she couldn't react quickly enough in that situation, he seemed to be implying.

"No, sir," she said. "I've always planned to become an apothecary."

"That's a rather tame profession for a Gryffindor," he remarked snidely.

"If what happened on Halloween is any sample of Auror's work..." Sarah shuddered involuntarily at the memory of how close she had been to dying. "I'd prefer to stick with my original choice."

Snape didn't say anything in reply, just kept watching her as she finished putting away her books and ingredients. But when she picked up her satchel to swing it over her shoulder, he suddenly asked, "Have you arranged an apprenticeship?"

Sarah's heart began pounding so hard it slunk up into her throat. A Hogwarts apprenticeship? Professor Snape didn't take on just any student. No, why would I even think that?

"Not yet, sir. I thought over Christmas, I would..."

"I will speak to some people I know," he said, over his steepled fingers. "Dreggs and Pennyworth sometimes have positions available."

Disappointment? No, no, definitely relief. It would far too unnerving to be his apprentice, especially now.

He went on, "There are other possibilities. Depending, of course, on the marks you receive in your N.E.W.T.s."

"Thank you, Professor," Sarah said wonderingly, puzzled that he would do such a favor for anyone but a Slytherin.

"You may go now, Miss Darkglass," he replied. But he was still watching her with an odd intensity. He couldn't possibly... No, that is the maddest idea. Up in the daylight, you'll see how silly it is.

She was only halfway to the door when Professor Snape said sharply, "Miss Darkglass." She turned, her stomach lurching.

"Do you know what a Dark Glass is?"

"It's a dark magic object," she answered warily, not certain how much she was supposed to know, despite the unlikelihood that anyone would think she was utterly ignorant about her own surname.

"Do you know its uses?" he persisted.

"Mostly...charms involving beauty and...and attraction." The direction of the inquiry was becoming alarming. It wasn't just being questioned about dark magic. It was the look of satisfaction on Professor Snape's face, as if he had caught her out. As if the trend of her thoughts during class had been transparent to him. As if she had actually been trying to... "I've never used one," she averred, becoming angry and frightened all at once at the accusation in his eyes. "I don't own one."

"Surely your father..."

"I don't have any of my father's things." Didn't he know that the Ministry would have confiscated everything? "I wouldn't want them if I did. You said I could go, Professor." She turned and, fully expecting a point deduction to be shouted at her back, stalked out of the room as fast as she could.