A Merciless Affection

Chapter 3: Now I Am Here With You: No Second Thoughts, I've Decided

Sarah knocked on the door of Professor Snape's office.

What am I doing here?

No answer.

Is that my cue to leave? Now, before I get deeper into this?

Finally. "Come in."

Taking a deep breath to control the sudden trembling that shook her, Sarah entered. Professor Snape stood behind his desk, looking at her dubiously.

"You said eight o'clock," she remarked.

"I should have known better," he said morosely, "than to offer a dare to a Gryffindor."

Was that all this was, then? Was he mocking her after all, just upping the stakes before he struck the final blow? Of course, he was a Slytherin. She should have known better.

"I wasn't aware that you gave out detentions as a dare." She lifted her chin slightly.

The barb must have struck home, because his expression soured further.

"And yet you viewed this...detention...as a dare, didn't you, Miss Darkglass?"

Touché. Sarah was not sure how to answer.

"Well, speak up: why are you here?"

Well, you did give me detention. Although I knew that wasn't what you meant. The truth then, as much as I know it?

"I'm here...for the same reason you asked me to come."

He leaned forward menacingly across the desk. "And do you presume to know the reasons for my actions?"

Sarah studied him, surprised at her own failure to flinch. He was angry, but not in the way that was his usual reaction to student stupidity. It was the more unstable kind of anger that appeared when someone had tried to defy him, or when someone had come close--an admittedly rare event--to proving him wrong.

"We both know why you set down rules for...for my presence in your class," she answered. "I can only assume why you would ask me to break those rules." And in almost the same breath, too.

He let go of the desk and stood up straight, his eyes curiously uneasy before he looked away. He seemed to be studying the jars full of horrid specimens that lined the shelves. Finally he said, quietly, as if the fact were somehow unbelievable, "And yet, you came."

I shouldn't have come.

"Yes. Sir."

Silence, broken only by their own unsteady breathing.

He whirled to face her again. "You should not be here."

And yet she was. "I know that."

"Do you, I wonder?" he said more sharply. "Do you understand why this is wrong?"

Calmly. "Because you're a teacher and I'm a student." Although as she said it, she realized that this was exactly what had been troubling her so much when he looked at her--the absence of that impassive stare he habitually threw at the students who had sat in his class for seven years. It was as if she had turned into someone--or something--else in his eyes.

"And do you know why that makes our...interaction...forbidden?"

Sarah blinked. It was wrong, of course, but it was the sort of thing that she had simply taken for granted as being wrong. She had no idea.

"Power," Snape whispered tightly. "Vastly unequal power. In which lies the potential for manipulation. For coercion."

"Well, you must always enjoy that part," Sarah riposted, suddenly tired of whatever game he was playing.

His face darkened. For a moment of alarm, she wondered if he would strike her. "I am not in the habit," he said, "of seducing my students, Miss Darkglass."

"Then...why me?" Sarah asked, feeling her limbs go to water, as they had not done since she came through the door.

"I might ask the same question." He touched steepled fingers to his lips. "How many of your friends know where you were going and why?"

"No one." To be truthful. "At least no one who knows that this is anything other than a detention. I don't have that kind of friendships."

"Really? I would have thought that seducing a teacher would come in under the category of adolescent dares. An extra notch on your belt, or however girls keep track of their conquests."

"I haven't got any notches," Sarah said derisively. Which was tantamount to admitting that she was a virgin. Whether he would find that more appealing or less, she had no idea. It was not something she was going to apologize for.

It did seem to take him aback slightly. She could see him studying her, thinking, although it was impossible to tell of what.

"I really think," he said slowly, "that you had better go back to your dormitory."

Rescued from fate? Then why did she feel as if her breath were being crushed out? She was being drawn back from the edge of the inevitable and something in her wanted to keep falling.

"Will you tell Professor McGonagall?" she heard herself saying.

"That...will not be necessary."

Snape letting her out of a detention altogether?

Silence again. They stood looking at each other. He isn't anything that a girl would want, Sarah told herself, trying to make herself see the rather ugly, unpleasant man who taught Potions. But all she could think of was the firm grip of his hands and the sound of his voice when they were probably going to die.

"Why are you standing here, Miss Darkglass?"

"You haven't dismissed me, Professor."

"Go, then." The intake of his breath afterward was sharp enough for her to hear it.

Breaking their locked gazes was almost physically painful, but she made herself turn, because he had told her to go, and she wasn't about to throw herself at his feet. Forcing herself to take a step toward the door was even more difficult. Nonsense, you've been walking since you were a year old. A step then. And another.

"Sarah..."

She stopped. There had been something of anguish in her name. Footsteps, quiet as the tread of a cat. She shut her eyes, shaking.

A touch on her chin, lifting her face. Warm breath. A kiss, which she did not resist. But there was hesitance in it, or restraint. She opened her eyes.

"Is that enough to convince you?" he asked, inches away.

"Of what?"

"That you don't want to be here."

"Oh." It had been so strange. Not a boy's kiss, for all its uncertainty. She wanted him to kiss her again so she could investigate further. "No."

"What will it take? How far do I have to push?" His lips were on hers again, one hand pressing the back of her head, the other going around her waist. There was no hesitation this time; it was almost savage. When he released her she was gasping for breath, her mouth stinging. "Are you ready to leave yet?" he sneered.

What else could I expect from a Slytherin?

"Do you want me to leave?" she asked, in earnest, but hardly expecting anything but more games and evasions.

"I want..." He tempered his voice, bringing it down to a knife edge. "I want you to understand--perfectly--what you are doing."

How could I not understand, as my parents' daughter? But I'm not my mother. I won't fall in love with one of them. "I'm sure you take me for a fool, but I wouldn't have come here if I didn't understand exactly what might happen." Sarah did not like how her words shook.

"Then understand this," his voice was almost a hiss, and his hand tightened in her hair. "Whatever happens, you will tell no one. Not your best friend, not your worst enemy. You won't even whisper it to your familiar in the middle of the night."

"I would never. And I haven't got a familiar."

He went on as if he had not heard her. "Second, you will not stare at me in class, longingly or otherwise," he gave the words a contemptuous twist, "or behave anywhere publicly as if anything had happened tonight apart from you scouring cauldrons.

"And third..." He took another breath, and his eyes seemed to stab into hers. "You may think now that you are certain of your own reactions, but I warn you that there will come a point of no return, and I will not be answerable for anything that happens should you choose to remain here beyond it."

"I understand," Sarah said, challenging his deep black eyes. "Perfectly."

To her surprise, he let her go, but after a moment the reason was clear. He took out his wand, approached a tapestry hanging on the wall that depicted, almost lost amongst its riot of woven herbs, a unicorn in combat with a serpent, and tapped a pattern on the stones. "Betony, blackthorn, elder, rosemary," he murmured, hardly to be heard. He pushed aside the tapestry, revealing an archway into a room beyond. "After you."

The feeling that she was stepping into a dragon's lair was not dispelled by the room in which she actually found herself. It was his private workroom. The state of the walls suggested habits of experimentation that sometimes resulted in minor explosions, which might explain why he kept his ingredients stores outside in his office. A number of potions seemed to be in progress, only a couple of which Sarah recognized.

"Don't touch anything," he snapped. He moved to the right side of the room. A few more taps. "Fennel and hypericum." Another archway appeared.

Deeper into the lair. It was harder to breathe here, although the air felt no closer. It was more difficult, too, to make herself see her surroundings. A fireplace, unlit; that was safe enough. A chair and an ottoman in front of it, darkly upholstered. Shelves and shelves of books, along the wall they had come through. The back of an ordinary portrait door off to the left, although she felt too disoriented to try to guess which painting and which hallway. Another narrow archway...bathroom? Wardrobe, closed. Two chests, of considerably different sizes. Stuck to the few spaces of bare wall were posters, the sort available in apothecary shops, illustrating various classes of potions ingredients.

Pull yourself together, if you're so determined not to back out of this. Yes, there is a bed. Dark green velvet trappings, with silver trim...

He moved into her field of vision and picked up a clear crystal, about the size of a child's fist, from a shelf. He murmured a charm over it, then looked at her. "I want it clear that you are here of your own free will."

What free will? Oh, yes, I remember, I get to choose just how fully I'll share my mother's fate. "I'm here of my own free will," Sarah said firmly to the crystal. It glowed blue for a moment. A recording charm. Naturally he would leave nothing to chance. No running to McGonagall claiming that he had taken advantage.

He set the crystal back on the shelf. "You can leave whenever you choose."

"No," Sarah whispered, with the slightest shake of her head.

"No, you don't believe you can? Or no, you don't want to?" He approached her, all darkness and height; the top of her head only came up to the end of his long, beaked nose.

"I don't want to."

He kissed her again, then, his hands on her shoulders, stilling her shaking. She found herself clutching the front of his robes. Whenever the kissing stopped for a moment, she looked up at a puzzled, even a suspicious, expression in his eyes.

The kisses, though. They began again with hesitance, but proceeded rapidly, although with some subtlety along the way, to demanding. She had been kissed before, but never like that. And her body, like the traitor it was, answered that demand as if she were, in fact, his possession. The one small remaining reasonable corner of her mind wanted to heave at that notion, but it was being outvoted. It was all she could do not to press closer to him, while the urging to do that and more flushed through all her distinctly female parts, spreading through her body like a strong and possibly poisoned wine.

Pressed back and back by his hands, her robes fell off her shoulders, puddling behind her feet. He caught her up and carried her three or four steps. Her heart, pounding already, lurched a bit higher.

But this is what you came here for, isn't it?

The covers had already been turned back. She would have expected something more exotic--black silk or some such. But the sheets were the same crisp white cotton as those on the student beds. There's house-elf efficiency for you.

While he stared down at her rather grimly, almost as if he wondered what strange creature had made its way into his bed and what he would have to do about it, her professor shed his own outer robes. Then he crawled in on top of her.