Rating:
R
House:
Astronomy Tower
Ships:
Original Female Witch/Severus Snape
Characters:
Original Female Witch Severus Snape
Genres:
Romance Angst
Era:
The Harry Potter at Hogwarts Years
Spoilers:
Order of the Phoenix
Stats:
Published: 03/19/2005
Updated: 07/13/2015
Words: 282,703
Chapters: 64
Hits: 98,814

A Merciless Affection

Verity Brown

Story Summary:
When a N.E.W.T. Potions field trip goes badly wrong, a chain of events is set in motion that may cost Snape more than his life, and a student more than her heart. Angst/angsty romance. SS/OC (of-age student). AU after HBP but canon with OotP. Contains mature theme and some sex.

Chapter 05

Posted:
04/07/2005
Hits:
2,171
Author's Note:
Thank you for reviewing, White Owl 2! I know what you mean--I'm definitely not getting the number of reviews here that I get elsewhere. And I tend not to bother to update over here unless I get a review that indicates that


Chapter 5: Here, I Have a Note...

Sarah was true to her word. In Potions on Thursday she neither stared at Professor Snape nor behaved like a lovesick schoolgirl. The fact that she was not in love helped. But the real trick was a kind of mental disconnect--the girl who had gone to the dungeons last night was not the girl who had once sat in class every day, innocent of such thoughts as she had known since Halloween. And while she was in class, she would set aside the mantle of the stranger she was becoming, and instead slip back into that blameless girl's robes.

It was not easy to maintain. New thoughts interrupted her old ones at untoward moments. She took sparse notes, as she used to, but she wasn't absorbing anything he said. Was he the same as always? Did he seem a little tired? Or something else?

There was no point in agonizing over it, she chided herself. It's over, that's the end. You're a little older, a little wiser for it. If you keep at this, you'll end up hating him for something you never expected from him to begin with.

Class finally ended. Snape passed out their parchments from the essay they had handed in on Wednesday.

"Wow, an 'E'--better than I thought!" Amanda Jorgen, the Hufflepuff who had sat next to her today, remarked softly as they gathered up their books.

Sarah scanned her own paper. She turned it over. Nothing. "He didn't mark it."

"Huh?" The other girl was rolling up and tucking away her parchment.

"He didn't grade my essay," Sarah said numbly.

"Whoa," Amanda said, swinging her bookbag onto her shoulder. "Has that ever happened before?"

"No." Sarah felt her stomach knotting up. She looked up in time to see his office door closing.

"Better go talk to him about it, I guess." Amanda made a face. "Poor you."

"I can't now, we have Herbology." She would have to come back later. She could manage it before dinner, if she hurried back from the greenhouses.

No grade. Did that...did that imply she would have to do something more to get one? Sarah's anxiety began transforming slowly into anger.


It was just after four o'clock when Sarah stalked into Professor Snape's office without even knocking.

"The door, Miss Darkglass?"

She shut it. Hard.

"If you think," Sarah said furiously, thrusting out the unmarked parchment, "that I will now participate in bribery in order to get my grades..." She stopped, half-choking on her own fury.

Professor Snape took the parchment from her. "I believe the correct word is extortion," he said coldly. He snatched up a quill, slashed it stabbingly across the upper corner, and tossed the essay onto her side of the desk. "There. That will be all."

Sarah stared at the "A." Not as high as her usual marks, but considering how distracted she had been when she wrote it, she had not expected any better. It was a fair grade.

"You may go," he repeated.

She looked up. "No."

"What did you say?"

"No, Professor. You wanted to talk to me."

"To talk to you, Miss Darkglass, not to be shouted at by you."

Sarah swallowed, an apology on the tip of her tongue, but she remembered how the absent grade had disturbed her--he must have known how I would take it--and instead said tightly, "I am not shouting now."

"Then sit down," he ordered. "If you fly at me like a shrew again, this conversation will be over immediately."

Sarah sank onto the hard-backed chair, more than a little afraid of what he might say.

You will be dropping Potions, Miss Darkglass.

This relationship cannot continue.

You are going to be expelled.

"If this relationship is to continue, certain things must be understood."

Continue? Her breath caught in her throat.

His frown deepened, and he snapped, "Of course, your conduct just now suggests that you may not wish it to continue."

To be with him again...the desire in the thought almost made her sight go dark. "I do," she whispered. She forced her eyes to open, struggled to control her breathing. She would have asked, "Do you?" but the very fact that she was here answered that question.

"Your composure in class today was adequate not to arouse suspicion, although perhaps not good enough to deflect it if it already existed. However, if you think you can continue to improve...?"

"Yes," Sarah answered. "It helps to...to know where things stand."

"And where do you think that is, I wonder?" he taunted. "I will make one thing very clear, Miss Darkglass: it would be better for you not to...become attached."

Sarah attempted a laugh, but all that came out was a sharp, guttural sound. "No fear of that," she said, trying to be flippant.

He frowned again. "Oh?"

"My mother told me: 'Never give your heart to a Slytherin. He'll hand it back to you on a platter with all the trimmings.'" Sarah was surprised at how bitter her own voice sounded. She hadn't meant it to.

"She wasn't in Slytherin?"

"She was a Hufflepuff," Sarah said, as if that explained everything. Perhaps it did. "I'm not my mother."

"We would hardly be faced with the present dilemma if you were. Has it occurred to you yet that it will be very difficult for us to meet?"

"You could keep giving me detention," Sarah suggested, wondering guiltily how many points she might end up costing her House for the sake of this illicit little affair.

"If only it were that easy. But a sudden string of detentions, when you've never been a problem before, would certainly attract Professor McGonagall's attention. And you're too good a student for the only other simple option: no one would believe for a moment that you need remedial Potions."

It took a couple of blinks for her to realize that he had actually complimented her. Emboldened, she offered, "I could...sneak out of the dormitory."

"That would certainly be a very Gryffindor thing to do," he said, far more nastily than she thought was warranted. "And what will you say when you're caught?"

"If I'm caught."

"When you're caught. Unless you happen to own an Invisibility Cloak?"

"No," she admitted. "Do you?"

"No, more's the pity." His eyes seemed to be looking at something far away. "Are you above stealing?"

"Yes." She frowned when he sneered. "I'm sorry, but I am above stealing."

"Too bad, since there's one in the Gryffindor dormitories. There are potions that can confer temporary invisibility," he went on. "Unfortunately, they have some rather nasty side effects."

"I'm sure that I can sneak away," Sarah reinforced her earlier suggestion. "If I cast a silencing charm on my feet, and hide if I hear anyone coming, I also ought to be able to figure out fairly quickly if there's a system to the teachers' rounds, and Mr. Filch's. Of course, you could tell me what the system is."

He eyed her narrowly, as if she had requested the answers so she could cheat on a test. "Never trust people to be where you think they will be. If you start making assumptions, you will start making mistakes."

"What are you saying then? That we can't meet?"

"That is not what I'm saying," Snape snapped. "I'm simply trying to emphasize that it will not be easy. No one solution is adequate. Anytime a pattern is developed, there is a risk that someone will notice it."

"Which means..." Sarah murmured, "...we don't set a pattern," he said at the same time she did. Sarah wasn't sure whether to be amused or horrified that she had spoken over him, but she saw the corners of his mouth twitch and relaxed just a bit.

"So we use a combination of strategies?" Sarah suggested.

"Yes, but even that can create a pattern. This will have to be very much at random."

"But then, how will we know which or when...?" Sarah furrowed her brow. "Owls?"

He shook his head. "There is reason to believe that the Ministry is, shall we say screening the Post, and not just at Hogwarts."

"That's illegal!" Sarah gasped.

"Does that ever stop people from finding a way to get what they want?" he scoffed. She guessed that he wasn't just talking about the Ministry.

"What are you suggesting?" Sarah asked warily.

"Nothing particularly illegal, actually. Here." He handed her two narrow strips of parchment. They were a type of cheap bookmark that Flourish and Blotts carried, printed with assorted line drawings. Most students colored in the drawings to suit their own tastes, but these were still plain. The design on one was a thorny, twining vine with rather feeble-looking blooms; the other was a stylized knotwork depiction of a snake. Sarah looked up, not comprehending what purpose they could serve. Snape smirked. "Come along."

She ducked under the tapestry after him, her innards all aflutter, from top to bottom. It was nearly time for dinner, and Professor Snape's absence would likely be noted by everyone, even if her own was not. No matter how much she wished otherwise, there wasn't possibly time to...

There were two small cauldrons on a worktable near the doorway. The contents smelled, oddly enough, of ink. In front of each cauldron was a quill and a sheet of parchment, on one of which was spread a few strands of dark hair. In the center between the two sheets was a rather odd device for potion-making: a pair of shears.

"There used to be a quaint custom for lovers to give one another a lock of their hair. Lover's Ink is one of the reasons for that custom." Snape picked up the shears. "If I may?"

It felt very odd to have him to cut her hair. He separated out a small section behind her right ear, the brush of his hand sending tingles down her neck. It was done too quickly. The shears snicked and he drew back, a collection of brown filaments lying across his palm. He laid them carefully on the empty parchment.

"How does it work?" Sarah asked. She knew of a variety of potions that used innocuous bits of people, like strands of hair or nail clippings, although their purposes were seldom entirely innocuous.

"There's no time now for long explanations. You will understand as we proceed. Once the final two ingredients are added, the inks will be ready. That one is yours." He pointed to cauldron that had what she could only assume was his hair in front of it. "Lay the bookmarks down. You'll be coloring in the snake with your ink. I'll do the other."

Sarah raised her eyebrows, but arranged the bookmarks appropriately, stationing herself by the parchment that held a dozen fine black strands.

He handed her a long pin. "Three drops of your own blood, then the hair."

So, more blood magic. Trying to hide a shudder, she took the pin, and before she could change her mind, she pricked the side of her thumb.

"Deeper than that," he chided, noticing her efforts to milk out even one drop of blood. Three fat drops of his blood had already fallen into the neighboring cauldron.

Grimacing, Sarah jabbed her thumb again. This time the pain was rewarded, and she let three drops fall into the ink. Then, matching his movements, she sprinkled the strands of his hair across the surface, where they instantly dissolved in a hiss of blue-green smoke. Her thumb still tingled.

"Good." He took up a quill, dipped the point in his cauldron, and began marking in the flowers on the viney bookmark with a deep blue ink.

Sarah's ink turned out to be dark green. An appropriate color for the knotted serpent. It took her a little longer, however, to color in the whole design. She whispered an ink-drying charm.

"Now we exchange." Snape took the serpent bookmark and handed her the flowered one. "Watch carefully." He dipped the quill again, wrote 10 p.m. on the blank sheet of parchment, then passed the serpent bookmark over it. To Sarah's surprise, the words disappeared as thoroughly if they had never been written. "Look at your bookmark."

The change was subtle, given that both inks were dark, but the flowers on her bookmark were now clearly green.

"Pass it over your parchment. Any bit of parchment will do, incidentally."

10 p.m. appeared on the sheet in green ink. The flowers were blue once more.

"It will disappear in one minute, so never waste time in reading it. However, the messages should be kept as short as possible. And never carry through with an arrangement without checking your bookmark immediately beforehand. I hope I don't need to warn you never to write or recover a message except in private."

"I understand. It's getting late," Sarah added anxiously. The pangs in her stomach had at least something to do with the approach of mealtime, even if it was primarily nerves. We're really going to do this.

"Quite late. Bottle your ink up." He snatched a squat, squarish bottle from a high shelf and put it on the table. "I'll deal with mine and the rest of yours later."

Seven years of practice bottling potion samples made it quick work. The stoppered bottle was nestled snugly in her satchel in less than a minute.

"Take your books back to your room before you come to dinner," Snape instructed while she worked. "It won't do for us to come into the Great Hall together."

"I don't think I can get here by ten," Sarah remarked, slipping the flowered bookmark between the pages of the topmost book in her bag. "I'll have to wait until the common room empties out."

"You thought I meant tonight?"

"Didn't you?"

"And what will you say if you're caught?"

"Unless I'm caught in the dungeons, I'll hardly have difficulty making up an excuse. And if I am caught down here, I can claim that I lost something I needed for my homework, and I thought I might have left it under my desk. I'll be careful."

His black eyes narrowed. "You know that I'll claim to know nothing whatsoever about any of this."

"I know." She lifted her chin a notch.

He seemed to take it as a challenge far different than she had intended. He kissed her.

Oh my. If only he would... Just a few steps that way. No, there's no time. Damn, I wish...

Then they were staring at each other, breathless.

"There's no time," she gasped, just as he said, "We can't."

He took his hands off her. "Go. Now."

Sarah fled past the tapestry, out the door. She did not dare to look back.


Author notes: Yeah, this is a little lower key, but we’ve been on a pretty high pitch the last couple of chapters. BTW, if you ever have to have your finger pricked for a test at the doctor's office, make them do it on the side of your finger, not the pad. It makes a huge difference in the pain, I promise.

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