A Merciless Affection

Chapter 6: Surrender to Your Darkest Dreams

Sarah had always spent a lot of her time in the library. It was better than listening to Quidditch strategy and the latest play-by-plays. With a book open in front of her, she became the lone audience for a story that the author was--for a few minutes, at least--telling entirely for her. Even spell books and histories were like listening to her own private lecture. And a lecture was what she needed tonight.

She was a little afraid that what she was looking for was in the restricted section. After all, a seemingly untraceable method of communication was something that any number of students would love to get their hands on. Just the possibilities it opened up for cheating on tests were enough to make it highly sought after, let alone the more romantic applications. There must be some catch to it, and Sarah was determined to find out what it was before she started relying on it.

It might not even be in the restricted section, she thought in despair, but in some moldy old dark magic book in Professor Snape's private collection. She put back Remedies for Love Potions with a sigh, and resumed running her finger slowly down the shelf.

She wouldn't have found it if it had been properly labeled. It was slender volume with a blue cloth cover, wide enough to extend out a little further than most, and without a title on its narrow spine. She pulled it out far enough to see the front cover: Obscure Seventeenth-Century Potions. Without much hope, but with something that Snape had said tickling at her brain, she opened it. Unlike many wizarding books--most of which seemed to go by the theory that if you hadn't bothered to read the book well enough to become familiar with it, you had no business trying to look up anything in it--this one actually had a table of contents.

Petticoat Poofer

Cavalier Curl Restorer

Lover's Ink

Sarah took the book to her favorite solitary nook and curled up in a low armchair that looked far more uncomfortable than it was, which was probably the reason no one else ever came looking to sit in it.

Interesting....

The chapter explained the theory behind the potion, the blood acting as a medium and the hair acting as a conduit for the magic. But scanning the list of ingredients told her why it had become obscure, even before the text explained it. For one thing, it required vampire dust, which was technically a regulated substance (since a sapient creature, however loathsome, had to die to produce it), and was therefore almost impossible to get except through underground sources. For another thing, like many potions for use in pairs, it would only work if the two people making it had a particular bond, in this case a sexual one. As the book pointed out, the original usage for which it was created--enabling communication between young lovers who had been separated by their cruel and unsympathetic parents--was also a situation which would often preclude being able to elude said overprotective parents long enough to do the dirty deed.

So, nothing particularly terrible, apart from the vampire dust. That and the fact that she had already slept with him. That she was planning to do it again. Tonight.

Sitting at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall at dinner, listening to the chatter of her classmates, while the man she had just been plotting assignations with sat up at the staff table, had brought home to her that he really was still her teacher. Not that she was going to let that fact stop her. But it gave her pause, sent waves of guilt churning through her veins, an uncomfortable chaser for the passion she had felt a few minutes before.

It still had her nerves on edge. It was only 8:30; in half an hour Madam Pince would shoo them all back to their common rooms, and Filch would start stalking the hallways. It was tempting to try to find a hiding place, maybe an empty classroom, so she wouldn't have to wait until the Gryffindor common room emptied so she could sneak out. But that would raise questions about her absence that she had no ready answers for. Better to been seen in Gryffindor Tower, to let it be thought that she was sitting up late studying in the common room.

Gads, it was hard to wait.

She ought to be doing her homework, but somehow she couldn't buckle down to it, not knowing that she would be moving so soon. So she leafed through the book of potions, finding out how to make a substitute for starch that obviated the need for either hoops or infinite layers of petticoats to hold out one's skirts, reading the recipe for a tonic that would let a man who had cut his hair in order to go undetected among Roundheads regrow his lovelocks in less than ten minutes.

When Madam Pince ordered everyone out, Sarah slipped the book back onto the shelf. She wanted to copy out some of it, including the Lover's Ink, but that would have to wait until the end of the year, when there would be no reason to worry about what might be found among her things.

Back in the Gryffindor common room, she made herself do homework. Professor Sinistra was expecting an essay tomorrow, and Sarah had reading to do for Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts. She did Umbridge's assignment first, fearing it would put her to sleep if she left it until the end. She kept her Potions reading for last. How had it never made her heart race before to realize that the inner voice in which she heard the words was Professor Snape's?

***

She was ready to throttle the Creevey brothers. Their parents had sent them a largish parcel filled with biscuits and sweets, and the two seemed to be determined to eat their way through the whole thing, in preference to dividing it up between them, going back to their own blasted dormitories and saving some for later. It was already after ten, and they prattled on and on, between bites, about the Muggle doings which had filled the apparently voluminous letter that came with the parcel. Sarah was tempted to cast a sleepiness hex on them. In the end, she took the opportunity of a particularly loud giggle to suggest sullenly to them that the hour was rather late and hadn't they better get to bed? Even though she wasn't a prefect, the fact that she was a (clearly irritated) seventh year had enough impact that the two made a hasty accounting of their remaining treats and headed up the boys' stairway.

As soon as she was sure they weren't coming back down for a forgotten biscuit tin, and after a quick check to make sure the flowers on her bookmark were still blue, she stashed her books in a dark corner behind a fat armchair and slipped out the portrait door. The silencing charm she put on her feet was a bit difficult to get used to; she had never realized how much she relied on sounds she never consciously noticed. But soon she was making her way down the hallway, eyes always in search of a potential hiding place, ears open for any sounds of approach.

She did fine until she got down to the third floor. It was just lucky that she heard Filch grumbling about Dungbombs before Mrs. Norris appeared. Sarah ducked around a corner. She heard the cat yowl twice, closer the second time, and fled along the corridor, taking the first down staircase she found.

She almost met with another mishap on the first floor, this time due to the pounding of her heart in her ears, which almost prevented her from hearing someone's shuffling gait. She ducked into a disused classroom, burying her face in her robes to muffle her panting breath. Ok, she was close to McGonagall's office--that would be a good excuse if she needed one. But the shuffling feet moved past and out of earshot again.

This was worse than she thought it would be, and she began to question the wisdom of even attempting it. Snape had been right--getting caught was when, not if. Should I go back? No, it was further backwards than onwards, now.

The race down the main staircase to the ground floor was horrible, with the expectation of being stopped at any moment by some teacher's voice. But she relaxed a little once she was down the first flight of steps into the dungeons. Of course, the Slytherin common room was somewhere down here. She only hoped that no Slytherins were engaging in out-of-House trysts tonight.

By the time she got to the Potions classroom--without any further panic-inducing incidents--she was feeling moderately pleased with her accomplishment, although she dreaded the trip back more than a little. She wasn't going to think about that just yet. She knocked softly on the door to Snape's office.

No answer.

She waited, remembering how long it had taken last night. Minutes went by with no hint of movement or other sound behind the door.

Could he be back in the workroom? She knocked again, just a bit louder.

Well, he couldn't have gone to sleep this early...could he? Not knowing that she was on her way. Or had he changed his mind after all, and decided to have nothing to do with the little Gryffindor hoyden? Was he back there now, congratulating himself on his escape?

"Getting careless, Miss Darkglass?"

Sarah almost screamed. Not quite. But her heart, at least, had come very close to leaping out of her body. She whirled around, feeling a rush of both anger and relief at the familiar voice.

He was pointing his wand at her.

She froze, a new and colder terror seeping through her.

"If I were a Slytherin student, instead of a teacher, you'd be lying on the floor, hexed within an inch of your life." He lowered his wand.

"If you were a Slytherin student," she retorted, still trembling, "we wouldn't have such a problem. And if I were a Slytherin student, I wouldn't have such a long way to go to get down here."

"If you were a Slytherin student," he said coldly, stalking toward her, "you would not be here, no matter what the temptation." He whispered a few words to the lock, then opened the door to his office. "Get in."

She didn't argue, although his mood was frightening.

"Why weren't you paying better attention?" he challenged her, closing the door behind him.

"Is it likely that I would be noticed in this closed classroom?" she responded. "Standing quietly in front of your door for ten minutes, not knowing where you were?"

"I was making sure that none of my students were out patrolling the corridors. They don't like their territory being invaded, especially by Gryffindors." His sneer changed to a frown. "You don't have your bookmark with you."

"I checked it before I left."

"Keep it with you at all times," he hissed. "Check it at every turn in a corridor."

"I got here without a problem until I got to your door," Sarah said bluntly, then to make her answer sound a tad more civil, tacked on, "Sir."

"I am responsible for a Houseful of students, Miss Darkglass," he returned. "Their problems, their concerns come before yours, or even mine, is that clear?"

Sarah blinked. His aggravating habit of favoring his Slytherins slipped abruptly into a new context. They were his students, his responsibility. For a moment she wished that she had not stopped the Sorting Hat from putting her in Slytherin, just for the sake of having that fierce protective mantle wrapped around her as well. On the other hand, she hadn't known at the age of eleven, or even at twelve or fourteen or sixteen, that she would be here now, feeling what was she was feeling, doing what she was doing.

"So Gryffindors are fair game?" she asked, a little tartly. "Am I here because of Quidditch last Saturday, then?"

"That does add something, doesn't it?" he said, bearing down on her like a shadow.

***

Sarah was out of sorts on Friday. Snape had sent her off last night with a warning that Professor McGonagall usually made a round of the main corridors a little after midnight and without setting a time for their next meeting. The prospect of not seeing him except at a distance for the entire weekend was maddening, and by the time she had gotten safely back into the Gryffindor common room and retrieved her bookbag, she was frustrated enough to take out her new bottle of ink and scrawl Detention tomorrow? across a scrap of parchment.

In the morning, Sarah flipped open her Astronomy book (safer, she thought, than her Potions book) and slid the green-flowered bookmark across the margin of the page. All it said was: No.

It was fortunate that Potions was the last class of the afternoon. Otherwise she might have behaved so outrageously that Snape would have had no choice except to give her a detention. By the time she was headed down to the dungeons for class, however, she had calmed down enough to take a more calculated view of the situation. She could wait, if she had to. Let him get desperate. She could write no just as easily as he could, next time. Let him stew about that. It was not very difficult in class to pretend that she felt the same vague, generalized and resigned resentment toward the Potions master that everyone else did.

The Astronomy practicum for the two N.E.W.T. levels, normally at 11 o'clock on Friday nights, had been moved up to 9 o'clock because of the moon. All things considered, it was probably a good thing not be showing up to class with her face flushed and her clothes disarranged. That didn't keep her from wishing that she were somewhere else as Professor Sinistra gave a complex assignment to determine, from tonight's observations, what astral influences would be operating in the next month. Shivering in the brisk north wind, in spite of a warming charm, she scanned the sky while she jotted down notes by the dimmest possible light of her wand, then began flipping through her book for the proper charts. The wind tugged the pages from her hand and they fell open at the new bookmark.

Sarah brought the tip of her wand closer to the book. Green. She closed it quickly.

"Professor Sinistra," she asked. "May we be excused once we've made our observations. It's awfully cold out tonight, and the wind is blowing my notes and my text so I can hardly keep them still enough to work."

There were murmurs of similar discontent among the other students, and Sinistra finally conceded that they could retreat to the topmost room of the tower to work. But she wanted their assignments turned in before they left for their dormitories.

Sarah beat a hasty retreat down the steps, with her book still in hand, and she managed to read the message before anyone else caught up with her: Saturday evening after dinner?

Her heart thudding, she made herself settle her work out around her in a marginally sheltered corner before she would even contemplate her reply.

Of course she would say yes.

Wait, what about making him desperate?

Could she put him off until Sunday night? Even Monday?

If she put him off, would he really stew about it? Or would he not care? Or would he just get disgusted with the effort required for the pursuit?

Sarah began working through her charts, forcing her concentration until her mind slipped into its old familiar grooves. She noted the position of the moon at each quarter, the movements of the planets, the notable conjunctions (her quill was less than steady as she described, in the most innocuous possible terms, the significance of Mars overtaking Venus), and (considering that she might need some extra credit once last night's essay had been graded) a list of some basic potions that would benefit or suffer from being prepared under the upcoming influences. She dried the ink, rolled up the parchment, and handed it in to Professor Sinistra, who was just coming downstairs with the last of the shivering students; Sarah's haste earned her a frown from the slender witch. Not caring, Sarah retreated down the long, long stairs of the Astronomy Tower.

The temptation to go to the dungeons now, while she had the chance, was strong but fleeting. She didn't dare intrude without writing a note first, and goodness knows when he might notice it or read it. So she went back to Gryffindor Tower, got ready for bed, pulled the bed hangings closed--the other girls were still in the common room, but Patricia always went to bed early and could come up at any moment--and composed her answer.

***

At dinner on Saturday, Katie and Alicia were begging Angelina not to make them go back out to the pitch after they ate. They had apparently already spent two hours out there, and if the quantity of warm drinks they were imbibing was any gauge, they were half-frozen.

"Ginny doesn't need the practice," Katie averred.

"Well Ron does," Angelina answered, as if that were that. When their woeful looks continued, she added, "We don't want to be dead last for the Quidditch Cup. McGonagall already frowns at me every time she passes me in the halls. Please?"

Sarah was as anxious to hear their grumbles of agreement as Angelina was. Three girls out of the dormitory meant three fewer people who might wonder where she had spent the evening. The real problem, of course, would be getting down to the Potions classroom on the weekend without getting stopped by a teacher on the stairs ("Have you forgotten the day, Miss Darkglass?") or attacked by Slytherins in the corridors. When could she...?

How could she have been so stupid? Now.

"Ugh. Nothing's agreeing with me tonight," she explained, setting aside her fork and slipping out of her seat. She hoped Snape would see her go, but she didn't even glance his way to find out. Once the big door of the Great Hall had closed behind her, she took a quick look around to be sure no one was on any of the other stairways, then made a mad dash toward the dungeons.

Sarah took more care in the lower hallways than she had last time, even with the silencing charm on her feet. She had slipped her bookmark into a papercovered novel small enough to keep in a pocket of her robes, and she checked it diligently before she went on, although Snape could hardly write secret messages when he was sitting at the staff table.

No one accosted her. Breathless all the same, she shut the door of the Potions classroom silently behind her.

Now, she thought, a little taste of his own potion. There weren't all that many places to hide: the stores cupboard was too full for a person to squeeze inside, and the equipment cupboard was too daunting--no knowing what might be lurking in the recesses back there. Finally she settled on Professor Snape's desk. The solid front didn't come quite to the floor, but if she didn't sit right against it, no one would be able to distinguish the black edge of a robe from the shadows, especially not from the door, where the student tables would partially block the view of anything beyond them.

You pop out of here without warning, you're going to be hexed into oblivion. No matter how sweet it would be to see him jump the way you did.

Okay, so I don't pop out.

You're going to regret dinner in a bit.

I won't starve to death before breakfast.

Your nerves really can't take all this sneaking and hiding indefinitely, you know. You aren't made for this kind of thing.

To that, she had no answer.

Finally she heard cat-quiet steps, the feather-soft opening and closing of the door. All the same, she wanted to make sure it was him before she gave herself away. The steps stopped. "Who," Snape said, in his nastiest voice, "is hiding in my classroom?"

Sarah cleared her throat before she stood up from under the desk.

"Better than standing out in the open, wasn't it?" she whispered, as she saw a look of relief pass over his face. "How did you know someone was here, if you didn't know it was me?"

"I heard you breathing." He moved quickly to his office door and unlocked it.

Sarah was taken aback. "I couldn't have been breathing that loudly."

"It doesn't have to be, to hear it down here when no one's about," he said tautly, shutting and relocking the door behind her. He opened the doorway behind the tapestry. She passed through with him at her heels, but at a harshly whispered word, the wall resealed itself behind them.

Why was he being so careful?

And you don't know the passwords, do you, so you're trapped here until he chooses to let you go.

Nonsense, there's always the portrait door.

If it isn't warded somehow.

The doorway between his workroom and his bedroom was sealed up again, just as tightly. Sarah cast an anxious glance at the back of the portrait door.

"Sit down," he ordered. "On the bed."

Sarah sat. She watched him go to the wardrobe, open it, then pull out one of the drawers. He closed it up again carefully and turned. He was holding up a small, elaborately decorated bottle. She felt the bottom drop out of her very empty stomach.

He hadn't kissed her yet. But he handed her the bottle.

"Drink it."

"Poison?" she said, horrified, before she could think better of it.

He drew a sharp breath, then slowly sat down in the armchair and put his feet up on the ottoman, folding his arms across his chest. "And just what sort of poison would I give you?"

Was he tired of her already? How simple a means to at once be rid of her and also secure her eternal silence.

"Well," she said waveringly. She unstoppered the bottle. It smelled of jasmine. She didn't know of any poisons that smelled of jasmine. Then again, she didn't know a tenth of the potions he must know. "I don't recognize it," she admitted.

"Then use what you do know," he cajoled, in that voice that she knew from seven years of classes. Use your brain, dunderhead!

"It can't be a slow-acting poison," she decided. "You wouldn't want to give me time to run and tell on you." She turned the bottle between her fingers. "On the other hand, you probably wouldn't want it to act too fast."

"Oh?" he said, raising his eyebrows.

"Well, I suppose you'd want time to...." Sarah was appalled at her own nonchalance, at the strange bubble of the black mirth rising up from some unplumbed depth of her soul, "one more time before I died. Unless you're into necrophilia," she added flippantly. The idea of him bonking her corpse was just too mad to imagine, the only drawback being that she would be too dead to appreciate any humor in it.

"Don't tempt me," he snapped. "Drink it or not, as you wish."

Sarah shut her eyes. It isn't poison. And if it is, well, that would be a fitting way for Julia Darkglass's daughter to go, too.

She upended the bottle into her mouth.

She sat trembling as the taste overwhelmed her, as if she were being smothered with heavily scented silk. He came and took the bottle from her hand.

"Only a Gryffindor would be stupid enough to drink poison on a dare."

"Only a Slytherin would be horrid enough to ask me to."

"Evenesco," he whispered, then set the bottle aside. "You'd better lie down. You may become somewhat dizzy." At another word, all but one of the lamps went out.

What if it really was poison? "How long does it take before...?" Before I start to feel the effects? Before I die?

"Not long. You should be feeling it begin already." He eased her back against the coverlet. Yes, she could feel it, a subtle warmth stealing through her veins. And strangely, the touch of his hands on her shoulders, even through layers of clothes, was almost like sandpaper.

Don't. Cry.

He shed his robes before he climbed into the bed. The brush of his fingers as he pushed a stray lock of hair away from her face was ticklish beyond laughter. It wasn't until he kissed her, though, that she realized that, whatever other effects it might have in the end, whatever he had given her was redoubling every sensation she felt.

Sarah had been old enough, before her mother left her father, to notice how she had flinched away from his touch. For a long time, she had thought she understood why. But her experiences of the past few days made her wonder. Her father had never struck her mother, not that Sarah knew of, but now it seemed possible that Malcolm Darkglass might have had other ways of hurting his wife that their daughter could not possibly recognize at the age of nine.

From some instinct of self-protection, Sarah made herself go limp. She had a vague concept of what it meant for a man to be gentle in bed, and she was pretty sure that, thus far, Snape had not been especially, although she had been too engrossed in the novelty of the process to care before now. But if she was going to die like this, she would rather not die in pain.

The effects of simply relaxing her clenched muscles were remarkable. It was as if that alone had changed something about what was happening to her. And now she couldn't think beyond to anything else. "Good girl," Snape whispered against her ear, as she moaned, and not in pain. He slid a hand up under her skirt and stopped.

"You aren't wearing underpants." His eyes went rather wide.

Sarah began to laugh; she couldn't help it. How was that going to be explained when her body was found? Would he have to tip her into the lake? Would she poison the giant squid when it had her for lunch?

"It isn't that funny," he growled, as her giggles reached a hysterical note. He wrenched his trousers open, and after a few awkward moments of positioning, her laughter faded.

Oh. It had felt nice before, but this...this...this promised something else. The longer it went on, the more desperate she felt to find out what. She had heard that....

"No," she whimpered. He had stopped. Had he...? She didn't think he had.... Not now, her body screamed. She tried to keep up the driving movement, pushing herself against him. If this was the last thing that was going to happen to her before she died....

He pinned her against the bed, stopping her. His breathing was still rough, but the control in his voice was like iron. "In my time, Sarah."

To plead with someone like Snape, who was not known for responding positively to such entreaties, promised fruitless humiliation. But she did not know what else to do. It seemed as if she might die of desire before the poison was ever finished with her. She begged, "Please."

She had never heard him laugh before, she realized, no matter how ruthlessly he mocked his students. It was a sound she could not interpret.

"You don't even know yet what is you want, but you'd do anything to get it, wouldn't you?"

Sarah felt tears welling up. God, don't let me cry! She whispered so thinly that the words bore edges, "What do you want me to do?"

In the dim light his eyes were almost wholly black. "Touch me," he said hoarsely.

She had never dared to reach out her own hands; it had never seemed a thing he would either invite or suffer. Strange, now that she thought of it. And another, almost wrenching thought: Did anyone ever touch him?

Still feeling instinctively that he would knock her hand away, she reached up, past the ticklish ends of his hair on the back of her hand, and laid tentative fingers on the line of his jaw. When he didn't flinch, she followed the jawbone back toward his ear. His skin was ever so slightly rough under her tingling fingertips, as if whatever shaving charm he used was beginning to wear off. Braving a little more, she touched his earlobe, explored the curious curves of his ear.

With a hiss, he tilted his head back. Startled, Sarah drew her hand away.

"Don't stop," he whispered, bending again to kiss her.

She laid her hands on the sides of his face, which somehow intensified her ability to kiss him back. His ears were delicate shell shapes under her fingers. She had never imagined it could feel like this to touch someone. Behind his ears, his hair stood out from the skin, curving over the backs of her hands. With some trepidation, she drove her fingers into the lank black mane that fell around her face.

Well.

Most of her father's Muggle tenants had raised sheep for wool. She remembered chasing them as a child, remembered a shearing day, remembered burying her hands in the clean white fleeces, heavy and thick with the oily, waxy lanolin that left her hands so smooth that her mother delighted in stroking them for days. While his hair was not heavy, nor rough and curly like wool, the feeling was otherwise much the same. Curious, but not horrible. When he broke off the kisses and looked down at her, a faint smile bent her trembling lips.

She gasped as he moved against her, suddenly. She didn't realize how much her desire had quieted until it flared up again. If he stopped again, she would scream.

"Once people believed," he hissed between breaths, "that to lie with someone...was like a little death. Maybe...you can make...the comparison ...for yourself."

She felt so very, quiveringly strange, all through her veins. Had she made a mistake about the poison, then? Was it the same mistake her mother had made, trusting one of them just foolishly enough to be betrayed? I chose this! she insisted. I knew I might be wrong. Just don't let me die before I find out what....

...what?....

The comparison, it seemed, was apt indeed. Sarah was not sure that she was not dying after all. If this was pleasure, as it somehow seemed to be, it was frighteningly beyond the borders of anything that word could convey. Her heart was surging as if it were making a final struggle to survive. Everything was surging. She was dimly aware of the intense pressure of his body against her, of sounds that might have come from his throat. She only realized that she was not dead yet when she found that her body was back within realms she could understand. Her heart beat down and down, into the very depths of her abdomen, then slowly subsided.

"Oh," she gasped shortly. "Oh."

It was only a few moments before rolled off her. Scarcely able to endure it, she turned into him, burying her face against his chest. After a time, her breathing quieted. She did not feel at all now as if she were going to die.