A Merciless Affection

Chapter 8: He's With Me, Even Now

At the end of the week, Sarah had come to a conclusion: she was not going to get a detention again, not if she could help it. The fact that her presence was required had produced an unpleasant edge on his attitude toward her. Nothing unbearable. Just that...he seemed more inclined to remind her in subtle ways that he was, indeed, in a position of power over her. It made for an interesting game, but there were frightening hints at times that he did not consider it merely a game. As much as was possible--and she knew that might be very little--she would rather play on her own terms.

On Sunday afternoon, although she hadn't heard from him all weekend, Sarah decided to try to find some alternative solution. There was the room Angelina had mentioned, and although it seemed highly doubtful that she could convince him to meet her anywhere except in his chambers, she could point out one thing: as a teacher, he had greater freedom to go wherever he pleased at whatever hour he chose. It was better than the risk of her being caught outside his door after curfew.

The section of the seventh floor corridor that Angelina had been talking about was, when Sarah went to investigate, bare of any doorways. She studied the nearby window, checking to see whether it was real or a disguised enchanted door. A blast of frigid air when she opened it proved it to be real, and she latched it again hastily. A huge vase at the other end of the section did not seem to be hiding anything either. Sarah paced in front of the blank wall, disgruntled; she had really been hoping to find a way to meet him without that peril-fraught trip to the dungeons. For one last good measure, she twitched up the corner of Barnabus the Barmy's tapestry. Nothing. Angelina must have been having her on. Not what she would have expected of her dorm mate, really.

Sarah turned around and there it was--a well-polished door with a bright brass handle. After looking both ways down the corridor, she reached out, pushed down the handle, and pulled it open.

She wasn't quite sure what she had been expecting. A storeroom maybe, piled with heaps of moth-eaten blankets or curtains, suitable only for rather desperate students; at best she had thought it might be a little-used guest chamber or an abandoned suite of rooms. Instead she found herself looking in on the top landing of a narrow staircase leading down. Torches burned brightly, far into the depths, beckoning her.

While she had never heard of the castle actually devouring anyone, the sudden appearance of an all-too-friendly doorway that led into something that greatly resembled a stone gullet gave her pause. Knowing that she risked discovery more every moment she stood here peering in, she took out her wand. Then she stepped onto the landing and pulled the door closed behind her.

The torches did not go out. Sarah began descending, step by gingerly step. None of them collapsed. There were no landings to count floors by, however, and the way grew longer and longer and longer. It was only the irrational hope that somehow this staircase would take her where she needed to go that gave her the courage to keep walking down, down, down.

At last a landing appeared, just beyond the final torch. The steps turned to the right after the landing and went on descending, this time into utter darkness. There was no other option, however, than to follow.

Or was there?

Sarah pushed against the far wall of the landing. As she had half-guessed, half-hoped, she found herself looking at the back of a suit of armor; the picnicking young ladies were chatting merrily in the painting across the way, having been joined by a couple of other portrait girls. This was the first floor side corridor. Which meant that Snape's bedroom door was just beyond the bottom of the unlighted steps.

Sarah had to use her wand to shut the stone door from the inside. She leaned back against the one solid wall. "If I go down there," she whispered aloud, "will I be able to get back up these stairs?"

To her alarm, the wall that used to stand where the stairs now ascended shimmered back into being. "I guess not!" she sniped at it. Suddenly, the wall spat out a tiny gold key, which tinkled to the floor at her feet. "Oh..." She picked it up. "Um...thanks?" But since she had no intention whatever of surprising Snape with a visit, she began immediately looking for the keyhole. Was that it? That little space between the stone blocks? It seemed less like a keyhole than a notch in the mortar, but it was somewhere near where the key had fallen from. She pressed the key into the space. Promptly, the wall ate it, then shimmered away into a staircase. "You dear, dear castle," she said. Feeling lighter than she had in days, she started up the stairs, two at a time.

***

Closed inside the curtains of her bed, with all her dorm mates either absorbed in their own pursuits or out in the common room, Sarah wrote in green ink:

I have a safe way down. However, the back door (portrait) would be safer. When?

The words disappeared under the bookmark. It was less than a minute later, when she had just finished corking her ink bottle, she noticed that the flowers had shifted from blue to green.

Tuesday night. I'll give an exact time later. Did you steal it?

Sarah restrained a laugh. She opened her ink again.

No. She wondered who it was in Gryffindor that had an Invisibility Cloak, and just how Snape knew about it. Can I have the password?

The flowers stayed blue. Unless something had called his attention away abruptly, he must have gotten the message. She grimaced. It had probably been a mistake to add that last part. It was just that standing in that hallway again, in front of that horrible picture, waiting for him to open the door....

Sarah put away her ink and settled down to read. She was behind in every subject, thanks to last week. She could fake Herbology and Astronomy if she had to, but Umbridge wanted a detailed essay on Tuesday, and there was no way she could write that without reading what old Slinkhard had to say about the morals of using wards.

She was tucking her precious bookmark after the last page of the chapter, trying to compose in her mind the beginnings of the necessary drivel, when she saw the flowers change color, the green bleeding up through the blue, overwhelming it. She laid the bookmark against the wide bottom margin and slid it down. There was only one word:

Nevermore.

Was that his answer? Or the password?

Sarah closed the book. With a sigh, she turned over and stared up at the canopy.

***

When she had received no further messages by Tuesday noon, Sarah was beginning to think that, contrary to anything that seemed reasonable, he really had meant she would never be seeing him again. Except in class, of course. And how long would that last? He still could dismiss her. What would she have then?

Well, she could still study on her own. And Professor McGonagall would surely see to it that she was allowed to take the Potions N.E.W.T., even if she had left the class earlier in the year. Aunt Portia might even arrange for private tutoring; she would take personal offense at her niece's expulsion, considering that the teacher in question was head of Slytherin. Provided, of course, that Sarah could prevent any confrontations that might allow Snape to twist the truth against her. She wouldn't do as well on the N.E.W.T., she was sure, but at least she might pass. And she could still manage to get an apprenticeship somewhere, even if not as good.

Unless, of course, Snape decided to make a special point of making her life miserable. She hadn't done anything to deserve that. But that didn't necessarily mean anything, not where he was concerned.

It was with what seemed to her inordinate relief that she opened her book to do homework on Tuesday afternoon and found green flowers.

His note was short and to the point: 10 pm.

She debated answering. He knew perfectly well that sneaking out after curfew meant waiting until she had a chance. Finally she wrote: If can get away by then. Let him wonder what that meant.

* * *

Sneaking to the seventh floor corridor was not utterly without hazard. But she kept a note to her aunt in her pocket, as an excuse that she was going to the Owlery to send it. Duplicating whatever she had done to get the door to appear was a little more difficult. The trick was obviously not in lifting the tapestry. It was only as she paced back and forth, wondering what she would do if she had to get down to the first floor by regular means, and whether she would be able to open the stairs behind the armor from the outside, that she noticed that the door had appeared.

Her own secret passageway. Well, no, not exactly. Based on what Angelina had said, this door led to wherever a person needed it to. It was worrisome, if she thought about it too much. Surely the castle itself could not approve of what she was doing, even if it allowed for student pairings generally. The amorality of such magic was a good deal more questionable than Slinkhard's stupid wards.

With her wand lit and the golden key tucked away, she made her way down to the hideous picture. The dark bird, which in profile was clearly a raven, had landed on the skeleton's shoulder but took off again with a muffled squawk when it saw her.

It was worth a try.

"Nevermore," she whispered.

The frame swung open.

* * *

"I don't like this," Snape said, as she lay curled next to him later. "Leaving the wards off the door."

"I could just not come," Sarah answered.

He growled, "If that's what you choose."

"If my going around to your office is worth the risk to you..."

"It's worth the risk," he answered abruptly, surprising her.

"What..." She hesitated, pressing her forehead against his arm. "What are you afraid of?"

She more than half expected him to snap at her, but his answer, though firm, was almost distant. "Nothing I am going to tell you about."

Sarah could not say whether she was more emboldened by the composure of his response or by a creeping suspicion that bloomed suddenly into a need to know for certain. She let her hand slip to the bottom of his sleeve. He had never taken off his shirt with her. Before he could realize what she was about, before she could think better of it, she snagged a finger under the edge of the cloth and pulled it up.

Faint on his skin was a familiar tangle of lines, a shape she knew.

His right hand flew around, locking around her fingers in a grasp so tight that she gasped in pain. He turned over slowly, his eyes as hard and sharp as chips of obsidian.

"Why," his harsh whisper was like tongues of fire, shards of ice, "do Gryffindors find it necessary to pry into things that are better left alone?"

Sarah levered herself up, trying to ease her hand out of his grip. "It isn't as if I've never seen a Dark Mark before," she said, with a hint of desperation. "I told you, my father was a Death Eater. You must have known him."

He let her hand slip away. "Only the Dark Lord knew all of his Death Eaters." He sat up and re-arranged his sleeve. "Malcolm Darkglass must have been in his sixth or seventh year when I came to school. I didn't know him well then, and I never had contact with him afterward, not that I knew of." The anger was slowly fading from his voice. Instead it took on a hint of disgust. "He showed the Mark to his child?"

Sarah cradled her aching hand against her arm, huddled over her knees. "When I was very small," she murmured, "he used to set me on his lap and let me trace all those curvy lines. Almost the first thing I ever remember, I suppose." She sighed. "I doubt it was out of any degree of affection. He did it to frighten my mother. To hurt her. She would snatch me up and whisper countercharms over me while he laughed. She was always trying to protect me from his influence with charms. I always thought they must have worked. But then," she said with sudden bitterness, "I'm here, aren't I?"

He blinked.

"What?" she asked, puzzled by the sudden blank look.

"Just...a thought." He snatched up his wand. "Reveal to me incantatum minimum!"

"What..."

"Shhh," he hissed, studying her with narrowed eyes. He reached out a hand to touch her forehead. Finally he lowered his wand. "Fascinating."

"What?" she insisted.

"What has Professor Flitwick taught you about layering charms upon charms?"

Now Sarah blinked. "That the results can be unpredictable."

"You have around you," Snape said, "a curious layer of protection. Nothing obvious or powerful. Almost the opposite, in fact."

"Because of my mother's charms?" she asked, incredulous. Charms shouldn't last that long.

"One can only assume so. More to the point, however, it is not protecting you from me."

The words sent a shiver through her. "What does that mean?"

He stood up without answering and began pacing the room. Finally he stopped. He was not looking at her. "Something peculiar happened after Halloween," he said tightly. "It was almost as if I had never seen you before that night, as if I had no prior sense of who you were. Not literally. On some higher level of thought it was obvious that you were Miss Darkglass, my student for the past seven years. But at a more basic level...no." He passed a hand over his face. "And there's the other matter. Forgetting something so entirely out of the ordinary as your mother's death should have been impossible, particularly since I now recall that the headmaster had a meeting with the staff about it at the time. Yet you say that no one remembers."

Sarah stared at him. He was tugging the corner out from under assumptions that she had never questioned.

"I can only guess," he went on, "that the end result, whatever your mother intended, has been to make you seem completely, almost invisibly common. Any attention that is drawn to you tends to pass quickly, as soon as the reason for it is no longer in evidence."

This curious supposition tallied far, far too well with her own experiences. "Then why aren't you...?"

"Affected any longer? An excellent question." He traced his lips with his finger. "You were brought to someone's attention on Halloween night. Someone who would have killed you, although he would have forgotten afterwards just whom he had bothered to kill. But that didn't happen, in part..."

"Because of you," she finished.

"Because of me." He sneered. "So, Miss Darkglass, had I been featuring in your daydreams even before that night?"

Sarah looked at him with cold eyes; her face felt as featureless as a mask. "I never gave you a thought before then."

He raised his eyebrows skeptically. "Really?"

"Are you saying that this is my fault?" she snapped.

"Oh, yes," he said, but his voice dripped sarcasm. "I'm quite sure you spent months arranging a way to put yourself in mortal peril in my presence."

"What do you mean?" she returned, not entirely sure that he wasn't accusing her.

"It seems apparent that somehow the danger to you affected the residual spell. It--or you," he added, his eyes still clouded with a hint of suspicion, "although it's hardly likely that you would have that much conscious control over the spell--decided that it was in your best interests if I were no longer excluded."

"I never decided that." Sarah gaped, overwhelmed at the combination of his accusations and these new particulars about herself. "I didn't even know about it."

"No," he said, in sharp dismissal. "Nevertheless.... How perfectly ironic. Your mother's efforts have, contrarily, managed to expose you to the very sort of person she was trying to protect you from."

Sarah felt a sudden heat in her eyes, like tears ready to start, as the reality of this statement struck her. This was surely the last thing her mother would have ever wanted. "Someone like my father," she murmured, still in shock.

Snape snorted. "What, that's never occurred to you before now? I don't remind you of him?" His face twisted unpleasantly. "I suppose a high-minded Gryffindor would never engage in that particular form of perversion?"

All Sarah's puzzlement and guilt dissolved into rage. "That's not what attracted me, if that's what you mean."

"Oh? So you've been perfectly oblivious to the fact that I'm old enough to be your father?"

"You're not that old," Sarah retorted, although it seemed an idiotic thing to say.

"You never turn over and think, 'What am I doing here with nasty old Professor Snape?'" There was a hard edge to the words.

"I try not to think," she said. Not about that.

"That explains a great deal, doesn't it? Including the recent drop in your Potions marks."

She was too uncomfortable for the dark laughter the comment occasioned.

"And what do you think?" she demanded, not at all sure she wanted to know. That I'm just a child?

He shut his eyes; there was a pained expression on his face. "I wake up to the smell of you on the sheets and ask myself, 'Do you realize that you slept with a student?'"

"Does that really bother you?" she asked, incredulous. "You're a Slytherin. I'd think you would enjoy flouting the rules."

His eyes popped open, full of sparks. "In my experience, Gryffindors are much more inclined to flout the rules. And," he almost spat the words, "much more likely to get away with it."

"You know I would never tell on you," Sarah said defensively, feeling some deeper accusation in his words. "Not even if I were tortured."

"That's rather extreme hyperbole, isn't it?"

"No." She breathed, "I don't want to get you into trouble."

"Or yourself," he added mockingly. "You would be expelled, you realize?"

"You would get sacked."

"Hmmm." As if he did not think so at all.

"Well, you would get sacked."

"Has that been your aim all along?" he asked snidely.

"Rrrrrr!" Sarah growled. She was on her feet in an instant, snatching up her robes, mumbling the neatness charm she had found. "I wouldn't keep coming back, would I, if that's what I intended? I could have gone to Professor McGonagall straight off after the first time...."

"All right," he said, trying to catch hold of her arm, "all right." She batted him away, stalked toward the portrait door and...found herself trapped by the wards. She glared at him, hoping her face would not show the embarrassment she felt at this interruption of her exit.

He approached her, his expression grim. Then, with a whispered word, he lifted the wards. She ducked out of the door. He did not try to stop her.