A Merciless Affection

Chapter 10: If You Ever Find a Moment, Spare a Thought for Me

Sarah stepped off the Hogwarts Express in London more than ready for a holiday, but with her mind too full to permit the hope that she might actually enjoy this one. Aunt Portia waved to her with a spindled copy of The Daily Prophet.

"Sarah, it's good to have you home," her aunt said, embracing her with slender, bony arms. Then, as if something about her niece's response was unsatisfactory, she stepped back and surveyed her with a critical eye. "Have you been studying too hard, girl? You're so pale, you're like your own ghost. And you've hardly written to me this term."

"I'm all right," Sarah said, a sudden wash of guilt causing her, she was sure, to turn paler still. "You know the last year of school is hard, Aunt Portia. N.E.W.T.s are called that for a good reason."

"I know, I know. But I worry about you, all the same." As soon as Sarah had retrieved her trunk, Aunt Portia led the way off Platform 9 ¾. Sailing through the Muggle crowds like a ship of the line, she brought Sarah up to one of the Muggle trains.

"Couldn't we just...er...take the Knight Bus or something?" Sarah hadn't noticed it so much when she was younger, but every year she became more aware of the way her aunt stood out. Muggles did not typically wear long skirts to ride on trains, for one thing. But taking a connecting train from King's Cross was the simplest way to get to their village from London, and Aunt Portia had the right amount of Muggle money in hand for their tickets.

"I do not like the Knight Bus. It's really for a much lower class of people. You do have your Apparition License, you know," her aunt pointed out tartly, tucking away her newspaper in her large, wooden-handled handbag.

Sarah sighed, resigned to the trip. Just because she had gotten her license didn't mean she enjoyed doing it. The truth was, as her aunt well knew, that she would sooner tolerate the same old train trip she had made for past seven years, no matter how embarrassing it might be.

It was late when they finally reached home. The walk out from the village was a good mile, all told, and at the end of a long day, it was cold and exhausting, even with warming charms and her trunk lightened. With the moon waning, the trip was a dark one, shadowed even more by her aunt's glum opinions (now that they were out of the hearing of any Muggles) about the declining quality of The Daily Prophet, the miserable judgment of the Minister of Magic, and the probable return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. At journey's end, Sarah tumbled into bed and was asleep even before the cup of tea her aunt had insisted upon had grown cold on her bedside table.

The next afternoon, Sarah bundled up and went out. Beyond the next bend in the lane, there was a spot where she could see, for a long distance, the snowy fields stretching away toward black-limbed hedges. There was a stark beauty to it, even to the contrast between the present, forbidding, wintry landscape and the summer's green that had welcomed her when she had first come here to live. She had been fleeing to these fields for comfort for a long time. But as she looked out across them now, it was unsettling to recall what she had been looking for on that first day, something she had since tried very hard to forget she had ever wanted. It was troubling to realize, after all this while, that her soul had found solace in the scene because it offered a resemblance, a remembrance. Because these particular fields bore--vaguely to be sure--something of the look of the land around Darkglass Hall.

Had the resemblance occurred to her that first day? She didn't think so, but so much of that time was a blur in her memory. She had only known that looking out across the fields made her feel better. She wanted it still to make her feel better. Although if it didn't anymore, that might make it easier to bid farewell to this place when it was time to start her apprenticeship and a life of her own. It occurred to her that Snape had failed to ever mention again the matter of helping her obtain an apprenticeship. She didn't like how loath she felt to begin making inquiries of her own. Probably she was just tired; in a day or two she would be up to it.

The slosh of footsteps coming along the muddy road interrupted her thoughts.

"Ho, Sarah!" he called. It was Michael. His carroty hair was buried under a blue stocking cap, but the cold had brought out the red in his cheeks. "You weren't at home. I thought I might find you here."

It was here, not long after her first expedition to these fields, that she had met him. And in his open-hearted way, he had observed her unhappiness and listened willingly while she bemoaned her fate--her parents separated, and having to live in this place with her mother's very particular and much older half-sister. Muggle though he was, he had made the changes to her life bearable. They had been convinced, at the age of ten, that they would marry someday. But the months and months of every year that they spent apart at school had worked the sort of detachment that one might expect. And she couldn't help wondering, now, whether her mother's charms had had something to do with it, too--out of sight, out of mind? Still, she had not been sorry to find, by the end of their third year at school, that they were merely friends. If things had ever become serious, sooner or later it would have been unavoidable: she would have had to tell him that she was a witch.

The fear of doing so had not arisen from any concern about his reaction. He had always accepted her odd family, her eccentric aunt and her own sometimes quirky ways without criticism. But she had not been able to bring herself to tell him that secret, despite all the years she had known him. Perhaps it was because the fact that he didn't know had become a refuge for her. His Muggle world was utterly apart from the stresses and sorrows that had plagued her childhood. If he knew, he would, by default, become a part of her world. No longer a place to flee to, however briefly, from it.

"Got home from school yesterday, same as me?" he asked, coming up.

"Yes, late though. It's a long way from Scotland."

"Last year of it."

Sarah nodded.

"Think you're going to manage your A Levels, or whatever they call them at that old-fashioned school your aunt sends you to?"

Having deduced, from past conversations about Michael's Muggle school, that he meant a set of final exams that resembled N.E.W.T.s, she said, "I think so. It's been a rough term."

"Tell me about it!" He grinned. "Old Trig Trent seems to believe that none of us have any other lessons, based on the amount of work he sets."

They rambled along the road, chatting about all the usual old things, and a few new ones. He had met a girl at school, and Sarah listened sympathetically to his woes in courting her.

"You don't still fancy me, do you, Sarah?" Michael asked abruptly into an extended silence.

Sarah laughed. "I'd hardly listen to you rave on about this Tara girl if I did, now would I?"

It would have been the perfect opportunity to steer the conversation towards saying, We'll always just be friends, Michael--but would you like to shag anyway? But somehow the idea of anyone else touching her like that, even Michael, was...well, squeamish. I'll have to get over that, won't I? At some point. Or stay celibate for the rest of my bloody life.

"Just," Michael said, "you never talk about boyfriends of your own."

"You heard every painful detail of my crush on Martin Mickelson!" she protested.

"That was three years ago. Isn't there anyone up there in Scotland worth looking at? Or are you just not looking? I can't believe no one's looking at you." He raised his eyebrows, which made them all but disappear under his hat.

"You're right," she said, trying to smile. "There's not many worth looking at."

"No one at all?" Michael persisted.

"Well..." Sarah admitted, wishing suddenly that she could tell him everything. "There was someone, this term. I don't think it will last after Christmas, though."

"Oh...sorry," he said, with an expression of profound regret at his blunder in bringing it up. "You breaking it off? Or him?"

Sarah pondered this for a moment. "Him. I think. I'm not sure, really."

"If you're not sure who wants to end it, maybe it's not ended. Is he nice?"

Sarah choked on a laugh. "Oh no," she said. "Not nice at all."

Michael looked genuinely puzzled about why that fact was so amusing. "Really, Sarah...I mean, do I have to track this bloke down and warn him to treat you right?"

The thought was sobering enough that it helped her stop giggling. "No, no, that would be a really bad idea. I promise."

"He's not nice, but you fancy him? That doesn't sound like you, Sarah." Michael was still frowning.

"No, I suppose it doesn't," she sighed. "Please don't worry about me. It really is over, I think."

"Well, I hope so, for your sake."

They went on into plans for the holidays. Michael had an outrageous number of things on his schedule--trips to London, meetings with school friends, visits to half a hundred relatives. Sarah, who had no friends to meet and no other relatives worth speaking to (let alone visiting), felt meagerly consoled by the prospect of a trip to Diagon Alley to buy Christmas gifts later in the week. But she and Michael managed to arrange a lunch date in the village, and Michael promised her a trip to the cinema sometime before the break was over. Muggle pictures were usually quite entertaining, even if she didn't understand everything that happened in them, and she looked forward to the prospect.

"I remember you like Jane Austen," Michael said. She did. Aunt Portia, who thought Austen's books more appropriate for girls than most wizarding romance novels, had introduced Sarah to them during Christmas of her fourth year. "I heard there's a new film of Sense and Sensibility, with some excellent stars. Dunno if it's out yet, but if it is, we'll go to that."

Regardless of what she had told Michael, it was more difficult than she had hoped to come to terms with the fact that her relationship with Professor Snape was almost certainly at an end. But although she checked her bookmark every night, the flowers never altered. Considering the purpose the ink had been designed for, she doubted that distance would be a negating factor, as it was in most spells. She was only slightly tempted to write to him first; it would be awkward, to say the least. And the only real news she could give him would hardly be conducive to his comfort--certainly not to his approval. With another week gone and still no red "flowers" appearing, she had little doubt that she had a problem.

At least that problem was manageable, something she could plan for, something she could deal with. Something that would not depend on his volatile, unpredictable temperament. And in that respect, the end of their relationship could only be perceived as a good thing. That thought went a long way toward smoothing over the gap in her life as the holidays passed.

By the afternoon of Christmas Day, she was no longer thinking of him with every dozen breaths. Instead her daydreams were taken up by a dark-haired, dark-eyed child. Severian Darkglass. A risky name, maybe, although she would be well out of school by then, away from anyone with the power to question her about it. The gossip of busybodies could never be proven. And no one paid that much attention to her to begin with. Once Aunt Portia got over the shock of her niece having a baby without a father, she would spoil her grand-nephew silly. Presuming it was a him. The Plattuses had such a habit of having girls. But Sarah didn't think she was mistaken.

Sarah was curled up on the old settle by the kitchen hearth. Aunt Portia had given her a copy of Accidents of Alchemy as one of her Christmas gifts, and she was deeply absorbed in it when the front bell jangled. She marked her place hastily and went to the door. Muggle carolers, maybe? If they were foolish enough to brave this icy weather. No one else would call on them today. Maybe Michael had gotten away from his family after all, and would make an offer she couldn't refuse to go see the Muggle pictures with him. She was smiling when she opened the door.

There on the doorstep stood Professor Snape.

"Happy Christmas, Sarah," he said.