A Merciless Affection

Chapter 11: Think of It, a Secret Engagement

As Sarah stared numbly at him, she heard her aunt come up behind her.

"Who do we have the honor of...?" Aunt Portia asked.

"Professor Severus Snape, Head of Slytherin House at Hogwarts." He made a curt bow.

There was nothing worse he could have said, and Sarah felt her aunt stiffen at her back. Why couldn't he have just said he was the Potions master? Why did he have to mention Slytherin? And what was he doing here at her door?

"May I come in?" he went on, his teeth chattering slightly.

Aunt Portia's instinctive good manners forced her to permit him to enter, although Sarah, who had retreated from the door, could see that her aunt's expression was just as frigid as the snowy doorstep. Her voice, however, remained steadily, if coolly, polite. "This may seem abrupt, Professor Snape, but may I inquire the reason for your visit?"

It's about the apprenticeship, thought Sarah, permitting herself a small mental sigh of relief. That's all it could be. He can't tell on me without incriminating himself.

Snape was removing his gloves, and he finished before he answered. "Since you are, I understand, your niece's guardian, it seems appropriate that I should inform you of my intention to marry Miss Darkglass."

Marry Miss Darkglass? The ice castle she had been building to protect her future seemed to shiver and shatter at the words. This was not at all what was supposed to happen.

"How dare you!!" Sarah found her voice before her aunt did. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides, but she found she did not have the breath for anything further, and whirled away from him, gasping.

"This is very...unexpected...." There was a note of query in her aunt's voice.

"I see that Sarah intended to tell you under other circumstances," Snape lied smoothly.

Sarah turned around, eyes blazing. She had no idea what she was going to say. I never agreed to marry you. As if you ever asked me. Or maybe to her aunt: I'm sorry but my Potions teacher seems to have gone completely mental. Maybe we'd better contact St. Mungo's. But Snape did not give any obvious appearance of being unbalanced. And it was her at whom her aunt was frowning.

Portia Plattus cleared her throat. "I must say that this is very much out of the ordinary, Professor Snape. Is Albus Dumbledore aware of this...engagement?" She shot another look at Sarah.

Please do not say yes. Or at least let that not be the truth.

"I intend to discuss the matter with him at the beginning of the new term."

Over my dead body.

"Then this is a...recent...circumstance?" Aunt Portia glanced at Sarah, looking as if she suspected her niece of flooing out of the house every night for secret trysts. With a Slytherin.

No, you only sneaked out of the dorms, her conscience assailed her.

"Very recent." Snape caught Sarah's eye, one of those intense looks that had started all this. She made herself blink and look away.

"I...am not sure...what to say. This is...very...." Aunt Portia, who was seldom at such a loss for words, stammered out. Then, finding a more familiar target, she spoke shrilly, "Sarah, what have you to say for yourself?"

"A great deal," Sarah managed tightly, glaring at Snape. "But to him. In private." She turned to her aunt. "Please," she pleaded.

Whether it was because her aunt was too kerflummoxed to continue to deal with the head of Slytherin House standing in her front hall, or whether it was because she hoped a lover's quarrel--potentially one that would end this appalling relationship--needed as much encouragement as possible, Aunt Portia agreed frostily. "Very well. Perhaps it will give you time to consider your explanation for all this. If you will excuse me, Professor." She sailed off towards the back of the house.

Snape gestured to the parlor door. Insufferable, considering that this was her own home. Sarah stalked into the room. When the latch clicked behind him, she spun around.

"How dare you!" She felt tears welling up in her throat. "Do you realize that you have probably just ruined my life? But then, that's likely what you intended, isn't it?" She realized she was shouting. He never liked that. She didn't care. This was far, far worse than anything she had ever expected him to do. All her tentative plans for salvaging her future depended on Aunt Portia's goodwill. And he had just lost her that, perhaps irrevocably.

"Do not make assumptions about what my intentions..." he snapped, but she didn't let him get any further.

"This is your form of blackmail, isn't it? Because I wouldn't take the potion."

His eyes narrowed. "You seem to have a very poor grasp of the concept of blackmail. Threats typically come before revelations."

Sarah was so upset she couldn't quite track what he was saying, beyond his vague denial, and she changed course only slightly. "So, you decided on one last little stab to make sure this ended with me really, truly hating you? It didn't occur to you what the aftermath might be?"

"What are you talking about?" There was a frown crease between his brows.

"My aunt," Sarah said, stunned to the core that he might really not have considered this before making his horrible little joke. "She was my mother's older sister. My father broke my mother's heart. No, he broke her. My aunt despises anyone ever associated with Slytherin House, and now she thinks I'm in a relationship with one."

"My," he broke in snidely, "how quickly we forget. You are in a relationship with one. And I don't recall that you gave any consideration to your aunt's feelings about this before now."

The jab quenched some of the fire that was propelling her. Because he was right.

"I don't see why it was necessary," she continued in a colder tone, "to show up on my doorstep making this kind of a joke. Or are cruel jokes essential to your Slytherin well-being?"

"I was under the impression that jokes were intended to be amusing. I'm not laughing, Sarah. Or perhaps it's that you prefer to consider it a joke?" There were sharp edges on his words, like shards of something that had been broken.

Sarah swallowed uncomfortably. "You cannot possibly intend to marry me."

"On the contrary, I am very much in earnest."

"No," she said after a stunned moment. "I cannot believe that. Why? Why would you do such a thing?"

Silence on his part, a long, long silence. She tried to read his expression and failed utterly.

"My son," he said finally, "is not going to be born without his father's name."

"You know?" Sarah blinked. Then, realizing, "You knew! You already knew when you offered me the Gravixterminus .... How?"

"A fallen strand of hair can reveal many things, given the right application." He reached out a hand and brushed a lock back from her face.

Sarah turned away from him. "I never expected you to do this. It isn't as if..." She didn't dare to think the words, let alone say them: as if you loved me.

"Didn't you?"

"No!" She turned back to face him. His expression had become as unpleasant as it ever was in class. "Whatever you call this, you're really just trying to get me to take the potion, aren't you?"

"Do you want to?" he asked. Although his sneer remained the same, something changed in his eyes.

Sarah braced herself. "No, I don't. But that doesn't mean I want anything from you. I don't want money. I don't want attention. I just want..."

"The child," he spat bitterly.

She stared, perplexed at his vehemence.

"Considering that you've made your choice, I now have every right to make mine."

"And I have every right to say 'no'."

"Sarah...." he began sternly.

Another voice broke in. "O, Mistress Sarah? Sorry we is for interrupting. But Mistress Portia wants to know if that Slytherin," the house-elf imitated her aunt's manner so perfectly that she was sure it was exactly how the request had been made, "will be staying to supper? We is putting it on the table."

"No," Sarah said.

"Yes," Snape overruled her. The house-elf lowered her ear tips, clearly confused.

"Do you have to make this worse than it already is?"

"It cannot be any worse, based upon what you've told me. I have no other plans and I have had a tediously long day."

On Christmas? "Oh, all right then!" she said. "Set another place, Ganna." The house-elf vanished.

The meal was not in any way a success. Sarah, mortified by her aunt's displeasure, said nothing at all. Snape tried to engage Portia Plattus in a conversation about the Ministry of Magic's interference with the management of Hogwarts. Aunt Portia--who, to Sarah's knowledge, had never been a fan of the Ministry, and had always expressed supreme confidence in Professor Dumbledore--remarked that if things were going so badly at the school, the Ministry might very well be in the right to interfere. The conversation grew heated, and Sarah cowered over her soup while the two traded increasingly unveiled insults. Snape departed in something more like his usual black mood immediately after supper without another word about their supposed engagement, either not knowing or not caring that he was leaving Sarah to be put to the rack.

Aunt Portia did not let up for the rest of the evening. How could she have done this? Hadn't she been warned, over and over? By her own poor mother, who had died of being married to a Slytherin? No, Sarah protested, she had died of loving a Slytherin with all her loyal Hufflepuff-ish heart. Portia, who had been a Hufflepuff herself, did not take this well. Did Sarah have no sense of loyalty to her family--the worthwhile side of her family? Did she have no loyalty to her mother's memory? Or to her aunt who had taken her in and raised her? It was only loyalty that prevented Sarah from pointing out that since her mother's death, her aunt had only been taking care of her during the few weeks of school holidays. Portia went on a new tack: Did she not realize that dating a teacher, let alone marrying one, was against the school rules? Or it had been when Portia was at Hogwarts, and she didn't believe things had changed to that degree. Had she (unthinkably) slept with him?

Sarah locked herself in her bedroom. The shouting in the hallway outside her room turned into hysterical weeping which, after a while, retreated into her aunt's room next door. Although it went on and on, Sarah guessed that this was only an interlude. She went to the closet and pulled out her trunk.

After a while, the weeping seemed to subside. Sarah had just finished repacking when she heard her aunt moving about. Before the sound of footsteps even reached her door, the screaming started again.

"Get out of my house! Do you hear me? Get out of my house! You horrible, ungrateful girl!"

Sarah threw on her cloak and grabbed the handle of her trunk before she flung the door open. Aunt Portia stared at her, speechless, her face crinkling up as if she were going to start in on another weeping fit. At least the screaming had stopped. Sarah pushed past her aunt and down the stairs, her trunk thumpthumpthumping behind her.

"You know what you've chosen, don't you? You know what this means, don't you?"

Sarah turned back, her hand on the doorknob. Her aunt looked as desperate as she felt, and if there had been a kind word spoken, Sarah might have dropped her trunk and run back into the woman's arms.

Some wounds, perhaps, were too deep to ever heal.

"Never step foot in this house again!"

Before Sarah had made it to the edge of the road, she heard a series of locking charms being shouted at the door behind her. But it wasn't until she had stumbled up the steps of the Knight Bus and collapsed on one of the bunks that she let herself weep so wretchedly that she was ill and exhausted enough to fall asleep.