A Merciless Affection

Chapter 13: Turn Around and Face Your Fate

Sarah knew that she was in for a tongue-lashing. As she stepped out of McGonagall's fireplace, it seemed as if all the talkings-to that she had missed out on in this office had suddenly caught up with her and were about to come crashing down on her head.

"Where are your things?" asked Professor McGonagall, as she dusted herself off.

"At The Three Broomsticks."

McGonagall sent for a house-elf to retrieve them, then settled behind her desk.

"Sit down," she requested.

"Professor McGonagall..." Sarah began, desperate to say something for herself before her Head of House could start in.

"Sit down." Sharper. She gestured with her wand, and a tray with tea, toast and marmalade appeared in front of Sarah on the desk. "Eat."

Sarah plopped onto the hard chair. Her eyes filled up with tears. This was like a nightmare, and no one would let her wake up. She didn't want to eat anything.

Yes, she did. What little she had eaten of the soup last night had been used up instantly by her nerves. It must be well on past nine o'clock. She could almost taste the tanginess of the marmalade, and her body begged for the liquid warmth of the tea.

"Go on," said McGonagall. "I'm not going to shout at you on an empty stomach."

Sarah was grateful for the respite, but as soon as she had propped up her courage with enough tea and toast, she attempted to take the initiative in the inevitable unpleasant conversation.

"Professor McGonagall," she said, "please believe I never intended this to happen."

"I should hope not!" Professor McGonagall retorted, apparently undeterred from taking Sarah to task, now that the girl had recovered. "What were you thinking, Miss Darkglass? To do such a thing?" She shook her head in obvious perturbation.

"I didn't think..." Sarah began miserably.

"No, clearly you did not," McGonagall cut her off. "Do you realize what it means, for a student and a teacher to engage in a romantic relationship? Of course, Professor Snape is much more culpable than you. As an adult and a teacher, he knows better. But surely you can see how inappropriate it is?"

"Yes, I suppose," Sarah answered, finding herself unexpectedly reluctant to back down in the face of this onslaught. "But I'm of age, Professor. I'm not a child."

"As long as you are at Hogwarts, you are a ward of the school in the eyes of every teacher, regardless of your status outside these walls. Parents place a great deal of trust in their children's teachers. And a teacher who takes advantage of one student, might well take advantage of another. I know that may not apply in this instance," McGonagall said, putting up her hand as Sarah tried to protest. "But even beyond that....well, I won't even go into the issue of trading favors for grades. Yes, I know your marks in Potions have always been high. But the truth never prevents people from speculating. And at the present moment, everyone is ready to assume the worst." McGonagall's lips grew thinner still. "Do you realize the problems a scandal like this could cause for the school right now? For the headmaster? High Inquisitor Umbridge would have all our heads on pikes in front of the Ministry. And here you sit, showing no remorse whatsoever for your actions!"

The accusation struck Sarah hard. She had never intended to put the school in danger. It had never occurred to her that the ramifications might stretch beyond her own expulsion and Snape's dismissal. "Professor..."

McGonagall was not finished. "Have you no sense at all that what you did was wrong?"

"Yes," Sarah said. "Professor, I wasn't raised to behave like this. I'm sorrier than you know that I felt compelled to do what I did."

"Compelled?" McGonagall queried. "Sarah, if you can give me any reason to believe that Professor Snape..."

"No, that isn't what I meant!" Sarah said, beginning to despair of her explanation. "I don't know if this makes sense. It wasn't a spell, but it was like...fate..."

"Fate!" the older woman snorted. "Fate is made up of the choices we make ourselves. You knew it was wrong."

"Yes, I did," Sarah admitted, her shoulders drooping.

"And yet you did it anyway. I would not have expected that of you."

"You didn't expect anything of me!" Sarah's temper flared unexpectedly, given such a ready outlet. "You didn't know I existed!"

"That is not true," said McGonagall, clearly taken aback. "No matter what Professor Snape theorizes. But you have never given me cause to worry. You seemed to handle...well, your mother's death...unusually well for a child of that age. I expected something, then, some sort of outburst. And it never came. Not until now."

Sarah felt the fire in her dying down. Had all of this just been some kind of delayed reaction? A fine way to honor her mother's memory--following the same path to destruction. Aunt Portia was right.

"Professor McGonagall," Sarah turned to the issue she could deal with, "I didn't plan for anyone to find out. No one would have found out if Professor Snape hadn't..." Confessed? Gone insane?

"I hope you can assure me that no one will find out. Professor Dumbledore is very serious in what he says. This must be kept strictly secret. If you have ever hinted to any of your friends...."

"What friends, Professor?" Sarah asked bitterly. "I have dorm mates, not friends."

"I hope," said McGonagall, sounding less sharp, "that that is not what drove you to this."

"It would be a little late for that, wouldn't it? In my seventh year?"

"I simply cannot fathom why you would want to..." McGonagall looked as flustered as if she were being called upon to explain the facts of reproduction to a roomful of first year boys, "well, to...become intimate with Professor Snape." It was strange to see an old woman blush.

Sarah's trunk appeared with a pop in the middle of the floor near the fireplace.

"Ah, there it is. I assume you have dress robes that will be suitable." McGonagall went over to it, overrode the locking charm on the trunk with a tap of her wand and opened the lid. "Find them quickly. You may use my bathroom to clean up and change."

Sarah shifted uneasily, but did not stand up. "Professor McGonagall, I don't want to marry him."

McGonagall fixed her with an exasperated look. "Well, perhaps you should have thought of that before you made the choices that led to this situation." The utter lack of sympathy in her voice suggested that no one was going to come to Sarah's rescue, no matter what her protests or explanations. "How could you be so irresponsible? With the appropriate charm to avoid the risk of--"

"Charm?" Sarah echoed dully.

"Surely you know the Tempus Conceptus charm?"

Sarah's blank look produced an expression of bewildered dismay on her Head's face.

"Oh dear, I suppose your aunt wouldn't have taught you that, would she have?"

"No," Sarah answered sullenly.

"Yet I was told you were very adamant about refusing any means of...well, amending the problem."

Sarah did not know what to answer. I think that was my choice to make, she retorted inside her mind, but she wasn't sure if she could face whatever the reaction to such a statement would be.

In obvious frustration at the lack of cooperation, McGonagall began rummaging through Sarah's trunk herself. "Is this it?" She held up a thin white cotton garment pin-tucked at the yoke and covered with white embroidery.

"That's my nightgown!" Sarah objected.

"Ah, well then...." McGonagall set it aside and dug deeper. "Here." She pulled out Sarah's dress robe, a heavily-pleated array of midnight-blue silk. "This will do very well." She extended the robe to Sarah, who did not take it.

"Please, Professor, I don't see why I have to marry him. I'm perfectly capable of managing on my own."

"As a single mother?" McGonagall made a disgruntled noise. "You haven't even a place to live, after leaving school. And it isn't very likely that you would be accepted for an apprenticeship with a baby in tow. Severus, whatever I may think of his participation in this scandal, is at least attempting to do the decent thing, and you seem very ungrateful for it."

Under McGonagall's frown, Sarah gave up. She took the dress in her hands.

McGonagall showed her into her own quarters, which were replete with tartans. Pillows, the upholstery on the sofa, the hangings on the bed, even the various former biscuit tins in which McGonagall kept her toiletries. The soap in the shower was scented with heather.

Sarah came out, feeling a good deal better in body, although still considerably rumpled in spirit. Her dress robes were a bit wrinkled from being packed in the trunk, which McGonagall put right with a pressing charm. She pulled Sarah's still-damp hair back and fastened it with one of her own hair clasps, a jeweled thistle. Sarah, staring at her own reflection, was alarmed at how old she looked with her hair done up. Not really old, of course, but worn. Then again, she hadn't had more than a couple of hours of uneasy sleep on the Knight Bus. Sarah turned from the mirror and stood up.

"There now. You look...well, I won't say respectable." McGonagall held her at arms' length. "So very young. I cannot imagine that you will be happy. But, for goodness sake, I can't help hoping it." With a quick squeeze of Sarah's shoulders, she let go. "Come along. Best to get this over with, for good or ill."

As Sarah went through the Floo, she heard Professor Dumbledore speaking, although at first his voice sounded weirdly far away, as if he were inside a jar. "...tell her about the order."

Then Snape's voice, growing clearer. "It isn't safe. I would prefer to pick my own time."

In the midst of this comment, Sarah stepped out of the headmaster's fireplace.

"Ah, there you are." Dumbledore beckoned to her from across the room. He had put on his own dress robes, or at least the ones he wore at the start-of-term and end-of-term feasts.

And there stood Professor Snape, with a sourly suspicious expression on his face, as if he suspected her of intentionally eavesdropping. Whatever orders Dumbledore had just been talking about, if the choice of when to tell her about them were up to Snape, she had just set back that time by...well, possibly forever. At first glance it was not obvious that he had changed, but as he moved forward, she saw that he had. His robes were of a slightly better cut than his usual ones, with subtle piping in the seams, black on black, almost invisible except as the textures caught the light.

Professor McGonagall stepped out of the fireplace behind her, almost bumping into her. Standing there transfixed, she hadn't moved out of the way as she should have. McGonagall gently urged her into the room.

"Shall we begin?" asked Dumbledore.

Sarah felt like a puppet on strings as she came to stand in front of the headmaster. When Snape took his place beside her, she wanted to run. It shouldn't be that difficult; she had run from Aunt Portia. And yet she stood there, like a dolt, too stupid to get away. She was running out of places to run to.

"Sarah Darkglass," Dumbledore said, holding the license in his hands, "Severus Snape has asked for your hand in marriage. Will you accept him as your husband?"

No! No. And if she said that, what then? She could imagine the headmaster's frown. After all the trouble he had been put to, to solve a problem she had caused. And Snape.... She remembered the fierce look in his eyes when he had insisted that she was going to marry him.

"Yes," Sarah whispered, wondering whose voice she was hearing.

"Severus Snape, Sarah Darkglass has consented to your request. Will you take her now to be your wife?"

He didn't look at her as he said it. "Yes."

"Then join together, blood to blood, heart to heart, life to life." Dumbledore offered Snape a small silver knife. Without hesitating, Snape nicked his ring finger. Sarah shivered as a thin line of blood welled up.

Somehow the knife was in her hands. She had been too young to understand much at the only marriage she had ever attended, but she had read enough novels to know that in this particular form of the wedding ceremony--one that tended to be favored by those on the darker side of the Wizarding community--this part was supposed to be a true binding. The ring finger led to the heart--it was supposed to be romantic, for goodness sake. And here she stood, with the knife blade to her finger, not daring to push it through the skin. She did not want to give him her heart. He already had enough of her blood.

Then his hands were on hers, a strength that had always made her melt. Her finger stung; it was bleeding. Awkwardly, he was linking their ring fingers together, tip to tip, cut to cut. No, oh please, no.

"E duobus unum!" A tingle, a sparkle, a warmth flowed through her with Dumbledore's words. Then her hand was her own again, the cut healed to a tiny scar, free of either of their blood. Burned away...or absorbed? She trembled.

"Do you have rings?" she heard Dumbledore ask.

Snape retrieved something from a pocket. Then he was sliding a silver band with a green stone over her still-throbbing fingertip. He settled it into place, then pressed a similar circular shape into the palm of her hand. Puppet Sarah slid it onto his finger, her own fingers trembling so that she could barely keep hold of the silver circlet.

It was over. It had taken all of five minutes, if that. Dumbledore had omitted to mention a kiss. Sarah was grateful; the idea of being kissed in front of McGonagall and the headmaster made her skin crawl. Or was it the idea of him kissing her at all now? How could he do this to her? She had never asked him for this. Why had he asked this of her?

Dumbledore was suggesting a light luncheon. It was already laid out, in another part of the office. Sarah sat down at her place. As nausea at the thought of eating anything clawed at her stomach, she finally felt as if she were coming to her senses again.

She stared down at her hand, a stranger to her with its new adornment. She had not had a chance to examine it properly. The wide silver ring was set with a cabochon emerald and deeply, darkly engraved: two elongated S's flowed gracefully around the band, in the form of two snakes entwined at their ends. It was at once the most beautiful and the most horrible piece of jewelry she had ever seen. Had he had this custom made in London, then, during the break? Sarah and Severus? Sarah Snape? She shuddered.

McGonagall was offering her a tray of fancy sandwiches. Sarah moved one woodenly to her plate, where she picked at it. Professor Dumbledore, she realized, was talking about Quidditch. Anything but what the event just past signified. McGonagall and Snape took opposing points of view in the resulting debate, although neither seemed especially enthusiastic in their arguments. Sarah listened, not out of interest, but because she had no other choice to distract herself from thinking further ahead than the next breath. She felt like a first year, sitting in this rather fearsome gathering of her elders, not like a young woman who had, in more ways than one, recently joined the ranks of adulthood.

At last the interminable, uncomfortable meal--the second one in less than a day--was over. The mangled remains of her sandwich were scattered across her plate, although she was beginning to wish she had eaten it instead.

Standing in front of the fireplace, Dumbledore gently took her hands in his. They were thin and wrinkled, but there was strength there, too.

"I wish you well," he said, blue eyes steady and serious, "whatever happens. A great deal is being asked of you in return for your absolution. But I believe you are equal to the task. Take care of her, Severus," he added, turning to the Potions master, "as best you can."

Absolution? A lifetime of penance was more like it. Sarah looked up into Snape's eyes for the first time since the ceremony began. There were no answers in those dark orbs, not even to her silent question of their destination. She took up a handful of Floo powder and cast it down.

"Professor Snape's office!"