A Merciless Affection

Chapter 15: Let's Not Argue...Please Pretend

Sarah woke feeling queasy, as if she'd been dreaming about doing one too many loop-the-loops on her broom. Maybe she had been; her dreams had dissolved beyond recall as she opened her eyes, leaving her with a vague sense of unease, suggesting they had not been pleasant.

The situation before her waking eyes was far from pleasant either. The earlier panic at being where she shouldn't smote her again, only to be replaced, as memory kicked in, by a dull sensation of helplessness and a wave of claustrophobia. She sat up, trying to breathe.

"Nightmare?" Snape was dressed and sitting in his chair, reading. Sarah's wand was on the bedside table. The sight of it, the memory of why it was there, brought forth a surge of stale anger, but her body protested at the effort that sustaining it for even a few moments required, and it faded into a kind of resignation.

"No. Well, maybe. I don't know." She rubbed her hands across her face, pushed back her tangled hair. In desperate need of fresh air, she asked, "How can you live without windows?"

"Very securely," he answered coolly, returning his attention to the book in his hands.

Sarah stood up and went to her trunk, and with fresh clothes in hand, made for the bathroom to change, thankfully unhindered. It was just after eleven (presumably in the morning) by the clock. She splashed her face at the sink, hoping that cold water would prove to be an adequate substitute for cold air. With damp tendrils plastered across her forehead, she looked worse than ever in the little mirror. The queasiness had not abated.

Oh.

Hardly unexpected, is it?

Sarah dried her face, frowning at her reflection.

I guess that's one way to while away the rest of the holidays: puking my guts out.

Except that she didn't feel like throwing up. She thought she would feel better if she could, like purging herself of something bad she had eaten, getting it out of her system. But her stomach lay calmly in place, while something in the base of her skull contradictorily insisted that she was really not at all well.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she found the bedroom rearranged. A small table and a chair that had not been there before had appeared in front of the fireplace, with Snape's own chair drawn up to it and the ottoman pushed out of the way. The table was laden generously with breakfast. She slipped into the empty chair and began loading her plate with eggs and bacon and stewed tomatoes.

"Sorry," she said, chagrined at his surprised look from across the table. "I haven't eaten decently in days."

"I said nothing," he remarked, flipping another page in his book with one hand, picking up a piece of toast with the other. "I expect you to eat well."

The comment was almost enough to make Sarah put down her fork, but she was too hungry. As she began eating, she was a little afraid that she might only be giving her stomach something to heave up later. Curiously, though, she felt better. She dreaded the end of the meal for other reasons, however. Cooped up in this suite of rooms for another week....

"Is there some reason," she asked, as the dirty dishes vanished from the table, "that I can't just say I've come back to school early? I don't think I can cope with being locked in the dungeons like this."

"It is safer that you remain here." He pushed back his chair and stood up. "I shall see to it that you have enough to occupy yourself."

Sarah didn't entirely like the sound of that, and she stiffened as he came around behind her. He did nothing more threatening, however, than lay the book he had been perusing in her hands.

"A Christmas gift," he said. "Or a wedding present. Whichever you will."

She was now able to read the title on the unassuming brown volume: Potions for Pregnancy, CXIIIth Edition. Definitely useful. She found herself vaguely embarrassed that she had nothing to give him in return. An exchange of gifts had seemed out of the question, although she had seen more than one thing during her Christmas shopping that had made her think of him.

She opened the cover and was surprised to see an inscription on the flyleaf.

For Sarah, it read.

In expectation.

Severus

Simple and almost...sweet. Which was not the man she knew at all. It raised suspicious hackles on the back of her neck. In expectation of what?

"Thank you," she murmured. "I'll have to leave this here with your things, you know."

"I realize that."

She looked up him. He was watching her, as if trying to read her reaction to the gift, beyond her words.

"Does this mean," she found herself asking quietly, "that I'm to call you Severus now?"

He seemed to consider this, unfamiliar expressions chasing one another across his face. Finally he turned away. "I think not, for the time being. Students do not address teachers by their given names under any circumstances. You could not account for even a single mistake."

"I don't think I would make a mistake," Sarah answered, less because she wanted to argue for the privilege than because she wanted to defend her good sense.

"You call me that, to yourself?"

"No," she admitted.

"What do you call me?"

She was hesitant to say. "Not disrespectfully," she cautioned, finding it difficult not to say sir, "but, well, just...Snape."

"Not disrespectfully?" he mocked.

"No! More like...like chums, I guess," she tried to explain, wincing instantly at her choice of words. "Forget it. Please."

"I'm trying to," he said, with a grimace. He had moved toward the nearer bookshelf, and now he took something like a folded packet of parchment from between two of the volumes. Returning with it, he placed it on the table in front of her. "I was given the impression, when I obtained this, that the headmaster considered it to be his wedding present."

Sarah unfolded the packet, hardly daring to guess what it might contain.

"Apprenticeship papers," she breathed. A Hogwarts apprenticeship. "I don't deserve this, you know." She spoke coldly, trying to convince herself more than him. "There's only one reason for it."

"I fail to see what difference the reason makes," Snape responded, obviously irritated at her reaction.

"It makes a difference to me." Sarah refolded the papers carefully, as if they were something precious that belonged to someone else. "I would rather get a position I earned instead of one that I obtained in someone's bed."

"If you had bothered to take a closer look, Sarah," he sneered, "you would have seen that your apprenticeship is contingent upon receiving top marks on your Potions N.E.W.T. I don't need to remind you, I hope, of the difficulties that will arise if you disappoint me."

She breathed a quiet sigh. "I'm good, but I'm not that good. Top marks at N.E.W.T. level require flash and flair that I don't have."

"Then it's a good thing you're not taking them today, isn't it?" he returned.

Sarah found, unaccountably, that her feelings were wounded. It wouldn't kill him to give a reassuring compliment once in a while, would it? Well, I guess it might.

"Apart from the fact that your concentration needs drastic improvement," he went on, "since the examiners will not accept you dropping your ingredients on the floor, you nevertheless consistently produce satisfactory results. That is of far more importance at this stage in your training than a lot of impressive slap and dash. And since, in an informal sense, your apprenticeship begins now, I assure you that by June you will have developed enough 'flash and flair,' as you put it, to achieve any marks for which you're willing to make the effort.

"Now," he said, "for the time being, that is your text." He pointed at the book she had set on the edge of the table while she examined the apprentice papers. "I am going out. Don't expect me back until late. I, however, expect you to have read the first three sections before tomorrow morning." For a moment, she thought he was going to bend over and kiss her, but instead he retrieved his cloak, slung it around his shoulders, and stalked out through the workroom without so much as a goodbye.

"Damn you, Severus Snape," she said out loud, as soon as she heard the outer office door close. "I hope vultures feed on your liver!"

All the same, having thus relieved her feelings (at least slightly) and having nothing else productive to do, Sarah picked up her book and flopped across the bed. She winced as her breasts reminded her that such careless movements had become a bad idea.

Owing to the fact, the "New Introduction to the CXIIIth Edition" began, that all contraceptive potions invented to date--Sarah quickly flipped back a page to determine that this edition had been published the previous year--are known more for their side effects than their effectiveness, (hardly anyone, for instance, cares to walk about with a bright green nose or large violet squares on their skin, to name the least objectionable outcomes), most witches, excepting the very ugliest, will eventually find themselves facing the prospect of producing a new generation of witches and wizards. This book has been assembled, in its many editions, over a period of several hundred years by potion experts working under the direction of the most skilled midwives of their times. The words "under the direction" had been underlined, and in the margin was the terse comment: ha.

Thank you so much for writing in my present, Snape, Sarah thought crossly. Although as she proceeded to get into the text itself, she found that his marginal notes appeared to have merit more often than not.

The first section was titled "What to Do If You Don't Want to Be Pregnant," and offered a series of emmenagogues and abortifacients, from the safest to the more risky. She couldn't help noting (although for some reason it did not make her feel appreciably better) that the potion he had offered her was rated highly on both safety and effectiveness, hence its popularity; most of these she had never heard of.

The second section, unhelpfully, provided potions designed to increase one's fertility. Most of these carried caveats about their sometimes excessive effects on desire. If you are dealing with an older wizard, one of these commented, you may want to make sure he has the appropriate potions to keep up with you. Sarah, her face flaming hot, took a break in her reading to have the dinner which had (due apparently to some arrangements with the house-elves) appeared on the table about ten minutes before.

The third section was "Dealing With the Discomforts of Early Pregnancy." Finally! Sarah was a little distressed to discover all the things she might find herself suffering from. The tenderness of her breasts turned out to be an entirely normal symptom, with a fairly simple potion capable of relieving it. However, the various permutations of "morning sickness" (hah, thought Sarah, it's nearly eight o'clock and I still feel queasy) required a careful match to a range of potions that varied in their effectiveness. In short, if one was experiencing the wrong set of symptoms, one might find oneself left being relatively miserable, regardless of the art of potion-making.

* * *

Snape had still not returned when, two hours later, exhausted and restless from the mental strain of reading for so many hours at a time, Sarah set aside her book and wandered into the workroom. Keep your hands to yourself, she reminded herself as she wandered among the worktables.

It was easier than she expected to identify the contents of the various cauldrons--mainly because most of them had a piece of parchment nearby on which was copied out the instructions for the potion in question, with the steps that had already been completed ticked off with a bold checkmark. Wolfsbane Potion was one of these, in progress on its own private table in the corner, and Sarah backed away from the cauldron quickly. It was supposed to be phenomenally tricky to make, and she was afraid that even breathing on it wrong might mess it up.

Phytolactus Potion, Sarah read, next to another cauldron that was simmering quietly, giving off tendrils of fine pink vapor. It was the potion for relieving breast pain. She studied the instructions, wavering. The next unchecked step was: Simmer for a minimum of five hours, then remove from heat, add one ounce of swan's down and stir counterclockwise for four minutes. It had already been simmering at least that long. She peered at the bubbling contents.

You are stark raving mad.

I'm also bored out of my skull. And I can do this.

Are you sure you aren't suicidal?

Ha ha ha. Anyway, it's not as if the finished potion isn't for myself.

With no little trepidation, Sarah got out the scales and found the jar of swan's down. But in the intensive process of measuring out the ingredient to her satisfaction, right down to the weight of a single feather, the hazard she was taking ceased to have any hold over her mind. She quenched the fire under the cauldron, then--at just the right moment--tipped in the swan's down and began to stir.

* * *

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The words cut through her reverie like the slash of a sword. She was grateful that she had just set down the minute timer after flipping it over for the last time.

"If it isn't obvious," Sarah answered, trying to keep her voice steady, her eyes still on the timer, her hand still describing circles over the cauldron, "then I'll tell you in about 45 seconds."

To his credit, he refrained for the specified length of time, although she could feel him fuming behind her.

"I have not given you permission to use my workroom," he bellowed, as the last grains of sand fell into the bottom bulb. "Nor have I ever suggested you could take the liberty of interfering with my work! Indeed, I told you precisely the opposite!"

"This is for me, isn't it?" Sarah snapped, turning to confront him. "I finished my reading, the potion was ready for the next step, and I had absolutely nothing else to do."

He bent over the cauldron, obviously looking for fuel for his rage.

"I did it right," she said. When he looked up, she knew she had.

"If you're so convinced of your ability to step in and complete my work, then finish it," he snapped, jabbing a finger at the cauldron.

It was difficult--more so than it had ever been in class--to focus on her work while he hovered over her, ready to flay her with words at the slightest hint of error. Concentrate! Get back where you were. Somehow she managed it. Everything went correctly. An hour later, she was staring down at the finished potion, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve to prevent it from falling into the cauldron.

"Well?" he asked. He had, at some point, grown tired of looming and now was sitting on the edge of the table behind her.

"It'll need to be bottled while it's still warm," Sarah reflected.

"And you're certain you've followed the instructions precisely?"

"Certain enough to drink it, if that's what you mean."

"Then go ahead," he dared. The curl of his lip worried her, made her second-guess herself, made her go down the list again, to be absolutely sure.

Casting him a defiant look, she found a clean bottle of the appropriate dose size, filled it from the cauldron, and (with a deep breath and a prayer that he would stop her in time if she had somehow gotten it wrong without realizing it) she gulped it down. She coughed at the hideous taste, but she managed to set the empty bottle on the table without breaking it.

"Congratulations," Snape said.

"What?" Sarah looked at him sharply, worried.

"Well, unless you've been practicing with illicit mixtures outside of class, that's the first time you'll have taken a potion of your own brewing. Oh, excuse me...half your own brewing," he corrected. He still didn't sound pleased, but his eyes had lost their disdain. Slowly he pushed himself up from the edge of the table. "Surely you'd like to know whether it worked?"

Sarah opened her mouth and took a step backwards, aghast at her own stupidity. There was only one possible reason he would have bothered brewing up that potion: so that he could touch her without hurting her. And while that might suggest some degree of thoughtfulness, the assumption that he would be touching her again was outrageous.

You idiot, of course he will be. How long are you planning on denying yourself to spite him?

Long enough!

Feeling suddenly and foolishly like a fish out of water, she shut her mouth. "You promised," she protested coldly.

"Yes, I did," he whispered in return, but a thousand times colder, propelling himself past her, disappearing into his room.

How did he do that? She could shrug off the most horrible things he might say. Then he would throw out some offhanded comment that meant nothing on the surface, yet it would pierce her like an arrow.

With a sigh, Sarah began bottling the potion. No sense in it going to waste; she would probably need more later. All the time she was cleaning up, however, she was torn by the urge to leave things where they were and go have it out with him. It was beyond understanding, why she wanted to fight with him. He could crush her like a bug if she got him angry enough. Yet it was almost as if the tension between them must be finite, that the sooner they used it up, the sooner everything would get better. What she meant by better, she wasn't sure. Maybe it had something to do with how it had felt last night, falling asleep with his arms around her. It was as if once they used up their quota of arguments, she could have that forever.

Which was a ridiculous idea, she chided herself, putting the cauldron away under the table. He was about as likely to change into someone she wouldn't quarrel with as that mark on his arm was to disappear. And if he were really....

No, don't go there. Don't even think it.

...but if he's double-crossing Dumbledore....

No! I said don't think it! Don't let it matter. If you let it matter, you're lost.

That, at last, got through. She took a series of deep breaths, trying to steady herself.

You know how to survive shit. You take everything one moment at a time--what you have to focus on right then and nothing more. And you don't let anything reach you.

Leaving the labeled bottles on the table, since she had no idea where he stored completed potions, she steeled herself to walk back into the bedroom.

* * *

He was sitting at the little table in near-darkness, staring into the fire with a cup of tea hovering disregarded in his hand. Sarah poured herself a cup. At first the silence was uncomfortable, but after a few minutes, it seemed the most normal thing possible to sit with him, saying nothing at all. Yet, when he seemed to come to himself, lifting the cup to his lips and grimacing at the cold liquid, the need for words rushed in again.

"I think what's left in the pot is still warm," Sarah offered. She wasn't sure why. It just seemed the decent thing to do.

He vanished what was in his cup, and Sarah picked up the teapot. One moment at a time.

"Better," he admitted, sipping at it. Now it was Sarah who sat with her cup neglected in her hands.

"You haven't asked me," he said, the hint of a sneer in his voice, "where I've been."

"If I ever get that curious, I'm sure I will," Sarah answered. "And then you can have the pleasure of telling me it's none of my business. But at the moment, I really don't give a damn."

He turned his head to look at her, his dark eyes reflecting bits of firelight. It stirred an odd fancy--as if he were burning in hell. But the manifold ramifications of the thought were too horrible to pursue. She did not hate him badly enough to wish that on him. And if he already....

"I'm tired," she said, standing up, interrupting whatever it was that he might have been about to say. "I'm going to bed."

And if he took that as an invitation....

I won't fight it.

No. As stupid as it is, you want him as badly as you ever did. And it might take your mind off this spinning in the back of your head.

Sarah came back from the bathroom in her virginal gown and climbed under the covers. Severus Snape hadn't moved; he was watching the fire again.

He might not take the invitation. She had hardly given him any reason to suppose that she would even allow it. Which would mean another day of sniping at one other.

You think anything's going to change that?

He set aside his cup, finally, and went out through the workroom. She was a little surprised to hear him come back, murmuring the closing spells for the doors. A stop in the bathroom, then he went around the bed.

Sarah watched him change into his nightclothes, slightly shocked at her own voyeurism, although he was turned away from her. When he turned around to pull back the covers, she pretended her eyes had been closed the whole time. She felt the bed shift under his weight, felt the other half of the covers being drawn up again.

He didn't say a word.

There were no sounds in the darkness but their own quiet breathing, the occasional constrained rustling of fabric and the popping of the fire. If she had to lie here, discomfited by her own longings, she might eventually fall asleep, but it wasn't going to be anytime soon.

Would it be giving in, to turn to him?

What if he decided to be stubborn in return? She imagined how crushing that would feel, how brutal he could make his refusal.

She imagined how crushing her own refusal must have sounded.

Well, he deserves that, doesn't he? The thought was bitter.

So, it's better if the two of you just keep on doling out what the other deserves?

That kind of war of revenge, played out on such intimate terms, could only end with one of them dead, and it might not be the relative kindness of a physical death.

Would you rather wait until he asks you again? Is the power of refusal worth anything if he doesn't keep his promise?

Somehow she thought he would. But she wasn't sure. Desire could drive a man to almost anything. Or a woman.

Is there any power in asking? That was like begging, wasn't it?

Or, to put the question differently, would there be some power in taking the initiative?

Speaking into the heavy silence was more difficult than she thought it would be, and her voice was horribly loud in her own ears, although she spoke even more softly than she had intended. "I guess I am curious whether it worked."

She was wondering if he was going to answer at all, if perhaps he had fallen asleep, when he said, "I think you could figure that out without my assistance."

In point of fact, she had, in the bathroom. But she wasn't about to say so.

"I could," she admitted, bracing herself for another war of words, "but it wouldn't be the same."

"I am in no mood to play games, Sarah," he growled. "What are you really asking?"

"You know perfectly well. Although it's more offering than asking. I'm certainly not going to beg if you aren't interested."

"It sounds more as if you're trying to make me beg."

"No, I'm not. It's just an offer. Take it or leave it." Although if you leave it, I'd better be able stop myself from begging.

He sat up, and Sarah wondered if he was going to take her very literally and just leave altogether. But he braced himself against his knees and looked down at her.

"I'm finally beginning to see why the Sorting Hat was tempted to put you in Slytherin."

Suddenly not liking the physical dynamic of their relative positions, Sarah sat up herself. "I've had a good teacher."

"More than one, I think," he returned. "Although a compliment like that is rare enough that it seems a pity to quarrel with it."

Did he have to conjure her father's ghost? Though admittedly she had set the stage for it, reminding him that he was her teacher. "I'd rather not quarrel, so if that's all you intend to do...." She laid down again, turning her back on him, no longer sure what she wanted to happen.

"You get no thrill from it whatsoever?" he asked.

"What?" Sarah craned her neck around.

"Quarreling. Don't tell me it does nothing for you."

Startled at the sudden shift of paradigm, she turned over. At the same moment he moved toward her, and she found herself underneath him.

"I take it this is more what you had in mind," he whispered.

The speed of her heartbeats would put the lie to anything she might say to contradict him. And still he hovered there, doing nothing but watch her.

"Ready to beg now?"

"You...!" Anger surged through her, stiffening her limbs with the urge to resist. The tingle left by the rush of adrenaline, however, was only proving his point. But there was, she found, only so much pushing she was willing to suffer. She forced her voice to be cold. "Not even if you killed me."

Whatever she had expected--more volleys of words, or perhaps him rolling away from her, leaving her to suffer until she conceded his mastery of her will--it was not a long and quiet contemplation of the chill her declaration had left between them. For that was what it seemed, as he stayed where he was, unmoving and silent. Then the ramifications of what she had just said occurred to her. She had forgotten his threat. She had wanted to forget it. And there was no way on earth to apologize for bringing it up now.

"I've never done anything in my life," he murmured, "to deserve this." The words ought to have been stinging, bitter. Instead, as if he were responding to something else altogether, there was a strange sense of wonder in his voice, and his fingers moved slowly to trace the outlines of her face. She reached out her own hand to push away the shadow of his hair, hoping to better read his expression in the dim light.

It was no one thing--in the near darkness she could not see well enough to be sure of anything in his eyes or on his face--but the impression was formed, regardless, from what was half seen, half felt, half imagined. She had become fragile in that dark gaze, under that delicate touch: something incalculably precious, something that might vanish in vapor and smoke. The sensation of insubstantiality was disconcerting. I'm Sarah, she thought, just Sarah.

He kissed her, and that was real enough to dispel the previous notion. What came after was...odd. Sometime in the past weeks, without her ever being aware of exactly when it had happened, the intenseness of novelty had been transmuted into the comfort of familiarity. She knew his touch...sweet Merlin, she knew his body...had more than a vague idea what to expect.

"I..." Maybe it was his curious gentleness or maybe her own desperation that emboldened her to ask for something she had, until now, simply accepted would happen or not, as it suited him. She wondered if it would be beggarly enough a request, as steady as she forced her voice to remain. "I want...I need to...finish." As her face flushed hot, she felt as if she had stepped off a plank into the center of a whirlpool of embarrassment that could only spit her out again in a devastation of shame.

He smoothed her hair back from her face and pressed his lips to her forehead, across her temple. In the merest sigh of a whisper against her flesh he answered, "Of course. By the way," he went on, as he reached her ear. "I think the potion worked."