A Merciless Affection

Chapter 17: Am I Fonder of Dolls...or of Goblins

Madam Pomfrey had not stopped frowning once since their interview began. After a short lecture on the impropriety of Sarah's behavior (adapted, Sarah suspected, from one that she kept in readiness for similar occasions), and a suggestion that there were simple means to put an end to the problem (although, judging from her halfhearted presentation of the idea, she had already been warned that Sarah would refuse), she had offered a series of potions that she pulled out of the far back corner of the hospital storage cabinet.

"This has to be taken every day, and since you appear to have no other conditions that would provide an excuse, you'll need to do so in private. It will encourage your body to carry the child closer, so you won't show as much or as soon."

"I'm already taking it," Sarah answered. And when Madam Pomfrey's brow furrowed, she couldn't help adding a little loftily, "I made it myself."

The medi-witch harrumphed, fiddling with the bottles. "Do you vomit in the mornings?"

"No."

"Any other difficulties?"

"No." Sarah felt rather absurd sitting here.

"Well, then, there's not a great deal more that I can do for you at present, Miss Darkglass. You'll need to pretend that you're still menstruating every month. The other girls will notice, sooner or later, if you don't. And when you do begin to show, I'll give you a spelled girdle that will prevent it from being apparent. Thank goodness school robes are so forgiving," Madam Pomfrey sighed.

* * *

A similar interview with Professor McGonagall did not go much better.

"The Hogwarts Express arrives Sunday evening. However, I've arranged for your things to be moved back to Gryffindor Tower this afternoon. You will pretend that you arrived a couple of days early--on the Knight Bus, as in fact you did. It's as well to have a trial run, and fortunately none of the other seventh year girls stayed at school for the holidays."

"A trial run?" Sarah asked.

McGonagall's mouth went thinner yet. "I don't approve, but.... Severus will, I'm sure, explain the arrangements to you."

That was more than Sarah could be sure of. Snape had been away as often as he was present for the past few days.

"In any event, you will need to be careful. I don't know how to emphasize that to you sufficiently. I'm terribly afraid that these holidays will have permitted you to relax and become careless."

"I'll be careful, I promise," Sarah said, offended by McGonagall's mistrust of her good sense, but also a little worried that she might be right. She felt as if there were an edge she had lost somewhere. She hoped it would not be too difficult to find again, with the other students back.

"Do not forget what is at stake, Sarah. There are more reputations at issue than your own."

"I won't forget."

McGonagall sighed. "As if there weren't enough hazards for the moment," she said quietly, as if to herself.

"You've managed to get it through my head that things are very bad right now." Sarah felt a renewal of that twinge of guilt for having put the school at risk.

"You just don't know...."

"I only know what I've been told," Sarah pointed out tightly.

"What have you been told?" McGonagall asked, curiosity taking some of the sharpness out of her voice.

Now it was Sarah turn to sigh. "Not enough, I'm sure. I've figured out that..." she tripped over a way to name him to McGonagall; finally she settled on imitation of the older woman as the best course, although it was a strange sound on her tongue, "...Severus is a double-agent. I have no idea of the details; he hasn't told me. In fact, I'm not sure I know more than anyone else does about You-Know-...I mean, the Dark Lord trying to return to power."

McGonagall's mouth pursed, but she said, "If you know that much, you're ahead of most of your fellow students. And that bea-..." she visibly bit back what she had been going to say, "Professor Umbridge's presence makes it impossible to take the steps necessary to convince the student body of the truth. Yes, Sarah, things are very bad indeed. I can only hope that the efforts that are being made to prepare for the worst will be enough. It is very important that you do exactly as Severus tells you."

Sarah froze, then swallowed hard.

"What's the matter?" McGonagall had not failed to notice her reaction.

"Nothing," Sarah said brusquely. But the fact that her own Head of House was telling her the same thing was disconcerting; it was as if she had lost one of her last recourses, should she find Snape's instructions unacceptable.

McGonagall, however, held her eye for a long time. "He always said the same thing. Though most students make that protest at one time or another. But you have the same look--as if the truth is there and you're daring me to dive for it...at the bottom of a deep, dark pool of acid."

Sarah blinked. "I'm sorry," she found herself saying. She had not meant to be impertinent.

The older woman smiled grimly. "Well, that's more than I ever heard from Severus Snape."

Perhaps it should have made Sarah feel the difference in their ages less, to realize that Snape had once been McGonagall's pupil. On the contrary, it merely made her realize how very old McGonagall must be.

"Oh," she said suddenly, "before I forget. Here's your hair clasp." Sarah pulled it from her pocket and laid it on the desk. "And thank you for the shortbread, too."

"Then it hasn't gone to waste this year?"

"You know he always throws it away?"

McGonagall snorted. "I would expect nothing less. I don't suppose you persuaded him to eat a piece?"

Sarah shook her head.

"Well, you'll have the luck of it at least."

* * *

It was both strange and liberating to have free run of the school again, although it made her aware once more of the need for caution. At dinner in the Great Hall, with the handful of students and staff that had stayed for the holidays, Sarah discovered that she had to consciously work to be Miss Sarah Darkglass again. Snape was absent, for good or ill, and Professor Umbridge was back, wearing a fluffy new cardigan that was clearly meant to be recognized as a Christmas present (although who would care for the woman enough to give her gifts was beyond imagining). She was attempting to dominate the gathering in her own knife-with-honey way, while Professor McGonagall and the headmaster tried to maintain a quiet dignity.

"Is it usual," Umbridge wanted to know, fixing Sarah with her bulgy eyes, "for students to return to school after the holidays otherwise than on the Hogwarts Express?"

"It's common enough," McGonagall assured her. "Especially for older students. The Knight Bus is a good deal quicker in some cases, and more amenable to busy schedules."

"And where did you spend your holidays, Miss...." Professor Umbridge paused, clearly waiting for the name to be supplied.

"Darkglass," Sarah said, praying that a plausible answer would give her mother's protection a chance to distract even a person as tenacious as Umbridge. "After Christmas I went to visit my cousins in Northumberland," she lied. Well, it was a lie that she had visited them. With any luck, Umbridge would forget about this conversation before she had time to consider whether Sarah's story was worth the effort of checking up on.

"Surely they could have hosted you for a few more days?"

"I wanted to get back early. Avoid the crowds on the Knight Bus. Get some extra study time in. After all, the N.E.W.T.s are only six months off."

"It's good to see a student so applied to her studies," Umbridge commented absently, already looking around for someone or something else to criticize.

* * *

Sarah had left a note for the absent Snape before she had left his rooms and crept up the back stairs to begin her reintegration into normal student life. Pacing her empty dorm room after supper, half-wishing in the oppressive solitude that the other girls were there, she waited with her bookmark in hand for some reply.

When it finally came, however, it was even more abrupt than she expected.

Get down here.

It wasn't worth the waste of ink to argue. Not when she had nothing preventing her from leaving right now. It was still before curfew--which was not rigorously enforced during the holidays anyway--and the couple of Gryffindors in the common room were too engaged in their game of wizard chess to even notice her passing through.

She made herself go to the portrait door. The tone of his note suggested that something had him upset, and facing the skeletal figure and the leering raven was the best possible preparation: nothing would seem quite as horrible afterward. Although it was bad enough that she had to knock when the wards refused to let her in, even after she'd spoken the password.

"I assume your interviews with Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall went acceptably," he said, once she was inside. He refrained from commenting on her choice of entrance.

She sat down in front of the cold, empty fireplace.

"Madam Pomfrey was put out that I know how to make my own potions. Professor McGonagall is worried that we'll get careless. That was the sum of it." She wasn't about to repeat McGonagall's injunction to wifely obedience.

"Hmph," Snape snorted. "Anything else?"

"She hinted that there were...arrangements?"

He blinked, as if his mind had been on other things. "Yes. We shall, of course, be required to return to the situation that existed before the holidays. With one small exception." He reached into a pocket, at the same time moving around behind her. The purpose was clear in moments, as he fastened a long, slender gold chain around her neck. The ornament dangling from it was the silver circlet she had thrown at him on their wedding day.

"What's this?" she asked, fingering it, unable to believe him capable of such sentimentality. Certainly not without a purpose.

"Well, you clearly didn't care for it as a wedding ring," he said. "It's an extremely complex and highly illegal Portkey. Courtesy of the headmaster. The chain is long enough--keep it hidden. If anyone sees it, it belonged to your mother. If there's any risk of it being taken from you, swallow it if you have to."

Sarah couldn't help chuckling quietly at the idea, but the expression on his face wiped even the hint of a smile off hers.

"I am quite serious. If Professor Umbridge, in particular, should happen to confiscate it, we would all be in a great deal more trouble than we could dig ourselves out of in a year."

"How does it work?" Sarah asked, examining it for any obvious signs of magic.

"You must slip it onto your finger, of course. Three turns to the left will bring you here, three turns to the right will return you to Gryffindor Tower. I warn you, however, not to use it outside the castle--it isn't equipped to deal with the wards, and the effects could prove extremely nasty. Even apart from the fact that wizards from the Portkey Office would be breathing down your neck faster than you could spit."

"So, no more sneaking down the stairs."

"Don't tell me you enjoyed that?"

"Not exactly," Sarah said. Although it was true that the risk had gotten her blood pumping a little faster.

Snape sneered--she could just imagine him thinking Gryffindor--before he went on. "You will still need to take precautions. A muffling charm on your bed curtains should prevent your dorm mates from being aware of your departures and returns. I shall help you set up the precautionary spells. And above all, don't neglect to check your bookmark for notes. There's no point in taking unnecessary risks."

Sarah couldn't help thinking that the main risks--encountering someone by accident in his office or while sneaking about in the hallways--were pretty well eliminated by the ability to step directly from her bedroom to his and back again. But she didn't argue; too much was at stake to get lackadaisical about it now.

"One other thing," he said, the earnest frown returning. "You are not to come here on Mondays, ever."

"What are you doing on Mondays?" she asked, puzzled. That time had never been off-limits before.

"What did I say about questioning me?" he snapped, so sharply that Sarah had the feeling she had finally touched upon whatever had him on edge tonight. Unfortunately, his malady seemed to be catching; her predetermined efforts to remain calm in spite of his mood were being sorely tried.

"I believe you said not to pester you for information. Simply asking is not pestering. If you don't want to answer, fine, just tell me to sod off. I'm not stupid," she said, sneering herself. "I'll get the idea."

"You want to know what I'll be doing with my Monday evenings?" his voice tightened like a noose. "I'll be paying Albus Dumbledore's price for you."

Sarah stood up, a sore spot of her own jabbed beyond tolerance. "I never asked to be paid for." She wondered whether the Portkey or the door would provide a more resounding exit. "So whatever it is, don't take it out on me."

"Calm down!" he growled, holding up his hands. "My point is precisely not to take anything out on you. You've just seen how difficult that would be if you were here."

Curiosity won out over anger. With forced quietness, she asked, "What did the headmaster ask you do to that has you so upset?"

Snape flung himself down in his chair with a harsh sound. Sarah sank to the floor next to him, hoping that unobtrusiveness (or, damn it, a proper wifely humility) would convince him to tell her what was going on.

"Extra lessons," he said between his teeth, glaring at the empty fireplace. "Lessons I were better to be giving to you. And I don't dare to take on more than one pupil at a time. It's going to be tricky enough to eliminate any trace of you from my thoughts."

Sarah fixed him with a puzzled look. "Lessons?"

"Occlumency," he said. "The art of blocking the mind against magical intrusion."

"I've heard of it," Sarah said, although she would not for the world have told him that the source of her information was a wizarding novel. "I didn't know it was real. That's how you hide the...the truth from the Dark Lord, then, isn't it?"

He nodded shortly. "I had intended to teach you. You would take to it easily, I think. And now this."

"Who did Dumbledore ask you to teach?" Sarah asked, unable to imagine how any one student could produce so much apparent aggravation.

Snape's answer dripped venom. "Harry. Bloody. Potter."

Sarah sat back slightly. "Oh."

"Oh what?"

"Just...well...everyone says...at least everyone in Gryffindor says...that you don't like him...much."

"Amazing. For once, a vicious rumor is true."

"Except no one seems to know why." The most popular rumor--until Potter himself had become persona non grata because of the Daily Prophet's recent portrayal of him--had been that Snape's purported dislike of the Boy-Who-Lived was proof that Snape was secretly on the Dark Lord's side. Sarah held her breath, hoping that was not the answer.

"Do I need a special reason to dislike such an arrogant little snot?"

Sarah had never noticed that the boy possessed that quality, but it hardly seem diplomatic to say so. "Just...some people seem to think that he's...well...that he might be the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord."

"Good god," Snape said, turning his head away from her. "I had no idea I'd married a member of his fan club.

"I am not," Sarah averred, stung. "But could it be true? That he'll be the one to defeat the Dark Lord again, maybe for good this time? And if it's not, why is Dumbledore having you give him special lessons?"

The look he turned on her, as if she were far too quick on the uptake, justified her question. But he said, "What Professor Dumbledore believes and what I believe are sometimes two very different things. In this instance, however, it was inevitable that he would ask me to cede to his judgment. Which I have done. The situation with you has simply made it more difficult to argue with the specifics of his request. In any event, I will not be fit company on Monday evenings. Mental magic is largely a function of memories and emotions, and it will be necessary for me to tamper severely with both in order to hide your place in my thoughts from Mr. Potter. The process of rearrangement can be...unsettling. I don't want you to be present for it. It would not be pleasant, I assure you."

Sarah leaned against the arm of his chair with a sigh of resignation. Almost absently, it seemed, his hand strayed to her hair.

"Professor McGonagall said something about a trial run?" she murmured after a pleasant minute or so of this.

"Yes," he said. He stood up, offering a hand to help her get to her feet. "I think it best if you go and return first by yourself. Then I will go along and help you set up the necessary spells."

Sarah raised her eyebrows. She was not sure which was more alarming: just the general idea of Snape in her dorm room or the thought of him casting spells (or ordering her to cast spells) in her own private space.

"Well?" he said.

She took a step back and lifted the ring on its chain. He hadn't said it was a condition of the spell, but it seemed likely enough (especially if Professor Dumbledore was unaware of their quarrel), so she put it on the same finger she had torn it off of over a week ago. Using the green stone as a reference, she began turning the band to the right...once, twice, thr--

As if something had grabbed her stomach and yanked, she was pulled out of Severus Snape's bedroom. She found herself standing--quite a wobbly position--on her own bed. Sitting down rather ungracefully, she examined the ring with a sigh. She wondered whether using it as the Portkey had been Dumbledore's idea or Snape's. It wasn't worth asking about; she and Severus had come to a kind of precarious truce with one another since that first horrible night, and accusations that he did not actively provoke seemed likely to upset that balance.

Certain that he would become alarmed if she didn't return promptly, she began turning her ring to the left. The resulting snatch of magic deposited her on Snape's bed. He turned, startled; apparently he had expected her to appear in the same place she had disappeared.

"Well," Sarah said. "Either the headmaster is extremely practical, or he's a dirtier old man than I would have given him credit for."

"What?"

"Just...the spell deposits the user on the bed. There, too. I almost fell over because I was standing up."

That elicited one of those smirks that was almost a real smile. "Then we'd better try this lying down," he said, coming over to the bed. What he had in mind, however, resulted in him lying on top of her. After a couple of extended kisses, he sighed. "Work first." He found her hand between them and rolled off just enough to manipulate the ring on her finger. The sensation was troubling, evoking as it did the moment when he had placed that ring there to begin with. But she did not have time to think about it before the world was jerked out from under her.

It was disconcerting that, apart from the jolt of the transference, the situation was not substantially different. Except that the canopy over her head was red instead of green. Snape had rolled off her altogether and was staring around with a singular, unreadable expression.

"A Knut for your thoughts."

He looked sharply at her.

"Okay, a Galleon."

"I was thinking," he said, "how long I've imagined this."

It might have been taken as a compliment, but there was something about how he said it that made Sarah open her eyes a little wider. He hadn't always been a teacher. Trying to picture him as boy at Hogwarts, though, was both difficult and bizarre. She attempted to plaster his hair and eyes and nose on a series of seventh years, but the Weasley twins' red hair did not give way easily to black, and although Nightshade's coloring and build were something closer, not to mention his Slytherin uniform, his pretty face was completely at odds with Snape's grim visage, which did not seem as if it could ever have been any younger. The customary leer in Nightshade's eyes, though, lent itself to the picture of a youth daydreaming about a girl's dorm room.

"The Gryffindor dormitory particularly?" Sarah blurted out, amazed at the idea. She had not spent much thought on his interests prior to herself. There had been a hint, that first night, at a former liaison with a fellow apprentice. It had seemed little worth troubling herself about. But now curiosity had got the better of her.

She realized, however, as his eyes shuttered over, that she had made a mistake. "Sorry, forget I asked that." She got up and paced a little, nervously.

"This is your dormitory, is it not?" he asked.

"Yes." She forced herself to stop. "You know, it's just occurred to me. The castle was designed to keep these rooms off limits to people with the wrong set of anatomy. It must be having a fit."

"I suspect it's merely a spell built into the stairs," he said. He got up. "Now, first I want to see how much power needs to be put into the muffling charm. Back on the bed," he ordered. He closed the bed curtains around her. "Cast a simple muffling charm, then go and return."

"Stifilus!" Sarah whispered, pointing her wand at the curtains.

The operation of the Portkey with such frequency was not doing her persistent nausea any good whatsoever. Upon her return, she felt positively green. She pulled back the curtain and said, "Well? And please say, 'Yes, it works.'"

"No, it does not."

Sarah groaned. "What's wrong with it?"

"A distinct noise. Muffled, but still audible."

"What do you suggest?" she asked, too miserable to want to think.

"Try 'Munio silentio.'" He demonstrated the wand movement.

It took her a few tries, but she got the spell down.

"Ready?"

"Not really." Sarah snapped the curtains closed and performed the spell. Gritting her teeth, she turned her ring.

When she returned, she sat for so long trying earnestly not to heave up her guts that Snape peeked through the curtains.

"Did you even leave?"

Sarah tried to smile but it was more of a grimace. "I guess that means it was effective."

"Are you all right?" he asked, seeming suddenly to notice her unwell expression.

"My head doesn't like all these Portkey trips back-to-back." Her stomach was settling down, but the dizziness was worse than ever. She got up and rummaged in her trunk, which had been returned to its usual place at the foot of her bed, and gulped down a couple of generous swallows of her decoction of ginger root. "I'll be fine in a minute. I hope."

He wrapped her in his arms for that long, long minute. The comfort was so unexpected that she wasn't sure how to react. Restraining the urge to tell him that this was all his fault, she let herself lean heavily against his chest, wishing she could simply collapse, knowing that she should not allow herself the luxury. Finally, she began to feel capable of conscious action. She raised her head and said weakly, "What next?"

"No more Portkey journeys for the present." He studied her bed frame. "The chief danger, of course, is that someone will try to wake you when you're not here. An Imperturbus charm would prevent anyone from opening your curtains, but that would raise even more questions than your absence."

"I can just say I was in the bathroom," Sarah pointed out.

"And if you reappear when someone is looking at you?"

Sarah frowned, stymied.

"Admittedly, it's an unlikely occurrence. But there is a way to minimize the hazards." From a pocket in his robes, he removed a wand-length bundle of cloth. He laid it on the bed and unwrapped a dozen or so golden-brown wheat straws. That explained the faint rustling sensation she had felt when he held her. "Do you know what to do with these?"

Sarah sank down on the bed next to the straws, staring down at them, a cold sweat forming on the back of her neck. "I...think I remember how," she said. It had been some of the first Dark magic her father had taught her, and she had not even known it at the time. It had seemed merely an amazingly clever trick, to make, by careful twisting and bending, little dolls out of straw. The darker possibilities had been revealed later. She looked up at Snape. "What are we going to do?"

"An illusion spell, so the doll will appear to be you to anyone who might look in on you."

"This is dangerous," Sarah said. "If it should fall into anyone else's hands...."

"It won't be tied to you in that fashion. That's integral to the spell."

She continued to stare at him dubiously. "Is it possible to make a one-way connection?"

"Most of the commonly-used spells are one-way connections. This one merely makes the connection run in the other direction."

"Are you sure?" Sarah asked. The idea of the existence of any tool with which someone could directly affect her by Dark magic was not at all to her liking.

"Do you think that generations of students in Slytherin House would take the risk of making them otherwise?" His lip curled in his impatience with her hesitation.

"I didn't think Slytherin students broke the rules," Sarah challenged.

"Slytherin students simply put a higher priority on not getting caught. They used to have bed checks, you know, as late as my third year."

"Did they give it up because the students were too good at fooling the teachers?"

Snape chuckled faintly; it was still a curious sound to her ears. "It was a challenge. A game--not to be there for the check and not to be caught out for it. And yes, the staff figured out that the checks were producing more misbehavior than they were preventing."

"But not before you learned the spell?"

The smile left his face. "I already knew it, before I ever came to school."

Sarah lowered her eyes to the straws again. Forcing herself to overcome the instinct that told her, in her mother's voice, that she must never do such a thing again, she picked up a set of straws, whispered a charm to make them supple in her hands, and began folding them into a human shape. It was troubling how easily the skill came back; her hands were far less clumsy than a child's and made up for the years' worth of lack of practice. It was not long before the straw form lay finished in her hand.

Snape opened her trunk and pulled out the despised white nightgown. She imagined that he took a particular delight in using a severing charm to remove a long strip of the hem. With a sigh, she extended the doll to him.

"You have to do this," he told her. "The spell doesn't work properly otherwise."

By winding the strip of white cotton around it, she succeeding in creating a rough facsimile of a gown on the doll.

"Does it need hair or something?" Sarah asked, worried at the anticipated answer.

"No. That would create too strong and dangerous a bond. The clothing is enough." He went on to explain the spell, which allowed the doll to store and project a magical image of herself. If she pushed the blankets aside, as if she'd kicked off her covers, and left the doll there in her place, she might even be able to return under someone's very eyes without too much of a flicker of difference between her and her projected image in the dark.

Staring down at her apparent self, soundly asleep (or dead, if you noticed that it wasn't breathing), Sarah was extremely uncomfortable. She could feel the faintest tug of the magic in the doll, as if it were connected to her by a single thread. Dark magic.

"I don't like this," she said.

"I thought we agreed that that doesn't matter." There was the slightest edge on his voice.

"I know, but I still don't like it. Can't I feel about it as I please?"

"For the moment," he answered. She looked at him uneasily. "But it would help if you could feel, for just an instant, some pleasure in the cleverness of what you've done."

Sarah considered this. She had felt pleased with herself about the stairway, even about her first panicky trips without being caught. But none of that had involved the Dark Arts. To be quite honest, she felt ashamed of herself. If this were not necessary....

And there, she knew, was the beginning of a slippery slope of excuses. She frowned.

"At least imagine you're pleased." Snape frowned in return.

"I can't. Not right now. Not about this." She shook her head.

His jaw tightened, in obvious frustration, but he turned from the matter. "Are you ready for another Portkey trip."

"If I have to be," she said, not enthusiastically.

"Then we'll proceed with one last test. When you get there, try to lie in as near a position as possible to that of your image here before you come back."

Sarah slid to the foot of the bed, out of the way of the illusion, and carried out these instructions. Her head again did not appreciate it, but the ginger decoction was still working, and when she returned she felt no urge to lose her dinner.

"Not bad," Snape said. "Probably better when it's fully dark in here. But dispell everything the moment you return. With you occupying nearly the same space, the image is apparent for what it is as soon as you shift positions."

"Are we done, then?" All this had exhausted Sarah beyond reason.

"We are." He climbed onto the bed as she dispelled the magic and tucked the horrid straw figure deep enough under the edge of her mattress that even the house-elves would be unlikely to find it. She turned back to find him very close to her. "Except, perhaps, for one thing."

She thoroughly enjoyed the groping and kissing that followed, but when it was clear that he intended to take things further, she balked.

"Not here." She pressed a restraining hand against his chest. "Please."

"Yes, here." It was very clear that he had no intention of stopping.

"Listen to me," she pleaded. She had to take his face between her hands to get him to pay attention. "I can't sleep in this bed, in this room, as a student, as Sarah Darkglass, not with this kind of memory haunting me. Please."

"Damn it," he snarled. "All right. But the moment that this room is empty at the end of the summer term...."

"Okay, okay," she agreed, maneuvering the ring onto her finger and turning it. Once, twice, three times.