Rating:
R
House:
Astronomy Tower
Ships:
Original Female Witch/Severus Snape
Characters:
Original Female Witch Severus Snape
Genres:
Romance Angst
Era:
The Harry Potter at Hogwarts Years
Spoilers:
Order of the Phoenix
Stats:
Published: 03/19/2005
Updated: 07/13/2015
Words: 282,703
Chapters: 64
Hits: 98,814

A Merciless Affection

Verity Brown

Story Summary:
When a N.E.W.T. Potions field trip goes badly wrong, a chain of events is set in motion that may cost Snape more than his life, and a student more than her heart. Angst/angsty romance. SS/OC (of-age student). AU after HBP but canon with OotP. Contains mature theme and some sex.

Chapter 22

Posted:
05/29/2005
Hits:
1,555
Author's Note:
I feel like my brain has been suffering a severe meltdown lately. Self-Occlumency? Anyway, if I’m less than coherent in my notes, that’s why.


Chapter 22: Those Who Speak of What They Know

It was very late when Sarah woke up from her nap...after midnight at least. Quickly arranging her protective spells, she sat at the end of the bed and turned her ring three times.

She arrived in darkness. The bed rustled as he stirred, aware on some level of her arrival. But he was, curiously enough, asleep.

Perhaps she should simply go back to her own bed, although she was struck with a sudden temptation to curl up next to him for the rest of the night. However unreasonable it was to take such a risk--and as profoundly uncomfortable as it could be to share bed space with another restless body--she had never felt quite as safe sleeping alone after the Christmas holidays. Safe. Hah. That made a lot of sense: the bed of a Death Eater, the Dark Lord's spy inside Hogwarts, as the safest place to sleep. On the other hand, she realized grimly, that did make a lot of sense, looked at in a certain way. She frowned.

"I'm here," she whispered, crawling up beside him.

He made a groggy sound, then she felt him start. "Torches, minimum," he mumbled, and a pale light flared, revealing his wand hand raised, his eyes scarcely open. He asked, still groggily, "What are you doing here?"

"I woke up late from my nap. I just thought I'd see if you were awake."

"You weren't supposed to come tonight," he groaned, letting his hand drop back onto the covers.

"Why?" she asked, then suddenly realized her mistake.

"Aaaagh, you fool." The force of the accusation was blunted somewhat by the fact that he couldn't seem to fully wake up. "Your bookmark."

"I know, I know." Sarah grimaced. "I'm sorry, I only just woke up myself, and it was so late I didn't even think about checking."

He groaned again, murmuring something unintelligible. Sarah was beginning to wonder if he had taken Dreamless Sleep. In suspicion of what his note had said, she brushed up the sleeve of his nightshirt. Reacting sleepily, he tried to push her hand away, but not before she saw that the Dark Mark stood out very sharply against his pale skin, as it did only when he had recently been summoned. If whatever he had seen had been bad enough that he wanted no risk of nightmares....

"I'm sorry," she whispered, squeezing his hand. "I'm so sorry. Go back to sleep. Torches, nox."

Arranging herself properly, she turned her ring and found herself back in Gryffindor Tower. Once she had shoved the doll back under the mattress, she curled up in a tight ball on her side, trying not to think about anything at all, hoping that the nightmares he was not having would spare her as well.

* * *

If he remembered her unsanctioned visit, he gave no sign of it when she appeared on Sunday after lunch. He also gave no signs of remembering their quarrel the day before. She was disinclined to remind him. This was the day he had set for her first formal attempt at finishing the Wolfsbane Potion under the conditions of the examination. She had gathered up her pre-prepared ingredients in her workroom, cradling them carefully on her lap before using the Portkey to move unseen to his quarters.

He had set up a space for her in his own workroom, and after they had moved all her materials and taken care of some other business, Sarah stood in front of the cauldron she was using, trying to focus, to find that inner state of mind which would let her work undistracted by anything. Especially the man who leaned against the edge of the table, watching her every move.

She began. As she checked off the steps one by one on the parchment she kept beside the cauldron, the minutes stretched into hours. Moonstone mixture, aconite, stirring changes, temperature changes, a little of this and a little more of that, and heaven help her if the set of her mouth wasn't just right.

"We can't both be absent from dinner." The words broke the surface of her deep concentration.

"I know," she answered, and went on with her work as he left.

Not a word about how she was doing. Pfffft, she thought; she couldn't do it aloud--it might ruin the potion.

She was nearly finished when he came back. Almost time for the last ingredient: five drops of essence of silver. The drops had to be just the right size, applied in just the right pattern to the shimmering blue-green surface of the potion. And she had not done this step as often as most of the others. She filled the dropper with essence of silver and held her breath as she held it above the cauldron.

One...two...three...wince...four...five....

Whoosh!

Sarah was afraid for a moment that something had gone badly wrong and the potion was exploding. In all the times she had got to this point, the best she had got from the mixture was a feeble little sizzle. Now it was positively smoking.

"Hmmm," Snape said. He took a ladle from the rack and filled a sample bottle. He held it up to the light. Sarah could see that it was a little too cloudy, and the color was off.

"Damn!" she said, banging the table with her free hand. She set the essence of silver down as carefully as she could manage and pounded that fist on the table as well. All the moments when she had not been quite sure, when her actions had not been quite as precise as they could have been, crowded through her head in succession. "I'll never get this! And I've only got two months to come up with something else." She sighed and perched wearily on the table behind her, pressing a hopelessly unskilled hand to her face.

"You'll need to brew a new moonstone mixture. Either it wasn't quite right to begin with, or it's gone off. That's why the potion is cloudy."

"Why didn't you just tell me how worthless I was weeks ago?" Sarah groaned.

"Worthless?" He raised his eyebrows. "I assure you, if I believed that you were incapable of this, I would have put a stop to your 'worthless' efforts months ago." He held up the potion again. "The color..."

"I faltered with the silver, I know," she said

He frowned at the interruption. "This is close enough that the examiners would be impressed, even if it wouldn't do more than make the transformed lycanthrope dazed and irritated, rather than properly clear-headed."

"Yes, well I don't sleep with the examiners, do I?" Sarah snapped; she stalked off into the bedroom.

What's wrong with me? she wondered. He said it was close. He's not yelling at me, telling me what a dunce I am, and yet here I am coming unhinged at him because it wasn't perfect.

"I'm sorry," she said, turning into his embrace as he came up behind her. "I'm just...I'm sorry."

"It may be that you're hungry," he suggested gruffly. "It isn't good for you not to eat. Not now. Madam Pomfrey would have my head if she knew that I let you skip dinner. She's apt to have yours if she noticed that you weren't in the Great Hall tonight." He gestured at the table with his wand, and a plate of sandwiches appeared, along with some tea.

With some food tucked away, things did not look quite so dismal. Still.... "You really think they'd give me top marks for that?" she asked Snape, who sat across from her. He had never gotten rid of this table for two, it occurred to her, although she almost never ate here.

"I didn't say that," he said warningly. "They might. But you can do better, and you know it."

"I don't know it."

"Very well, then. I know it."

Sarah was too tired to feel encouraged. "Can I nap here, please? I can't face all those stairs."

"No. You don't have things set up in your room, and if you are caught out after curfew, the least that would happen is a detention."

"You could catch me," she pointed out. "Staying too late in my workroom."

"You really want to lose more points for your House?"

"No." She grimaced guiltily at the thought of how far she had set Gryffindor back already this year. Nor was she prepared to beg him to let her stay. She certainly could not tell him her thoughts of last night, about feeling safer sleeping with him. She didn't want to watch him sneer at such maudlin foolishness. With a sigh, she stood up.

He went out ahead of her--to check for anyone in the hallway, she thought--but at the tapestry into the office he met her with a bottle of the strengthening tonic she had made under his supervision a month ago. She leaned against the wall, pouring a sizeable dose into her mouth. She felt the effects almost immediately, but still she didn't move. Her exhaustion was more than physical, she realized, but what had suddenly become so draining on her spirit?

Far too many things, she found, as she began enumerating the possibilities. Being Umbridge's little sycophant was a big part of it; the more she had to hurt other people to please the woman, the worse it became. The strain of trying to perfect the potion. The anxiety of not knowing what was happening to Severus, what he was doing in those meetings with his dark master. Trying not to think about where he really stood. The troubling craving she was developing for expressions of affection. He had begun that, she thought crossly, with those moments of comfort he gave her. Was it unreasonable to expect a degree of affection in marriage, even without genuine love?

You're an idiot, she told herself. You're just pregnant and it's rotting your brain.

She opened her eyes. Her Wolfsbane Potion still smoked in the cauldron. His, resting at an earlier point in the process, stood in its usual place in the corner. She wondered suddenly why he was always making it. It had to be brewed fresh each month--the effects of the full moon were such that, no matter how carefully it was stored, it lost its effectiveness.

"Are there any werewolves at school now?" she asked.

"No," Snape answered sharply, furrowing his brow at what must have seemed a terrible non sequitur. "Why should you think that?"

"Just, you brew it all the time," she added. "I wondered who it was for."

His frown lightened ever so slightly. "Dreggs and Pennyworth have customers who pay them handsomely for it. And it isn't something just anybody can brew, as you well know."

"They pay you for keeping them in stock?" It had never occurred to her, in spite of her career plans, that her talents might actually be worth something without being tied to the slavery of a job.

"That is the typical arrangement, yes," he sneered, as if the question were so obvious that it was condescension to answer it.

"What about Professor Lupin?" The rumor that the well-liked Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was a werewolf had spread like wildfire near the end of her fifth year, disrupting the confidence of many of her classmates in the preparation for their O.W.L.s.

"What?" Snape's face flushed.

"He could never afford it." Sarah remembered the man's tattered robes. "How could most lycanthropes?"

"Perhaps they have wealthy friends." He looked irritated, uncomfortable. "That is no concern of mine. Now, go to your room. Rest. Don't even think about working on the Wolfsbane Potion tomorrow evening. I shall be setting an essay in class. Finish it and go to bed early."

"Yes, Professor Snape," Sarah said, with mocking meekness.

He caught her against him, his expression shifting to a rather vicious smile. "It's about time you learned to obey me, Sarah."

She could feel the curve of her stomach against him as he pressed her close. She had been loosening her skirts for weeks now, but until this moment she had merely felt fat. The sudden consciousness that she really was pregnant rushed through her like a tingle of magical sparks. On impulse, she pulled him into a kiss which, from the expression on his face as he finally broke away from it, had surprised him.

"Curfew," he whispered. "House points. I mean it. Voracious girl. I'm tired. So are you."

"I am tired," she admitted. "I'm going." She slipped out of his arms, although he still went with her to the classroom door. "All clear?" she asked, as he returned from checking the hallway.

"Yes. Goodnight, Sarah."

"Goodnight, Severus..." she grinned mischievously, "I mean, Professor Snape."

As he closed the door behind her, he wore the roguish sneer that he reserved just for her.

* * *

Sarah did more or less as she had been told on Monday. After all that she had read in preparing for her project, Potions had become a breeze. Her most recent N.E.W.T. Herbology task--growing Vampiric Violets--was progressing nicely, and she had already filled out her work journal on them for the day. She caught up on her Astronomy reading during the evening, and was puttering through her Potions essay, more than a little bored and wishing that Angelina was there to chat with, when she felt a sudden, nasty buzzing against her arm.

For no especially good reason, she had pinned her silver 'I' to the left inner arm seam of her outer robes, where her shirt sleeve would protect her from it, but it would still be pressed close enough to her arm for her to notice it if it did something. Ok, she'd had a reason. But the fact that it wasn't a very good one was made entirely apparent by the chill of dread that ran through her at the summons.

It was a little after eight. The meeting couldn't last long without encroaching on curfew, although she supposed Umbridge could excuse them for being late. But what could be so important that....

Marietta Edgecombe. Sarah had hardly thought of her the rest of the weekend. With a guilty start, she realized that Angelina was gone. So were Katie and Alicia. Was Potter?

He wasn't in the common room, as she hurried through on her way to the Dark Arts professor's office. What could she do? If she didn't respond to Umbridge's summons, she would have a lot of explaining to do. And unless she knew what the I.S. was being called upon to do, she could hardly give a sensible warning to anyone.

Sarah arrived later than everyone else; the other common rooms were all closer. Someone she didn't know was weeping in the corner, with her hands over her face. Presumably Marietta Edgecombe.

"--on the seventh floor." Umbridge was already giving instructions, and gave Sarah a surprised nod (apparently having failed to realize that she was missing) when she came in. "We will catch them in the very act. Nip the problem at its source. Strike without warning." The woman was so outrageously pleased that she could hardly speak clearly for the stretching of her mouth by her smile.

"Professor?" Draco Malfoy spoke up. "What about the house-elves?"

"What about them?" Umbridge said, her mouth slackening slightly.

"That good-for-nothing creature that Potter tricked my father into freeing is here at Hogwarts. They know everything." The boy's eyes flicked around the room, looking suspiciously into the corners.

"Well, that can be dealt with." She spoke the words to summon a house-elf. The one who appeared was clad in a purple tea towel. "House-elf," Umbridge ordered imperiously, "none of your kind is to speak to Harry Potter tonight, or to warn him or his friends in any other way about anything you may have heard in this office. That is a strict command from the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Inquisitor," the creature whimpered, twisting its hands together. "I is understanding. I be telling the others right away." He disappeared.

"There. Now, let us hurry!"

As the I.S. sprang into action, heading for the door, Umbridge went to the crying girl. "You just stay here, dear. I'll find a way to deal with this little problem. Ah, Sandra," she said, noticing Sarah had hung back. "Please do what you can for Miss Edgecombe."

Sarah found herself alone in Umbridge's office with the sniffling Ravenclaw.

The seventh floor...that door...Angelina's magic room.... That must be where they met. And she had no means of getting there to warn them. If only....

Her ring? Her room was close enough to the seventh floor that if she hurried fast enough.... Of course, that required that she didn't care who might see her appearing in her room...or coming down the stairs a second time without having gone up them. Still, she was poised to do just that when she noticed that Marietta had stopped wailing and was looking at her hopefully.

"It's so awful," the girl whispered.

It was. Marietta's pale, tear-stained face had broken out in livid pimples that spelled out the word 'SNEAK' across her face. At least Potter and his friends had found a very effective way to reveal any potential traitors in their midst.

"Why did you tell on them?" Sarah asked sharply, knowing that it hardly went with her I.S. persona, but not caring.

Marietta began crying again. "M...m...m...my...m...m...mother...m...m...made...m...me!"

A little sympathy for the girl trickled into Sarah's soul. She could hardly abandon her in this state. And by now it must be too late to even try to get to the seventh floor in time. "All right, I'll try to get rid of this," she said, hoping to sound reassuring. Marietta must be in her sixth year at least, but she looked much younger with her face screwed up trying not to cry. "Look, I know a couple of charms for acne, but I'm better with potions. Maybe if we go down to Professor Snape's offi--"

"Oh, NO!" Marietta wailed, looking horrified. "He'll...he'll...he'll say s...s...s...something horrible to me if he s...s...sees me like this."

Sarah couldn't argue with that. Indeed, she wasn't overeager to hear what Snape would say to her. Whether it was a gloat about Potter or an accusation of mismanaging her spying, it wasn't something she wanted to listen to, not when she was doing quite well enough at recriminating herself.

"All right," Sarah said. "Let me try the charms."

* * *

It seemed to take forever before anyone returned. The charms had not helped. Whoever had cast this spell had known what they were doing. The other members of the Inquisitorial Squad trickled into Umbridge's office, mostly looking disgruntled.

"Flitwick caught us bringing Lovegood down here and made us let her go," Montague complained. "I wish Umbridge'd hurry up about making our powers public."

"I got Potter, at least," Malfoy gloated, as he came into the room. "Umbridge has taken him up to Dumbledore's office."

"Isn't he likely to let Potter off?" Sarah asked, trying to sound more concerned than hopeful.

"Oh, you weren't here when the meeting started," Parkinson put in. "She's got Fudge up there. Minister Fudge."

"Maybe he won't just get expelled," Malfoy crowed. "Maybe he'll get sent to Azkaban! Old Dumbly won't be able to do a thing!"

Sarah tried to at least smile when the others broke into guffaws. Bad. Oh, this was bad. And it was all her fault. If only she had tried harder to...to what? to get to Marietta? to warn Potter herself? to convince Severus to.... Sarah felt tears welling in her eyes, and she forced a laugh to cover them up.

"They did a number on you," one of the Slytherins commented, taking in Marietta's persistent skin condition. Having failed to bring down any other prey, several members of the I.S. now turned their venom on the unfortunate Ravenclaw girl. Sarah noticed that Morgaine Lukas looked very unhappy, although she was doing nothing to stop the teasing.

"Oh, let her alone," Sarah spoke up, disgusted at herself for having done so very little to prevent any of this. "It could be any one of you."

Umbridge came in before it got any worse. "Well done," she said, apparently unconcerned by the fact that there were no other prisoners waiting for her. "You may go to your dormitories now. Keep your pins close at hand. I feel confident that you will soon be able to wear them openly. Come with me, dear," Umbridge added to Marietta. She frowned at Sarah. "You weren't able to do anything for her?"

"I'm sorry, Professor," Sarah ducked her head. Sorrier than you know. "It's a very difficult jinx to break, and I wasn't able to get at my Potions supplies."

"Oh, nevermind," Umbridge dismissed her. "I'll do it myself."

Leaving Marietta to the horrible woman's tender mercies, Sarah trudged up the stairs.

She didn't want to go back to her room. Not to face the other girls, who must have had very narrow escapes. How could she face anyone? She might as well have 'SNEAK' spelled out across her own face.

She had surprisingly little impulse to seek out her usual solace. If Snape had passed along all the information he should have, maybe none of this would have happened. And if he were to so much as smile at the thought of Potter being expelled, she was likely to hex him.

The Astronomy Tower? Not that she was going to throw herself off. But no, it was getting warmer all the time; now it was April, and she was still thinking of that frigid night in January, wanting to punish herself with the cold. Could she roam the hallways until someone caught her? Filch maybe; that would surely result in some hideous detention.

Unfortunately, no one seemed very interested in catching any other misbehaving students tonight. Finally, Sarah made her way back to Gryffindor Tower. The common room was dimmed for the night. Everyone in her room was asleep...or so she thought.

"Sarah?" she heard an anxious voice from Angelina's bed. "Where've you been?"

"I just couldn't sleep," Sarah said quietly. I let you all be betrayed.

"Me either," Angelina said. "What a horrible night."

If the other girl expected this statement to prompt a question, she was going to be disappointed.

"Yeah, it was," Sarah answered. Not even bothering to change, she kicked off her shoes, crawled into her bed and closed the curtains. When Angelina made no further attempts at conversation, Sarah cast the silencing spell and wept miserably enough to put Marietta to shame.

What would happen now? Had she just lost the whole war for Dumbledore's side, if The-Boy-Who-Lived went to Azkaban? How could Snape be happy about that? Maybe she ought to have listened to him to begin with, about the spying. But...no, that would only mean that she wouldn't have known about tonight's events. She would have had no chance at all to have stopped them.

Did he want to see Potter trip so badly that he didn't care about the end result? No...no...if that were true, he would have let her betray Potter to Umbridge herself. Maybe she should have--then at least she would be getting some benefit from her torment of conscience. Their own little shop, with Severian running around the counter. Severus shouting at the boy to behave himself. She tried to make him pick up the child and lift him up into the air, as her father had done with her when she was small. But her imagination wasn't strong enough for that. And the shop...that wasn't him either. Her child's father was the enigmatic Potions master of Hogwarts, who secretly spied for both sides and spent kind words as stingily as if they were Galleons. And it was impossible to see him as anyone else. He could never be the father she would have wanted for her son. It was not in him.

Why didn't he leave us alone? she agonized. The boy Severian turned around, as imagination gave way to dreams. It wasn't Severian; it was Harry Potter. And Severus was glaring at both her and the boy from the other side of the counter.


Author notes: I can’t think of much to say, for a change. Up next, dealing with the aftermath. And just so you know, there’s only two more *insert anti-depressant of your choice* chapters coming up here (thanks to that annoying Dolores Umbridge and that miserable, prying Harry Potter). Things will start to get happier when we get to the Easter holiday, I promise. Which isn’t to say there won’t be other problems further down the road (of which it is my sad duty to inform you). But there’s going to be a reprieve for a while. Just so you know.