A Merciless Affection

Chapter 24: Little Prying Pandora

Having the box of Veritaserum vials in the bottom of her trunk, as small a thing as that was, made Sarah feel immeasurably better. It was as if she had achieved at least one victory over Umbridge. Although a portion of guilt continued to gnaw at her, it only took the thought of those vials for her hold her head up a little higher.

Even the new moonstone mixture was going better. She spent all her free time on Wednesday afternoon on it. All through dinner she went over the steps in her mind--both the ones she had completed...yes, she had done very well...and the ones she had yet to do.

"Pssst, Darkglass." A voice at her ear broke her concentration as she was hurrying out of the Great Hall.

She turned to see a narrow face topped by white-blond hair. Malfoy.

"What do you want?" she snapped.

The boy looked down his nose at her. "Montague's come up missing. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"Not a thing," Sarah lied.

"Well, everyone in the Inquisitorial Squad is supposed to go looking for him."

"Fine," she snapped, although she had no intention of wasting her time on such a worthless activity. The more she was seen with members of the I.S., the more likely it was she would be identified as one, badge or no. It wasn't as if Umbridge would notice her absence, based on how she had acted the other night. If she could just shake Malfoy.... "I'll check..." Sarah broke off as she felt a sudden buzzing against her arm. At the same moment, Malfoy raised his hand to his badge.

"Damn," she murmured to herself. Not only was her work time being encroached upon, but now she was going to have spend at least a half hour snuggling up to the toad. And she had no chance of testing her new theory about Umbridge, not with Malfoy apparently determined to stick to her side all the way upstairs.

As they climbed the first flight, the boy commented, "You seem awfully friendly with Professor Snape."

Sarah's stomach instantly began to churn, and she felt a cold sweat break out on her scalp.

"So do you," she returned. "Bursting into his office without even knocking."

"I have the right to talk to him anytime I like," Malfoy said haughtily. "He owes my family. Anyway, he likes me."

"Are you implying that he's your pet? Or would that be the other way around?" Sarah let her voice drop very low. "Do you like being buggered, little boy?"

Malfoy's face went nearly purple. Gods, she hoped it wasn't true. The thought made her feel quite ill.

"You take that back!" he shouted. His wand was out in an instant, but if he thought he had gotten on the jump on her, he was disabused by the tip of her own wand nearly touching his.

"You want to bet that your father taught you better curses than mine taught me?" she asked; her whisper was even quieter and more deadly than before. A few people had stopped, seeing wands drawn, and now a small crowd was gathering to watch the show. "All right, Malfoy," she said, "I take it back. After all, only two people know the truth, hm?"

Malfoy showed his teeth; they were small and white, as if he had never lost his baby set. "Not much of an apology, Darkglass. But," he lowered his wand, "I have better things to do. The headmistress is waiting."

She let him go on ahead, while the crowd dispersed in whispers. It wasn't worth it to hex him in the back. Anyway, she was fairly sure that he was anticipating just such an attack. He walked stiffly, as if waiting for the sound of a spell going off. A pregnant woman has no business dueling, she reminded herself.

Dolores Umbridge was not in her office; Morgaine Lukas was.

"They found Montague," she said, "up in the fourth floor girl's bathroom. Umbridge is there. She wants everyone to come up and help."

Groaning as she faced more stairs, Sarah debated not showing up. Probably a bad idea, with Malfoy more than eager to say something about her skiving off. Dang it, she wanted to get back to her lab.

There was quite the crowd gathered around the entrance to the bathroom. From inside, a male voice was howling almost like an animal. Umbridge's voice was raised in obvious impatience. Gritting her teeth, Sarah pushed through the crowd.

Most of the I.S. were gathered around a stall toward the back, from whence the howls were emerging. The floor was flooded, and chunks of porcelain were scattered about. Umbridge backed out of the stall, her robes rather the worse for whatever she had been attempting to do, and looked around.

"I haven't time for this nonsense. Someone get Professor Snape. Montague is his student, after all."

Sarah looked at Malfoy, as if daring him to volunteer after their little altercation. He sneered at her. "I'll go, Headmistress."

"Well," Umbridge said, as he took off. "I don't need all of you here. We're getting behind with the post. I want twenty minutes from each of you, right now."

It was a long twenty minutes. Usually post-inspecting time was broken up by smart-arse comments (from the Slytherins) about what they were reading. Tonight, everyone seemed more interested in getting through the time and having done with it. Several people had been splattered when the toilet was blown to bits, and all of their shoes had gotten damp; the post room, a smallish chamber just down from Umbridge's office, was filled with a musty odor until Parkinson got irritated and cast an air-freshening spell.

Tramping down to the dungeons afterward, frustrated and certain that she would have difficulty getting back into the right frame of mind to complete the moonstone mixture, Sarah was so distracted that she almost didn't see Harry Potter come charging up the dungeon stairs. She only had time to register that his eyes were almost popping from his head before he was past her and gone, and before she had time to ponder the meaning of his expression, there was a loud thump from the Potions classroom.

Ignoring the tiny warning voice that arose from her memories of the night that the Divination mistress was sacked, Sarah hurried down into the classroom, wondering if (against all probability) Potter had managed to do something terrible to Snape. Guilty...the boy had looked guilty...and scared.

Snape was standing next to an overturned table in the classroom, his eyes blazing, his face deathly pale.

"Get out of here!" he shouted, although he hardly seemed to see her. As prepared as she was for his lack of recognition, it was still painful. And with such a wild expression on his face, she was truly afraid of him. But she was also afraid for him. He did not look well.

"Are you all right, Professor Snape?" Sarah asked, as firmly and calmly as she could manage, bracing herself to dodge if he reacted badly.

"I said get out!" He began advancing on her, his threateningly outstretched arm pointing sharply to the door.

She had to try one more thing before she retreated. "Sir, it's Sarah."

Whether it was because the name connected with something still in his mind, or because he was so stunned that a student would actually dare to continue talking back to him when he was this obviously outraged, he paused, blinking rapidly. At least he finally seemed to be seeing her. Although that did even stranger things to his expression.

"You...aren't supposed to be here." His eyes glazed over.

"I'm sorry. Potter ran out and then I heard a loud noise in here. I was worried."

"Potter!" he spat. "That damned prying little...!"

"What did he do? Should I get someone? Madam Pomfrey? Professor McGonagall?" Sarah wondered if he had gone quite mad.

He shut his eyes, took a deep breath. "No! There is nothing the matter with me now that your absence would not cure." Perhaps because he was clearly not himself, the comment didn't sting as much as it should. "You are...disorienting."

"Maybe we'd better go into your office," Sarah suggested. Although goodness knew, no one would hear her shouting for help in there if he suddenly went completely off the deep end.

"I will go to my office. You will go back to your dormitory."

"Not until I know you're all right," Sarah said firmly.

"Are you allowed to behave like this?" He furrowed his brow. His voice was full of uncertainty, which was, for him, very odd. "How the devil did I end up married to you?"

Sarah glanced anxiously at the open door. She had to get him into his office before someone overheard this conversation. "I'm pretty sure it was your idea. I really think, sir, that it would be better if you go and do whatever it is you need to do to reverse the memory spell." She slipped over to the outer door and shut it, then began walking slowly and carefully toward his office, beckoning to him. It seemed unwise to startle him with any sudden moves. He watched her, puzzled and wary.

There were splinters of glass everywhere inside the office door, as well as dead...were they cockroaches?

"Excuse me," he snapped, striding up rapidly behind her, as if he wasn't about to allow her to enter the office first. She stepped out of the way, and he stomped inside, crushing dried bugs and scraping glass into the stone under his boots with an ear-grating sound.

"Evanseco!" Sarah pointed her wand at the floor. The evidence--of whatever--vanished.

"I did not ask you to do that!"

"You're welcome. Now will you be all right? I know you don't want me around for...whatever it is." Her roving eyes, assessing potential damage, lighted on the mysterious stone bowl she had found under the bed. It was sitting on the desk, and a weird silvery glow (which had certainly not been there when she saw it before) swirled and danced inside it. Moving behind the desk, Snape took out his wand and stuck the tip into the bowl; the light that played across his pale face as he stared down into it was a strange counterpoint to his shifting emotions. He looked up at her after a few moments, his face still tense, but with something like wonder or confusion--it was hard to say which--in his eyes.

"I don't understand you. All the times I've watched you in my memories before I put them back, and I still don't understand you."

"What is there to understand?" She shrugged, feeling uncomfortably as if she ought to leave. Now. She did not dare to take his warnings lightly anymore. The anger and perplexity, cruelty and gentleness waging war on his face were troubling enough by themselves to merit such a warning. And there might be worse.

"Look at yourself!" He gestured to the bowl. "Look at yourself and explain that."

Hesitant, but afraid of disobeying, Sarah moved closer. "What is this?" she asked, more than a little anxious about invoking a powerful magic that she did not understand.

"It's a Pensieve. It stores memories, allows you to watch them. It's supposed to give you...perspective," Snape twisted the word in his mouth, as if he had chewed on it and found it distasteful, and was about to spit it out. "Look in it," he ordered.

She bent over the bowl. The silvery light was curious...it flowed like water, like fog. Like neither, quite. As she stared, he prodded the bowl again and the light became a whirlpool which seemed to be washing the bowl of itself. It cleared, and there were images. Disturbing ones. She saw a brown-haired girl with flushed cheeks and defiant eyes--herself, although the vision was much stranger than any mirror. Even as she watched, an unhandsome middle-aged man with black, stringy hair and a fierce look about him bent to kiss the girl. Sarah glanced up quickly at the man across from her. It did not seem possible that the two men were one and the same, no matter what her eyes told her. A peculiar perspective indeed.

As she looked again, she realized with a shiver that she was watching their first night together. Had she not noticed, then, the puzzlement on his face, which so closely matched the expression he wore now, in the present? And had she considered, on that night, how many times had he tried to convince her to leave? She looked up; her face was burning hot from what little she'd seen in this bizarre self-voyeurism.

"Why did you come that night?" He was tensed, almost angry. "Why did you stay?"

Sarah stepped back from the Pensieve.

"Severus," she said, calling him very deliberately by his first name. "Put the memories back and I'll try to tell you." It was a risky request, partly because she wasn't sure what she was going to say. But she was very sure that, whatever it was, she could not say it to the man who was standing here now.

She watched him struggle with his fury: he was being told what to do by a student. The fact that whatever he was able to remember about her was enough for him to retain some presence of mind in dealing with her was both a surprise and a relief.

"Sit down," he ordered.

She thought it best to comply, although she remained tensed to spring away, if need be.

With the tip of his wand, he scooped up a large tendril of the silvery light, which hung there like strands of thread. He lifted it, placed the wand tip against his temple. It was slightly horrifying to watch the many twisted strands of the tendril penetrate his head and disappear.

"Bloody hell," he whispered, and sat down hard on his own chair. He was visibly trembling, and he clenched the chair arms until his knuckles stood out.

Sarah winced. Did it hurt? If so, how could Dumbledore force him to do this twice a week? Or--and it was a worse thought--was it so horrible for him to remember her place in his life? She felt very helpless watching his face contort with a troubling variety of emotions, his eyes forced closed. She wanted badly to ask if he was all right, but fear of the consequences of disturbing the process made her wary of doing so.

Finally, he became calmer. His breathing was still too quick, and his face, normally rigid (in whatever expression it wore), was weirdly relaxed. He opened his eyes.

"I didn't know it was like this," Sarah said, suddenly angry at Dumbledore. "I had no idea."

"It isn't...normally so bad." He grimaced slightly. "I meant it when I said your presence made it worse."

"I'm sorry." She could feel her own frown trembling. "I was worried."

"I know," he said. "I know."

Sarah could see that there were still tendrils of light swirling in the stone bowl. "Will the rest be like this?"

He sat up straighter in his chair, trying to project something of his normal self. "The rest of it does not concern you. I shall not put it back until you are gone."

They watched each other for half a minute.

"What's it like?" Sarah whispered. She tried to imagine having the substance of her memories stolen away, and having it come rushing back. He still looked...odd.

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. His eyes found something else to look at, maybe the jars on the shelves. "Almost like...a rough sketch...being transformed into a painting," he said. "More than visually." He let his gaze fall to her again, and it passed over her in something alarmingly like a caress. She had not expected anything like that. As she became aware of the subtle feeling of tension in the air, she began to feel extremely uncomfortable with the increasingly inescapable idea of him taking her back to his room under these conditions, with his memory still full of holes, his mind still shaky (she sensed) from everything that had occurred.

"What did Potter do to you?" she asked quietly, still wondering if outside help was needed.

"Do not speak that name in my presence ever again!" he roared. The abrupt shift to fury caught her off guard, although she immediately kicked herself for not having known better. Before she could realize that he had not risen from his seat, she was on her feet, holding up trembling hands, backing away.

He controlled his fury with an obvious effort. "Sarah, I don't want to hurt you. I'm not going to...." He closed his eyes, shook his head. "Had to cancel the lesson. Montague."

"Up in the toilet."

"You knew?" His eyes popped open again.

"Umbridge called all of us to help look for him."

"I might have known that...certain people would involve her. The fact that he was missing ought to have stayed within the House." He passed a hand over his face. "When I came back, he hadn't left...he was meddling with the Pensieve." It was obvious that 'he' was Harry Potter.

"Does he know about us?" Sarah gasped, the reason for such anger made clear. Now that Dumbledore was no longer the headmaster, Potter might have no influences upon him to prevent him from telling. In the course of her eavesdropping, Sarah had learned that Potter was no fonder of Snape than the Potions master was of him. She fumed: if that boy said a single word....

"No!" Snape snapped, so whip-like that she flinched, Potter forgotten. Snape went on, in a voice as vicious as she had ever heard him use, "You don't really suppose that you are the only thing I would rather not have revealed?"

Even if the venom was not all aimed at her, she was in his line of fire, and it hurt. In self-defense she retorted, "Hardly. You've told me more than once that you have things you don't want revealed, not even to me."

She could not help looking pointedly down at the Pensieve, where those very memories were swirling. She could understand the temptation, although why Potter should have found it tempting, she could not imagine. Unless he really had hoped to find something to use against his hated professor. She thought of Potter, surrounded by a gaggle of other students on the morning after he had avoided being expelled--at Dumbledore's expense--and suddenly she saw the arrogant little berk that Snape had complained of.

"You have a problem with that?" he sneered.

"I have never pried, and you know it," Sarah said. "I can understand wanting to keep certain things to yourself."

He blinked, his expression changing radically yet again; he still seemed far from stable.

"I asked you a question, before," he said bluntly. Sarah had been hoping he would forget about that. "Are you prepared to answer it, as you promised? Or is that still something you would prefer to keep to yourself?" He gave the final words a nasty little twist, as if he himself had no sympathy for such a feeling on her part.

Sarah lowered herself back onto her chair uneasily, trying to collect her thoughts sufficiently to reply. Why did I come down to the dungeons that night? Why didn't I leave when he gave me the chance?

"I'm not certain that I know," she said. His disbelieving sneer made her hurry on, "But I'll try to tell you what I do know." She sighed quietly, knowing that he was as unlikely to sympathize with anything could say as McGonagall had been. She ought to watch his face, to gauge his reactions, but somehow she could not raise her eyes from her hands.

"I ought to have died that night, out in the graveyard. A traitorous daughter to her father's cause. It was justice, catching up to me. But I didn't die--I lived." She managed to glance up, as far as the Pensieve. "But I couldn't forget that night either. And it wasn't the man's face, or his wand threatening me." Finally she made herself look at him, daring him to dismiss her words. Her voice shook with the effort. "It was the feeling of your arms around me, your breath on the back of my head. I knew that you would never have held me like that, except by accident. I knew that you were probably arguing him down for your own sake, not mine. But I couldn't forget."

The anger faded from his face as she spoke, until now it was curiously blank.

"It was like Fate.... Like the universe was taking another pot shot at me to make up for missing me the first time. And I thought I could outwit it. I thought that I could walk through the fire. That I could avoid the mistakes my mother made. That I would come out the other side, older and wiser and safe from the machinations of...of Fate."

Slowly his face came to life again, mirroring the flow of his memories in the bowl before him.

"You weren't the first student ever to come down here trying to seduce me, you know," he murmured.

Sarah swallowed hard. "I never thought much about it."

"Didn't you? Admittedly, you were the first I ever invited to do so," he interjected. "But they came, now and again, hiding whatever they really felt, thinking I would be desperate enough to succumb. All of them wanted something--the dismissal of a punishment, a better mark in class. A few simply wanted influence with someone more powerful than themselves, and mistakenly believed that was the way to achieve it. Occasionally there was a dare involved, as I accused you."

Slowly his eyes had come into focus again, and now he was holding her gaze with his dark one, silently speaking realms of the unknown that she could not begin to interpret.

"You wanted nothing. Even seeing it, I didn't trust it. But contrary to all reason, you gave yourself...you kept on giving yourself...unstintingly. And, god help me, I wanted what you had to give. I had never...." he broke off. He was studying her. She could feel him measuring her against whatever it was he felt compelled to say. For that was how his words came out--as if he had been tortured for them, if only by himself. "The last time I did not have to take or pay for something like that, I was not very much older than you."

Sarah found herself shaking inside, even before what he had said managed to filter through her brain enough to consciously process it. She had never supposed she was the first, or even the second, not for a man of his age. But she had kept the grimmer possibilities of his past liaisons tucked away in the same corner as her other darkest fears. She had known they were there, but having them drawn out even partway into the light was, to her surprise, almost more than she could bear.

What about the fellow apprentice girl, then? she thought, trying to turn her mind from the rest. She had known about that, from the very first night. "When you were an apprentice?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady enough that he would not stop talking, whatever had plunged him into this curious reverie. Anything to keep from thinking of the rest.

"Yes." His gaze went distant again. "We had a commission for a potion that required virgin's blood, and Brimshaw had none in stock. He offered Cassilda a significant bonus to...produce the necessary ingredient, and her choice of him or me. And believe me, anybody who knew the man would agree that it was no great compliment that she chose me. Neither of us knew what we were doing and it was over mercifully quickly."

He grimaced.

"But she came back, and.... I thought it was simply a matter of convenience, apprentices of the same master, still in our first year. It never occurred to me until long afterward that it might have been anything else. Our feet were already set on different paths, even then. And by the time I thought to wonder about her, she had already long been dead. At the hands of one of my compatriots, no doubt."

His dark eyes hardened, coming back to the present. It was as if, having purged himself with such a confession, his mind was itself again, clear and sharp as always. "And that," he said, watching her darkly, "is more, I am certain, than you ever wished to know. And as much as you deserve for remaining here when I told you to go."

Sarah bit her lower lip, trying to still its trembling. She did not know what to say, much less what to do. Stand up and walk out? Refuse to ever return? Forget it and go on as before? There was a definite appeal in that last. But how could anything ever be as it had been before? From his point of view, if not hers. "So," she asked bitterly, "do you hate me for knowing some of your secrets now?"

His mouth fell open slightly, one of those rare hints that she had said something that startled him. "Naturally," he said bluntly, "I wish you need never have known."

Sarah stood up. She was, she thought, at the end of her endurance. "I'll leave to you settle the rest of your memories in peace. As I should have done to begin with."

"Peace!" he snorted.

She turned to go.

"Don't..." he pleaded. When she turned around, startled to hear such a note in his voice, he finished, lamely, "...run. Sarah."

Before she could think better of it...before she could think of anything, he was on his feet and she was in his arms. Her breath was so ragged, he must think she was crying. He wouldn't tolerate that. How could she care for such a man? How could she give herself, night after night, to a man who...

Who what? Who had been a Death Eater? Who had doubtless done everything she knew or guessed went with that very horrible avocation? Torture? Murder? Against all reason, against all sense, Sarah held him tighter as those thoughts marched through her head. She had known for a long time what he was. What right had she to back away now? What right had she to be disgusted...sickened...frightened? She knew what it was to do things she despised, for scarcely any good reason. How much more must he feel the effects--assuming that he still let himself feel anything at all, and she could hardly blame him if he did not--from whatever the Dark Lord required him to do?

The worst had not begun, she knew. In her earliest childhood, when the Dark Lord had been at the height of his former power, there had been threats, tortures, killings almost every night. She didn't remember that, exactly. Only the sense of power that had pervaded her home, the sense of fear in the air when they had gone to Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley. Very little of that kind was happening yet. But more would, she was certain, the more his power grew. And what would happen then, when Severus was called upon to do such things again? He couldn't lay down a silver badge. He couldn't tell the Dark Lord to go wank himself. He was a dead man if he failed to play that game all the way through to its end, whatever the end might be. His position might protect him from the worst of orders. Might. And if, some night, he should stumble back to her with blood on his hands....

No. He wouldn't. He would wash his hands first, and pretend nothing had happened. And that might be worse.

Did she have the courage, she wondered, to take his hands in hers on such a night?

Did she have the right, having made the choices she had made regarding him thus far, to do anything less?

"This is dangerous," he whispered, his grip on her slackening. "Go back to your room. For now."

She nodded, numbly. With a desolate kiss, he sent her off. She left him staring down at the swirling silver lights in the Pensieve. Somehow she was out in the hallway. Whatever Draco Malfoy said to her didn't register.

"I'd leave him alone for now, if I were you," she said, brushing past the boy. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

She heard something that sounded an awful lot like, "Gryffindor cunt...." She whirled around, her wand out, her senses coming back. They were alone in the corridor.

"Maybe your dear Death Eater daddy would like to know how you talk to Malcolm Darkglass's daughter. Or maybe the Dark Lord would be interested in knowing the Malfoys' attitude toward his martyrs?" Sarah felt sick at what she was saying, but the words kept coming. "I imagine I could arrange for him to find out."

Draco Malfoy went very, very pale; his wand hand shook. "You...you couldn't. You're still at school, and your father is dead."

"You have no idea, do you? Are you even sure he'll let you take the Dark Mark...the spoiled little snot of a family that's publicly denied him for fourteen years?" It was a good thing that horror looked so very much like anger. "I know where I stand. I know what I can count on. You think I can't step straight from Hogwarts into the Inner Circle? Unless you can say the same, you'd better not make an enemy of me, Malfoy. You'd just better not." Her own wand was shaking.

Malfoy turned and ran.

Sarah began walking up the stairs, her wand still out, the haze descending again over her mind. She went into the first bathroom she passed, and threw up.

"I'm sorry," she choked out in a whisper, her hand on the slight roundness of her stomach. "I'm sorry, Severian. I'm sorry, Mother. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Her father would have been proud of her.

And Severus?

She needed him. Soon. Even if the only comfort he could offer was understanding. She was not even sure she wanted sympathy. She did not deserve it. But he would comprehend the stain she had just spilled on her soul. And she had no choice, now, except to trust whatever he chose to do about it.