A Merciless Affection

Chapter 28: Here in Hell, the Blood Runs Deeper

Sarah turned her head and saw a tall, aristocratic man with pale eyes and pale hair. Even though she scarcely remembered the face from the one time she'd met the man as a child, she had spent far too much time of late with his son not to recognize Mr. Malfoy.

"Good evening, Lucius," Severus answered silkily, although she felt his arm tighten.

Sarah nearly panicked, wondering whether it was more imperative to keep her face hidden, or if it would draw even more attention to her if she tried to replace the veil now. She lowered her chin toward Severus's arm, praying that the dark was enough.

"Homesick for your old haunts?" Lucius Malfoy asked, with a hint of mockery.

"Not particularly. Although, as you well know, certain things can be obtained here that can be obtained nowhere else."

"Yes, there are indeed." Malfoy's gaze took in Snape's female companion with considerable interest. "As a matter of fact, I had some plans myself, after I attended to a little business."

"Enjoy your evening, then. I won't keep you," Severus said, dipping his head and moving as if to go around the man.

"Now, now, nothing so urgent that I don't have a moment to pass the time of day. Share a little...information."

"Certain information should not be shared on the street, Lucius. Or with...witnesses." A rapid movement of his eyes indicated Sarah. "If you have something to tell me, I suggest we go elsewhere."

"No, I suppose we can't be too cautious, can we? You wouldn't believe what Draco was trying to tell me the other night, Severus. You know, he came home for a little extra tutoring over the holiday."

"So he mentioned."

"Ah yes, well, he somehow got the idea this past term that you had taken a special interest in another of your students. A certain young lady outside our House."

Sarah heart was pounding in her throat. She was sure the man must be able to hear it. It was so strong a sensation that it was hard to feel, above it, the answering pulses in Severus's side.

"I do teach students from all four Houses," Severus pointed out laconically. "At this time of year, with exams approaching, I frequently am forced to spend additional time with my N.E.W.T. students. I'm sure that Draco will discover for himself in the next two years that N.E.W.T. preparation is more than merely a matter of studying books."

"Yes, well, I did have to chide him for making such a foolish suggestion. Indeed, I found the idea of you carrying on with a student rather amusingly absurd. Although you always have preferred them young, haven't you?" He shot another look at Sarah.

"I'm sure you're aware," Severus said frostily, "as I am, that one's private tastes are best indulged far away from one's public life."

"How very true," Malfoy allowed indolently. "And, of course, no young lady at Hogwarts would ever dream of coming here."

He's guessing, he only guessing. He can't possibly know. He's just trying to make Severus uncomfortable.

He's doing a damn good job of it, isn't he?

"The name he gave me was interesting, though," Malfoy went on. "You see, he said that the girl had made her loyalties plain to him. Even hinted that she was already on her way to a position of power."

Sarah's heart sank, remembering her horrible--and now clearly foolish--words to Draco.

"Naturally, it seemed worthwhile to investigate such a claim. After all, if she was lying, I'm sure that someone would want to be sure that she was punished for it. And if not, well, it interested me. I'm sure you remember that, in December, Franklin Nott confirmed before...well, before all of us that his brother-in-law, Malcolm Darkglass, had died for the cause. I had a little chat with him the other night. It seems he did, indeed, have a niece by the name of...Sarah, was it? But that she had been spirited away by her mother and never seen by the family since. He'd hardly thought of the girl in years, he said. And yet this girl was insisting to Draco that she was already...known by the right people." Malfoy had been fingering the silver snake's head of his cane while he said all this, but now he stopped and looked sharply at Severus. "I'm sure the girl is one of your advanced students. Has she said anything to you?"

Severus's lip curled. "Miss Darkglass is working on a particularly difficult N.E.W.T. project, Lucius--the Wolfsbane Potion. Consequently, I have seen more of her this term than usual, which may be where Draco got his foolish notions. However, she has not confided anything to me, much less her loyalties. In fact, she's in Gryffindor House, as I recall."

"So Draco said. And yet, Severus, I'm sure you haven't forgotten that the Wolfsbane Potion was originally a Dark potion. I wonder why she would choose that? It all seems rather...odd. Ah, well." Lucius shrugged. "I daresay that we shall hear more of her, when she leaves Hogwarts, if she does have the contacts she implied."

"I daresay we shall," Severus said dryly.

Lucius began to turn, as if to go, then a small and wicked smile bent his lips. He looked pointedly at Sarah; she did not like the expression on his face at all.

"I wonder, Severus...would you be interested in sharing your little slapper, there, once I've finished my business? A bit of a ménage a trois? For old time's sake?"

Old time's sake?! Sarah could not stop her fingers from digging sharply into Severus's arm. Although it wasn't so much the thought of the past that disturbed her at this moment--she would let herself feel ill about that later--as the possibility that, in order to maintain her disguise, Severus (and therefore she) might be forced to comply with Malfoy's request.

Lucius smirked at the look of alarm on Sarah's face, and although he addressed his words to Severus, he kept on watching her. "If you didn't pay her enough for it, old boy, I'm sure my purse can satisfy any objections she might have."

"Perhaps it would satisfy hers," Severus said coldly, "but not mine. Indeed, seeing as my tastes don't run that way, I think you must be remembering some other of our...youthful companions. I won't keep you from your business any longer, Lucius. Goodnight." And with that, he steered Sarah around the man and on down the street.

Lucius Malfoy's laughter echoed behind them.

* * *

"Why did you have your veil off?" Back in the flat, Severus was pacing, and angry.

"I couldn't see. It was dark. I never imagined that...."

"When you slip up, you fall! Now Lucius Malfoy has a very good idea what is going on, even if he didn't recognize you outright. And of all people, he is one that I least want to provoke unnecessarily."

"Well, you could have done what he suggested, out there, if you're so fixed on not provoking him." She was more glad than she could say that he had not, but it had been a terrible risk, it seemed to her. "Wouldn't that have proven to him that he was wrong?"

"Damn it, I won't have him touching you! How could you even think so? Or did you find his little offer more interesting than you let on?" He was sneering nastily at her.

"No! But was he lying, or were you?"

"What?"

Sarah had known she was going to regret that the very moment it popped out.

"Nothing. Just...nothing."

"Sarah, you're prying into matters you ought not to know," he said warningly.

"No, I'm not. I said, 'nothing,' didn't I?" She raised her voice.

"You are thinking about it." He brought his wrists to his temples. "You are going to think about it until it eats us both alive."

"How can I not think about it?" Sarah protested.

"Because it has nothing to do with you!" He slashed his hands down and apart. "It's over. It's done. I can't change it, Sarah. And if you begin trying to make me believe that I can, or that I should, I shall end a raving madman. And I refuse to let you do that to me," he said, so threateningly that she believed for a moment that she might not walk out of the flat alive.

She retreated to the end of the bed in the darkened bedroom and brought her feet up. It was a bit harder to huddle herself close than it used to be. She could feel her stomach resisting the pressure of her thighs.

"I know you can't change the past," she said, as he came to the door, occluding the light from the kitchen. "I just need to find a way to live with it. And that's difficult when I'm not even sure what 'it' is. Just horrible hints. Guesses."

"Stop attempting to guess! You already know more than I would prefer. If you had any idea.... Sarah, you don't want to know any more, I promise you."

She looked up at him, her eyes blazing. "I know I don't want to know. That's just...that doesn't come into it, does it? What I want? I can't rearrange the universe with my wishes. Why should I expect you to?" She sighed, letting her head drop. "I guess, I just want it said. So it'll be there, where I can ignore it and know what I'm ignoring. So it can't slide between us out of nowhere, like a ghost. Or ghosts."

He took two steps and sat down hard on the side of the bed, a hand to his forehead. "So, merely to satisfy your foolish impulses, your damned insatiable Gryffindor curiosity, you mean for me to dredge up thoughts that I've long since buried. Thoughts I intend to remain buried. Thoughts that are, as I said before, absolutely none of your business."

"Fine then! Keep your damn thoughts buried!" Sarah slid to the far edge of the bed and lay on her side, still huddled up, with her back to him. It was his side of the bed, which annoyed her all the more. He was sitting on her side.

Less than a minute of this was obviously too much for him. He stood up and lifted his cloak from the chair where he'd dropped it.

"Where are you going?" she asked, sitting up and turning.

The thing she feared most must be there quite plainly in her eyes. And he saw it. Clearly it disgusted him. In the shadows, his face twisted with rancor. "Out!" he said brusquely. With a swirl of his cloak and the slamming of the outside door, he was gone.

* * *

If he was going to let himself go at...whatever, so was she. She growled and pounded pillows and stomped on one of his dirty socks that somehow hadn't made it into the corner last night. She kicked it there.

Would she ever see him again? Did she want to? He deserved to be hexed from behind in the dark out there and then...what? Robbed? That would be a good one. Then they would both be penniless and she'd have no way at all to get back to Hogwarts unless she could work herself up to Apparating. Killed then? Admittedly, that would be no better for her situation, but at least she would have the satisfaction of knowing that he'd never...what? Never bring anyone else up to this room? Never take another point from Gryffindor? Never disagree with her about their son? If Severian was his only son. Damn it! She threw the pillows across the room, one after the other. When did I become so jealous?

Her father had stormed out more than once in those last couple of years, leaving her mother weeping. He'd always come back. It had frightened her at first, but she'd soon learned. I couldn't leave my Sarah, he'd told her once, when he'd come in, not so late as usual, and found his little girl crying. He'd tucked the covers around her, his robes smelling of strange things, and promised her he'd always come back.

Severus will come back. Surreptitiously, although no one could see her, she wiped at her cheeks, where a slow, steady stream of tears had started to fall. Yes, he would. Whether she wanted him to or not. If only to tell her to get out. No, somehow she couldn't believe he would do that, foolish as it probably was to think so.

I want him to come back. She felt as if something inside her was starving in agony. Right now!

And do what? Apologize? He'd sooner lie dead at her feet than apologize to her. Damnable man!

She'd be better off without him, wouldn't she? Better if he did leave for good and take his horrible, haunting past with him. Then that evil couldn't touch Severian, couldn't hurt him, couldn't corrupt him....

Merlin's balls, she sounded like her mother!

My mother was right to take me. She was trying to protect me and I love her for it. To hell with fooling Voldemort! To hell with pretending to be a horrible person just so I can have him! To hell with Dumbledore's scheming!

The need to do something (or go mad) drove her to the kitchen, where she found parchment and ink in a drawer. She sat at the table and began to write, trying to keep her tears from falling on the page.

Dear Professor Dumbledore, [dear, like hell!]

I have come to the conclusion that I will not be able to help you and Sev [cross that out!] Professor Snape in your plot against Lord V [damn, I don't even dare to write it, so follow that with a long dash] --. Whatever you hoped for, this relationship is not working. [that's so damned short, but what else can I say?]

Deepest regrets, Sarah [damn, I won't write Darkglass and I won't write Snape, so just leave it; he'll know perfectly well who it's from]

As she folded it up, it occurred to her that didn't have any money for an owl. Even assuming that an owl could find Professor Dumbledore, since he was in hiding from the Ministry. Although owls' abilities were legendary. Still, without even two Knuts to rub together, it was rather moot. And she knew no one here she could borrow money from. Unless, maybe, Miriam. Oh, yes, that'll go over well. I'm leaving your nephew; can I borrow enough to send an owl post to my former headmaster, who is now a criminal?

For that matter, where could she go? Could she beg Aunt Portia to take her back? Could she bear, even if Portia agreed, to hear 'I told you so' every livelong day for the rest of her life? No N.E.W.T.s, no apprenticeship.

Would she have to sell herself in the street here, just to escape from Knockturn Alley?

Sarah crumpled the folded parchment, threw it in the bin, and threw herself onto the dark bed, weeping. Was this how desperate her mother had felt, with no escape?

Why doesn't he come back? So I can yell at him, at least.

"I hate you, Severus Snape," she whispered vehemently, curled up again on her side. "I hate you I hate you I hate you. Come back here so I can tell you that I hate you!" He could have left her alone. From the very start. That was what he should have done, wasn't it? He hadn't resisted when...when she had kept pushing and pushing and daring him. That was what it amounted to, wasn't it? He had kept giving her the chance to leave, the chance to save him from temptation....

That was a temptation he provoked himself! Calling me down for a detention when he knew that....

She could have left. And she hadn't wanted to.

I could have taken the fucking potion, and gone on my way. If I'd known that Snape wasn't about to let me walk away with his own bastard son. If I'd known that....

She felt the subtle curve of her abdomen. She couldn't have done it. She had known perfectly well the risk she was taking, lying with him half the nights in every week for a month. She wasn't stupid. She could have figured out some precaution. But she hadn't. She'd been tempting Fate, saying 'Go ahead, throw a child at me, too, while you're at it!" And knowing that, more than anything, she wanted someone to love as much as she had once believed herself to be loved. Someone she wouldn't abandon as she had been abandoned. Someone she could hold up--in the face of Fate, of her father, of her mother--and say 'This is what I accomplished, in spite of you.'

She hadn't counted on feeling anything more than a fleeting passion for the man from whose seed that child had sprung. She hadn't counted on caring....

God, it hurt so much to care!

Could Severian feel it? she wondered abruptly. It was almost a physical pain, even though it had arisen in her soul. Could he possibly be safe from that, locked in her womb? She felt, or thought she did, that little flicker of life inside. In sudden anxiety she tried to calm herself, to still her weeping, to quiet the agony in her heart. Please come back, Severus, she pleaded. I won't cry when you're here. I won't feel things it isn't safe to feel. You've taught me that, damn you.

He'll come back.

Somehow it will be all right.

I don't know how.

It just will.

* * *

She woke at sound of footsteps and a rough jostling against the mattress.

"Severus?" She called light into the tip of her wand, not wanting to make a mistake in this place.

"Yes," he replied. It was Severus, although he was, in some way she could not yet define, not himself. He knelt on the bed and she smelled the sharpness of whisky on him.

"You're drunk," she said.

"Very," he answered. Although he really didn't look it. There was only the slightest hint that his usual self-possession was not spot-on.

"You didn't even enjoy it," she accused. She had some idea how she would have dealt with a stumbling, laughing, dead-drunk husband. This booze-soaked stone-cold man was nearly frightening in his potential to do something unexpected.

"Hate the stuff." His words were just slightly slurred. "So hard to control. But it stops...thoughts...when nothing else will." She wasn't sure if he collapsed or if he let himself fall sideways onto the bed.

"Gads, you're going to regret this tomorrow."

"Potions," he choked out.

"I don't know the instructions for a hangover potion or for Sober-Up, not by memory."

"Don't want to be sober yet." He tried to sit up again and groaned, wincing at the light of her wand. "Turn that damned thing off!"

He grabbed her wand hand. She whispered, "Nox!" before he could break her fingers.

"You think I was with Malfoy, don't you?" he growled low.

"I don't know where you were. Obviously in a pub, pouring poison down your throat." She could hardly see him. He must have put out the light in the kitchen. As the glare of her wand faded from her eyes, there was only a little pale light coming in the windows--moonlight, maybe, or the weird skyward glow of the lights in Muggle London.

"I know everything about poisons. If I wanted...."

"Okay, I didn't mean that. But it was stupid to drink yourself...stupid."

He reacted badly to this assertion. Moving quicker than she would have predicted, given his state, he rolled over and pinned her down.

"Who drove me to it? Prying!" he spat (unpleasantly, into her face). "Bringing up things that...." He let his head sink onto the mattress next to her own, and she felt his guts clench. She sincerely hoped he wouldn't throw up on her. "It didn't work. Everything fades...not that."

"Severus," she whispered, troubled. She was wrapped in such a tangle of her own guilt and anger at him that she couldn't sort it out. "I didn't mean to...I didn't know you felt...."

"I don't feel anything, do I?" he sneered. He was face to face with her again, his hair curtaining out the light, his fingers clenching hard around the wrist of her wand hand. "So convenient. Prevents things from blowing up."

Sarah found, distressingly, no words. She could only stare up at the shadows of his face in the darkness and wonder how her simple plea for the truth could have set such agony loose.

"You had to know, didn't you? Well, then, here's a memory. Just for you, Sarah." The whisper was vicious, but his head went down to the mattress again, his hair brushing ticklingly across her face, and again he convulsed slightly. "We had never...it wasn't on the program...before that. All of them knew by then...what to expect...when we came. Knew they were already dead when...came in the door. That was such...power." With the word came a tighter grip that finally loosened her hold on her wand completely. A picture arose in her mind: young men bent on terror, drunk on the might of their own misdeeds.

"That night...was to be...Hammonds...Muggle-born girl's family. Evan said...enough sisters for...Evan started it...."

So, it had really happened...or it had happened to someone real. Not just an idea...rape, as well as murder. That was as much of a confession as she had been asking for earlier. More than she wanted to know, if he said another word. "That's enough," she said. Begged. "You don't have to tell me..."

"Oh, you wanted to know," he accused, lifting his head, the alcohol slur finally seeping into his words in earnest. "So beautiful...." Horribly, he trailed his fingers down her cheek. "Pushed back in her room...she was so white...in the moonlight. I could see...in her eyes...she thought if she...that I would...she begged me to save her.... But I couldn't..." The word sounded as if it had been torn from inside his body, as if he were going to bleed to death from it. "None of them were...going to live. Someone else...would have killed her if.... Couldn't seem...weak." He seemed to try to pull himself into a semblance of his usual unbending nature. And began shaking violently, whether from the whiskey or from the memories.

"Stop," she ordered. Pleaded.

"She was mine. That was so.... No one ever...no one ever would...but me. Me!" With his face twisted up and distorted by shadows, the accusation of his own unloveliness was implicit. She didn't want, at this moment, to imagine how he had appeared then. It was terrible enough to be trapped underneath him now, living inside her own fears of what he might do. If he tried to force her now, she thought, she really might well scream. No matter who, in this horrible place, came to her rescue.

"Nothing was...ever like that...again. A fire inside...that...." Letting go of her wrist, he seemed to collapse onto her, suddenly heavy, making it harder to breathe. "It wouldn't die. It was like...fires of hell." He rolled partway off her then, a low, miserable sound coming from his throat.

Sarah's breath was coming in dry sobs. "You stopped it." She hardly knew what she was saying; she found her hand curled into a fist against his chest. "You stopped it."

Unexpectedly, his free arm went around her, awkwardly pulling to her to him, and he said, with equally unexpected clarity, "Yes. But, understand...I can't change it."

In that simple fact, she knew, from her own meager experience, was all the substance of the torments of hell.

"I have...little enough power...to change the future. Protect you." He held her tighter, unaware of his own strength. She carefully levered herself breathing room.

She tried to think: what now? Perhaps he would fall asleep; his breathing was beginning to quiet. Given that she had not noticed any hints from him of actual arousal, in spite of the nature of what he was saying, it now seemed improbable that he was going to demand sex. That would have been...no, she wasn't even going to think about what it would be like, knowing what she knew now. That was something to worry about later. If there was a later.

She still had nowhere to run. If she ran.

You can't stay, not knowing that....

Knowing what? Knowing what I knew before?

Knowing for certain.

And what she knew....

How could Professor Dumbledore have hired him, knowing this? Although perhaps he didn't know. No...he knew that Severus was a Death Eater. He must know what Death Eaters were guilty of, in general if not in specific. He probably knew more about that, even in the specifics, than a girl who had still been in her cradle when so much of it had occurred. Had he supposed that Severus was less guilty than the rest of them, somehow? Had he accepted the young man without any punishment...had he circumvented justice...?

He had set Severus to work as a spy against the Dark Lord. That in itself was a death sentence, suspended only by the whim of fortune each time he went back and risked discovery. He would have been safer in Azkaban.

Where would she be safe?

Damn it, he's the same man he was yesterday, or this morning! It isn't he who's changed, is it? It's you.

If I'd known before....

And was he bloody well likely to tell you? Can't you just picture the reserved Professor Snape: 'Before you agree to go to my room, Miss Darkglass, you ought to know that I've...'

Did I...do I remind him of her? The question flitted like a bat across the darkness of her thoughts. She shrank from it, turning her mind to something...anything else.

What if he tells you to get out, once he's sober? If he remembers what he said? Potter saw something. Was it that? Hardly likely, or the Aurors would have been knocking on Snape's door before the end of the week, she was sure. Even assuming it was something else, the way Severus reacted.... Could she expect any better?

Would she forgive anyone who made her remember having done such things?

I've never done such things.

He didn't rub your nose in the Edgecombe business, did he? He could have, too.

Was that his own guilt, stopping him? His own guilt behind his advice to set the matter aside?

How about pragmatism? And how do you know that you won't be called upon to do worse and worse?

There'll come a point when I'll stop!

And which point is that? How many steps will you take, one after another, that'll lead you to the bottom of the same cliff you wouldn't dream of jumping off of?

I'll know. I'll just...know, when I can't do it anymore. Maybe that point is now.

Except, she realized, that Lucius Malfoy had no reason not to report to the Dark Lord the claims of a certain Miss Sarah Darkglass of Gryffindor House. There might yet be some meager hope that Malfoy would conveniently forget about her. Or that the Dark Lord would. But her mother's magic had already proven itself not to be that strong. It was ironic that the spell had a more substantial effect on those who might do her good than on those who had a clear and compelling reason to do her ill.

Are you willing to stand before him, if they drag you there, and deny that you said such things? Admit to him that you don't want to serve him as your father did? That you refuse to do so? Are you willing to die in agony, and Severian with you? If it comes to that, will you let that monster force Severus to wear your blood on his hands as well?

Clenching her teeth, she slid her own arm around him, pressed herself to his chest. He stirred slightly.

"Sarah?" he murmured.

How many steps down the cliff had it taken before he had reached that point where he'd known he had to stop?

"I'm here," she answered.

What had it been like to have Dumbledore say: keep walking?

"You're still here." His voice remained blurred and barely above a whisper.

"Yes."

"You're...going to leave."

Sarah took a deep breath. "No."