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 30

Posted:
07/04/2005
Hits:
1,484
Author's Note:
I hope this will be a quicker update than usual. Thanks for reviewing! Your praise makes me quite giddy. :)


Chapter 30: Those Tremulous Stars Still Glitter

Even before Sarah opened her eyes, she had an odd sensation. It was very early--the light was barely that of dawn. She blinked. Severus was lying close to her, looking at her with disturbing intensity.

"What are you doing?" She shifted uneasily.

"Trying to decide if it's worth the trouble of restraining myself. Since you already know the worst." The words were chilling in their implication. But his voice was deeply bitter, and he sat up, grimacing.

"Obviously you decided that it was," she said, although she was by no means sure that he had, in fact, decided that until this moment. She sat up as well, nervous about presenting him with temptation by continuing to lie there on her back.

"Obviously," he answered dryly. He began to stand up, but she caught his arm.

"This isn't forever," she said. "Just until I can...can cope."

"Is that likely to be ever?" he snarled. "Not that I can blame you. Only myself."

"Would you stop! And you complain about me feeling sorry for myself!"

He wrenched his arm out of her grasp. "Don't push me!"

"You haven't slept, have you?" Sarah finally took in the fact that he was dressed. "And you've been taking Invigoration Draughts, haven't you?"

"I needed a clear head...." he began, then abruptly rose to his feet. "I refuse to make excuses to you for my actions."

"You know the bloody side effects!"

"The bloody side effects were never a problem until you came into my life!" He rounded on her.

Then why don't you kick me out of it? But no, they had already been over that territory yesterday. She wasn't going to risk having him decide that he really did want her gone.

"It wouldn't be a problem," he went on, when she didn't retort immediately, "if you...." He trailed off, as if realizing what he was saying.

She could finish his sentence in her mind: if you would give in. Probably he had phrased it a little more crudely to himself.

Looking disgusted, whether at her or at himself, he stalked out into the kitchen without another word.

Sarah drew up her knees and huddled over them.

Remind me again why you're refusing him...? On second thought, don't. So you're going to punish him for telling you the truth?

Not for telling the truth. Just for what the truth was.

Something he can't change, remember? No matter how much he regrets it. You want to punish him for not being able to change the past? That isn't fair. Not to the man you've accepted as your husband.

I don't intend to keep refusing him. Just...

Just what? Until you forget what he told you? He's right--that'll be never.

She got up and went to the kitchen door. He was brewing something in a cauldron. And tea.

"Severus...." she said quietly.

"What?" he growled, not even turning to face her.

"Please come back."

There was no answer but his tense breathing.

"I mean it."

"Do you?" His sarcasm was ragged-edged. "I will not tolerate games, Sarah. I'm not in a state where I would stop myself should you suddenly decide that you really didn't mean it. And I am not prepared to pick up the pieces that would be left."

It had been a long time since he had tried to use fear as a seduction technique. She was appalled to find herself responding to it, under the circumstances. And yet...she had missed that. Not that she didn't appreciate tenderness, but....

"I'm not playing games. I just want to try to have things be...right again. With us."

He still hadn't turned. "You believe they could ever be right again?"

The words came unbidden to her tongue, the expression of a knowledge she'd been denying for a long time. But now, after all her attempts to excuse or rationalize her choices, it was the only answer she had.

"I love you," she said, tears starting in her eyes.

He whirled around, and for a moment she was afraid that he was going to spit her confession back into her face. But when he did get a word out, it was choked.

"What?"

"I'll say it again, if you want me to. If you don't, then..."

There was a shifting avalanche of emotions across his face. He stood still, saying nothing. Had she been wrong about what she had stopped him from saying? Or had she been right that he would hate her now for knowing too many of his secrets?

"Why would you say that now?" he asked, viciously skeptical.

"Do you not want me to say it? I know it's dangerous. I know that you told me a long time ago not to become attached." She stopped, trying to swallow her tears. "But you made me think that...."

"That I love you?" There was still a sarcastic edge on his voice. She wondered what she would do, how she would bear it if he rejected her now. Tears were running down her face, and she could not prevent them; she shut her eyes, unwilling to look any longer at his face, to try to read the emotions there.

She heard his footsteps, cat-quiet across the floor. Felt his hands grasp her shoulders. Damned tears, getting worse and worse!

"Look at me," he demanded hoarsely.

She blinked up at him. Those black, black eyes, reading what he found in hers, as if he were using Legilimency, subtly and without a wand.

"If you don't believe me," she whispered, "then what do you see?"

"Fear," he said. "Pain." His hard expression quavered, as if he could not sustain it. "Bloody hell...how can you?"

Without any preamble, he caught her up in his arms. Her foot bumped on the doorpost as he carried her through into the bedroom, and she giggled, her nerves driven to the point of mild hysteria. He did not. He lowered her onto the bed with a grim countenance, and straddled her menacingly.

"You're going to regret this," he said in a strained voice, and it was not clear if it was a threat or an observation or a fear he was expressing.

Sarah shook her head. He'd been right, though: she was frightened. Trying to remind herself that he'd been her lover for months and months only made it worse. She had been with him all that time, not knowing....

She shut her eyes as his hair came down around her face, blocking the light, and his lips came down demandingly upon hers.

Can I do this?

You don't have much choice now, do you? How are you planning to pull yourself together enough to manage this? Because he was right--if you don't, there won't be enough pieces of your relationship left to even spell back together. And you'll still have to tell the Dark Lord....

Oh.

That was at the core of everything, wasn't it? If not for the company Severus was still forced to keep, the company that, at some point, she would be thrust into, there would have been no need for him to tell her anything. Her preparation for that eventuality had gone deeper than either of them had planned. And it would have to go deeper yet, if she was to survive this. She couldn't afford, now, with the truth of their emotions revealed, to hope that half-measures would be enough. However much she would prefer death to accepting the Dark Lord's rule, she could no longer think only of herself. She could take no risks that would result in Severus being forced to kill her and their unborn child. Or refusing to do so, and watching them die anyway, before he was killed himself.

Sarah Darkglass Snape, she told herself brutally, would not feel horrified at sleeping with a man who has done the things Severus has done. She forced herself to sink into that role again. It felt as if she were pushing herself down into quicksand. But she had no choice, not now.

He seemed to sense some change in her, because he broke off the intense snogging. "What is it? What are you doing?"

"What I have to," she answered numbly, staring up at him with the rawness of this new necessity unhidden on her face.

He understood. His eyes--filled with the same regret she had seen there so often before--closed tightly for a moment, as if in pain, but when he opened them again, they were clear pools of dark adoration. "You will listen to me this time," he murmured, bending to brush his lips against her ear. "I love you, Sarah."

They had never made love in the light of day. It was a curious thing, that it should happen now, as her life was being plunged into darkness. On the other hand, the morning light was unforgiving, hiding no physical imperfections, diminishing the kindness of shadows. It brought out every harsh plane of his face.

Nor was it as easy to maintain her darker sense of self. Perhaps that would not have been entirely easy, even in the depths of night. But it gave no aid to pretenses.

"Are you certain?" he asked, watching her struggle to banish thoughts that insisted on asserting themselves. He had her nightgown pushed up, his trousers open; it was a foolish question.

"Take off your clothes," she said.

He frowned slightly. It was curious request. They seldom undressed completely, merely taking advantage of the access their nightclothes provided. The one notable occasion they had been entirely naked was hardly a good memory to evoke. But she didn't want to see him, dark-robed, with other figures in black, bursting into a house....

Dubiously--she could see the memory of their wedding night in his eyes--he did as she asked, casting aside robes and trousers.

"Your shirt, too," she said, as he approached her again.

"Sarah...." He shook his head.

"I know that my husband is a Death Eater." She was inexorable, suppressing the chills that ran through her. "I have to relish that. Let me do it."

While he leaned over her uneasily, she reached up and undid the buttons of his shirt, small bone buttons that ran from throat to mid-chest. The dark fabric fell open to reveal a tangle of dark hairs, which stood out all the blacker against his pale skin. Crossing his arms, he snagged the bottom of the shirt and pulled it off over his head, drawing his hair up off his neck; it settled again, lankly, around his shoulders as he threw the shirt aside.

Her hand went to the fingers he had laid automatically across his opposite inner arm. A mark of shame, his gesture said, of foolish, youthful choices from which he would never be completely free. Then she was struck with a terrible thought: would she be expected to take the Dark Mark herself? Anyone who heard about what she had said to Draco Malfoy had every reason to believe she wanted to. She trembled, her fingers convulsing over his.

"Sarah...."

"It's not that. Not you. I just suddenly realized...if he makes me...."

"One of us is enough. Don't even think it. Not now."

She tried to steady her breathing as she tugged his fingers aside.

An ugly shape, the color of a bruised rose. The shape that had marked her father's arm in her earliest memories. "It's gone. He's gone," she remembered her mother saying. Her father had laughed at that. "Some of us know better." But he had never shown Sarah his arm after that. She did not like to think what must have happened the first time her mother had seen the Dark Mark there and had known what kind of man she had married.

I know what kind of man I've married, Sarah thought fiercely.

She looked up into his eyes. They studied her darkly, as hooded with desire as a snake ready to strike.

"Sit up," he demanded. He pulled her up and took in handfuls of her nightgown, drawing it off over her head. She cooperated by raising her arms, then fell back against the pillows, breathless with her own vague sense of shame, with her own desire.

"You are so beautiful," he said, looking at her as if she were going to disappear up the chimney in another moment.

So beautiful.... He had said the same, hadn't he, of that girl who...?

No, she pleaded with herself, trying to close that gap in the armor she was building around her mind.

He fell upon her with force, as if he were unable to contain himself any longer. Not a good moment to falter. He was already bringing his knees up between hers....

He paused, feeling her resistance. "Damn it, Sarah," he cursed.

"It's all right," she gasped. "It's all right. I want it to be like this."

Desperate need occluded the anger and disbelief on his face.

"I mean it," she urged.

I'm sorry, she thought, I'm so sorry, whoever-you-were Miss Hammond. But I want him. I want him. Sarah felt as if something were breaking inside her, as she let her own needs overcome her pity. She couldn't think about it now. But on some level she sensed, with a pang of both fear and triumph, that whatever had broken had made it easier to be Sarah Darkglass Snape.

She did want it like this, she realized. The faintest resistance, the faintest touch of fear made her quiver.

"I'm not stopping," he warned her, hoarsely.

"I don't want you to." But she made him push her legs apart. She pressed her hands against his chest. She whimpered faintly when she felt him against her.

"Sarah?" The mingled anguish and desire in his voice were almost unbearable.

"Don't stop," she begged.

He didn't. He moaned an oath, though, as he took her.

She didn't restrain her impulse to cry out.

"Sarah?" he gasped again, cupping her face with one hand, trying to read whether her words or her body had been telling the truth.

"You're mine!" she said fiercely, heedless of the tears that welled up in her eyes. She touched his face. "You're mine!"

She had only a moment to ponder his faintly puzzled expression before he removed all doubts with a kiss.

"Always," he murmured against her lips. "Always."

It had never been quite like this. However immoral their coupling had been before their marriage, it seemed pure compared to how she felt now. With that red shadow on his arm always at the corner of her eye, she had no choice but to be her father's daughter. That or go mad with terror. It had always seemed before that he had come up to where she was. Now it was as if she had sunk down to his level.

It was necessary, she told herself, in his voice. And it can't be changed now.

And turning from that thought, she let herself sink into such guilty pleasure with him as she had never known.


Author notes: And on that note, we return to Phantom. BTW, there was another paraphrase from An Awfully Big Adventure in there. Did you catch it?