A Merciless Affection

Chapter 57: What Horrors Wait For Me?

"Help!" Sarah screamed, the moment they disappeared. "Help me!" Although it was dubious, Knockturn Alley being what it was, that anyone but a family member would choose to involve themselves in her troubles.

Connor's long knife lay on the floor near her feet. In other circumstances, she would have tipped the chair over and tried to wiggle her hand close enough to grab it, to at least attempt to cut herself free of the magical cords. But she dared not risk a fall now. Instead, she began pushing the chair across the floor with her feet, hoping to at least be better heard, closer to the window.

"Someone help!"

Even now, Severus was probably doing battle with Connor. Provided that Connor had not set too clever a trap. But that set of Portkeys suggested forethought and skill. He had had months to plan his attack on Severus. Severus, quick and canny as he was, would only have seconds to react.

Tears of desperation and fury started in Sarah's eyes. "Please, someone help!"

"I'm coming, Sarah!" a woman's voice called up from below. Cornelia's?

Sarah found herself sobbing in earnest; great gasping sobs, part relief, part horror. Connor's cruel face hung her mind's eye. He had killed Aunt Portia. The image of him standing over her aunt's body changed, and it was Severus lying there, dead, while Connor sneered.

"Damn you, Connor! Damn you to hell!" she wept.

Rapid footsteps, barely heard over her sobbing breaths, clattered on the stairs. Then the door burst open.

"What on earth?!" Cornelia stared in disbelief at the scene that met her eyes. "Severus wouldn't--"

"It was Connor, Isaac Connor. I was so stupid--I let him in. I thought...he was...Severus... coming...back." Sarah found herself gasping for the breath to speak.

Cornelia, showing that, when it came to a pinch, she was as sensible as her mother, flicked out her wand and charmed the cords loose. "He's gone?" she asked, glancing anxiously at the bedroom door where it stood ajar.

"He wanted Severus." Sarah ripped at the magical ropes, casting them down around the foot of her chair. "He had a Portkey."

Cornelia laid a hand on Sarah's cheek, encouraging the other girl to look into her eyes. There was a silent plea there, for her to calm down, for her to make sense. "Sarah, where is Severus?"

"Connor took him! Or...he went with Connor. They were going to duel...but I know..." Sarah ran out of breath again.

"Did he hurt you?" Cornelia fingered the still-tender lines, burned further by the salt of her tears, that the man's backhanded slap had left on Sarah's face. Had he had left welts? Sarah raised her own hand to feel, as Cornelia studied the rest of her for evidence of damage. "Did he hurt the baby?"

"No." Sarah shook her head. "I don't know why. If he wanted to hurt Severus...."

"Just be grateful," Cornelia said firmly. "Someone sent a message that you needed my mother." It was more than half a question, as the older girl stared at Sarah's stomach.

"That was Connor." Sarah felt the lurching desire to sob calming slowly in her, being eaten up by the more steady flame of rage. "He thought your mother would find a way to get Severus back quick."

"She needs to check you. I can't see that you've come to any more harm than this." Cornelia touched her cheek again. "But the strain of all this.... Come lay down in your room. She'll be here when she's done at Burkes'."

"But Severus!" Sarah protested. "It was a trap! I'm sure it was trap!"

"Do you know where they went?" Cornelia asked, and when Sarah shook her head, she went on, "There's nothing you can do about it, Sarah! Not now. You have to rest. I'll take care of all this." She gestured to the mess.

I don't know where they went. Even if she could somehow contact Professor Dumbledore, she couldn't begin to tell him where to look for Severus. Unless the headmaster had some means of finding people that was beyond the common run of magic. And if he had that, why hadn't he tracked Severus back to the Dark Lord before now and put an end to the menace for once and for all?

Reluctantly, she permitted Cornelia to urge her to bed. The very sight of the bed brought tears spilling again from her eyes. If she should never lie there with him again....

She had just settled on her side, clutching Cornelia's handkerchief, when she remembered the safe box, whatever that was. It had not been an hour--scarcely even a quarter of that yet--but if there was something inside that might help her find him....

"I need to look for--" she began, struggling to sit up again. But Cornelia pressed her down again.

"No, you do not! So help me, Sarah, if you struggle with me anymore...."

"But you don't understand! He said if he didn't come back--" Her voice broke on the word.

"You don't know yet that he won't," Cornelia said. "You can't go on like this." She raised her wand. "Somniferous!"

Sarah had no strength with which to fight off the simple sleeping spell, a fact she only realized as she tried to break its hold. Her limbs were like water, and they grew heavier and heavier, along with her eyes. "I...have...to..." It came out as a mumble, and then she could not remember what she had to do, although she knew it was something important. Her muscles tried to tense, as if for one final effort, but she was so tired, and a soothing darkness was closing in around her....

* * *

She woke with a start, to find Miriam sitting on the edge of the bed.

"There now, calm yourself," Miriam said. "I'll not have you working yourself into a frenzy again."

It all came rushing back in a flood of anguish.

"But Severus," Sarah whispered.

"Severus is well able to take of himself." Miriam smoothed back Sarah's hair from her face. "He's been doing so long before he took up with you, my girl. If I may be so bold as to remind you--since before you were born." Miriam's expression did not quite match the heartening tone of her words, but it was clear she intended to brook no contradiction.

"But Connor planned--" She had to make Miriam understand.

"No doubt," Miriam interrupted. "But Severus'll not have been caught napping."

"But he intends to reveal us! He realized I was a student, when he saw me. He knows! If Severus doesn't kill him--"

"Then Severus will kill him," Miriam said, as if that were that. But a line creased her forehead that had not been there a moment ago. "Now, Cornelia says you haven't started travailing in earnest." She splayed her hands on Sarah's abdomen for a quiet minute before she went on. "And I concur. But I feel that you're much nearer the time--perhaps nearer than you should be. Your fretting can do Severus no good at all now, and he would not thank you if he found that you'd done yourself or the child harm by it."

But, thought Sarah, with a sudden wrenching of her heart, if Severus is already dead....

"There now," Miriam caught the anguished change in her expression. "I'll have you off to sleep again if you work yourself up. I know you're upset. We all are." It was the nearest the woman's voice had come to expressing real fear. "But until we see a way clear to do something, we must garner our strength. You most of all, cherub. Cornelia's making a broth for you. And here it is," she said, as her daughter came into the room.

The rest of that evening passed in a painful blur of endless, helpless moments. An hour had gone, long past, and he had not returned. But Miriam refused to let her get up and go searching for the box Severus had referred to, and neither she nor Cornelia could find anything of the sort.

"It'll wait 'til the morrow," Miriam pronounced.

Carabas jumped up on the bed at last, revealing that he had survived Connor's attack, but he was cold comfort to Sarah. Severus had hated him. How could she love him now?

She raged at Connor, at the Notts; she pleaded with Miriam to do something, anything; to send her sons looking for him, since they might know where Knockturn wizards would go to duel; she begged them to find the box; she told them to send an owl to Professor Dumbledore. Most of all, she blamed herself. It was her foolish assumptions that had given Connor the opportunity he'd been seeking.

No, Miriam countered, the man had obviously planned to lie in wait for Severus. He would have found a means, one way or another, sooner or later. At every wrenching turn of Sarah's thoughts, Miriam stood ready to stop her. She held the sleeping spell over her like a threat. It would be better not to use it again, lest her child take some small harm from it, but if Sarah made it necessary....

At last, as the darkness grew outside the window, plunging the bedroom into a blackness that Miriam made no move to remedy, agony faded into nightmare, and nightmare into restless sleep.

* * *

When Sarah woke in the dawn light, she felt someone at her back. Her heart lifted suddenly--Severus had come home! But it was only Cornelia, whose eyes opened as soon as Sarah turned over on the bed.

"How do you feel?"

"Severus isn't back?" Sarah asked. The dashing of her hopes, rather than launching her into hysteria again, left her in a kind of quiet despair.

Cornelia shook her head. "But I've been asleep since afore midnight." She got to her feet and smoothed down her clothes. "I'll find out. And I'll make some breakfast. Don't you move."

The restlessness she had felt last night still twitched at Sarah's bones. But something deeper made her disinclined to move. She lay still, half turned on her side, staring at the walls and ceiling, feeling her abdomen tighten.

Severus had not come back. It was pointless for Cornelia to pretend that might have changed during the night. He would have burst into the flat the moment he returned to see if she was all right.

Unless he was injured? A hopeful image formed in her mind: Miriam tending to Severus's wounds. Although, if he had been badly hurt, it was more likely he would have been taken to St. Mungo's.

If anyone had found him. If Connor had not left him dying or dead in a field somewhere, far from Muggle habitations. No, Connor would know that if Severus' body turned up anywhere, Sarah could point the finger straight at him. If Severus was dead, it was probable that his body would never be found.

The tears that came with that thought did not fall; they sat heavily behind her eyes, a pain that had not the decency to be either sharp or dull, but something in between. The impulse to rage was gone. Instead, Sarah felt as if her soul had been ripped out, as if a deep, empty hole had opened inside her, waiting to suck her down.

It did no good to lie here, doing nothing. But there was nothing she could do. The pressure on her abdomen eased, and heaviness crept over her limbs, as thoroughly as the sleep spell, though she did not feel in the least bit sleepy. It would almost be a mercy to sleep more. To sleep and not wake until Severus came back. Or least until they knew.

Would she know, she wondered then; would she know if Severus was dead? Would the magic that secured their marriage bond tell her if he were alive or not?

She reached out with everything that was in her, searching for some sense of his existence. Some empty place that would mean he was dead. Some quiet assurance that he yet lived. She sought for a long time. She turned her wedding band on her finger, as if some part of their marriage bond resided there that could be woken and brought to her aid. Had he been wearing his ring? No, he would not have, not when he was going to Hogwarts.

There was no answer. No inner conviction that he lived. No quiet, irrefutable knowledge of his death. It should not be so. She ought to know if her child's father was still alive or not. There were dozens of songs and stories that told her so. Perhaps, she thought ruefully, she should have suffered through Professor Trelawney's Divination class after all. Or perhaps, more likely, she was simply not born with the gift.

She willed her listless muscles to move, slipped her hand across her abdomen. If Severian was all she had left.... It was not supposed to turn out like this, she thought, a surge of pain and anger washing over her. Why must I always be left alone in the world?

Cornelia, when she brought in the tea, found her weeping silently.

"Sarah, I'm sorry," she whispered. "I wish there was something more I could do."

Sarah looked up, fearful that there was hidden import in Cornelia's words.

"No." Cornelia shook her head. "Mum hasn't come back yet, so I don't know anything. She was right knackered last night, after Jenna Burke's lying-in. Took more than a day, and Mum was afraid once or twice that...." Cornelia broke off, as if realizing that her tale was best not told to Sarah. "But the point is," she went on, a little flustered, "she would have sent Nick or Devin if there'd been any news."

"Did they go looking for him?" Sarah asked, sitting up, trying to dry her face with the back of her hands until she spied Cornelia's crumpled handkerchief beside her.

"I don't know. If they didn't, they will. Mum will see to that. Dad doesn't like to get too involved in...well, in Severus's business. But this is something else, isn't it?"

Sarah had noticed that none of the Snapes referred to the Dark Lord, even as You-Know-Who, if they could help it. "If it were that, I'm sure Connor would have said something." If Connor had been given such an assignment from the Dark Lord, she doubted he could have restrained himself from gloating about it. "Do you know what Connor had against him?"

"I don't." Cornelia frowned ruefully. "I was hardly more than a little girl when Severus went to teach at Hogwarts. They must have known each other when they were younger. Least that's the way Dad talks of it."

Sarah nodded. She'd had nothing, back on that horrible night in the graveyard, with which to decode the conversation between the two men, but it had been obvious they'd known each other for a long time. Which meant that they might well have places in common that no one outside their childhood circles would know about. Was that a possibility? But she had no way of identifying Severus's childhood friends or foes. Miriam might know. Probably, to give the woman credit, she had already thought of that.

There was a knock on the outside door.

"You drink your tea!" Cornelia ordered, as she went into the outer room.

Feeling the need of something to strengthen her, regardless of who was at the door, Sarah snatched the cup from the tray. She was a little surprised to hear Cornelia lifting wards; somehow it had not occurred to her that she could possibly be in further danger. Miriam greeted her daughter. Then their voices dropped so she could not make out their words. That could not be a good sign. She was just setting aside the empty teacup, ready to confront Miriam and demand the truth, when Miriam came in.

"Got hold of yourself this morning?"

Sarah swallowed hard, rattled by Miriam's strange heartlessness. But the woman had been just as heartless last night. A consciousness of that terrible hole inside came to Sarah again.

"I'm as well as I can be, not knowing if my husband is alive or dead," she answered bitterly.

Miriam seemed taken aback, in her turn, by Sarah's manner. But she settled her shoulders after a moment. "Everything is being done that can be," she said, a little stiffly.

"Everything?" Sarah asked. "What's been done?"

"Nicholas has scoured every spot he knows of for private dueling, and Caius has been out asking questions about Connor, last night and since the first dim of the morning. Seems the man took a room at the Mermaid three nights ago, but he's not been there since yesterday morning."

"Did you write to Professor Dumbledore?"

Miriam looked uncomfortable. "I thought that was a matter best left to you. As soon as you've had your toast, you can write it out and I'll post it."

As if on cue, Cornelia brought in a plate. She ducked out again with Sarah's cup to refill it.

"I know of nothing more to do," Miriam said, sounding a trifle defensive. "If I knew, I promise you I would be doing it."

Sarah, eating as quickly as she could, although her stomach wanted nothing at all, did not answer. As if there were any way to track a Portkey...

Sarah almost choked; she swallowed hard as Miriam dove in to pat her back. "The Ministry might be able to track a Portkey," she said urgently, as soon as she could. "It could hardly have been a legal one. And they monitor for illegal magic."

"Not here." Miriam shook her head. "You ought to know that by now."

"But if they went someplace outside the Alley. And they must have." Sarah felt energy coming back to her. "Connor would hardly have made an elaborate illegal Portkey to carry them a few hundred yards."

"I'm surprised he would have the skill to start with," Miriam said.

"We've got to get hold of the Ministry somehow." Sarah did not need Miriam's doubtful expression to tell her that it would be difficult to do that from inside Knockturn.

"Would anyone listen or care?" Miriam asked wryly. "Perhaps, seeing as the missing man is a teacher at Hogwarts. But who would you address the message to?"

"I could go there," Sarah said. Although she had only the vaguest of ideas where the Ministry of Magic actually was. The only time she had ever been there was for the settlement of her father's will, and that was nearly ten years ago.

"You will not," Miriam averred. "Not as near to your time as you are."

"I feel perfectly alright!"

But Miriam was firm. "You've had a nasty shock and a dreadful experience, only yesterday, and you're near your time. Wandering across the city through Muggle crowds would be a foolish risk."

"I have to do something, Miriam!" The sense of despair seemed once more ready to devour her.

"Then write your letter to your headmaster. Surely he'll take whatever steps can be taken out there. He was reinstated to the Wizengamot, wasn't he?"

That, Sarah could not help but agree, was a very good point. With Miriam clucking that parchment and pen could as easily be brought to her, she stood up and went out to the kitchen.

Cornelia had done a thorough job of trying to repair the damage. The room was tidy, and the magical paint had apparently come off after all, although Sarah felt a strange pang of wishing that it had not: it had at least been visual proof that Severus had lived in this flat, that he had existed. That was foolishness--it had been an insult, for goodness sake!--and she tried to shake it off.

But as much as Cornelia had restored, the missing table and chair were all too obvious evidence of Connor's triumph yesterday. Realizing sinkingly that she would have to find another place to write, she bent awkwardly to the drawer where the parchment and ink were kept, her back and her stomach muscles protesting the motion.

"I could have got that," Cornelia said, too late.

Miriam, however, seemed to have concluded that letting Sarah do a little was better than trying to keep her quiet. She stood watching, her sharp eyes following Sarah's progress, but saying nothing.

Sarah had concluded that a largish book would be the best substitute writing surface, and she pulled the largest of her pregnancy manuals from the bedside table. It was nearly impossible to get into a comfortable position to write while sitting on the bed, but she had little choice.

Professor Dumbledore, she wrote, realizing with a pang that, should the Dark Lord somehow become aware of it, this letter would ruin all their carefully constructed deceptions. But he would not, she told herself sternly; he had no reason to intercept this particular piece of mail. It would be Miriam who posted it, at the Shadow Post no less.

I fear that something terrible has happened to Severus. I let in Isaac Connor yesterday by mistake, and when Severus returned from Hogwarts, Connor challenged him to a duel. He had a set of Portkeys (two gloves) and Severus went with him.

He hasn't come back. Reading the words, all set out in ink, was agonizing. But at least the headmaster would soon know what was happening. And if anyone could help....

He told me to find something he called a "safe box" if he didn't return within the hour.

"Did you ever find the box?" Sarah asked, raising her head.

"I hadn't thought to look yet this morning," Miriam admitted. "But there were no mysterious boxes to be found last night."

"I looked high and low," said Cornelia, who had followed them back into the bedroom with the second cup of tea. She had been holding it anxiously, but now she set it on the bedside table. "Shall I look again?"

"Please," Sarah answered gratefully.

"Are you certain it's here, instead of at Hogwarts?" Miriam asked, as Cornelia knelt and lifted the blankets to peer underneath the bed.

Sarah considered this. "I don't know," she admitted finally. "He did look off for a moment toward..." she pondered, "perhaps toward the fireplace...."

"Ask your headmaster to check and see if it's there in his rooms."

I can't seem to locate such a thing, and as it's the last thing he said, it seems as if it might be important. Could he have left it there at Hogwarts, in his quarters?

The Ministry can track an illegal Portkey, can't they? It was yesterday (Friday) afternoon, here in our flat. Connor gave no hint where they were going, and none of the Snapes have been able to find out anything.

One more thing: Connor recognized me, from the graveyard at Halloween. He threatened to expose Severus. I thought you should know.

Sarah was not sure what more to write. Expressing her fears would not cause the headmaster to act any more quickly or thoroughly, and neither would pleading with him to do something. Time was more important now than anything else she might say. She quickly signed,

Sarah

She folded up the parchment and addressed it to Headmaster Dumbledore, Hogwarts, but when she went to seal it, she realized that she did not have her wand.

"He took my wand!" she burst out indignantly, as if, on top of everything else, that was too much to bear. Connor had still had it tucked in his robes when he disappeared with Severus.

"Oh dear," Miriam said, frowning. "Well, let me seal the letter. We'll worry about getting you another wand later. Now, settle yourself. There's nothing more to be done now. Read your books or try to sleep again. Cornelia, put the ink and all away."

Sarah picked up her tea as Cornelia went back to the kitchen. Miriam's wand had flared briefly over the letter, and now she was slipping it between the buttons of her blouse.

"Better no one sees me carrying this from here," the woman commented. "I'll be back in a trice."

Sarah heard Cornelia raising wards as the outer door closed. Would Connor really go so far as to come back and kill her, too? She was not really sure, even now, why he had not killed her, or at least hurt her or the baby while he had the chance. Would it not, she thought gruesomely, have been a worse blow to Severus to return and find his wife and child dead, with Connor gloating, ready and waiting to kill him as well? Conner seemed the type to do just such a thing. That night in the graveyard he had been more pleased with the idea of destroying his enemy's life rather than actually killing him. And yet he had not taken that opportunity when he could have. Sarah and the child dead, and Severus implicated in seducing a student...even in murdering her himself, she realized with a chill of horror--that was the sort of thing that could be expected of a man like Connor. But he had not taken that way.

Sarah stared at the leaves in the bottom of her cup.

"Do you know how to read tea leaves?" she asked Cornelia, as the older girl came into the room.

"Not in any serious kind of way," Cornelia said. "There was an old woman who sat and told fortunes when I was younger, and I took up with her for a while." She took Sarah's cup, shook it gently for a moment, and then peered at it, turning it slightly. "Nothing very clear," she said with a sigh. "Some wavy lines--that's misfortune or enemies, which is obvious; that's already happened." She frowned, tipping the cup. "No, that's a key."

"What does that mean?" Sarah asked anxiously, as if leaves in a cup could mean anything at all.

"Well, good things...prosperity, a fortunate marriage..." Sarah huffed softly, and Cornelia looked up. "Well, that is hopeful, isn't it?"

Sarah took the cup back. The leaves had settled in little ridges along one side, which must be what Cornelia was seeing as wavy lines. Near the bottom was a sort of cross with a something vaguely like a circle on the long end. If it was a key, it was a curiously simple one.

"What does a cross mean?" she asked. When Cornelia did not answer immediately, she looked up. The other girl was frowning deeply.

"Just what you'd think," Cornelia said, her voice cracking with distress. "Suffering." She reached hastily to wipe away a tear that had sprung out onto her cheek. "But it isn't a cross; it's a key." She gave a sorrowful smile. "Everything will turn out all right."

She took the cup back from Sarah and held it down at her side, as if not to look at it again. "When Mum comes back, I need to go tend to some things at home."

Sarah felt a stab of guilt at the realization that her troubles were taking Cornelia and Miriam from their own responsibilities.

"You just lie down. Do you want me to sit with you? Or would you rather try to sleep?"

"I'll try to sleep," Sarah said, although she hardly felt sleepy. Just exhausted, for all that she'd scarcely been up an hour. She settled herself uneasily against the pillow, then started up again. "Carabas! Have you seen him?" She had not seen the little cat this morning.

"I let him out," Cornelia said. "He'll likely come back in with Mum."

Sarah lay back, hardly reassured. With the way her fate was running, it seemed all too likely that Carabas would be snatched from her, too. Even without a Muggle lorry anywhere in sight.

* * *

Sarah did sleep, in spite of herself. She woke to find the little cat curled near her feet, and she provoked an offended meow when she caught him up and hugged him. The sound also provoked footsteps. Miriam appeared in the doorway.

"What time is it?" Sarah asked. She could see from Miriam's face that it was of no use to ask if there were any news.

"Past noon," Miriam said. "You'd best have your lunch."

"You got the letter away?"

"I did. No suspicions raised there. I told Hob that Severus had asked me to post it. I daresay you'll have an answer tomorrow."

Tomorrow. And every day that passed, perhaps every hour, took away another sliver of hope that Severus would ever return.

Miriam must have taken in the change in Sarah's expression, because she said bracingly, "I'll bring your sandwich, and you'll eat it."

It was only the older woman's hovering presence that forced Sarah to do as she had been told. Her stomach was in knots at the thought of food, and only a very little better after she'd eaten.

"You need something to do," Miriam said, as she took the crumb-covered plate. "Sleep is all well and good, but you can't sleep forever, and it'll do you and the child no good for you to brood."

"How can I help but brood?" Sarah snapped, out of patience with Miriam's lack of sympathy. "What would you do if Caius disappeared?"

Miriam's mouth set in a curiously somber line.

"I have lost a husband, in my time," she said, and Sarah remembered in dismay that Devin and Nick were not Caius's sons. "I know what are you feeling, cherub. And I know there's no help for it. Only time."

"Then you think Severus is dead?" Sarah's voice cracked, as agony overwhelmed her again.

"I don't know," Miriam admitted. "But you fear it, and that grief will work ill on the child, and on you. I know whereof I speak." A hint of her accustomed sympathy crept into her eyes. "You're a strong girl. I know you've suffered a great deal already, but it's given you the mettle to carry on, unbroken."

"I don't feel unbroken!" Those bitter tears of self-pity were welling up again, falling angrily from her eyes.

"You've known, before now, that Severus lives a life of hazards," Miriam said with forced sternness. "Don't tell me you've not considered before what might happen."

It was true. How many times had she fretted when he had been summoned by the Dark Lord? And what, Sarah wondered with a start, would happen now on that front? If Severus was summoned and did not appear? Would the Dark Lord send someone in search of him? Would he send someone to bring Sarah to give an accounting of her husband's absence? And if that messenger were Bellatrix Lestrange.... Sarah shuddered.

"You must carry on, Sarah. And you needn't fear that we'll abandon you."

Sarah looked up at Miriam. She had never imagined that Severus's family would cast her off. But she felt a surge of gratitude to Miriam for saying so. She reached out and clasped the older woman's free hand.

"I just don't know what to do."

"Nor do any of us." Miriam stroked the back of her hand with her thumb. After a silent minute she asked, "Would you prefer to read? Or shall I bring you to the Grimms'? You might feel better in company."

Sarah shook her head. "I'll read, I think." Subverting the probability of being told to keep still, Sarah got to her feet and went to the trunk that held the books. She pulled out one on poisons--a least she could imagine Connor dying from every one of them--and took it back to the bed.

* * *

The guard--as Sarah had begun to think of it--changed in the late afternoon, when Cornelia returned and Miriam went to prepare supper. Her mind was numb with reading. No, it had been numb before that, and the words had passed through her brain without making much of a dent, despite her resolve to get some small satisfaction for her anger. Cornelia said little, spending her time stitching on a small garment that must be meant for Sarah's baby.

When Cornelia answered the next knock on the door, Sarah paid little attention. But then Sarah heard a man's voice and slid to her feet as quickly as her body would move.

Standing in the outer room, with Miriam, was Caius Snape, looking disgruntled and uncomfortable.

"What is it?" Sarah asked, with a rising sense of alarm.

"No news," Miriam said. "But Caius had an idea."

"Not that it will tell us where Severus has got to," the elder Snape said gruffly.

"What, then?" Sarah stepped into the front room, studying the Snapes with puzzled curiosity.

"It's a Dark spell, mind you," Miriam said uneasily.

"It'll work," Caius said. "That's the only thing that concerns me." He bent to set down a small cage that held a largish rat; then, out of his robes, he drew a long knife. "Now where was that evil git standing when he disappeared?"

Sarah blinked. It took her a moment to reorient herself. To get a grip on the unease she felt at both Caius's presence in the flat and the possibilities of his apparent intention. She moved across the room, everyone making way for her. The chair had long since been moved, but she thought it had stood about there. Yes, she could see some faint scrape marks where she had pushed her way toward the window.

"About here," she said, hesitantly, pointing. "What do you intend to do?"

"Location spell," Caius grunted, as he knelt down. He placed the long knife, which Sarah suddenly realized was Connor's, on the floor where she had indicated. "Got nothing with an edge that Severus handled recently?"

"Just a knife for cutting ingredients," Sarah said, a faint sense of hope rising again.

"Huh. How many days?"

Sarah thought back, feeling the familiar swing towards despair. "Four or five."

"Not good enough." Caius shook his head. "And I daresay it's never taken a life. That makes a difference in the strength of the spell. This one has. I'm certain of it."

Sarah shuddered. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Find Connor," Caius answered testily. "Now step back and let me work without hindering."

Miriam put her arm around Sarah as she backed up toward the fireplace side of the room. Cornelia backed up toward the other side; she put a hand to her mouth and, after a moment, began chewing nervously at her nails.

Caius appeared to have positioned the knife to his satisfaction, because he turned now and reached for the cage.

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

"Go, then," Caius said sharply. "Just keep out of my way. Not another sound from the lot of you. Les' you want to spoil the spell." He eyed them with the same kind of disdain that Sarah remembered from her first five years of Potions; her throat tightened.

In spite of all her recent studies, she felt a degree of horror as Caius pulled out another, smaller knife, then reached into the cage. The rat squealed fiercely, and Caius cursed; it must have bitten him. It continued to squeal and struggle in his grip, as he held it out above Connor's knife. Cornelia looked away. But Sarah made herself watch as Caius's little blade flashed. Blood began dripping, although the creature had not yet stopped struggling. Lifeblood, Sarah thought. There was more power in blood taken while the victim still lived. She might have to do such things, and worse, if she became the Dark Lord's potion-maker. Was that more or less likely to happen now, if Severus were dead?

Caius had dribbled the blood in a circle around Connor's knife before all hint of movement had ceased. He set aside the body, and began drawing the blood into signs and sigils with his finger. Sarah swallowed hard. She had seen her father work such magic a few times, although he had never used a live victim. At least not in her presence. Perhaps he had been afraid she would run to her mother with the tale. She might well have. Even now, the oily sense of Dark magic in the air made her feel unclean.

Finally Caius drew his wand and began the incantation. On the final words, Connor's knife began to spin. It spun faster and faster, rising a few inches off the floor, and Sarah shifted her weight uneasily, hoping that it would not suddenly fling itself across the room.

"That's done it," Caius said, rising quickly to his feet. "When it stops, it'll be pointing the direction, and we'll have an image to go by reflected on the blade."

The knife had risen about a foot in the air now. All of them, even Cornelia, watched it tensely. Then, without warning, the blade flashed as the spinning altered abruptly. Caius cried out a warning. But it proved unnecessary.

With a thunk, the blade buried itself an inch deep in the floor and stuck there, quivering. When the shivering stopped, the force of the magic entirely expended at last, Caius stepped closer to peer at it. "Blade's gone black."

"Didn't it work?" Sarah asked, distressed both at the apparent failure of the spell and a sudden realization of her own lack of wisdom in permitting Caius to work Dark magic under her roof.

"What does it mean, Caius?" Miriam asked.

Caius looked up at his womenfolk with a curious expression, troubled and yet strangely triumphant.

"I don't know what good or ill it means for us, nor for Severus. But Isaac Connor is dead."