FIC: Scenes from an Occupation (NC-17)

[iulia_linnea]

Title: Scenes from an Occupation
Type: Fic
Age-Range Category: Four
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Severus Snape/Minerva McGonagall, Amycus Carrow
Author: perverse_idyll
Beta(s):
likelightinglass and hippocrates460
Rating: NC-17
(Highlight to View) Warning(s): Dubious consent.
Note: Many thanks to
likelightinglass and hippocrates460 for help in cleaning up the worst of the mess.
Summary: A dreadful spark of attraction to the new headmaster leads Minerva to make a deal with the devil.



Three weeks into the new regime, the headmaster called a staff meeting. A pretext, Minerva was sure, for further attempts to quell and control, to cow Albus' appointees into submission. She sat rigid through the propaganda being entered into the curriculum and the ridiculous lip-service paid to Voldemort's educational 'concerns,' and when the meeting concluded stood up with the others to escape this infuriating farce.

"One more thing," the traitor said tersely, stopping them in their tracks.

"By now, you have all borne witness to the changes here, and I trust you understand that the consequences for disobedience are of a different calibre from prior years." One sardonic glance at the Carrows sprawled insolently in their seats, and Snape returned to scanning the faces of the actual academics in the room. "Infractions of our Lord's rule will draw swift punishment down upon the offenders' heads and those of their allies."

Minerva realised abruptly what he planned to do, and a surge of ire and helplessness almost made her cry out don't look! As each professor caved in to Snape's silent demand and met his eyes, she shoved her thoughts under layers of Occlumency and sought a quick mental distraction.

Of course, what leaped clamouring to the forefront were all the private matters she needed to keep as far from the headmaster - the usurper - as possible. All contact with Kingsley and Nymphadora. All knowledge and names of rebellious students. Their hiding places, their secret codes, their undying loyalty to Harry and Albus. Their fears and weaknesses, their sobs in the common rooms. The longing for home.

Snape's unspoken summons fell upon her like the tap of an obsidian wand. Coolly, she raised her head and stared back. She had the right, damn him. A cat may look as well on a scoundrel as on a king. Let him see her hatred, her withering scorn. Let him see her defiance.

Her desire.

It flashed through her in a moment of inspiration, the hot fuse of breath-stopping arousal that had woken her a few nights ago from a sweaty, heart-pounding dream. Snape's invading mind rippled in pursuit, lured on by the guilty memory, and for several painful seconds Minerva left her response to his complex, cold-blooded magic exposed.

Having humiliated herself enough, she pushed him out.

The sense of violation left her shaking, but at least she'd succeeded in concealing what mattered. Snape didn't speak, but the cold, flat weight of his gaze followed her out of the room as she hurried after Filius and Rolanda. They stayed together all the way to the stairs, and no one said a word about what the headmaster had seen.

That evening, Minerva stood at her open bedroom window watching heavy clouds extinguish the autumnal light. No lamps or candles flickered to life behind her. The room dimmed as the day did, adding a sharp chill to the icicles forming around her heart. She couldn't bring herself to move, merely folded both arms tighter as the sky darkened, thinking about Snape's harnessing of his pared-down, concentrated power, and why on earth some part of her should find that attractive.

It wasn't even desire, surely? It was awareness, nothing more, a confused erotic reaction to his careful control, his sense of purpose, which suited him far more than pettiness ever had. Perhaps, as in ancient ritual magic, Albus' death had bestowed a certain quantity of sacrificial life force upon him, the catalyst Severus had needed to concentrate himself, like the pure toxin at the heart of countless remedies and poisons.

The problem was what to do about it now that he knew. She didn't want to risk being manipulated. He could mortify her in public, of course. That might almost be the best outcome. No one but herself would suffer, and whatever arbitrary heat jumped awake at sight of him would surely be extinguished under a drenching bucket of bitter disgrace and resentment.

Or perhaps (she drew her shawl closer and pulled the shutters to) she could turn this unfortunate revelation to advantage. Severus hadn't ridiculed her weakness in front of the other staff, so either he dismissed it as an older witch's foolish susceptibility to his power or - much more likely, given this was Severus - he planned to save the knowledge for later, when it could be used against her to devastating effect.

Depending on his reaction, it might give her something she sorely lacked now, a bargaining tool. She had a new vulnerability to offer, but it was only as good as the value he placed upon it. Her very familiarity with Severus made it hard to judge what he might do. She'd been wrong before. But it might be the very thing she'd been wracking her brains to come up with: an entry point, a way to influence the headmaster's behaviour.

He would have to want her first, of course. To want her enough to honour any bargain. He had to want her willing, at least within the terms of any arrangement that made concessions to her side of things, when in fact he could force her and take what he wanted without fear of reprisal. He wasn't, Minerva hoped - would once have wagered without a second thought - interested in rape.

It would require thought. She couldn't overstep. She couldn't approach him until she had a better sense of what he saw when he looked at her - a pathetic, dried-up old Gryffindor or a proud woman bending to her desires, a conquest whose body and moral reputation would both be his to fuck. For a price.

Minerva McGonagall, no longer deputy headmistress but merely mistress.

Very well. This was the new Hogwarts. She would have to gather her strength. It could hardly be any worse than the futility she felt every hour of the day, the seething rage that kept her awake at night, imagining the defeat of the Carrows, the preservation of the children, every one of whom, in the privacy of her own mind, survived.

Oddly enough, she never thought about killing Severus. She preferred a scenario in which he had to kneel before them, bound tight, his wand snapped in pieces, surrounded by the consequences of his betrayal, the hard, hurt lack of mercy from his former friends and colleagues.

She was, perhaps, as mad as a hatter. These were the maunderings of a woman with her back to the wall, a teacher whose care for her students would drive her to the brink of immoral acts.

And all of this, every fear, every hope of negotiation, would of course be an open book to Severus, a mental page he could rip out and set afire at any time.

Minerva sighed and undid the coil of her hair. She might as well grade essays in relative comfort. Time to light lamps and candles, sit close to the fire, and behave as if pedagogical standards meant anything. Yet she was reluctant to dispel the gloom and chill, the undemanding silence. These days, a preference for light and warmth tended to draw the wrong sort of attention. The ludicrous fiction that Hogwarts operated according to classroom priorities might reassure a few students and provide plausible deniability to the board of governors, but Minerva saw in it her own helplessness and hypocrisy. Even if she was able to lose herself in the familiarity of the material, she found it harder and harder to care.

Still, she lit a single lamp, poured a thrifty finger of scotch, barely wetting the bottom of the glass, and sat down with her quill at the ready. She had brooded her way through seven essays and was presently losing patience with a third-year's desperately ungrammatical attempts to hide the fact that he hadn't done the reading, when someone knocked.

Minerva paused, shawl clenched in one fist, and stared into the candle flame. Then she rose and went to see who it was.

Severus entered without waiting to be invited and closed the door before she had a chance to. It felt like a declaration of intent, and she fell back before it, warily putting distance between them in case she needed to defend herself.

He raised his eyes to her without speaking, and for all his self-control, a slight distortion of his features dented the rigid contours of his headmaster mask.

He was in her rooms. Severus, the viper in the walled garden, deadly and unrepentant. She wasn't afraid of him, but the sense of violation hovered, pulsing in the space between them. The cold impact of his magical potency and the freezing heat of his scorn confronted her, an enemy she wasn't quite prepared to face yet.

"Headmaster," she bit off, refusing to betray her nerves. "May I ask what it is you think you're -"

"No," Snape said, his voice quiet and wrathful. "You may not. You are a fool, Minerva. A bloody lunatic. Don't presume to act as if you have no idea why I'm here. I could ignore your foolishness, but I take it as a personal affront, and I would prefer to address this now."

So he was insulted. She was being reminded that her perception of her own womanliness failed to live up to the standards of a younger man whose dark star was in the ascendant, promising him all the social revenge and personal gratification he could take. Literally, take. She glanced at Severus' hands. No wand. He was supremely confident. For good reason, she supposed. She raised her head and studied his narrow, accusing face. Like the rest of them, he'd lost weight. Scornfully, she wondered what had put him off his appetite, or if he were drawing sustenance from having bested them all, his greed assuaged by watching them eat their hearts out, starve their souls.

Not that Severus had started with a surplus he could afford to lose, of either flesh or heart. And after what had happened with Albus, it wouldn't do to contemplate the state of his soul.

"Cat got your tongue?" he snapped, still unaccountably angry.

"That was beneath you," Minerva said, although the irony was that nothing, really, was beneath him now. "I'm still waiting to hear why you've taken it upon yourself to invade my privacy."

The emotional disfigurement had faded from his sallow face, leaving a vacancy that was filled by that subtly breathtaking focus. She felt it, that frisson of awareness, the sudden tightening of her nerves in preparation and excitement. She refused to feel chagrin. If he probed her thoughts, she dared not shrink from him.

Snape's breathing slowed. She wondered what it meant. He had to be holding something back. His gaze took in the single candle, the scatter of scrolls, and lingered on her unbound hair.

"So, Minerva. There's something you want from me, I take it." He spoke so softly, almost caressingly, that it couldn't help but sound seductive.

Minerva stood straight and let the possibility whisper through her. Perhaps she'd been wrong. Perhaps he was more susceptible - perhaps he was hungrier - than she'd realised.

"You seem to believe there is," she said dryly. "Is there something you want from me, Headmaster?"

"Is this a guessing game, then?" He narrowed his eyes, drawing attention to the power behind them. He could discover anything he wished to know without needing to ask, and he was apparently impatient enough to remind her of that fact.

She risked an arch look. "Want? From you? For the students to be safe from harm, of course."

"I cannot and will not promise that," he said, and walked past her to the fire before turning to say coldly, "And you are wasting my time."

She wasn't a woman who could shrink before him with tear-filled eyes or wring her hands and beg. He wouldn't have believed it anyway, and she suspected he wouldn't be here if that was what he wanted. But the terms of the encounter were changing so rapidly she was unsure of her footing. "I didn't invite you here. I don't know, under the circumstances, what you expected to find that would make it worth your while."

"An answer, Minerva. I do expect that."

He stayed where he was, his back to the fire and his face veiled in shadow. He hadn't lifted the gloom by lighting more lamps, but the knowledge that Severus was at home in darkness had by now gone past the point of cliché to become a symptom of a disease they should have recognised long before it took over every molecule of his soul.

Perhaps not every molecule. Wasn't she banking on the slim hope that he possessed some sense of vanity, of self-regarding honour? That he would rather trade than take? Put like that, it was evident he was right. She was a fool.

The hush in the room, the subdued snap of flames, the self-contained, inimical stillness of his body, the coiled-snake intensity of his magic, all flowed together into a long silence, and Minerva realised he was leaving it up to her to make the decision. Her humiliating desire had been alluded to but not named. She could deny it by saying nothing and showing him the door. She was fairly sure he intended to let the subject die, buried beneath his contempt, if she failed to take advantage of his presence here tonight. He wouldn't speak of it again, but he would also never again allow this level of dangerous negotiation.

He had promised her nothing. Yet, on a hunch, Minerva ran a hand through her hair to make it ripple down her back and walked to the cupboard where she kept her liquor. She poured one for Snape and refreshed her own, then carried the glass to him.

The scotch swirled and glowed, a cup of liquefied fire. This close, her new awareness of Severus' body beneath the shrouding robes - so entirely the opposite of Albus' indulgence in colour and sparkle - leaped the short distance between them, flashing over her with feather-touches, a wakening pulse of heat in the crease of her thighs, the tips of her breasts.

He watched without comment as she took a sip, then handed her his glass and said, "Drink."

Minerva expressed her exasperation with a rude eyebrow, but she did as he said, helping herself to a portion and waiting a few seconds before handing it back to him to scorn or accept. He delayed a moment longer, watching her, then took the glass and turned it until he could place his lips where hers had been. He drank the whole thing off in three long swallows, then said, "Your bedroom, I think," propelling them into sexual territory without a by-your-leave.

Minerva quaffed her own scotch, a panacea to her nerves, somehow finding the fortitude not to hex him on the spot.

"You expect my compliance," she said tartly, "even though you offer nothing?"

Severus stepped right up to her, face to face, forcing her to withstand the combined impact of intimacy and threat. The nervy, simmering tension rose between them like firewhisky in a fluted glass.

"I'm here," he said, sour and distinct, "because of the opportunity presented to me. An opportunity that has nothing to do with children. I have no interest in simply taking, but neither will I lower myself to cat and mouse games. This isn't a bargain wherein you treat yourself as payment, a condition of good behaviour to be met. I don't consider you a hostage. You are Minerva McGonagall, a professor in my employ, not a procurable and convenient cunt who sells herself for favours. Especially the unrealistic kind."

The crudely worded pronouncement hit Minerva like Sectumsempra, ripping her composure from throat to knees.

She waited a moment until the desire to throw him out of her rooms receded. "Really, Headmaster. Do you truly expect me to fornicate with you simply to pander to your lust for power or mine for temporary physical release? To give the devil a free ride, without some assurance that my 'cunt,' as you so tactfully put it, will buy my charges every scrap of protection I lose by doing so?"

She saw his nostrils flare at that word on her lips, and he made an aborted move toward her.

The heel of her hand caught him in the chest. "I wish to see whatever comfort I give to you reflected in whatever comfort you can guarantee them."

"You forget, they are even more my charges than they are yours." Severus reached up then, and Minerva resolutely did not flinch when he lifted a lock of her hair. "I repeat: no promises. I have one vow left that I am sworn to honour in this life, and it is to that master I remain faithful."

"That monster, you mean," she said, unable to help herself.

"If you say so," Severus murmured, smiling ironically. "Who am I to question the moral clarity of the most judgemental of Gryffindors?"

They stood in silence while he toyed with the strands of her hair. The long drape of his robes flowed from his shoulders like a heavy, uninflected outpouring of guilt, merging with the mystery of his body, lean and expectant and emanating a subtle demand. Provoked by hearing 'cunt' applied to herself, she was free to think 'cock' in relation to him.

"Well, Minerva?" he said quietly, cutting her speculations short.

"And what do I get out of this?"

"Apart from my undivided sexual attention? Only the knowledge that I will keep your concerns at the forefront of my mind. Or," he said in a flat voice, dropping the lock of hair, "I can go about my business and leave you to finish yours."

Meaning the opportunity would never come again. Certainly not in any way that could possibly benefit anyone.

Her mind went blank at the intolerable crossroads. Then she slipped past him, allowing their bodies to brush, and said, "This way," in a voice so clear and austere you would never have known her throat was dry.

Her room was even colder, but Severus gave a negligent wave of his hand and the chill retreated. Minerva didn't go to him, or he to her. He had her disrobe entirely, although he told her to slip a dressing gown over her nakedness to stave off the cold. By silent agreement, they lit a single candle, enough to see by but not enough to expose them to mutual ridicule. Not that Minerva felt the least bit ridiculous. She stood before him in the draughty, occupied castle, a site of magic and learning that had always felt like home to her but which had lately become the home of nightmares instead, a penitentiary where the impenitents made the innocent suffer.

Severus removed not a stitch. Minerva held herself composed, the lapels of her dressing gown sliding over her nipples in token modesty but leaving her bush on display. The soft, consoling weight of her hair hung against her rigid back.

The candle flickered, and Severus still didn't move. His head was tilted down slightly, and his expression remained calm, unreadable, but some fierce emotion struggled to break through his self-control, she was sure of it. She didn't think it was mockery, nor yet disappointment. From the placement of shadows on his face, she would have guessed, against all the evidence, sadness. Or perhaps she sought to find in the hard, familiar lines the same thing she felt in that moment. Because it was there, sadness. It coursed in a steady current beneath her loathing and anger, and it had been there since Albus died at Severus' hand.

Then his hand - not that one, not the hand of betrayal and murder - reached out slowly. She waited, remote. His fingers traced a path through the air, not quite touching as they travelled from her navel up over the peak of her right nipple, hovering at the gap in her robes, finally coming to rest on the bony indent between her breasts.

"You may want to lie down," he said.

And so it began.

***
The headmaster never told her when to expect him, never stayed long, and never removed his robes. Sometimes, alone, Minerva pressed her face into the pillow and imagined history judging her as a collaborator. Then word would reach her of Snape sending Longbottom, Lovegood, and Ginevra Weasley to detention with Hagrid rather than handing them over to the Carrows. And once she watched from a shadowed alcove as he vanished graffiti from a school wall and walked on, removing evidence that would have set Amycus off on another rampage of random torture.

It wasn't enough, but it was … enough.

So in the weeks leading up to the Yule season, when the autumn-sweet, heart-tickling scent of burning leaves haunted the cool air, he came to her. Then, she did not want him. She was too melancholy, keenly missing too much of what was gone forever.

No, that wasn't true. She did want him. She wanted him to suffer.

Christmas week, and the fragrance of fresh pine boughs sweetened the stale air of the halls, and ornaments started to appear unobserved in the wee hours of the night, glittering balls of red and green, silver and gold, fragile bubbles of past cheer. A fir tree was fetched in from the Forest and prettied up with garlands and fairy lights and a delicate sugaring of snow. Meals in the Great Hall grew slightly more lavish, warm whiffs of cinnamon and nutmeg wafting over the fragrant tables. To everyone's surprise and the students' cautious delight, Christmas spread its short-term blessing over Hogwarts, more hostage than truce, but a willing hostage.

Minerva partook of this charade with suspicion. She urged the children to enjoy the falsely festive mood, to take what pleasure they could from the meagre semblance of holiday spirit that presumably had the headmaster's imprimatur; for as much as the Carrows complained and pulled ghastly faces, the decorations stayed up.

Snape presided over the season like a visitor from the underworld, a shrouded reminder of mortality, impervious to the effervescence whispering along the tables and through the classrooms. He didn't forbid it, but his very presence was a counterweight to joy, ensuring that no one grew too merry or bright, that none of them forgot the lengthening shadow of the Dark Lord lurking around the corner of the near future. They could gorge on plum pudding and gossip about who got what gift, but the school's headmaster did not indulge. He tolerated, but no one doubted his tolerance could be revoked at any moment.

He'd always cultivated a vaguely imposed-upon and superior attitude toward Christmas, but in the old days Minerva had recognised it as the face-saving aloofness of a former charity-shop boy whose experience was one of deprivation and envy of those better off than he. Professor Snape-as-was could always be counted on to turn up at staff parties, to be partial to hot spiced punch, to squirm and scowl his way through the gift exchange but always, without fail, contribute something that bespoke genuine if penny-pinching thought. It had softened Minerva's feelings toward him at the time, as it hadn't escaped her notice that Severus' upbringing left him unprepared for the vexing process of selecting presents.

Once or twice he'd fallen asleep in front of the fire, eye sockets purple with exhaustion and face flushed from one too many cups of Flitwick's finest. Seeing his thin torso wedged into the wingback chair and his mouth hanging open, Minerva had imagined Severus as a child curling up on the family hearth like a scrawny alley cat, so grateful for the heat that he risked getting singed by the flames.

The general impression this Christmas was that the Dark Lord wished to appear generous. He wasn't an unreasonable man; he would allow his followers to disport themselves in Yuletide frivolity.

When Minerva retired on the evening before Christmas, she was conscious of an ache in her soul that translated to tired bones and useless longing. Another milestone of change, designed to remind them all of previous years full of seasonal glitter and good cheer, a brief lull in the academic timetable, a chance to kick off one's shoes, sip hot toddies in the leaping hearthlight, and swap stories with one's colleagues about the latest student gaffes and adolescent mishaps. No likelihood of that this year, and Minerva felt the weight of that loss, another telling detail that brought the new rule of darkness home to roost.

As she breathed the password and the door to her dim sitting room swung open, tiny rows of multi-coloured sparks sprang to life, zipping around the shadowy interior. Minerva's breath caught, and she inhaled the tang of pine. A hastily cast Lumos revealed fir branches and garlands, twinkling fairy lights and red and gold glass ornaments dangling in fragile beauty from ledges and rafters.

The logs in the fireplace caught at her approach, roaring up in welcome before settling down to a merry crackle. On the mahogany sideboard, a bottle of nicely aged single malt drew her eye. Two empty glasses kept it company, a clear declaration of intent.

"Severus?" she said sharply, the name slipping out by accident. She peered into the shadows, his natural habitat. Nothing stirred. The entrance to her bedroom was dark. Relieved, Minerva pressed her thumbs to her temples and let herself sag a little, her head throbbing with the pressure of too many memories. At least he'd had the decency to give her forewarning.

When the knock came, considerably later than she expected, Minerva was well into her third glass, seated with her wrapper pulled around her, both feet propped on the hearth, warming the soles of her tartan slippers. A book she wasn't reading lay open in her lap, her hair hung tumbled and unbrushed on her shoulders, and she floated becalmed on a deep, nostalgic swell of emotion. She didn't bother to rise. The idea that the headmaster needed her permission to enter was a fiction she was in no mood to indulge.

The precise click of the latch carried across the room. There was no other sound until he stood before her, the orange light of the nearby flames pawing futilely at his light-repelling presence.

Minerva looked up by slow degrees, indulging a foolish concern that any abrupt movement would break the overful skin of sentiment keeping her afloat. She couldn't afford to sink. Not tonight. The ghosts of Christmases past would rise from the depths to wrap their arms around her neck and pull her down, encourage her to embrace her wild grief and possibly do something that would cost them all dear.

"Help yourself," she said instead, gesturing toward the sideboard. "You paid for it, you might as well get a Yule nightcap out of it."

Snape assessed her with an air of nostrils-flaring forbearance that conveyed how poorly her sarcasm rated. Without a word, he removed himself from her sight, robes rippling. She heard the clink and gurgle as he took her up on her offer.

"I suppose I should be grateful you left some for me," he murmured from behind her. She couldn't hear him swallow, but after a moment the glass thunked upon wood. Minerva closed the book she wasn't reading and tightened her grip upon it before she was tempted to hurl her scotch at his greasy head.

"Come into the bedroom," he said, with a strange, soft gravity. "It's late."

In the hush that followed, the fire's draughty hiss recalled to mind the disturbing effect of a twelve-year-old boy lapsing into the exhalation of snakes. It seemed so much longer than five years ago. Had Severus been biding his time even then, and had Harry's sudden dip into sibilance provided him with forewarning of his master's return?

On the windowsill outside, a light glimmered: fresh snow, a luminous dividing line between the battles being waged inside these walls and the pitch-black universe so indifferent to human grief.

Minerva sat for several minutes longer, her body too inebriated to make the effort. Finally a cinder popped, and her trance broke. She got to her feet, steadied herself on the chair back, and steered a firm path toward the glow radiating from her bedroom doorway.

As she padded across the vaguely medieval rug that covered the cold flagstones, her dressing gown trailing, locks of hair stirring in the warmly circulating air, she had a sudden sense of dislocation, as if glimpsing her own unimportance in the scheme of things; as if this might be her fate, to end up as one of the Hogwarts ghosts haunting the bounds of her living quarters, hair down, gown unbelted, feet nearly bare, wallowing in sentiment, the exact opposite of what she represented to her students. Or herself.

Poppycock. This was the consequence of overindulging in spirits.

She paused with one slipper on the threshold, confused. Small, strategically placed lamps clustered together in a star-like corona of beneficent light, glowing gold, and unexpectedly beautiful.

Snape, seated on the edge of the bed with his arms folded, glanced up from his contemplation of the floor.

He'd divested himself of his symbolic blackness. His robes of office spilled across the laddered back of a chair like a discarded uniform, and he sat now in shirtsleeves, dark trousers, and angular silence. His bare feet, pale and out of place on the shag rug by her bedside, falsely advertised vulnerability. She found it hard to accept that a man who tormented children should be permitted even that minor elegance. He was much less imposing without his official garments, much less of an adversary who, like the cockroach, could not be stamped out.

She entered the room, and he straightened, watching her every move.

As she approached, he stood with a sudden impetuous fierceness and cupped one hand at the nape of her neck, fingers knotted in her hair. His other hand slid behind her back, pulling her straight into a kiss with no preliminary small talk. Ten minutes earlier, she would have relished the chance to knock him arse over arrogance, but she was piqued by this display of physical diminishment, his impulse to unveil his thin frame and casual attire tonight of all nights.

Cautiously, she laid both arms around him, getting the measure of his body for the first time. The contours of urgent, underweight maleness pressing against her warred with her idea of him as the embodiment of evil, the banal kind that could share your world, place bets at Quidditch matches, get tipsy at Christmas parties, and in the end turn its narrow face toward you with a Killing Curse on its lips.

Depraved though it was, the hunger burning off Snape was exactly the antidote to lethargy she needed. He cradled her to his chest as if holding a harp, plucking and fingering the strings of her body, his touch bringing them in tune until lust hummed in her lower regions, clusters of clenched sensation that vibrated even after his hands moved on. The cleft between her legs throbbed rhythmically, hot and damp.

As usual, his first touch was cold enough to startle, although his face radiated heat like the bottom of a cauldron pulled off the flame. Minerva wondered if he were abusing potions to help him stay alert, to stave off ambush from both allies and hostile staff. Stimulants took their toll, as many an over-zealous NEWT-level student sent packing to the infirmary could tell you.

Well, it wasn't her business what he did to himself.

She let her defences down far enough to appreciate the paths of muscle and bone along his back, enjoying the heretofore inaccessible give of his skin through the fabric of his shirt, the twill of his trousers as she fondled the tense, warm curve of his arse. Snape's surprised hmpf of pleasure made her dig her nails in, and she pushed back when his erection butted her thigh, a thick hot lump that was wonderfully arousing. They shifted together so that his cock lined up against the seam of her cunt, and he rocked there, snug against her thudding pulse.

Minerva's right hand sneaked to his shirt buttons, but he caught her. "Not this time."

He backed up, guiding her onto the bed, and Minerva's head swam as he rolled her over, pinning her beneath him. She squirmed and held him off, not in protest but to get her dressing gown open. She wanted the sensual reassurance of texture, of flat spans of flesh and the hard architecture of bone, her breasts spreading and rolling against Snape's shirt and heat flashing between them, not a steady temperature but the sharp crack of sparks, as when two abrasive elements rub and scrape and finally ignite.

She wasn't drunk any longer, and neither was he, but they entered into an unspoken pact in her bed that night to behave as if they were, to be loose and messy and play at intimacy, hump and bite and test how much a purely physical alliance could support.

"Let go," Snape growled in her ear, teeth against her neck when she tried to obey by panting louder. Minerva yelped, indignant at the sharp sting. "Yes, like that," he muttered. "I know you have it in you."

To reinforce his point, he curled downward to suck her left breast and gnaw lightly at her nipple, worrying it into unbearable sensitivity. Minerva let loose the cry she'd done her best to suppress and yanked his hair. Her voice banished the last precious ghost of decorum, a muffled shriek breathless with anger, ragged with confusion caused not by his teeth but by the mystery of his betrayal. She could scream, aye she could. She could curse, come to that. None but Severus would hear her.

Tugging his hair free, he nuzzled his way down and to Minerva's surprise pushed his face between her legs. Prior to this night, he'd taken care to lie over her, hold her down, keep her in sight, always be in control. His reluctance to undress and his habit of hovering, holding himself back, his insistence on coming with eyes open and body tense, had enforced a boundary between them, always giving him the advantage, ensuring she remained conscious of her subordinate position, separated from her wand.

This was new and therefore disconcerting. Minerva gasped and pushed her hips forward as a delicate press like a wet fingertip slid up the smooth lining of her labia and Severus' exhale filtered through the heat coming out of her. She propped herself on her elbows and stared at him stretched out there, half his face invisible below her bush, the sudden up-dart of his eyes catching her with their avid blackness. The incongruous impulse to laugh bubbled up in her.

His long hands shovelled through the sheets under her buttocks and cradled her, hard thumbs smoothing her wide the better to let him lick. Minerva squirmed and bowed her knees outward. Severus murmured against her, settling in. After a moment, he brought one hand up and sank a finger down inside her, then moved it languidly around, a deep, succulent counterpoint to the rapid lapping of his tongue.

Minerva groaned and gripped a satisfying handful of lank hair, tugging it, steering him where she wanted him, digging her knuckles into his head to keep him right there. Severus accepted these unspoken instructions with the sort of cooperative spirit that would have served him well as a colleague if he'd ever bothered to show it. Minerva huffed and trembled as the gradual throbs built toward a slow-rolling gut-deep pang of convulsive, almost aching pressure, making her face scrunch and her loins shake. Severus sucked her through it, his tongue probing the most sensitive and swollen veins of sensation, battering plushly at the leaping, straining button of her clit.

When she finally let her body sag in the aftershocks, the flinching orgasmic ripples, he was still running his tongue around and around, as if washing her.

"Merlin's knickers," Minerva sighed, spread out as if floating in the middle of a lake. Severus swivelled his wet face to her thigh, nipping gently, then went back to licking her. She glanced down at his dark head between her splayed legs and twirled a knot of hair around one finger, tugging.

He wiped his mouth and came up for air, chin wedged in one hand, fingers curled inward against his lips. The consuming impatience in his eyes warned her not to relax.

"I'm not finished yet," he muttered to his knuckles. "I want to see how much you can take." In demonstration, he closed his lips around the finger that had been buried inside her, and drew it out glistening. Then he rubbed his lips with it, watching her. "Do you want me to stop?"

She blinked at the neatly buttoned cuff fastened around his thin wrist, and her sensuous daze faded. She was struck by a wave of this can't be happening. Because this was the Snape boy, a half-Muggle from Cokeworth. One of Albus' strays. She'd never found him sexual or generous, and had to wonder what this new game was.

Cautiously she lay back, one hand in his hair as if that could control him, and the heat of his mouth smote her. Observing herself with one part of her mind, Minerva nonetheless embraced the opportunity and let herself moan, let herself kick and swear and cry out while his tongue chased every hint of bliss exposed by his nuzzling and sucking. He was as good as his word, greedy, relentless, resting when his tongue and jaw needed a break but keeping her in place with an arm across her stomach.

The evening blurred into an orgasmic near-stupor, a haze of irresponsibility. Some part of her still refused to believe Severus would harm her, and that appalling trust opened the way for debauchery. Her body shuddered and strove toward everything he was determined to make her feel, collaborating to bring her to the next peak, the next tangled, flushed, pulled-tight knot of extremity. His tongue's wanton pursuit, every stroke or squeeze or plunge of his intrusive fingers, the streaks of sweaty hair against her inner thighs, the huffs and wet, private sounds he made, set off waves of sensation in her belly. It was deliriously invigorating, a sensual assault for which she wasn't prepared.

As she writhed and gasped, her restless legs and twitching feet occasionally kicking Severus in the arse, she marvelled at the sheer relief shaken out of her by this overload of sensation. The deepest parts of her were sluiced and wrung out. The tissues of her body and bareness of her skin, the sanctuary of a mind shrouded for so long in mourning, felt drowned in heat. She writhed in the sheets and sweated despite the lingering chill. The spasms of pleasure locking her muscles should have exhausted her. The ecstatic arch of her back should have left her limp and drifting toward sleep.

But suddenly it was enough, then too much, it was too much. Exhilarated and possessed, she shoved herself into a sitting position. The moment she moved, Severus was up and off the bed in a scramble of limbs, instantly on guard. He backed toward the door, glittery-eyed and smiling, swaying slightly off-balance as if still in a trance of sexual gluttony. Below the halo of light, his jaw glistened, and in his smile Minerva saw mirrored her own sharp, wild excitement.

Her heart soared with a rebellious need to match him, to best him, a peculiar urgency pounding through her. The reckless conviction of power raised her to her knees, crouched and crackling with magic. It flooded her in cleansing waves of sexual elation. Still on her knees, shoulders covered in her sweaty hair, she cried, "Severus!"

There was a clatter against the other side of the bedroom door, again, then again, a frantic rattle of wood on wood. "For shame!" Minerva gasped, dizzy with the luxurious ache between her legs and the rush of blood to her head. "To charm my room so my wand canna reach me."

"I will not duel you here," Severus retorted, his smile wolfish and wary, his wand swishing efficiently to bring his robes flying. He swapped hands to force his arms through the sleeves. It struck her suddenly as odd that he wore so many clothes. She'd expected him to favour the pureblood preference for robes and nothing else. Perhaps it was for warmth. Perhaps he felt the urge to armour himself, to layer superficial dignity upon the rot beneath. And perhaps there was a Muggle part of him lurking under the boasts of wizarding supremacy, a refusal to disown that kernel of his identity no matter how much he professed to hate it.

But why did he look so pleased? By rights he should have lashed out at her for having the gall to threaten him. On the contrary, he quivered almost as visibly as she did, as ravished by the combative crackle of sexual excess and righteous insanity. She felt impassioned, aglow with a sacrificial clarity, certain down to her bones of the cost of victory and the knowledge that it would be worth it.

"You will lose, Headmaster," she said, knelt on the end of the bed atop the churned-up coverlet. "You know that, don't you? You're going down, and our school will be free again."

"I rather think I've 'gone down' enough tonight without suffering defeat. Trust me, whether I lose or not, our side will prevail." His wand traced a small arc through the air. "Any other outcome is unthinkable."

She resisted the impulse to cross her arms over her breasts. "You believe we're weak, don't you?"

"Since when?" He flicked his wand, and she flinched as her dressing gown slapped down across her shoulders. "Such false modesty, Minerva. How many years have we worked together? I know your mettle. Give me credit for finding your fighting spirit attractive." His smile twisted slightly. "I don't have the taste or time for weakness, and neither do you."

He'd reassembled himself, every inch the bastard who guarded the Dark Lord's interests, who cared so little for children he condoned their torture. Yet he smiled - and oh how it rankled, how it burned inside Minerva, because Merlin's breath, he radiated a self-possession so powerful it overcame all sensible recoil from the state of his hair, his perpetual sneer (although he was smiling now, smiling), the self-neglect that had marked his existence from the moment he'd set foot inside Hogwarts, a sign of scorn for himself he'd never outgrown.

"I can best you in a fair fight," she said, her body still gripped by erotic confidence. "Someday, Headmaster, if the world is just, you and I shall duel, and I'll prove it."

"You're well aware the world isn't just." Severus stepped back until he reached the door, keeping her in view. "Thus I fully expect that, yes, it will come to wandpoint between us." He placed a hand on the knob. "And you'll do your damnedest to kill me, won't you, Minerva?"

In a single calculated move, he opened the door just enough for his narrow body to scrape through, ducking the speeding arrow of Minerva's wand as it flashed past the doorframe and dove toward the bed. She snatched it out of the air as the door clicked shut, and only bare wood splintered with the force of her wrath.

***
A child was crying.

Minerva, on her way to the staff lounge between classes, paused in the empty corridor. That wasn't merely crying. A child was sobbing, voice wavering upward in increasing terror.

She lengthened her stride, fury hastening her steps as she overheard one of the Carrows say, "Shut it, you disobedient brat. You want me reporting how you can't be arsed to practice your lessons? How you're so weak you're halfway to being a Squib? Now shut your gob and be glad I didn't assign you an hour-long detention."

There was a short shriek, cut off and trailing into half-swallowed, gulping sobs. "You'll remember this next time, eh?" Amycus Carrow said as Minerva swept around the curve of hallway and took in the horrid spectacle, the pitchy, heavily smoking torch, the girl huddled on the stone floor, and the repellent creature standing over her, wand wiggling between thumb and forefinger.

"That is quite enough," she snapped, trying to freeze her target's blood through sheer force of contempt. "Please confine your discipline to more conventional methods, Mr. Carrow. This blameless child has never in her life committed the sort of criminal behaviour that might excuse an Unforgivable. Unlike some I might name," she said under her breath, but not so quietly that Carrow could overlook it. The traces of gloating that still lingered in his face bunched into a scowl. He stepped in front of his victim, the tip of his wand swinging to point in Minerva's direction.

"Don't be ridiculous," Minerva said, walking past him. The poor child on the floor had wet herself, but a discreet twitch of her wand disposed of the evidence, and the sight of her Transfigurations mistress standing ready to protect her from - well, one could not, after all, call him a 'professor' - from a small-minded, sadistic wanker put some heart into the girl. She gathered herself together and got slowly to her knees, making a heroic effort not to sniffle. A small red line dribbled from her mouth, and Minerva almost threw discipline out the window. Merlin's bloody wand. The lass had bitten her tongue.

"Up you go, Ingram," she said briskly, holding out her hand. She managed to wait with perfect outward composure, although inwardly she was seething with the consuming desire to Cruciate Carrow straight into the Janus Thickey ward.

Ingram - Maddy, her name was - accepted the proffered help, and Minerva squeezed her cold fingers reassuringly before letting go to rummage out a pocket handkerchief. "You may keep it," she said, maintaining her placid exterior for the child's benefit. "And may I suggest you drop by the infirmary and visit the matron on your way back to your dorm."

"Nay, but we haven't finished our revising here, have we now, my little Hufflepuff," Carrow said in a falsely jovial tone.

"Be on your way, Ingram," Minerva said, readying her wand.

"I just told you we're not -"

She felt a surge of grim excitement. "And I tell you we are." Ah, but she was overdue for a fight. "Stop dawdling, child, and do as I say. Take yourself off to Madame Pomfrey this minute."

The girl jerked forward with a sudden squeal of alarm. "Professor!"

Minerva took her eyes off Carrow for half a second at the very instant a quiet, blood-curdling voice said, "What means this preposterous - Protego!"

An explosion of curse-light burst around her, a dazzling nimbus that obscured Minerva's view of the corridor, ceiling, and the participants in this tawdry drama. The many-tendrilled nebula writhed over a shell of protective magic and fizzled out, spending itself harmlessly against a Shielding charm. She was left standing untouched, eyes watering, wand unsure where to point, the very walls vibrating with the intensity of hatred rising from herself and her adversary.

As the light-blindness faded from her vision, the darkest shadow in the corridor detached itself from the other shadows and moved forward to stand between her and Amycus Carrow. Apprehension spread through Minerva at the headmaster's appearance. The tarnished glow of torchlight in which they all stood threw rendered Snape's robes as black nothingness, the disembodied antithesis of light, from which his pale face and hands emerged as deliberately poised as a mannequin's, as precisely controlled as a puppet's. He looked like a man swallowed up to his neck by an impenetrable void.

"Get out," he hissed at Maddy Ingram where she lingered in an obvious agony of indecision, her tear-stained face turned plaintively to Minerva. Minerva nodded permission, willing the girl to get herself to safety. Maddy edged away but glanced back over her shoulder every few seconds, her footsteps skittering faster and faster the farther she got from them. The patter of running feet soon faded down the corridor, sounding very much like Mrs. Norris chasing a mouse.

Snape's quiet voice stepped into the silence, reminiscent of the unnerving snap of ice under the stalking paws of a predator. "Well? I expect a clear accounting of what has led two of my staff to lurk in unoccupied corners of the castle with their wands pointed at each other's throats."

"She defied our Lord's will," Carrow leaped in at once. "Just showed up and stuck her snooty conk into my private lesson. You can't maintain order or command respect if sodding Gryffindor witches are free to run amok and insult you in front of your own sodding students. She ruined a valuable lesson, she did. Tell her to mind her own bloody business, Snape, 'cause if she don't -"

"You will address me as 'Headmaster,' Professor Carrow," Snape said midway into this tirade, so soft, so uninflected, the sullen torch dimmed until the tip glowed like a red-hot poker, shedding next to no light. A harsh smell crept through the hall, brimstone and throat-stinging, and the temperature dropped several degrees. "I shall indeed remind Professor McGonagall that she is not her students' keeper and that her only role here is to instruct young minds as our Lord sees fit. But I still fail to see why I was forced to cast a Shielding charm if this is merely a disagreement between colleagues."

"You weren't forced," Carrow grumbled.

"Pardon?" Snape's frosty whisper crackled along Minerva's bones. "Would you care to repeat that? Remember to whom you speak, Amycus."

"Don't 'whom' me," Carrow said. "I don't see what you're doing to remedy the situation. If the Dark Lord knew -"

"But his Lordship does know." The murderous silkiness of Snape's voice suggested he was weighing the benefits of plunging Carrow's head into a boiling Draught of Living Death. Minerva swallowed at the sheer erotic malevolence of it. "He knows everything that happens within these walls. Do you doubt it?"

For a moment, it seemed the idiot would defend his Voldemort-given right to torture children. Carrow had found his métier and was aggrieved that he wasn't at liberty to mangle his toys. If he lashed out, it might even lead to a duel. Minerva was confident Snape could annihilate this bog-dweller, a greater sadist but lesser villain, and he might appreciate being handed the chance.

"More to the point," Snape went on while Carrow stewed over a sufficiently killing riposte, "I have certain dispensations from our Lord that take precedence over your self-indulgent whims. So I'm warning you -" He moved with a swiftness Minerva hadn't foreseen and grabbed her upper arm. "Don't interfere with what's mine. Unless you wish to be called to my office for a disciplinary session of your own, do not raise your wand against Professor McGonagall again. Leave all reprimands and corrective measures to me."

Shocked, Minerva tried to twist away. Snape's grip tightened to the point of pain, and he turned to impale her with a black-ice stare.

"Oi, you actually want this tight-arsed old stick?" Carrow looked her over and wrinkled his nose. "You have peculiar tastes, Snape."

Snape's low, contemptuous laugh brought the threat of death by cauldron that much closer. "What makes you think our Lord objects to me fucking the head of Gryffindor house?" He added sharply, "I'll put you both in the infirmary if I have to," and Minerva understood it was meant for her and lowered the wand that had jerked up to hex him.

"Don't play favourites, blast you," Carrow said. "That's not -"

"Headmaster." Snape's voice echoed as if a knife were being scraped over stone. "Say it, Amycus."

"Headmaster," Carrow repeated, every line of his face conveying how much he wanted to spit. Suddenly bold, he stepped forward to block their way. "But I want to be there when you punish her. I want a hand in it. Tell me you'll -"

"I can think of few things that interest me less than what you want, Professor Carrow. You presume too far by thrusting yourself into my personal affairs." When Carrow opened his mouth to argue, Snape whispered, "Keep in mind that your desires are only important insofar as they relate to our Lord's, and do not involve me in your voyeuristic fantasies again." He raised his wand with serpentine elegance, his duelling expertise advertised in the tense line of arm and shoulder. "I've said all I have to say. Return to your office now or suffer the consequences."

Carrow's wand hand spasmed, but in the end he turned on his heel and stormed off down the corridor, snarling obscenities under his breath.

With a flick, Snape cast a privacy spell.

Minerva tried again to free her arm, to no avail. Almost trembling with rage, she said, "You had no right."

"I had every right." Snape's anger was as icy as hers was hot. "Don't be blind, Minerva. From this point forward, Carrow will be tossing off nightly to thoughts of revenge and sexual humiliation. If you wish to continue serving as a mother cat to your -"

"You had no right," Minerva cut him off, her wand practically humming with rebellious magic. "No sodding right to tell that abysmal bloodsucking tick that I belong to you. I am not 'yours.' There's no power on earth -"

To her shock, he pushed her hard enough to make her stumble, actually knocking her back against the nearest wall.

"Wand down, Professor McGonagall," he said tightly, his own wand tip at her breast. "Hold your wand down, and keep it down, or as Merlin's my witness, I'll Stupefy you and have Alecto take charge of your classes." He drew a hissing breath. "What I will not do is duel you in the corridors over my right as headmaster to handle a situation as I see fit." He waited until, finally able through her haze of pure fury to heed the clamourings of common sense, Minerva loosened her shoulders and stopped struggling to raise her wand. "Whether you like it or not, your behaviour reflects on me," Snape said. "I won't tolerate threats to my -"

He stopped short as if realising his next words would reveal too much. Humiliation scorched Minerva's cheeks, and she said, "So help me, Headmaster, if you say 'property' -"

"Power," he snarled back. "My power, Minerva. As in, authority. Which you would also do well to respect, since your personal safety depends on it."

"It will be all over the school," Minerva burst out, unable to suppress the nausea that rolled through her. "Your friends will spread the rumour that I'm your -" She couldn't bear to choose a word. They were all too horrible. "That I take you to my bed. That I fraternise with Death Eaters."

"And so you do," Snape said. "Your colleagues already suspect the truth, and no power on earth can prevent the students from gossiping. You'll have to endure suspicion and insult, but if you imagined you could escape those forever, you would be something I don't believe you are, and that's bloody stupid." He leaned closer. "Because you do 'fraternise,' although I prefer to call it 'fucking.' Isn't that the basis of the understanding between us? If you wish to withdraw from our agreement, do let me know so I can cease wasting time reining in the Carrows."

Minerva pressed herself back against the cold stone. Snape was still crowding her; trapped between his body and the wall, she recognised that deep unease. "Headmaster, please lower your own wand, otherwise you might as well have saved yourself an unpleasant scene with your minion. If you try to force me, I will fight."

Snape's eyes narrowed, but after letting the possibility hang in the air for a moment, he dismissed it with a humourless snort. "As if arguing in draughty hallways excites me. The only thing I'm interested in 'forcing' you to do is behave with the intelligence I know you possess. I wouldn't have expected you to be fussed by a loss of reputation."

"Of course you see nothing objectionable in me having to pretend I'm a - a Death Eater's lolly."

"Lolly?" Snape scoffed, but Minerva sensed the flare of tension in him and wondered if this was it, the moment their mutual tolerance shattered on the point of a wand.

"Do you deny it?" she said. "Oh, of course, how could I forget the agonies you suffered at having to pass yourself off as Dumbledore's trusted ally, having to deceive and mingle with us foolish Muggle-lovers. The shame of pretending that you enjoyed our company, and the pleasure you must have taken in destroying us from within. So much worse, I'm sure, than making one's oldest friends think you've betrayed them, or than the degradation of being labelled a collaborator, or giving the impression that I'm not 'fussed' by the torture of children." She paused to bring her shaking voice under control. "Do not sneer at me, Headmaster. I've never wanted to be a monster, and you apparently have never wanted to be anything else."

She stopped, chest heaving, when he laid the tip of his wand across her lips. "No more." A muscle jumped in his cheek, inflicting a deeper shadow like a gill-flutter. All his ugliness seemed to rise up and swirl around them, and she felt briefly paralysed by the quantities of darkness he could call upon, his own personal demons, like a creature much closer to a Dementor on the evolutionary scale. His hot breath was sour with anger. "Not a word more."

"Then let me go," she said, and threw an Expelliarmus at close range.

Snape's Protego met it but it still knocked him back a step.

"So this is your courage, is it?" he said with dangerous pleasantry. "Your vanity takes precedence over the safety of your students? If I'd known you'd baulk at so flimsy a thing, I would have thought twice about protecting you. Personally I don't see what would be gained by allowing the Carrows to eliminate you, but no doubt you have some grand scheme." He paused, his calm suddenly forming fault lines. "Well, fuck your reputation." His wand slashed the air. Minerva instantly cast a Shielding spell, but his gesture had been pure temper, void of magic. "You've had your five minutes of bewailing your ill treatment. If this is how you respond to me fulfilling my side of our bargain, then perhaps it's time to end it."

Merlin help her. The temptation to have it out here, now, was so intense she could barely restrain the curse rising in her throat. Her heart pounded with an excess of the sort of terrible passion the healers had warned her against. How ironic if after all this she succumbed to the killing force of her own outrage.

"If your only stratagem is to throw yourself in harm's way," Snape said with a sudden, twisted smile, "then may I convey the Dark Lord's thanks in advance for ensuring his ultimate victory."

Minerva stepped slowly away from the wall, hoping he wouldn't insist on pushing her back. The revulsion she felt for him in that moment so fiercely spiked and roiled her blood she was having trouble keeping a rational façade. Someday she would duel him. Someday she would make him eat every insult, every touch, every betrayal. She wanted that day to be now. The power of retribution and personal hurt made her certain she could take him down.

But she mustn't. She understood that. She couldn't risk jeopardising the students. It was in everyone's best interests that she wait.

She took another step, then another, her wand ready to deflect whatever Snape might throw at her, but he stood aside, still smiling in that creepy fashion. She walked far enough from him that she could breathe again, no longer so smothered and oppressed by physical disgust that her thought processes were compromised.

To demonstrate control, she made herself face him. "Very well, Headmaster. Spread your lies. You're right that what other people think is of little moment. What you think of me matters not at all. I still regard our bargain as ongoing and the children's safety as my price."

He had lost the horrible smile and reverted to his cold, sardonic default, a mask with no nuance and no human warmth. Minerva felt how utterly alone she was in this dim, untravelled corridor. If Snape changed the terms of their bargain, she would have nothing left to offer. Thus it was despair that made her say, "At least I have the comfort of knowing that when Voldemort falls, you will fall with him."

If she had hoped to wound him, it flew wide of the mark. He didn't even bother raising an eyebrow. "If it comes to that, I expect long before the Dark Lord falls I'll be dead."

Any answer to that would risk open combat. Faking indifference, Minerva turned away, desperate to escape his orbit and make a speedy retreat to a brighter, more crowded part of the castle. She could feel his gaze on her, the inscrutable assessment of a spy.

"If I die, Minerva, will you weep for me?"

It was said in the same dry, cold, mocking manner that used to irritate her without fail when he was merely Severus, her grudge-stroking colleague. She stopped walking and gathered herself as if the question required thought.

"No," she said finally. "No one will, Headmaster." She glanced back at him. "There will be tears a-plenty for the victims of your master, but you've placed yourself beyond the realm of mourning. I won't shed a single bloody tear, and I don't think you expect me to." She paused, hearing the cruelty in her own voice. "Nor can I imagine you weeping over me."

He said quietly, "I could make you weep. I could curse you where you stand. I haven't yet, but I can't promise I won't." His head tilted, and for some reason he looked around at the walls and ceiling, then back at her. "So now our positions are clear. No regrets."

She stayed still for a moment longer, wondering if that was a warning not to turn her back. To her chagrin, an inconvenient surge of emotion opened up in her breast. How strange that a threat against her should stir the very thing Snape was choosing his words with such care to destroy. Here was the last gasp of charity, the last sharp, poignant twist of regret, carrying away her anger and even her fear. This was where the line was drawn. No matter how warmly entangled or emotionally raw they had been together in bed, he was lost to her. He was lost to them all. If Albus' murder hadn't managed to convince her of that, this encounter in the hallway crushed her last doubts and silenced her scruples. It was the death of hope.

"Go back where you belong, Minerva," he said, and she was glad to obey. Head high, shawl pulled fastidiously over her shoulders, she turned and walked on, muscles braced for the obliterating impact of Dark magic.

For the entire distance to the cross-corridor where she could turn left and be shielded from danger, Minerva felt Snape's eyes upon her. Those few silent seconds, with her skirts brushing her legs and the rough, thousand-year-old stone walls her only witness, were some of the most disturbing of her life. Once, she would have considered it even odds that Severus would hex an opponent from behind if he thought it would give him the advantage. What were her chances now, if even in the so-called 'old days' she had assumed his instinct for ruthlessness over honour?

The silence dogged her to the turning, a silence longer and emptier than the length of one hallway. At the corner, she was tempted to look back but couldn't afford to show weakness. So she walked on, leaving him behind in the echoing corridor, her back straight and steps driven by the staccato blows of her heart, like fists pounding on a barred door. Tears of anger blurred her eyes, and she blinked them back, but they welled up again and again. By the time she gained her room, they were tears of lamentation instead. So many losses, so much betrayal, the fear of violence in the air, and the ineradicable memory of Severus saying "I could make you weep."

She seriously considered not going down to the Great Hall for dinner, as the prospect of encountering him again tied her stomach in knots. In the end, she took her seat as usual and played deaf to the sound of the Carrows sniggering further down the table.

She needn't have worried. The headmaster wasn't at dinner that night, and Minerva overheard rumours that he'd been called away to meet his hideous master. She hoped Voldemort found fault and that Severus suffered his displeasure every bit as much as the children who screamed through the Carrows' 'practical' demonstrations.

It was the least he deserved. Someday, Merlin willing, Minerva herself would see to the rest.