Chapter 4: Vincit qui se vincit

Bright the city: burnished with gold, with marble the colour of a young girl's blush. The gleam of sun- and moonlight upon the winding, twisting canals; on the broad expanse of the lagoon. Light spilling luxuriantly from windows and from the lamps of gondolas, bathing waters, rooms and faces in its warm glow.

Dark the city: shadows deep and thick gathering around the edges of the piazze, rubbing against the towering walls of churches with feline affection. Clouds gathering in the nighttime to transform the lagoon into an aching yawn of black, the canals to inky ribbons coiling between buildings.

In the brightness is the city's smile, music and laughter, the first flush of young love. In the darkness are the city's knives, quick and vicious, fitting themselves between the ribs of the unwary.

Master Snape knows this, and he watches from the shadows as the people of the city spin through the light. He remembers the feel of a heartbeat quickened for the first time, and he remembers the lessons that he learned in the darkness, many years ago. He turns his face to the wind that slinks through the streets, making the lamps shiver and the shadows dance. It will soon be time, he thinks, to pass those lessons on.

oOo

But, for now, enough of that, for here is a secret: hate is a cruel mistress, but love is crueller still.

oOo

"Concentrate!" Master Snape barks, sending a stinging hex towards Daphne's ankles that she only barely leaps away from, and she grits her teeth with frustration as she struggles to find her balance.

All day she has been like this, barely able to think, let alone move, perched upon the edge of something and staring into the unknown that lies ahead. Unbidden the image of the dark night gathering beyond an open casement springs to her mind, just waiting to be leapt into.

Perhaps I'll rob your father next -

"Lady Greengrass." Master Snape's voice is soft - deadly - and she looks up to see him watching her with his unreadable black eyes. Everything about him is dark, but he does not possess the pompous solemnity of the Priests, nor the ostentatious self-importance of the members of the Ministero. He is fluid as oil, gliding across the water, never mixing, always apart-

"My lady," he says again, and this time there is an unmistakable note of impatience to the words. "If you will not pay attention to the lesson, I hardly think it worth my while to tea-"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Daphne blurts, surprising herself as much as her instructor, whose eyebrows twitch together in an expression that could be shock, or irritation, but is, in any case, banished from his face almost as soon as it appears.

"Tell you what?" he asks quietly, and Daphne's jaw tightens as she draws on the mulish stubbornness that she so rarely deploys, but that makes her and Astoria more alike than either would ever admit.

"That he would be there last night."

Had she expected another flicker of emotion on his face Daphne would have been disappointed, but she knows Master Snape better than that by now; knows that having let her surprise him once today he will not do so again.

He considers her closely, and Daphne sees the moment of decision in the set of his mouth. After so many years she can read his face as well as her father's, she realises, though the mask that Master Snape wears is blank, whereas Hyperion hides his thoughts behind his smooth politician's smile.

"Even if I knew who you were talking about," Master Snape says slowly, "Why is it that you think that I would concern myself with the trite affairs of children?"

Daphne stares at him, furious and a little abashed. In their sconces the lamps flicker, and the walls give a creaking groan as magic snaps through the air of the room. All that Master Snape does is hold her gaze calmly, waiting her out. Just like that, she understands: it is another dance - the exchange of information; the revealing of secrets.

The lesson to be learned, she knows with sudden, indubitable clarity, is how much to give away. And, of course, surmising how much information your opponent has to give in return.

Wield your secrets like a knife -

"Because you make it your business to know things," Daphne says, trying to keep her tone light as she casts a baited hook into the conversation. "After all, if Harry Potter is not in the grip of the Ministero then he is surely in yours."

"Mine?" hums Master Snape, and there is a tiny, quizzical lift at the corner of his dour mouth. "I feel that I should assure you, Lady Greengrass, that Harry Potter is most certainly not under my control." His voice takes on a note of polite enquiry that doesn't quite cover the wry amusement in it. "Whatever would lead you to think that?"

You made a mistake, he seems to be saying. Revealed too much, too early.

Daphne sighs, and tosses her hair. "The missing son and heir to the house of Potter turns up to burgle Lord Malfoy's private office," she says ignoring the way that her heartbeat speeds at the memory of the small room, of the way that Harry seemed to fill it with his presence. "And you claim not to be interested?" Master Snape says nothing, so she goes on. "Had I known beforehand that I would need to absent myself from the dancing in order to deal with a thief in the house of my betrothed, I might have been disposed to be a little more helpful."

The amusement in Master Snape's eyes has faded by the time she stops talking, and his mouth twists in naked disapproval.

"That boy is hopelessly reckless," he says sharply, "worse even than his father." He grimaces again, and Daphne feels a mixture of satisfaction and surprise that something is able to break through Master Snape's sangfroid. It's on the tip of her tongue to question his obvious disdain for Harry when he turns his pitch-dark gaze back to fix her with a shrewd glare. "Did he find whatever it was that he was after?"

I can hardly leave here empty-handed -

Daphne lifts her chin defiantly, fighting the blush that threatens to stain her cheeks. "I think that he found robbing Lord Malfoy more of a challenge than he was expecting," she says. Her tone is crisp, and pert, but it isn't an answer, and she can't quite meet Master Snape's gaze as she speaks.

I got what I came for, Harry smirks in her memory.

There is a beat of silence while Master Snape seems to consider her, and then his eyes narrow. "What I find strange," he murmurs, "is that Miss Granger was not there. Wherever Potter goes she is usually not far behind."

Daphne thinks of the way that Hermione's eyes had widened as she looked at Draco - the decisive placement of her hand in his - and cannot hide her flicker of surprise, raising her eyes to Master Snape's quite without meaning to, and then finding herself unable to break his stare. Not for the first time she has the unsettling feeling that those black eyes can see all the way through her thoughts.

"Lady Greengrass?" Master Snape presses, impatience lending his voice the barest edge.

"She was -" Daphne begins to say, but then there is a glint of something in his eye and she stops herself, thinks back over his words.

She is usually not far behind.

"You already know she was there," she says softly. "You know Hermione, so you must - you sent -"

"I advise you, my lady," Snape's tone holds a warning now - and here - here is the lesson, Daphne thinks - "That it would be most unwise to assume that I know anything at all about what Potter and his friends get up to, let alone to accuse me of sending them to steal from one of the city's luminaries."

Guess, and guess, and guess again.

"But if you didn't -" Daphne starts to say, then falls silent when Master Snape raises a single eyebrow.

"Was that a question?" he murmurs silkily, and Daphne bites her lip, choosing her words carefully.

"Perhaps you did not send them," she says slowly, "But you know what they were there for."

Master Snape gives her a long look. "Are you sure," he asks finally, "That you want to know?"

oOo

Late that evening Daphne stares unseeing at her reflection in the glass, hearing nothing above the thrum of her own pulse in her ears. She had known of course - known that there had to be reason for the fear, for the mistrust, for the secrecy surrounding magic, but it is as though she has never truly believed it until now.

A Horcrux, Master Snape had said, is an object that contains a piece of the maker's soul, separate from their body, ensuring, so long as the Horcrux exists, that the maker cannot die.

Heresy! Daphne remembers a priest shouting one Sunday, spittle falling from his lips to spray the first row of worshippers. She had thought it strange then, unable to reconcile his vitriol, his terror, with the warmth and brightness of magic in her veins. But she knows now: knows what it is that makes the priests, makes the people, so very afraid of magic.

The soul is rent by an act of wilful murder, the energy of the victim trapped and harnessed to allow the caster sufficient control to place the severed portion of their soul into their chosen vessel -

Why are you telling me this? Daphne had asked, staring at Master Snape in horror.

Because this is what the Pretender did, he says, his voice cold and merciless. Not once, nor twice, but seven times, and it is for this reason that we know that he will return, and that boy is the last thing that stands between us and disaster.

Harry? Daphne could not keep the shock from her voice. Why Harry?

Master Snape had tipped his head so that half of his face was bathed in shadow, but she had seen, nevertheless, the deep well of sorrow laid momentarily bare.

Because his mother died to save him, he answered perfunctorily. Love, Lady Greengrass, is a magic more terrible even than Death.

Daphne's breath has grown ragged without her notice as she recalls the conversation, and she jumps to her feet, her hairbrush falling from nerveless fingers as she rips at her stays, desperate to be free of them. There is a fury inside her, a wild longing awoken by the press of Harry's chest to hers, the taste of his mouth, but with it lives the fear, the horror of what she now knows magic to be capable of.

The Ministero deny that the Pretender will return, and they would take practitioners and train them to be good little servants of their authority. If they had their way, there would be no caster capable of fighting him when he comes back. Master Snape had looked back at her then, a sudden urgency in his face. That could not be allowed to happen.

Why me? she had whispered. Why did you choose me?

Master Snape's black gaze had been unwavering on hers. Magic chose you, Lady Greengrass, he said simply. It is what you are.

But magic is a secret that Daphne has held to herself so closely; bound the cutting edge of it so tightly against her body for so long; that it seems as though to wrench it free, to be what Master Snape tells her that she must be - someone who will act, who will fight, and not simply exist to be looked at - might unstop something at the core of herself and allow everything that she is, everything that her lowered eyes and winsome smiles keep hidden, to come spilling out, to finally be seen.

Daphne laughs helplessly as she looks back at the glass, for she has only ever been an object to please the eye. But what is it that men see when they look at her - what it is that make their eyes glint with greed, their faces turn wolfish with longing?

It isn't her.

It is the fact that her hair is as golden as the coins that weigh down the purses at their belts; that her lips curve with the grace of the finest gondola. It is the way her breasts swell like the waves of the lagoon. It is that her eyes are as blue as the sky and her skin fair and smooth as Carrara marble. But her face - her beauty - is a mask, has been a mask since she was a little girl. Daphne sees herself more clearly in the sketch of her hands on the air as they shape a spell, in the way that her feet fit themselves nimbly to the tiled rooftops of the city, and in the movements of her body as she dances as Master Snape has taught her, than she ever could in the looking glass.

She presses her hands to the cool marble that tops her dressing table, meets her own eyes in the mirror. The marble feels liquid under her fingers, shaping and reshaping, the red veins in the stone flowing like blood. This feeling, the control and power, is what she is. Her face is - "Meaningless," Daphne murmurs, watching as a frown turns her features severe. There's a sound like the groaning of winter ice on the Grand Canal, and cracks web their way across the glass, splitting Daphne's beauty into nonsense fragments.

She gazes at the glass a moment longer, feeling a calm sense of satisfaction wash over her before she turns to look out of the window. Night has settled across the shoulders of the city, the moon's face peering out from behind unseasonable cloud. It is a good night for the rooftops, and Daphne tugs again at the dress that she has half-ruined, finally wrenching herself free and pulling the bundle of boy's clothes from where they lie tucked beneath the bedframe.

If it were up to me I would say that you were not ready, Master Snape had said, but unfortunately things move outside of my control, and I must be content to allow impetuous children to run amok.

Where? Daphne had heard her own breathless excitement, and had not cared.

A tavern in Castello. The Hog's Head. Do not get caught.

oOo

She can hear the tavern from two streets away, raucous shouts and wild laughter, and Daphne pulls her neckerchief higher, turning the collar of her coat up as she approaches. She has smudged dirt over her face, but she doubts the disguise would survive a great deal of scrutiny. She notes with relief that it does not seem to be the sort of place where one is required to remove one's hat, at least if the caps dotted among the crowd spilling onto the little piazza are anything to go by.

Shouldering her way to the door, Daphne pushes inside and is immediately assaulted by a wave of heat and even greater noise, and by the ripe scent of many unwashed bodies. It is nothing like the heady smell of the crowd at a ball - this is earthy, pungent, and mixes with the odours of woodsmoke, of spilled beer and wine to create an overpowering stench that has Daphne close to gagging.

Blinking tears from her eyes she winds her way carefully through the crowd, her magic gently pressing people out of her way, subtle and unremarkable, and yet enough, she hopes, to catch the attention of someone who knows what they are looking for.

When she reaches the bar she rests her elbows on it, pretending to crane her neck for a look at the dusty bottles that line the back wall, but in fact counting slowly in her head.

One -

Two -

Three -

"I don't know you," says a hard voice in her ear, and she turns her head slightly to meet a pair of bright blue eyes.

Daphne smiles, slow and unconcerned, raking her gaze across the man's face. He is tall, lanky almost, his face freckled and his unruly hair a shocking shade of red. He'd be quite striking, she thinks, if it weren't for the look of deep distrust that turns his features almost to a snarl.

"You don't," she agrees pleasantly. "But your leader does, and it's him that I'm here to see."

The man frowns at her, the petulant look on his face making him suddenly boyish, and Daphne realises that he must be around her own age. "I don't know what you're -"

"Spare us both the trouble," she says, with the flat dismissal that she has learned from Master Snape, "And take me to Harry."

Beneath his freckles the man pales slightly, and his hand closes tightly around Daphne's upper arm. "You must have some sort of death wish," he mutters, as he pulls her through the crowd towards a rickety staircase at the back of the room.

Up the stairs and they turn onto a narrow landing, lit with tallow candles from which thick trails of oily smoke hang upon the air. The red-haired boy raps sharply at a door at the end of the landing, and hauls Daphne through it when a muffled voice speaks from the other side.

The room is dimly lit, but a quick glance around it tells her that there are about ten people in there. It is dominated by a large desk on which a map has been laid out, and behind it Harry sits, elbows on his knees and his fingers steepled in front of his mouth. He looks up at their entry, and Daphne sees his eyes go wide.

There's a movement behind Harry, and Daphne sees Hermione stepping forward, her face slack with shock, until Harry stops her with a hand on her wrist.

Daphne feels the redhead draw himself upright beside her, about to start speaking, and takes the opportunity to elbow him in the ribs, forcing him to release her arm as she steps up to the other side of the table from Harry. As she does, she pulls the cap from her head and vanishes the dirt from her face, summoning a stool from where it has been pushed against the wall and perching on it.

The room has fallen silent save for the muffled noise of the tavern downstairs, and Daphne quirks an eyebrow at Harry.

"If you will insist on showing up at my parties without an invite," she smirks, "it shouldn't surprise you when I return the favour."

For a long moment nobody says anything, and then Harry slowly starts to smile. "My Lady Greengrass," he says, inclining his head graciously. "Master Snape told you where to find us?" he asks.

"And what you're up to," Daphne nods. She pulls her gloves from her hands with practiced delicacy, dropping them to one side and fighting a grin when one of the men hovering at the edge of the room rushes forward to catch them.

"He did?" Hermione asks, her voice squeaking slightly with surprise.

"Horcruxes," Daphne says, the one word making the quiet of the room thrum with tension. Harry's eyes do not move from hers, and though she can feel heat moving up her neck and across her face, Daphne does not look away. "But really, Lord Potter, housebreaking? I would have thought it beneath you."

Behind her someone - Daphne thinks it might be the boy called Ron - makes a strangled noise of indignation, but is quickly shushed. Harry's eyes narrow very slightly. "What would you suggest as an alternative?"

Daphne allows herself a small smile. "I have always found," she says, "that the easiest way to gain entry to a house is through the front door."

She sees the glint of Harry's teeth as his smile answers hers, and Daphne hears again the thrum of the blood in her ears. What was it that Master Snape said?

Love is a magic more terrible even than Death.

She doesn't doubt it.

A/N: This one goes out (belatedly) to jadepresley. Happy Birthday you gorgeous loon! The title means 'he conquers who conquers himself' and it's also (lol) the motto seen on the stained glass window in Beauty & the Beast.