14 - The Odds Are Long

The silence was heavy and stifling, and once again, his throat felt tight – this time not with the urge to cry, but to scream, or at least to say something. Anything. He was generally a fan of silence, but not silences like this. But he restrained himself from breaking it, because that was up to Laura. The air was cool against the skin on his arm, so rarely uncovered, and without looking at her, he twitched his sleeve back over the tattoo.

"...How long have you...?" she faltered, and although the anger hadn't left her voice, it had been joined by something much worse; the unsteady timbre of fear.

He swallowed, digging his nails into the skin of his wrist. "A little less than a year. I was initiated into his inner circle when I turned seventeen. That's when they give you the Mark." His voice was dull, as dispassionate as he could make it, the words clipped and precise. Even so, even withdrawing from the situation as much as he could, he couldn't bring himself to look at her. "But I've been working officially on his side since the beginning of sixth year. He saw potential in me." And, he suspected, the Dark Lord had also seen the dangerously simmering resentment in him – the combined pain of Lily and a long hard summer with nobody to turn to – and known it could be turned against him. He would be angry at having been taken advantage of that way, but he knew that being with the Death Eaters had more than served his own purposes.

Until now.

Now he risked a glance at Laura, out of the corner of his eye, and his nails dug a little further into his wrist. She'd edged away from him slightly, and was giving him a look which wasn't precisely fearful, but was definitely cautious, like he was a dangerous beast she'd set out to study. For the first time, he wondered whether his mistake might not have been in coming here, but earlier, in going to Malfoy Manor, in allowing himself to be drawn into the Dark Lord's web...

He couldn't afford to think like that, though. He couldn't afford to doubt. You never knew who might be watching – which, of course, was precisely the problem.

"You see why we can't be around one another?" he said quietly, at last. "You are in harm's way already. Since before I joined them, even, there have been whispers about you. Later, when I became closer... they question me, Laura. Frequently and with increasing belligerence. About why I allow you near me, and whether you are a danger to their cause." Looking away again, he took a long, slow breath. "I apologised because... because I knew when I agreed to come here that it would be dangerous for both of us. And I did it anyway."

Again, that silence, long and deadly.

"Why?" she asked, softly.

He blinked, not understanding. "I..." he began, and cursed his own hesitation. But he really didn't know the answer. Eventually, unwillingly, drawn out by the sense of overwhelming responsibility to her, he admitted, "I thought it might make you stop asking questions. You were talking about things I would prefer left well alone. I thought, perhaps, I could draw you off the topic by giving you what you wanted."

"That's a lie." Her voice was surprisingly gentle, which made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "You wouldn't have come just because of that. You must have known that I would not be satisfied as easily as that. You must also have known that I would have respected your wishes if you'd asked me to leave the subject. So why? Think about it."

And, grudgingly, he did. He hadn't known that she would have left the subject if she'd been asked, but other than that, he knew she was right. He was trying to assign logic to a situation in which he had acted completely illogically; trying to excuse himself for his own irrational stupidity. When he thought about it, there was really only one answer.

Why?

Because he hadn't wanted to be alone.

It took him several minutes to force himself to that conclusion, during which time she watched him unerringly, with a tiny, sad smile and her eyes still shiny with unshed tears. Although he didn't say anything, he must have done something to give the revelation away, because she stood up, with a sigh, and nodded.

"That's what I thought."

He looked up at her, his eyebrows drawing together, the question hanging in the air between them: what now? And she looked back, her arms wrapped around herself, belying her upset. There was something challenging in her posture, though, and he recognised it for what it was – a signal that it was his move now, that she'd done all she could. He met her eyes for a moment, then looked down, back at the sleeve covering up the tattoo. The mark wasn't burning, but it might as well have been for all the chance he had of forgetting about it.

This was worse than what he'd done to Lily, and he knew it. He loved Lily more than he cared for Laura, and if the hurt had been equal he would have felt worse about Lily's pain, but the hurt wasn't equal. He'd hurt Lily, but she'd healed, and it had been in anger and in pain and part of him, even now, felt resentful that she hadn't understood that and forgiven him.

He'd done much worse by Laura, and she was making it worse still, because he could see in her eyes and hear in her voice that she had forgiven him, or was starting to, which could only mean that she didn't know the magnitude of what he'd done. How could she? She was smart, but you only had to look around this house, at her parents and at her friends at Hogwarts, to know that she'd had an easy life. She'd have been exposed to the war, of course – all of them had, especially the Muggleborns – but for her it must be relatively distant, something which touched people she didn't know, or only knew a little. She'd never listened to Death Eaters talk, or watched them kill, or looked the Dark Lord in the eye and felt his mind probing into hers. She was a child of war, but she was still just that – a child.

If he'd ever really been a child, he certainly wasn't any more, and he knew what he'd done. He knew how much danger he'd put her in, for the sake of some weak need for company. And he knew there was nothing he could do about it now.

"I can't go back on it," he said, aloud, very quietly, and found to his horror that his own eyes were filling up with tears. He choked them back, praying she hadn't seen them. "Laura..."

She reached out, hesitantly, and touched his shoulder. "If you can't go back on it," she told him, her voice shaking a little, "then you have to go forwards. You... we have to enjoy the rest of the holiday. We'll think of something, between us. I'm a Ravenclaw, and you're the smartest person I know. We'll think of something." Her breath was deep and steadying; he recognised the same tension in her as in him, and he forced himself not to flinch away from her touch.

"I can lie," he said, with sudden certainty. "Even to him, I think. If I really have to..." It was a crazy thought. Of course he couldn't lie to the Dark Lord, probably the most skilled Legilimens in Britain. Severus himself might be a gifted Occulumens, but he was seventeen. He wasn't arrogant enough to suppose that he was a match for the Dark Lord – certainly not enough to suppose that the Dark Lord wouldn't know he was keeping secrets. It was technically possible, of course, but he doubted there was anyone alive, with the possible exception of Professor Dumbledore, who was capable of that kind of thing.

And yet, there was a part of him that whispered maybe... Maybe, if there was enough on the line.

If her life was the prize, maybe.

"First, we would have to come up with a lie for you to tell." She was scrutinising him closely, even as she dug in her pocket for a handkerchief. "If we're careful, it shouldn't have to go beyond Hogwarts, right? If you can convince your friends in Slytherin that you are innocent, then nobody will pass it on to the adults, and both of us should be safe. That's how it works, isn't it? They won't alienate you on the basis of a rumour, or because your Potions partner is some bloody Mudblood?" She pronounced the word with an oddly clipped tone, as if she were quoting something somebody had said to her, and the intonation was so subtle that it took him a moment to realise she was throwing his own words from Christmas Day back at him.

"I don't know," he admitted, softly. "They're... unpredictable. It certainly won't make you safe, but if you keep your head down and don't make it too obvious that we're friends..." It wasn't worth searching for a better term than 'friends', although he still wasn't sure he wanted her as a friend.

"Did you tell them you were going to stay with me?" She was looking through him, probably – just as he was – running the train journey over in her mind to see how much they had incriminated themselves. Not much, he thought – he'd been silent and taciturn for the whole journey, for exactly that reason.

"Of course not." He considered this for a moment. She had a point – they didn't have to know he had been here at all, although that could be utterly ruined if the Dark Lord called him. "Possibly I could tell them that, being of an age of majority, I wanted to take the opportunity to spend Christmas away from Hogwarts. That I found lodgings somewhere in London. That you happened to sit next to me on the train, and I was forced by social mores not to move away." A bitter, humourless smile played at the corner of his mouth. "Or I could tell them I paid a visit to my father. I was considering doing so." He had considered it, too. He'd had time to repent not killing the old bastard – all the time spent vagrant on the road from Spinner's End to London, every time he'd read a story about a Muggle being killed, all the time around his fellow Death Eaters and followers of the Dark Lord. He'd been weak not to do it when he'd had the chance, and looking back on it he couldn't believe he'd left the house without taking his revenge. Nobody would mourn Tobias Snape, except maybe his wife, whose feelings Severus had stopped caring about years ago. Nobody would consider it more important or unusual than any other Muggle killed. He probably wouldn't even be caught...

"You really hate him, don't you?" Laura's soft voice made him jump; he'd all but forgotten she was there, lost in thought as he was.

His nails dug deep into the skin of his wrist. "He is... what Potter will become when Potter gets bitter, jaded, and cruel." It wasn't the most vehement declaration of hate – in fact, it was almost cool, if a little taut – but it was the most damning indictment he could give, and he could see in the slight widening of her eyes that she was starting to grasp the magnitude of his feeling. "He is also completely irrelevant to this conversation."

"I don't know that he is." She was frowning as she dabbed at her eyes. "Is... Severus, is he your problem? With Muggles?"

"My problem isn't with Muggles," he said, levelly. "My problem is with people. He's irrelevant, and we are not going to talk about him. We have to focus on what we're going to do."

Laura regarded him for a moment, her eyes still pinkish from the tears, and then nodded, her voice firm. "I'll tell you what we're going to do," she said with authority, holding her hand out to him. "You're going to get up, we're going to go downstairs for dinner and later to toast in the New Year, and we are going to enjoy the rest of the holiday."

"But, Laura-"

She silenced him, somehow, with a look – something nobody but her and Lily had ever really been able to manage – and a slight, watery smile. "Severus. I doubt we will have time to enjoy anything without stress once we go back to school. So we are going to enjoy it while we can. Understood?"

He had to stifle a smile as he reached out to take her hand. "Understood."