After three days of rest, Rosaline was back to feeling more like herself on Monday, with the exception of a lingering cough that seemed to always make itself known whenever she went near the putrid bouquet Gilderoy Lockhart had sent, wishing her to "Get well soon! Though I am all too happy to be covering your classes for you, I fear your students may be severely disappointed when they no longer have me for classes twice a day! Best not to let them get too attached to me! ---Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award." She'd burned the note.
On the up side, both Professors Flitwick, Vector and Dumbledore had all paid a visit to her rooms over the weekend to see how she was convalescing and, after a visit from Poppy Pomfrey on Sunday evening, she had been deemed well enough to return to work, something for which she was both thankful and fearful.
The latter emotion was the most prevalent now, as she stood in front of her first class, a group of fifth-year Ravenclaws who were normally one of her favourite groups to teach. At least they were all looking more or less relieved that she was back.
"Feeling better, Professor?" Penelope Clearwater, a prefect with a lot of curly dark hair, enquired as she passed by Rosaline's desk on her way to her seat.
"Oh, yes, much, thank you," the History of Magic professor replied, forcing a nervous smile as the bell rang and the class officially began. Taking a deep breath (and consequently exhaling it in a cough), Rosaline stood and cleared her throat, regarding her students with some hesitation.
"Good morning," she began, and was met with several responses of the same that led her smile to widen somewhat. "Um...would anyone care to tell me where you left off with Professor Lockhart?"
Ravenclaw House's Quidditch Keeper and captain, Roger Davies, stood and adopted one of the widest, most insincere smiles Rosaline had ever seen. "And in the beginning," he said, lowering his voice to a theatrical boom, "...there was Gilderoy! That's right, me! And I said, 'Let there be light.' And there was, shining out from beneath my azure and chartreuse plaid silken underpants---"
The class snickered collectively, and Davies took a bow, and then his seat. Rosaline, on the other hand, looked absolutely horrified.
"Oh, gods, I am so sorry," she apologised. Damn that man! What on Earth was the headmaster thinking to allow him to take over in my absence? "Can you ever forgive me?"
"It's no big deal," said Davies, now grinning much more earnestly. "While you were on your death bed, most of us reverted to our previous habit of sleeping through this class."
"Oh. Well, that's a relief," Rosaline sighed, visibly relaxing somewhat with the knowledge that not too much damage had been done to her precious subject. "I'll still make it up to you, though. So...shall we begin where we left off on Wednesday? Open your books to page five-hundred-seventy-two. Miss Clearwater, if you would read the first paragraph aloud?"
As the girl read (it was a rather long paragraph), Rosaline's mind drifted, still consumed in confusion over the peculiar dream she'd had whilst in the midst of fever. The fact that the next dream she'd had was one concerning a flock of parrots taking control of the Knight Bus did nothing to alleviate her bewilderment. When Pomfrey had arrived at her rooms for a follow-up examination, Rosaline had been most embarrassed to learn of her volatile outburst in Snape's presence, and that the faint purplish bruise that now discoloured his left cheek had been the result of that. Her face had flushed earlier that morning at breakfast when she'd caught his eye, and she felt quite deserving of the fierce glare he'd seen fit to bestow upon her. She would have apologised to him, if she thought for one moment that he would accept it, or if she hadn't been more unnerved by the nature of the incident than whether or not he blamed her for it---which, she was certain, he did. It was just another tick for him to add to the "mad" box.
A second possession.
The thought squirmed its way into her mind before she could push it away, but that didn't stop her from countering it.
No. A dream inspired by the first one---the only one. And even that much is debatable.
Rosaline wasn't sure which theory worried her more---that she was indeed being sporadically controlled by some nameless spirit, or that it was all her, all in her head.
You are going mad again.
She shook her head almost imperceptibly. No. I'm not. That is unacceptable.
You know what happens when you refuse to accept things, Rosaline.
"Professor?"
Her mouth twitched into a small, acrimonious grimace. As though I could forget.
"Professor? Are you all right?"
The questioning voice pulled Rosaline from her ruminations, and she blinked at the slightly alarmed-looking prefect. "What?"
"Um...are you all right?" Clearwater repeated, her pretty face pinkening. "You looked a little..."
"Out there," Davies finished for her.
"Oh," said Rosaline, finally coming to her senses. "Yes. I'm sorry. I just got a little distracted..." In class. Grand way to reinforce a professional front, Ros. Quite rude of you, too.
"With what?" asked Victor MacFarlan, a wiry Quidditch Chaser with a face composed almost entirely of freckles half hidden by a shock of blond hair that perpetually flopped over his forehead.
"Concern yourself with your own business, Mr. MacFarlan," the History of Magic professor murmured brusquely. The students looked a bit taken aback by her sudden irritability, and she cursed herself for being so short with them---it wasn't their fault she was cracking up, and they didn't deserve her taking her frustration out on them. With a brief sigh, she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and stood to begin the day's lecture, hoping that she could immerse herself in the Giant War of 1813---which was both between giants and of gigantic proportions---enough to block out the rather depressing thoughts flowing through her mind.
Not only depressive: Dangerous. I cannot afford to start thinking like this again, not when I've worked so hard to...
To what? Become a neurotic recluse?
"...the Giant War of 1813 was the culmination of centuries upon centuries of tense and distrustful relations between two of the most aggressive giant tribes whose disagreements continuously fed their instinctive thirst for war..."
~*~*~*~*~*~
The remaining two weeks until Halloween passed slowly for Severus. Following Rosaline's recovery and subsequent reappearance at mealtimes, he had taken to eating either as quickly as possible, or within his office, deeming the atmosphere of the Great Hall (so often clogged with the inane chitchat of children, and now with her presence) very much negotiable in his efforts to keep as far away from the woman as possible. When the headmaster had enquired of his absences, he had claimed to be working on a much more difficult final exam, as too many students had passed the one for his class the previous year.
The bruise on his cheek had healed within a week, but he still found himself occasionally running a hand over the place where it had been, as if he missed the dull ache of it.
Ridiculous thought, he inwardly groused on All Hallow's Eve as he took a long drink of wine from his goblet, driven to the Great Hall not so much for the holiday feast as from the desire to escape the raucous noise polluting the dungeons (and therefore his office) from Nearly Headless Nick's deathday party. Even in death, Gryffindors still managed to find ways to exasperate him like no other group could---he supposed it was a silent requirement of being admitted into that particular House, wedged right between "bravery" and "chivalry." He would not have been surprised were the Sorting Hat to add such a lyric in its song for the next year's start-of-term feast.
The Rosebridge woman was a scant four seats away from him, between Flitwick and Vector on Dumbledore's other side. Not far away enough. He kept his eyes on the students, his gaze roaming over all four tables at length beginning with his Slytherins and ending with the Gryffindors, who, he noted, were missing three of their number. A slight smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth at the prospect of seeking out the absent second-years and demanding their reason for not attending the feast, then punishing them regardless of their excuse. There were many reasons why he played favourites so obviously as he did, but to say that because he enjoyed it fell nowhere on that list would be lying.
"Professor Snape." McGonagall's voice, tinged with annoyance and something akin to desperation, cut through the waning end of one of Lockhart's fairy tales which Severus had quickly coached himself to tune out. If she was seeking himself out for conversation, Snape knew she must have been nearing the end of her tether with the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. "Professor Sinistra was telling me earlier today of a recently unearthed study by Galileo on the effects of the moon's phases on magic. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject and its relation to Potions."
Dark gods. And to imagine I thought I was beginning to grasp at straws... "Professor McGonagall," he drawled, intoning both boredom and belittlement in his voice, "you are just as aware as I that the strength of a potion depends on the passion one puts into it as much as any of its ingredients. If a full moon increases one's magical ability, then it is...possible...that a potion brewed on that particular night would be slightly more potent than usual. It is all, of course, dependant on the wizard brewing the potion. No amount of moonlight can turn soup into serum. I daresay you can remember such rudimentary knowledge from your school days." Long ago as they may have been.
The Transfiguration professor's mouth thinned a bit, and Snape contained the urge to sneer. Under normal circumstances, he and McGonagall got on reasonably well, in a formal, you-keep-to-your-House-and-I'll-keep-to-mine sort of way jilted by the occasional spat concerning their respective students, but his sarcastic inclinations had amplified as of late, owing to a number of factors. The blond wizard in midnight blue robes to his left had something to do with that. The mousy witch seated four chairs down from him had a great deal more, though he couldn't for the life of him make sense of why a shy, stammering woman who seemed to be doing her best to keep as far from him as she was capable of would take precedence over someone so ridiculous and condescending as Lockhart. The man actually had the gall to ask him to be his assistant in a duelling demonstration---he, who had memorised more curses by the age of eleven than the majority of the seventh-years currently in attendance at Hogwarts, an assistant.
Snape had, of course, agreed. A chance such as this to vent his frustrations with minimal consequences happened once in a blue moon. If Lockhart wished to make an even bigger fool of himself than he already did---quite a feat in and of itself---Snape was not going to miss out on the opportunity to take part in it. It promised to be the most fun he had had in a long while.
He checked his watch; only a handful of minutes until the feast was over. With any luck, Sir Nicholas would take the hint when the Slytherin students retreated into their dungeon dormitories and begin exorcising his little festivity, leaving the Potions master to rest in peace, or at least sit in peace. During the last few days, the night hours had had him feeling even more restless than usual, almost...caged, with a strange, chilling sensation prickling along his skin as though he were treading on thin ice, too fearful of falling through both to stay, and to move. Sooner or later something would splinter and break, but whether it would be the ice or himself, he did not know.
He drummed his fingers slowly on the table, absently grinding his teeth together, lost in thought. This feeling, whatever it was, greatly unsettled him. It was like being watched, studied---hunted---by a predator cloaked in darkness, the same darkness in which he himself so often sought solace from the day. Something foreign and invading, and yet so very familiar...almost a reflection, which was partially why he found it so damned unnerving. It would have been better if he had felt it of an enigmatic origin---being haunted by those he had...wronged...in the past was something he was nearly accustomed to by now---but as it was, it seemed almost a part of himself, some black corner that had remained dormant, up until now.
Of the two of us, he mused to himself, risking a second-long glance at the History of Magic professor, who was poking absently at the as yet untouched food on her plate, which is the mad one?
He hadn't a chance to answer himself before Dumbledore stood and declared it was time for the feast to come to an end. Grateful for the interruption of his thoughts, Severus rose and followed behind the students with the other professors, lingering toward the back of the steady trickle of bodies out of the massive doors.
That something was wrong registered immediately in his mind as the flow of people suddenly hesitated, then came to a complete halt. Gasps and whispers floated through the crowd, young Mr. Malfoy's voice rising with taunting enthusiasm above them all.
"Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"
He, along with Dumbledore, McGonagall and (much to Snape's irritation) Lockhart began to push through the crowd of stunned students to the front, where Filch had just shouldered his way through.
"What's going on here? What's going on?" the caretaker demanded, then fell back at the sight that awaited him, clutching his face in horror. "My cat!" he shrieked. "My cat! What's happened to Mrs. Norris?"
The Potions master fought to contain a nasty smile at the thought of some great tragedy befalling Filch's wretched feline cohort. Though on neutral terms with the caretaker himself, Snape loathed the beast that perpetually followed at the Squib's heels, if only because he was less than fond of all cats to begin with. Nothing but a mass of matted fur and fluff that licked their paws after walking about in their own filth; ghastly creatures, the lot of them.
"You!" Filch carried on, and Snape's urge to smile multiplied when he saw the recipients of the caretaker's rage---with their punishment, his night would certainly be looking up---waning only when he took in the whole of the scene of the crime. Beneath foot-high words, shimmering in the flickering luminescence of the flaming torchlight, the ill-fated Mrs. Norris hung by her tail, stiff as a corpse, her red eyes wide and glassy. An icy shiver slithered along his spine, as though someone had trod on his grave, as he read the message above the animal:
ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.
His mind buzzed with centuries' worth of legends and rumours flitting through his brain, brought forth by his formidable memory, and he could not force down a strange thrill that welled up in his throat, realising in the back of his mind that those words should not have pleased him as they did. He felt almost...proud, though not of himself. It was the sort of pride he often took in his students when they did well brewing a particularly complicated potion, or received high marks on a final exam.
"You! You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you! I'll---"
"Argus!" Dumbledore finally broke through the swarm of students, and Filch's wrath. "Come with me, Argus. You, too, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger."
Lockhart eagerly stepped forward, and Snape's desire to smile quickly became a desire to see the Dark Arts professor join the frozen cat in being hung by the arse.
"My office is nearest, Headmaster---just upstairs---please feel free---" the blond man offered with far too much enthusiasm than was appropriate. Dumbledore, ever patient, thanked him kindly, extracted Mrs. Norris from the wall, and Snape followed both men and McGonagall up to the first floor of the castle, casting a surreptitious glance Rosaline's way, gauging the witch's reaction. Her eyes were large and unblinking, and her mouth bore no trace of smile, nor a frown, as if the words written on the wall entranced her. Severus narrowed his eyes briefly in suspicion, but continued on his way.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Terrible thing, simply terrible," Flitwick shook his head as he and Rosaline followed the Ravenclaw students up to their tower dormitories.
"Who d'you think is responsible, Professor?" asked Morag MacDougal, a nosy second-year Scot who always had a black ink spot on her temple from the quill perpetually tucked behind her ear, and who proclaimed herself to be the next Rita Skeeter at least twice a week. Now, the quill was in one hand and her journal in the other, both poised to take down and receive whatever interesting facts were bound to spill from her head of house's mouth.
"I'm afraid I cannot say, Miss MacDougal."
"Can't say, or won't say? Has Professor Dumbledore sworn you t'secrecy? Does he know who it is? Does he have his suspicions?"
Flitwick sighed and patted the girl on the knee, ever the bearer of paternal comfort, though his eyes were grim. "Don't trouble yourself with it, dear; I'm sure it will all be rectified soon enough."
Sensing that she wasn't going to get anything worth exploiting out of the Charms professor, but never one to give up without a fight, MacDougal turned her interrogation on the taller teacher.
"What about you, Professor Rosebridge? Who d'you think's done it?"
But Rosaline wasn't paying attention to the overeager girl, and before her silence could be commented on, Morag's somewhat less inquisitive friends Padma Patil and Terry Boot each took one of the Scot's arms and yanked her past the password-taking suit of armour and through the open portal that led to the Ravenclaw common room.
"Now, straight to bed with the lot of you," Flitwick called after them just before the portal door slid shut and the suit of armour swung 'round to stand in front of it, stoic as a Buckingham Palace guard.
"You know they'll be up until three in the morning if you tell them that," Rosaline murmured absently, and Flitwick smiled and gave a small shrug as they reached the door to his private chambers not a stone's throw away from the Ravenclaw dormitories.
"Children will be children. You, on the other hand, look as though you could use some rest. Try not to stay up too late dwelling on things, hm?"
Rosaline nodded and made her way down the corridor as Flitwick disappeared within his rooms. When she got to her own, she unlocked the door and stepped inside, but lingered in the threshold. Now is not the time for sleep, a voice whispered softly in the back of her mind. She swayed slightly on the balls of her feet, hesitant to move in either direction for a moment until the voice returned, You know where you want to go.
Without further thought, she started back toward the ground floor of the castle, the door to her rooms left open behind her.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Snape stormed out of Lockhart's office ("shrine to himself" was actually a better term for it) and down the nearest staircase, silently fuming at both the headmaster's lenience in punishing the three little Gryffindor wretches that always seemed to be hard at work to make his life more unpleasant than it already was, and the blond man's mind-boggling audacity.
Cursed, idiotic, moronic man..."I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep!" Oh, I would thoroughly enjoy watching him try...he could test it on himself in a show of his oh so remarkable bravery. His funeral would certainly be cause for celebration, though he would probably return as a ghost just to spite me and mistake the festivities for an Irish wake...
His jaw clenched as he stepped onto the ground floor and turned sharply right, heading for the dungeons. He had nearly reached the antechamber that would lead him there when something made him pause mid-stride; a low, scarcely audible hum echoed through the Entrance Hall, like a G chord on a cello, melodic and morose. A shuddering breath of cold swirled around him, enveloping him in a heavy sigh of icy air. That's when he heard it---a voice, whisper-soft and without any origin that he could discern, a quiet, ethereal rasp: "Sev-er-us..." Sing-song, childlike, beckoning him toward the direction from whence he came.
Slowly, tentatively he turned---nothing but shadow and moonlight streaming in through the great cathedral windows of the castle met his gaze. And yet...and yet there was something, someone...
His lips parted to ask who was there, to reprimand, but his voice had left him. He couldn't remember willing his feet to move, but he was walking nevertheless, sweeping over to the threatening letters shimmering in the torchlight and then stopping. Waiting.
"You should not let him get to you like you do," another voice, different from the one that had called him to this place, spoke gently from behind him, and he whirled around, half expecting the owner to vanish before he had the chance to see...
...her.
She stood before him, hands clasped behind her back, and vaguely he remembered that he hated when she stood like that, as though she had a knife in her hands and was waiting for him to embrace her so that she could stab him in the back.
"He is entirely infuriating." His words (his?) were spat harshly into the air, as if they had been stuck in his throat and choking him. "I loathe him from the very bowels of my soul."
"Oh, what pretty words," she retorted, her sarcasm diluted by her amusement, as she sauntered toward him, closing the space between them to a mere few inches and running her fingertips lightly over the front of his robes. His eyes darkened, narrowed slightly, and he caught her wrist and pulled her---roughly---closer to him, so that she was pressed flush against him. She gasped in surprise, but did not struggle.
"I prefer the absence of words," he hissed, voice silky and coiling in the air like a serpent, "and the actions that quiet them."
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but he impeded the act, grazing her lips with his. One of her hands came up to wind around his neck and entangle in his hair as she deepened the kiss, the other sliding around to splay possessively between his shoulder blades. A hushed growl rumbled from his throat as his own hands slipped down over her shoulders, over her sides, and came to rest at the small of her back.
He remembered that he adored when she stood like this.
Both the silence and the ambience were shattered suddenly with the resonant chiming of a nearby clock striking midnight. The numbness of the surrounding cold turned to sharpness, the adoration fled his mind instantaneously, and Snape's eyes flew open.
For one stunned moment, they remained stationary, still holding each other, mouths still entwined. But that, too, was fleeting, and they jerked away from each other almost violently, both staggering back a few steps, shocked expressions that asked the same questions mirrored in each other's faces, one question in particular booming above them all until the clock finished letting the time be known: What the hell had just happened?
Snape was the first to recover.
"Explain yourself at once!" he snarled, the words directed at himself as well as at her. Rosaline jumped, startled as his voice cut through the thick fog of confusion clouding her mind.
"I..." she began, trying to make sense of her thoughts. "...wait, no," she shook her head, "you. You kissed me. Why did you---?"
"Woman, I did not! You---" he paused, becoming aware of the loud echo of his voice in the enormous hall and lowering it to an abrasive growl. "You called me here. Whatever this was, it was your doing. What curse was this?" he demanded. "The Imperius?"
"It might have been," Rosaline all but yelled, indignation and bewilderment causing her to forget her usual shyness, "but I certainly wasn't the one using it!"
The Potions master scowled dangerously, his upper lip curled back in an incensed snarl. "I do hope you are not insinuating that I---"
"Who else could it have been? Twice already I've not been myself in your presence! What the hell do you think you're playing at, bringing me all the way down here and...and...taking liberties as you did! Whatever sick game you've constructed in your perverted mind, I refuse to be included in it!"
"You honestly believe I have nothing better to do with my time than to play silly mind-games with an insipid and physically unappealing wench such as yourself? I can assure you, Professor, that you are sorely mistaken. And besides, from where I was standing, I took no liberties that did not wish to be taken in the first place!"
Rosaline's palm met his face with a loud crack, and Severus reacted on instinct, violently shoving her back and pinning her against the wall, his fingertips digging with a bruising force into her upper arms. Her head snapped back and hit the stone with a hard thud, and for a few seconds blackness flooded her vision as a blunt pain flooded behind her eyes. She felt him hesitate, but when her vision cleared she found his face very close to hers, and what sliver of concern that might have been present in his obsidian gaze was drowned by glittering rage that frightened the hell out of her.
"Professor Rosebridge," he whispered, his eyes flashing cruelly, "I advise you never to do that again, and to keep your distance. I will not tolerate another episode of this farce of a fantasy. Have I made myself perfectly clear?"
She bit down on her bottom lip to keep it from quavering, wanting him to leave before the tears pushing against her eyes spilled down her cheeks, and nodded. Without another word, Snape released her and stalked quickly away for his original destination of the dungeons. Rosaline held her breath until she heard the door to the antechamber slam close, then finally exhaled, covering her mouth with a trembling hand to muffle a choked sob. The tears she had been holding in escaped, and for a long while she couldn't bring herself to move, save for the cries that wracked her thin form and made her chest ache with something far deeper than fright or confusion.
~*~*~*~*~*~
He nearly collapsed against the antechamber door the second it had shut, his entire body shaking in fury and the remnants of the passion that had gripped them just before the clock struck twelve. His breathing was harsh and ragged as he tried to will himself to calm, and was met with minimal success.
It had not been the Imperius Curse, which controlled one's body but not one's mind, not really; this had gone far beyond mind control. His emotions had been violated, forced into feeling something which he had never felt before, something which did not exist within him and never would---he had thought.
Love. For those few vile moments, he had loved her. The heat of her pressed against him, the sweet taste of her mouth, and the fleeting knowledge that he was defenceless against her and that that was all right...
He felt as though he might vomit. The chaos, the sudden abandon of those feelings for a woman he barely knew and was definitely not romantically interested in more than unnerved him---they frightened him. Whatever had transpired in that great room, it was deadly, dangerous, and he wanted no part of it. It ended, here and now.
He could hear her quiet sobs through the door, a strange mixture of anxiety and guilt welling inside of him at the anguished sounds. He had meant to hurt her, and had expected to enjoy it. Why the fuck didn't he enjoy it?
Suppressing a shiver from the cold that was taking its time to fade from the air surrounding him, he pushed off from the door and headed with determined but leaden steps toward the dungeon stairwell. He needed a scalding shower, a boiling bath, a bonfire---anything to burn the filth of love from his skin, and steam the memory of it from his mind.
~*~*~*~*~*~
A/N: In case anyone's curious and whatnot, m'sister was digging up some old mp3s and found a theme song for this little story (and then I found myself wondering why it wasn't obvious to me in the first place). Anyway, Sarah McLachlan's "Possession." I'm sure you've all heard it (who hasn't?). Just thought I'd share.
Davies' little Lockhart speech is credited to Faith Accompli, who was nice enough to let me use it, because it amused the hell outta me.
The next chapter should, in theory, be out faster than this one was. Schoolwork got the best of my writing time. Bleh.
As always, many thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter. I appreciate it much.
Tessie: Ta much. Hope you found this part just as interesting as the last.
Faith Accompli: You've already heard my reply to your review, so be happy with another thanks. ;)
Atheis and Aeris Gainsborough: Yes, more I wrote. More I wrote again. Hope you enjoyed.
Veruka: ::nods:: Poor History of Magic. I felt kind of...dirty...after making Lockhart the sub. So, does Snape continue to live up to his bastardry in this part? ::grins::
Fidelis Haven: No, you're not deluding yourself---it's them. And I agree---poor Jane Grey. Got thrown into a bunch of shite against her will and for what? An axe to the throat. But I reckon she's had time to, ah, heal, since then. Figuratively speaking. And I'm doing my best to make Snape nasty. I think the whole forced-to-love thing would definitely not change him for the better, so he gets to be all conflicted.
Amanda: Thanks. :) It's not really the first (past-life-loves thing); more of the second (dead-love-lost thing). They're sort of stuck in a loop and can't get out of it---at least, not by themselves.
And. Um. Yeah. ::runs::