Chapter 2: - Cleansing

Outside Snape's quarters Isabeau paused to pull on her robes and to breath,

At the beginning, when they had first started it, it had been exciting, he had been able to quench her needs, and he had made her feel whole, wanted and even to some extent loved.

But now, after countless nights she felt the pain beginning to creep back into her, filling her with an emptiness that had began the day her life had changed completely, now even he wasn't able to fill that hole.

Silently and quickly she moved along the pitch black corridors, she knew these dungeon passages by heart now and even in this blackness Isabeau knew her way, after a while she uttered the common room password to the damp looking rotten bricks they parted and she climbed inside to the now empty common room beyond. The huge common room Fire had died low by now and the light it cast only fell a foot from its source. Isabeau headed to the girls showers. She always bathed afterwards, spending longer there then she had done with him, cleansing herself of his smell that was clinging to her body.

She simply stood and let the water run over her, soaking every inch of her body as though it was able to wash away all her sins. She laughed a dry and mirthless laugh as she thought about this ridiculous notion. Even if the water was able to free her from her past transgressions there was some evils in Isabeau's past that the most sanctified water would never be able to penetrate, these evils resided deep within Isabeau's soul and now could never be purified.

She had once came close to freeing herself of the hatred and pain that she felt within herself, it had happened the first time she had been with him, it had been her first time with any man and she had been as eager for the act as he had. But as soon as her excitement of him began to fade and their times together became more regular the pain and hatred soon returned, but now they were returning stronger and more heavier then before. She could feel the pain growing inside of her everyday, deep down in the pit of her stomach making her feel sick.

Isabeau sighed, as she finally stepped out of the shower her light blonde hair dripping with water as she towelled herself dry. She could feel the tears starting to burn at her eyes as they often did these days after her time with him. She knew they were not tears of regret or sorrow at being with him or tears of despair at the situation that she had created for herself at this school, being friendless and unpopular suited Isabeau very well. It meant that there was no one to ask her stupid question of her whereabouts or how she was feeling deep down inside. She had never told a living soul about the pain she carried not even her old friends from Beauxbatons, who after several months of Isabeau not replying to their letters had given up on her. This too suited Isabeau as their letters always reminded her of the life that she had had to leave behind, and of her mother. It was for her mother that the tears came.

As the tears stung her eyes she leaned against the washbasin and crouched, it was with great difficulty and pain that she removed her diaphragm, washed it under the ice cold water and dried it, she returned it to the small box concealed deep inside her robes. Like everything about Isabeau this too was a habit, and like most things about her she was probably the only girl in the school that carried her own contraceptive. She had too; Severus had medieval ideas about that sort of thing, along with most of the members of her house. But despite Isabeau's masochistic tendencies she wasn't willing to inflict her world and problems on an unwanted innocent being.

It was long after 3am that Isabeau retired to the girl's dorm, unlike the other houses at the school the Slytherins only had two long dormitories, one for the male students and another for the female students. Each year of that gender shared the dormitory and again unlike the other houses there was no preventative charms to stop each gender entering the others dorm.

Isabeau moved silently passed the many emerald curtained beds towards her own. She was thankful that this night all was quite, there wasn't any sounds of moans or groaning mingling amongst the breathing and snoring of her slumbering peers.

But Isabeau's progression to her bed wasn't as unnoticed as she had thought, unknown to her, the climatic noises that regularly broke the otherwise silence of the dorm had faded only a few hours before Isabeau's return and as Isabeau removed her robes for the second time that night and slipped into her bed covers, final year Draco Malfoy emerged from a fifth years bed. Draco was grinning hard, both at the thought that the young lovesick fifth former would soon realise what the real world was like when she realised she had been tricked into a one night stand by a pro, and the knowledge that Isabeau Navarre had more to reveal then just what had really happened to her mother.