Haunted
By Be Boring
Chapter 19:In the Bakery
In the two days following the trial, Necia realized something that disturbed her deeply. Ever since waking up from her induced sleep, she had been almost constantly worried about Snape. The image of his weak, blood-soaked body hadn't left her once. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw him lying there, breathing with a sound that she supposed wasn't too different from a death rattle.
So far she had been unable to speak about what had happened because she couldn't bring herself to picture Draco's dead body again. Strangely enough, the news about the catastrophic trial hadn't been put out in the Daily Prophet, and no announcement had been made at school. The morning after, her friends had bombarded her with questions about whether Draco had been found guilty or not, but the look on her face made them back off. Not even Crabbe and Goyle knew about what had happened. Even students from other houses had been asking them, but they just shrugged in their ape-ish way and lumbered off, refusing to talk to anyone else.
It was on the third morning that Necia knew she would have to get it off her chest. She couldn't stand the interrogations anymore. Everyone, and that meant absolutely everyone, wanted to know what had happened in that courtroom, and she was the only one who could tell them other than Dumbledore, who hadn't made any kind of announcement. She figured he was waiting for all of Draco's relatives to be informed first. Perhaps that was what was taking the Daily Prophet so long.
When she walked down to the Great Hall where the others were already sitting, it seemed that they could tell by her face that she had something to say, because they all fell dead silent. She took her time sitting down, taking a huge drink of orange juice before clearing her throat a little bit.
"Still nothing in the Daily Prophet?"
Hermione shook her head and held up the paper, where the cover story had a large picture of what seemed to be a national dueling competition. Ginny leaned forward conspiratorially so that no one passing by could hear them and whispered, "So just what happened? It must have been something big, otherwise you could have just told us right away." It occurred to Necia that this was the first time Ginny had actually asked her. They were closer, maybe Ginny could sense that she hadn't been ready to talk yet.
She looked around at them all nervously, then dived into the story. "When Draco showed up, he brought some kind of dust or powder with him that when he dropped it, it blew up everything it touched. He blew up the middle of the room, then I think Snape ran to stop him from getting away, because there was a huge explosion by the door. He must have knocked him over, because I'm sure Draco was going to use the remaining powder to get out of the Ministry, but I guess when they fell the rest of it went off. Dumbledore went to help the Wizengamot because the first explosion made part of their balcony collapse, but I went over to where Snape and Draco were. They were completely buried under this huge pile of broken rocks and pieces of the benches around them. I pulled Snape out, but he was really hurt. He was completely covered in blood and there was this huge gash in his side. It was like he couldn't see me, and his breathing sounded absolutely horrible. Then I tried to get to Draco, but…" She couldn't bring herself to say it aloud.
Everyone was staring at her in shock. If they had been expecting anything, it hadn't been that. "Did you see him?" Ginny asked gently.
She nodded. "Not his face or anything, I stopped digging before that, but I could see the back of his head. There was just so much blood." She had to stop for a moment and close her eyes to collect herself, then finished, "If Snape knocked him over and he fell forward, then there couldn't have been much left of his front side, so it's probably a really good thing that I didn't see his face."
"Was anyone else hurt?" Hermione asked quietly.
"No one died as far as I know, I don't know much about other injuries. Snape really didn't look good, but the last time I saw him he was still alive and the Aurors were taking him to St. Mungo's."
"Hope the git snuffs it," Ron said grimly, stuffing several strips of bacon into his mouth, but at the look on Necia's face, he immediately slowed down his chewing and looked at the table, looking slightly ashamed of himself. "Srrydidn mean upsechew," he managed to force out.
"Come on, Necia, it's just Snape," Harry tried to point out. "What's the big deal?"
"Well, it all sounds great to say you wish someone would just die, but that's before you see them actually at death's door," she replied quietly. "One Auror had me try to keep him conscious, and he was really out of it. At first I couldn't even get him to wake up. It's just hard to see anyone like that," she finished lamely. She really wished she could find out if he was okay, but she didn't want him to know that she had any interest in whether he lived or died, which meant she couldn't ask Dumbledore, but that left her without any options.
When Ginny headed to Charms and the others went to Potions, she was just starting to contemplate a route she didn't really want to have to take, but she knew she wouldn't have any peace of mind until she knew Snape was still alive. She had suspected that he was staying in Hogsmeade somewhere, so maybe she would have to go there herself.
Severus woke up much more calm and rested than usual, although the ache in his side quickly brought him back to reality. He had used the Confusion Draught again last night to help him relax, although the Healers had highly recommended that he not ingest anything other than normal food for at least a week. He hadn't even waited twenty-four hours after he returned to the Hog's Head.
It had taken the Healers a while to correct the damage caused by the gash in his side. It apparently ran much deeper than they had at first anticipated and had practically demolished every organ in the vicinity. At least the Healers seemed to know how to fix everything, although it meant that he had spent nearly forty-eight hours at St. Mungo's. He'd never been there so long in his life. Dumbledore hadn't visited since the early morning hours after the trial, so there was absolutely nothing to do once he had finished reading the paper. In fact, he had slowly made his way through every recent edition of every newspaper and magazine he could get his hands on just to pass the time. After returning to Hogsmeade, he had spent a great deal of time just walking around the town, so relieved to be breathing outside air that he had no interest in returning to the musty atmosphere of the Hog's Head.
For one of the few times in his life, he actually wanted to go out for breakfast. After showering and putting on a fresh set of robes, he headed down the empty street in search of any place that looked as though it had good food. He stepped into a tiny bakery that was filled to the top with the scent of pastries and began looking at the different baked goods with his stomach rumbling. Getting hurt had surged his appetite into high gear.
"I'd like a blueberry muffin," he told the portly, friendly-looking older blonde witch behind the counter.
She smiled cheerily at him. "Here you go, and these are on the house today," she added, setting a tiny glass bowl of doughnut holes covered in powdered sugar on the counter next to his muffin. He paid her quickly and sat down in a booth at the edge of the shop. It had been a long time since he'd had doughnut holes.
"Where have you been?" Severus asked with only half his attention actually on Cassandra, who had just arrived in the library despite the fact that she had been going to meet him nearly twenty minutes earlier. The rest of his attention was on his Transfiguration essay.
"I just had this insane craving after I dropped the rest of my books off in my room, so I made a little detour by the kitchens," she replied, pulling out a large white cloth that had been crudely used as a bag. He looked up curiously only to see several different kinds of doughnut holes come rolling across the table as they escaped from the bag. She had managed to get them smothered in everything sweet that he could imagine, but the ones covered in chocolate frosting were making a beeline for his essay. He just barely managed to get the parchment out of the way in time, but instead one of the tiny balls rolled off the table and landed neatly in his lap, leaving a large chocolate smear on his robes when he picked it up.
"Sorry," she said very unconvincingly as she popped a cinnamon covered ball into her mouth.
"I doubt it," he commented dully, absentmindedly eating the doughnut hole that had dropped into his lap. It wasn't half bad, even though a lot of the frosting was still on his robes. "Why do you always get these when you're craving something sweet? I'd rather have a regular doughnut."
"I don' know, I jus' li'e 'em," she replied through a mouthful of doughnut.
"Snivellus is eating in the library? How very naughty of him," James sneered as he stepped out from behind a bookcase. For once it appeared that he was alone, for there was no sign of his obedient guard dog, Sirius.
"What are you doing in the library, Potter? I thought you were under the impression you knew everything, and I also wasn't all too sure you could read."
"Don't be so charming, Snape, some people might actually start to like you." With that, he picked up a very sugary doughnut hole and lifted it up to study it. "At least it doesn't look like you touched this one. I wouldn't want to get food poisoning."
Just before he managed to put the sweet to his lips, Cassandra took out her wand and murmured, "Reducto." The doughnut exploded into a cloud of dust right in James's face and he leapt back, choking and clearing his throat loudly to get out any doughnut dust that had rushed down his throat before he had expected it. His hazel eyes landed on her.
"You know, you're not nearly as nice on the inside as you are on the outside," he snapped angrily, dusting the crumbs off his robes.
"Just because I'm not nice to you doesn't mean I'm not nice," she commented idly, thoroughly enjoying one of the powdered balls. She didn't even look up as James swept out of their portion of the library, but she smiled indulgently at Severus once he was gone. "That felt really good," she chuckled, carefully selecting a rather plump little sweet that looked as though it had been rolled through a mile of sugar.
Severus smiled back and returned to his essay. An actual smile for the day meant it hadn't been a total loss after all.
Reducto.That was the first memory he had had of her since the night Necia had taken the potion. After that night, his thoughts had dwelled almost constantly on his newer memories, but it was the old ones that were real. That was the time he and Cassandra had truly been together, even if they weren't sleeping together, no matter how much he had wanted to. Everything after that had involved Necia, and therefore just didn't seem as pure to him. Not that anything in his life could actually be considered pure, but Cassandra had come close. That was what had infuriated him so much about the night of Necia's conception. After that, Cassandra was tainted, whether she wanted to be or not.
As he slowly ate his muffin, he began to have the very uneasy feeling of being watched. That's when his eyes landed on the window and the deep blue pair of eyes looking back at him.
It took Necia quite a bit of searching through the seventh year boys' dormitory to find Harry's Invisibility Cloak. She wished she also knew the secret passage that he took to Honeydukes, but seeing as how she didn't, she would have to make due with the little secrets she did know about.
Of course she felt guilty about borrowing Harry's cloak without asking, especially since he had told her in complete confidence about it so long ago, but she couldn't see any other options, and besides, she wasn't planning on keeping it. She would probably miss Care of Magical Creatures, but she figured it was worth it just to ease her mind. She knew it was her mother's fault she was feeling this way, but that didn't make it any less real.
Slipping through the gates of Hogwarts wasn't too difficult, but she knew it would look suspicious if anyone had been looking out the window at that precise moment. Once she was in the village, she realized she had no idea where to start looking. If he was staying at an inn, how would she get a look at him? She couldn't very well look through his window if he was still in his room.
She had wandered around the village for nearly half an hour, peering through windows with the Invisibility Cloak wrapped securely around her, when she stumbled in a dip in the road and the cloak landed next to her as she just barely managed to throw out her arms in time to catch herself before her face hit the dirt. Shoving herself back to her feet, she was just about to reach down and pick up the cloak when her eyes landed on the nearest shop window. Snape was sitting inside, seated comfortably at a booth and meditatively eating a large blueberry muffin. Before she could even think to grab the cloak, he looked up and their eyes connected.
She felt a tiny shiver race through her, but suddenly she found herself overwhelmed with relief. 'He's all right, now I can just forget about everything Mum left in me and move on.' Unfortunately, the portly little witch who owned the bakery came bustling out and grabbed her arm, smiling with more cheer than Necia believed should be allowed.
"Please come in, dear, isn't it a bit chilly for you to be outside without a cloak?" As the woman began to lead Necia inside, she kicked the Invisibility Cloak into the shadows next to the tiny stone steps leading into the shop. The woman let go of her once they were inside, and she found herself standing right next to Snape's booth.
"Shouldn't you be in school?" he asked as he pushed his muffin away, apparently no longer interested in it.
"I felt like getting out for a bit, not that it's any of your business," she snapped, already turning for the door. She had satisfied her need to know how he was, there was no point in hanging around. She certainly hadn't wanted to speak to him.
"Sit down," he ordered quietly. He certainly didn't make it sound as though it was optional.
"No."
"Sit down," he repeated more firmly, gesturing to the empty space across from him. "We need to talk."
She sat down huffily in the booth with her arms crossed. "I don't see what we have to talk about."
"I think there's plenty. For one thing, why are you in Hogsmeade during school hours?"
"This is my free time, remember?"
He nodded, apparently remembering that today would have been her classmates' Advanced Potions lesson. "But that still doesn't explain why you're off school grounds. Students are only allowed off the grounds on holidays and Hogsmeade weekends."
"I don't think that concerns you anymore. You don't have any authority at Hogwarts now."
His black eyes seemed to burn into her. "But you're forgetting that I'm still friends with Dumbledore, who fortunately does have authority and plenty of it."
She glared sulkily out of the window. Coming here had been a huge mistake. Why had she allowed herself to be worried about him? "I can't imagine Dumbledore being friends with a pig like you." She could still feel his eyes on her, but she refused to look at him.
"You know perfectly well what happened," he said under his breath, so that his voice didn't carry to the owner of the shop. "Of all things, I don't consider myself to be a pig."
Now Necia turned to stare in disbelief at him. "I already know that you go to the Porter's Inn during the holidays and find yourself a blonde whore to spend the night with you. How can you be anything other than a pig if you've been fucking strange women for years and imagining they're my mother?"
She had definitely caught him by surprise, but he recovered quickly. Still, she liked that brief moment when his eyes had widened in genuine shock. It was good to know that she could take him off guard. It made her feel more powerful. "Now I think it's my turn to say that what I do is none of your business. I'm a grown man, what I choose to do with my spare time is my decision."
"So you don't deny that you've been screwing my mother in your mind for years?"
For some reason, he half-smiled very strangely at her. "No, I won't deny it, but I think my little hobby has lost some of its appeal. After all, I managed to get as close as possible to the real thing not too long ago."
If she could have incinerated him with her eyes, she would have. "You're disgusting."
"So you've told me."
"How many other students have you taken advantage of? There are plenty of blondes at Hogwarts. Perhaps you managed to get that Slytherin whore Pansy into your bed? Actually, she's probably more the type to sit under your desk while you correct papers. I guess now we know why every now and then you give good grades."
His lip curled as he matched her furious stare. "As a matter of fact, you're the first student that I have ever had more than a platonic relationship with, and just so we're clear, I didn't take advantage of you. You threw yourself at me, and if I'm not much mistaken, you enjoyed everything just as much if not more than I did."
"It wasn't me, it was my mother, and for some strange reason she loved you. What a horrible choice that was on her part. There are so many other people she would have been better off with. You don't care about anyone but yourself."
His eyes suddenly had that strange, pained look that she had seen in his office the morning after their second night together. "That's not true, and I think you know it."
"Please, don't patronize me. A beautiful woman cared about you, but the moment she did anything that wasn't up to your standards, you left her behind. You're really good at hating people, aren't you? You hated her for doing something that wasn't even her fault, you hate Harry for being James Potter's son, and you hate me for being Sirius Black's daughter. I don't know, maybe you also hate me for being hers as well, but I think you're just more pissed about the fact that now there's proof that my mother slept with him. That must be pretty embarrassing for you." Every word she spoke was icy with venom, but his eyes weren't looking much safer.
"Children shouldn't talk about things they know nothing about."
"You didn't think I was so much of a child when you were fucking me a few weeks ago," she growled.
"If I had been aware it was you, I wouldn't have done it," he said furiously, but it was the first time he actually sounded as though he was attempting to defend himself.
"But you knew the second time. You knew perfectly well it was me, but you went ahead and did it anyway. Did you even know that when you finished, it wasn't my mother anymore?" There, the words were out, and judging by the look on his face, he hadn't known. Now, however, he looked very curious.
"Why didn't you react? As far as I could tell, you were still acting very much like Cassandra."
She couldn't let him know that she had been in full control of herself for quite some time before it was over. She just couldn't give him that kind of satisfaction. "Because I wasn't in control for very long, and it was only just before we finished, then Mum took over again. I was just there long enough to realize what was happening before it was done."
For once, he didn't seem to be able to come up with anything insulting to say. "I didn't know."
"I'm sure you didn't, you seemed rather distracted at the time," she hissed, focusing very powerfully on the table. Tears were starting to heat up around her eyes and she most certainly did not want to cry in front of him. It was just difficult to remember that helpless feeling, made even more powerful by the fact that she had been enjoying herself and hating herself for it. When they sat in silence for a while, she absently reached out and picked up one of the doughnut holes, popping it into her mouth without really thinking about what she was doing.
"You like those?"
The question took her by surprise and she looked up at him. "Yeah, what's wrong with that?"
He shook his head as though scolding himself for asking. "Nothing, it's just that I remember Cassandra liked them quite a bit. She always got them from the kitchens when she felt like a snack."
It was uncomfortable to hear Snape talking in an almost nostalgic tone, because she felt the same way. There had always been an abundance of the little treats in their home, but it seemed strangely tainted by the fact that Snape knew about Cassandra's love for them too.
"I should get back to school," she said finally, turning to slide out of the booth.
"You still haven't said why you came into Hogsmeade."
"I've already told you it's none of your business."
"If you tell me, then I won't tell Dumbledore about your little stroll off the grounds."
She looked at him for a moment, then said the only thing she figured would make some sense without insinuating that she really cared one way or the other. "Mum wanted to know that you were all right. I'm not surprised you're alive, though. People as hateful as you just never seem to really go away."
His eyes drifted to the bowl of doughnut holes as he pointed out, "You sound so disappointed that I'm alive, but you're the reason that I'm sitting here." Now looking directly into her suddenly uncertain eyes, he added, "Your actions couldn't have been Cassandra, she's no longer inside of you, and I don't think you're here right now because of her either. You were concerned, you came here against school rules, and no matter how much you wanted to leave the moment you saw me, you still sat down to talk to me. Cassandra may have affected you, but in the end it's your free will that is making decisions. Perhaps your free will has been operating much more than I originally believed."
Necia couldn't believe his nerve. He hadn't really gone near the topic during his little speech, but she knew perfectly well that he was insinuating that their second night together had also been partly her decision. Had it been? Had she let her mother take over because her memories of their first night, while disturbing, had made her want to feel that closeness again? 'No, that's just sick. I had no choice in the matter.' But no matter how much she didn't want to think about it, those two nights had been wonderful when her own revulsion wasn't interfering. Even now, looking completely mundane with half a blueberry muffin sitting in front of him, she could still see his face in the dark of his bedroom, still feel his hands on her, still feel the pleasure that had been such a contrast to the emotional pain she had been dealing with since her friends abandoned her. She wondered if he was remembering it as clearly as she was at that very moment.
Why was she letting herself think about it? The creep would probably be very willing to do it all again even without her mother's personality dominating her, and letting him believe that it was something she wanted was the last thing she needed right now. "Well, here's a little free will for you." With that, she walked very quickly out of the shop, picked up the cloak from the ground, dusted it off, and pulled it over her once she was out of anyone's sight. At least she could move on with a clear conscience now. Snape was alive and as cruel as ever. What had driven her to go see him herself? Now that she was away from him, the thought of asking Dumbledore seemed like the better option.
Severus watched her stride off down the street with something that looked very suspiciously like Potter's Invisibility Cloak. That explained how she had gotten here without being seen.
That confrontation had been very enlightening, although not in an entirely good way. There was evidently enough of Cassandra left in her for her to want to know how he was doing, but he was sure that now that she had satisfied her curiosity, Necia's hate would take over. If he was lucky, that was the last he'd see of her.
Yet again, he felt the familiar twinge of guilt that seemed to be plaguing him this year, although originally it had been because of abandoning Cassandra. He honestly hadn't known that Necia had come back to the surface while he'd been making love to her mother, and he was far from pleased about it. He had forced himself on women before, back when he had been a fully fledged Death Eater and they had broken into Muggle homes for a bit of fun torture. That was something he wasn't proud of, but in a way, he had done it again the second night he had been with Necia. Although she had been willing at first, Necia must have been terrified when she came to her senses. He didn't like to think of what Cassandra would have said if she were still alive. Necia was her daughter, and he had basically raped her. That wasn't how it had felt at the time, but facts were facts. It was Necia's body, and if she were in her right mind, she would never have let him touch her.
For some reason completely unknown to him, the memory of dancing with her at the Yule Ball came back to him, and he distinctly remembered the heat of her back beneath his hand, how stunning she had looked in her attempts to impress Potter, and even now he could smell her perfume. Now that he thought about it, she had looked very much like her mother that night, and even though he hadn't realized it at the time, that was probably what had made him enjoy the dance on any level, although a lot of the reason had been that he had liked her discomfort with the situation.
Why was he still thinking about her? The only thing she had been good for was channeling her mother's personality, and now that that was over, he should be able to easily forget about her. But he couldn't very well forget her dark hair draped over his pillow that second night. As beautiful as she had looked at the Yule Ball, she had been even more breath-taking that night, when she was laying beside him wearing nothing but sheets.
His eyes settled on that last place he had been able to see her before she disappeared from view, and as suddenly as if someone had written it in the air in front of him, he knew he'd be seeing her again. Just before she had left, her eyes had glinted with something that had nothing to do with Cassandra, and certainly didn't involve affection although he couldn't quite place it. 'I'm imagining things. She quite obviously intends to never see me again.' But things rarely go as planned, and as he headed back to the Hog's Head, he couldn't shake the feeling that he hadn't seen the last of her.
