Chapter 25: The Benefit of the Doubt

By the following morning, the Ebonys were ready to leave Hogwarts, and Meli was able once again to bury herself in her work. She was quieter than usual, but even Dumbledore and Poppy chalked that up to a combination of her current identity and the emotional turmoil of her family having to go into hiding. Amber dropped by to see them all off to the Bat Cave, and while she said a number of uncharitable things about Rasa (to Meli's face), Meli's resolve to keep her mouth shut remained firm.

Only Rose Ebony seemed to have any clue that her new protector had suffered some sort of crushing blow, and after catching her grandmother's compassionate eye a few times too many, Meli kept her gaze studiously focused on anything else. She led her grandparents out of the hospital wing and into the deserted guest wing near Ravenclaw Tower, where she gave them a brief crash-course on portkeys and then used one of those tools to transport them all to the Bat Cave receiving parlor.

She had owled Alfred to expect them, and he met them in the parlor with a pot of fresh tea and a tray of scones, biscuits, and crumpets. Meli would have excused herself then, but Rose specifically invited her to stay. She therefore sat through an hour of Henry muttering viciousness about his scar and how he had come by it and Rose trying to engage her in conversation; Alfred stood nearby, his expression unreadable except for a brief flashing of his eyes when Henry said something particularly vitriolic.

After tea, Alfred showed the Ebonys to their temporary quarters, freeing Meli at last to wander aimlessly through the house. She ventured up to the ground floor, where she paced several times around the library and stopped briefly at the window to watch the snow falling outside. It was winter, she realized abruptly—somehow it had come without her noticing…and with winter, of course, came Christmas.

She felt her inside hollow out at that thought. Snape and Zarekael had been planning to come to Snape Manor for Christmas Eve; the house elves were doubtless making furious preparations for the visit…but now, she thought, they probably wouldn't come. Why should they, after all? Snape hated the place, Zarekael had only rarely been there, and the only draw either one had ever mentioned was that she, their friend, lived there now.

And now they were no longer friends.

Alfred and Lavinia will be so disappointed, she thought matter-of-factly. They miss the days when they had a family here to serve.

Her throat tightened as she turned from the window and wandered away, finding her way eventually back downstairs to the Bat Cave. She made it perhaps a half-dozen steps in the direction of her rooms before her ears told her that she was no longer alone.

"You'll want a cardigan or a cloak if you spend much time in the corridors, Mrs. Ebony," she said quietly, turning to face her grandmother. "It's rather damp and a bit drafty here."

"The cold has never bothered me much," Rose answered. "And I was only coming out to find you."

Meli raised her eyebrows. "Is anything the matter with your rooms?"

"Oh, no, dear," the elderly lady replied reassuringly. "Everything's wonderful. I only wanted to talk with you." She cocked her head to one side. "Particularly now."

Meli frowned. "Why particularly now?"

Rose offered her a sad smile. "Do you know that you hum when you're alone?" she asked.

The corridor was lit only by widely spaced-out torches, so it was doubtful that the older woman could see the younger one pale, but Meli couldn't keep her eyes from widening for a long, horrified moment as the breath froze in her lungs. Of all the stupid things I could do! she fumed inwardly. I ought to have been twice as much on my guard, even when I thought I was alone!

"It's…been pointed out to me before," she said aloud, managing to keep her voice steady. "Why do you ask?"

"The tune caught my attention," Rose answered bluntly. "From 'The Lancashire Posy', isn't it?"

Meli swallowed as she nodded. "'The Lost Lady Found'," she specified, still forcing steadiness even as she trembled beneath her grandmother's gaze. Even if she's found me out, she thought coolly, I have no intention of saying anything until she does.

Rose, too, nodded slowly. "You're the one who sang at Meli's funeral," she stated. "Aren't you."

Meli stared at her for a moment, attempting to catch the flow of the conversation and failing miserably. "Yes…" she allowed.

Rose bit her lip and nodded again. "I thought you must have known her," she said. "Meli used to hum the very same tune."

Meli let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Good old Occam's razor, she sighed inwardly. If Meli's dead, she'll go directly to the next logical conclusion without rethinking the foundational assumption.

"Yes," she answered again. "I…I knew Meli. We were in school together."

"You knew her well?" Rose asked.

Meli bit her lip and shrugged. "Well enough," she replied. She had a sudden thought and parted with an equally sudden smile. "Well enough to inherit her sheet music when she died."

Rose smiled back, but she was holding back tears. "You knew she played flute."

Meli nodded. "And she favored Arcangelo Corelli," she said.

It was true, every bit of it, but the number of people alive who knew about it was extremely low, and every single one of them was named Ebony. As Meli had observed to Zarekael over a year before, music revealed a great deal about a person, and with everything about her known to Voldemort and his flunkies, she held close to her the only thing she could. Her mother had started teaching her to play, and Crim had caught her practicing once or twice…but no one else outside her family had ever known. The Ebonys had noticed how secretive she was about it, and while they didn't understand her wishes, they had respected them; Rose could not help but see and understand the importance of Meli having told someone else.

And she did, Meli saw. Rose had always treated Rasa with general respect, but now she straightened and eyed the young woman before her with new eyes—and hopefully, by extension, she would see Rasa's friends with the same new eyes.

"She must have trusted you powerfully," the elderly lady observed.

Meli cleared her throat. "I suppose so," she replied in a low voice.

"She trusted your judgment?"

Bingo. "In matters of importance…yes." Meli looked her grandmother in the eye to gauge her reaction, and she was gratified to see gears turning in a promising direction.

Rose regarded her thoughtfully for a long, silent moment before letting the other shoe drop: "And what did she think of your friend Professor Snape and his son?"

Meli met that gaze without any thought of flinching. "She told me more than once that she found them to be the most honorable of men," she answered. "And I know I wasn't the only one she said that to." She raised an eyebrow and gave her grandmother a half-smile. "As I understand it, Meli introduced you to Professor Snape when she was younger; what did you make of him, Mrs. Ebony?"

Rose smiled sheepishly. "He was an intelligent and likable man," she replied. "I thought at the time that he suited Meli perfectly as a teacher and mentor, but she seemed a bit unsure of him."

Meli nodded. Right, she thought. I'd forgotten. We weren't friends yet at my parents' funeral. "Professor Snape had…a dark reputation," she said aloud. "We were all a bit unsure of him, Mrs. Ebony, but Meli would never have let him accompany her to the funeral if she didn't trust him. Professor Dumbledore offered her a choice between Professor Snape and Meli's Head of House, and of the two, she was more comfortable with him."

Rose nodded slowly. "Given the circumstances at the time," she murmured, "I suppose that's the best demonstration of trust she could have given." She raised her eyebrows. "But what would she have made of this?" She didn't have to point to her scar for Meli to understand perfectly.

The younger woman shook her head. "I don't know, Mrs. Ebony," she replied. "She trusted Professor Snape and Zarekael, she would be grateful to have you alive…but she would have been torn, I think. The thought is always there, particularly in the minds of the spies themselves, that there must have been another way, a better way, a safer way…" She trailed off and shook her head again. "In truth, Mrs. Ebony, we are, all of us, torn."

"But Meli would have given them the benefit of the doubt?" Rose persisted.

What an awful, ironic question, Meli thought darkly. "I believe so," she answered.

Rose chewed on that for awhile before nodding once more. "Then I suppose I should try to do the same," she said at last. "Henry will be a different matter, of course."

"I don't try to convince, Mrs. Ebony," Meli told her. "I only speak the truth as I know it."

"That in itself is enough," Rose replied. She shivered suddenly and let out a little laugh. "You weren't joking about the draft."

Meli smiled. "No," she said, and accompanied her grandmother back to the guest rooms.

ooo

Rose had been right about one thing: Henry was not convinced of Snape and Zarekael's trustworthiness. Meli might have been content to let her grandfather have his opinions while she had hers, but unfortunately, it was not lost on her that the very men he spoke of so hatefully had furnished their home for his protection. More than that, it made it all the more painful for her to remain loyal to her friends because it felt like a strange betrayal of her family.

Her one consolation was that she had the worst of it…but as she discovered soon enough, even that wasn't the case.

The Ebonys stayed in the Bat Cave for a total of three nights, and Alfred tended to them without so much as a peep of dissent. Late on the third evening, though, Meli was walking from her potions supply room back to her quarters and saw Alfred coming out of the Ebonys' rooms, a silver tray full of china in hand. He bowed a polite good-bye toward the room he had just exited, closed the door behind him, walked calmly a dozen or so paces down the corridor, and promptly slammed the tray, china and all, into the wall beside him. He followed this up with a sound kick that ought to have broken every one of his toes but which appeared not to faze him at all and certainly didn't interrupt whatever it was that he was viciously muttering.

"Alfred!" Meli called. "Are you all right?"

Instantly, the little house elf whirled to face her, his manner businesslike and courteous; he even had a servile little smile firmly in place. "Good evening, Rasa," he said in his usual tone.

Meli was impressed but not put off. "What happened, Alfred?" she asked.

He narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth, but it wasn't, as she first suspected, out of determination not to answer. "I have never, in all my years of faithful service, heard my master so roundly and unjustly abused by someone without a blood connection," he spat. "For family to treat its son that way is horrible enough, but for complete strangers who are beholden to him—!" He made a quarter-turn and kicked the wall again. "It cannot be borne! It simply cannot!" He turned back to Meli and shook his head, and she thought she caught the glint of angry tears in his eyes. "You are the master's friend, Rasa, and I have come to think of you as my friend, but if the master had not commanded me to follow your orders, I would not—not for them!" He waved a hand in the direction of the Ebonys' rooms. "It is too much, even for a bound house elf."

Meli looked at him, stricken. She couldn't remember ever having seen anything like an emotional reaction out of Alfred in her entire time at Snape Manor, and even a small one would have been a shock. "Alfred," she said quietly, "I'm so very sorry—"

Before she could say anything further, though, an alarm sounded, and both she and the house elf swore. It was not the standard signal for someone escaping to the Bat Cave but rather a different one that sounded only when Snape or Zarekael came to Snape Manor. They had a separate parlor in the dungeons into which they would portkey from time to time to bring potions or other supplies Rasa needed, and they were, fortunately, wise enough to stay there until she came to them. Unfortunately, she didn't want to see either of them just now, she was sure neither one of them particularly wanted to see her, and she had her hands full with the Ebonys and an irate house elf.

"Alfred, I'll—"

"Oh, by all means," Alfred interrupted, once more his calm, collected self. "See to the wanted guest. I'll inform our unwanted guests that you've put the Bat Cave under lockdown."

Meli regarded him warily for a moment, but she didn't have time to argue. "When you're done," she told him, "please bring tea to the receiving parlor."

Alfred smirked. "A wise precaution," was all he said before bowing and walking back to the Ebonys' rooms.

Meli shook her head and activated the wards to lock down the Bat Cave; it wouldn't do, after all, for either of the Ebonys to go wandering and stumble across whoever it was that had brought the potions delivery this time.

Particularly if Rasa, who had vouched for them, was in the middle of a staring or shouting contest with them.

She shook her head again and turned her footsteps toward the far end of the dungeons. It puzzled her that someone had come just now; the next scheduled delivery was a week away, and she hadn't used unusual amounts of any of her stocked supplies. She wondered uneasily if her visitor had come for a further argument over what had happened to the Ebonys, or—worse—if Dumbledore had convinced one or both of them to kiss and make up.

Hell would freeze over first, she thought. After all, Dumbledore's been trying to convince Severus to cut the Marauders a break for half his lifetime, and he hasn't budged yet.

It brought an odd sense of relief, really, to know that; she had far rather live in honest separation than in falsified friendship.

Meli came to the parlor door far too soon and was forced to set aside any thoughts that might interfere with whatever was now to come. She took a deep breath, turned the knob, and walked into the room, looking and feeling every inch a whipped puppy.

Her first realization on entering was that this was not a standard supply delivery, if only because both suppliers, not the usual one, had come. She blinked in surprise, but, in keeping with her resolution to keep her mouth shut, merely greeted Snape and Zarekael with a nod.

They stood ten or so paces away, Snape to her left with a cauldron in his arms, Zarekael to the right with a wooden case more suited to holding raw ingredients than bottles of potions themselves. There was a moment of awkward silence, which Snape shattered by plunking the cauldron down on the floor and looking pointedly at Meli.

"We didn't come just to deliver potions ingredients," he said bluntly.

Meli's heart sank. They're here to say the friendship's officially off. "I know," she replied hollowly. "It doesn't take two of you to drop off a box and a cauldron." She cleared her throat. "But, please, before you say what you've come here to say…I want to tell you again that I'm sorry." She lowered her eyes. "For whatever it's worth."

"You have nothing to apologize for," Snape countered. "We owe you an apology."

She looked up in surprise and stared, first at him, then at Zarekael.

"Forgive us," the apprentice said quietly.

Meli blinked as surprise gave way to outright confusion. "What?" she asked lamely.

"Please forgive us," Zarekael repeated, with a bit more fervor.

"For what!" Meli sputtered. "I questioned you! Why are you asking my forgiveness?" This is not—cannot—be happening!

"We have shown ourselves to be untrustworthy," Zarekael countered, "whereas you have shown yourself to be nothing but trustworthy. You have stood by us time and again—"

"And yet when you needed the benefit of the doubt," Snape added, "we didn't give it."

Meli shook her head. "But you've always had a reason for everything you've done," she insisted stubbornly. "You've proven yourselves again and again—why should this time have been any different?"

"You've done nothing to deserve our doubt," Zarekael said, just as stubbornly, "and when we have deserved yours, you've still trusted us and stood by us. How could we expect the very thing we would not give?"

"Look," she sighed. "There is nothing for me to forgive you for."

"No." Zarekael was adamant, and she saw in his eyes that this matter was of utmost importance to him. "Do you forgive us?"

She looked from one to the other and read nearly identical expressions on their faces. It occurred to her for the first time that she was not the only one who had felt the pain of their separation, and she saw that it was necessary for all of them to know that there was nothing at all standing in the way of their friendship. They needed to hear that she harbored no grudge as much as she had needed to know that they didn't think her a personal traitor.

"Yes," she said firmly. "I forgive you."

Snape closed his eyes and seemed to have a huge burden lifted from him. Zarekael met Meli's eye and nodded once. "Thank you," he said quietly.

Alfred chose that moment to appear with the tea, and at Meli's look of pointed inquiry, he bowed (unhappily, she thought) and smiled. "The Ebonys are alive and well," he reported coolly. "Will anyone be wanting blueberry scones?"

Snape cleared his throat and, with a smirk, informed the house elf that the cranberry he'd brought would be adequate.

"If you change your mind, Master Snape, you need only call," Alfred replied. "Lavinia said they should be out of the oven in ten minutes' time." He disappeared with a crack.

In his wake, the conversation turned first to business, then to Snape and Zarekael's Christmas plans. They were expected to put in an appearance at Hogwarts for Christmas dinner, but they could come away long enough for dinner and a small gift exchange on Christmas Eve.

"I have no doubt that the house elves will try to keep us longer," Snape remarked sardonically.

Meli nodded. "They miss you terribly," she replied. "Oh, that reminds me—Lavinia asked me to inquire about your favorite kind of meat."

Snape smirked. "You may inform her that my tastes have not altered since boyhood," he answered cryptically. "And please also ask her not to experiment this year; I'm still recovering from her venture into Scandinavian fare."

"I'll be sure to tell her," Meli promised.

They parted not long after, and there was no doubt of their parting as friends. Meli returned to her rooms with a smile on her face, and it was only a few hours more before she remembered to deactivate the lockdown wards.

Rose made no complaints; Henry, if he did, was kind enough to keep them behind closed doors.