Chapter 46

CONFESSION

Standing on the snow beneath Harry's pine tree perch, Snape again turned away from Daine. Again, she folded her arms protectively against her chest. His uncle coughed a few times and made an audible swallowing noise. At last, he began to confess.

"The evening we were introduced, I dismissed you as just another last-minute hire. Too pretty for a proper Defense Against the Dark Arts master, I told myself. Too mild in manner. Not enough force. I soon realized, I'd been wrong."

"Why, that's a lovely thing to say. I—"

Snape held a hand up, again silencing her.

Harry shook his head. Even when he's confessing, he has to be controlling.

"That's when you began to . . . disturb me. The night after the Halloween ball, after dancing with you, I couldn't sleep. And it only became worse. All those long talks about the Death Eaters and the trials that face us—I felt a special bond with you. Then I would see how attentive and caring you were with everyone and realize I'd been mistaken. Our friendship wasn't special after all. Round and round, my thoughts went until one evening, I had a dream."

Snape paused to draw two ragged breaths. Daine didn't speak, but Harry could sense her nervousness.

"For a week, I'd been disdaining sleep, experimenting with some novel potions late into the night. That evening as I marked essays, my long hours caught up with me. One glass of wine, and I fell asleep at my desk."

Harry's eyes widened. This dream, he'd witnessed.

"I saw my sister. In real life, I had failed her. In my dream, I faced a monster and slew it. I was so elated to have saved her life, I found myself telling her everything—all about you, how I felt about you, things I hadn't even told myself. Lily . . . she gave me her blessing." Snape shook his head. "Something woke me before we could talk longer, but from that moment I committed myself to winning you."

Harry pressed his back against the tree. Somnoleveritaphantasmagoria Powder had had more effect than he could have imagined. How could so much dreamtime have taken place between the moment the professor confronted the Bandersnatch and the moment he jumped up to dash into the stairwell?

"And you did win me," Daine said softly.

Snape pivoted so fast, she took a step backward. "Don't you see? I won you, but I did so dishonestly. Have you ever asked yourself why you were drawn to me? Wouldn't it have been more logical for you to be attracted to a man with whom you were, well, comfortable? Say, Lupin—rather than me, who—"

"Remus?" Daine giggled. "Oh, honey. Remus is a sweetie, but he's not my type. And I'm definitely not his. In fact—"

"Stop!" Snape waved both of his hands insistently. "I must finish. I confess to you that I acted unfairly—reprehensibly, abominably. I forced you to want me. I—I used a love potion."

Harry pursed his lips to whistle, then caught himself just in time. A love potion. Was that the explanation for everything? A flurry of wind stirred the pine needles around him. He leaned over his branch, frankly gawking at the couple below.

Snape gazed at the ground, looking like a chastened schoolboy.

Dane playfully lifted her chin. "Not the one with rhino horn, I hope."

Snape pulled himself to attention, his black cloak swirling around him. "Certainly not. Rhinoceri are an endangered species. I'd never—" He stopped, staring at her. "Don't jest. Confession isn't easy for me."

She continued gently, "Nor damiana root?"

"No." Snape's answer was taut. "Rose, rosemary, pansy, fennel, columbine, rue, violets, crushed garnet . . . ."

Harry recalled Neville's makeup final. Had the plant specimens he'd gathered for the professor gone into a love potion? And the morning Snape had caught Cho and him at the edge of the Forbidden Forest—had that been the rose-colored concoction he'd been brewing?

". . . steeped under the glow of the morning star," Ariel Daine finished dreamily. "An Adoripotion. Never you mind. I'm flattered."

The Potions master didn't seem to hear her. "I'm horribly ashamed. Adoripotion is sanctioned only for those willingly renewing or enhancing their matrimonial bonds. The Ministry sets strict standards. I trampled them. Worse, I violated my own principles. One cannot pursue happiness. One has it, or . . . ." He shook his head.

Harry heard Snape release one of his typically derisive laughs, for once aimed at himself.

"To ensure the potion's potency, I added chimera tooth. How apt. Muggles see the beast as symbolic of unrealizable dreams."

Harry remembered Hagrid saying Snape had asked for one.

"Oh, Severus." Daine sighed. "And when did you give me this overpowering philter?"

"At the Yule Ball. I'd hidden the vial in my sleeve." Guiltily, Snape poked his boot at the snow. "I sprinkled it on your strawberry tart."

"I remember," she replied. "When you looked into my eyes, my heart swelled. My entire body started to shimmer."

Snape moaned as though he'd been stabbed.

"I'll admit your Adoripotion gave me a buzz. It added a little sparkle to the way I'd been feeling since I brought Winky out of her trance and caught you gazing at me."

Snape glanced up.

Dane edged nearer. "Truly. That first time you cut me off. You literally slammed your office door. I felt foolish—sure I'd been seeing things. You intrigued me, but I feared the appeal was strictly one-sided."

Snape stared at her. Then stubbornly, he shook his head.

Silently, Harry groaned. Stop being such a mule! Around him branches creaked in the brewing wind. He concentrated hard to catch Snape's response.

"An effect of Adoripotion. You've revised your memories of what happened before you took it. You only imagine that—when actually you never—You were kind to me. Always. As you are to everyone."

"It's not my imagination." Insistence had crept into Daine's voice. "I was attracted the day we met. And I've been crazy about you since the night I learned the kind of man you are—the night Albus explained your mark to me."

Abruptly, Snape clutched his left arm.

Daine nodded, her blonde hair tousled by stray gusts of wind. "When I glimpsed it during the square dance, I was aghast. I thought you were one of those rehabilitated Death Eaters. When I learned you had been the double agent who'd risked so much and received so little honor—"

"You called this my badge of courage," Snape finished, so faintly that Harry barely heard him.

"Yes. Everything I teach the kids about the assaults and snares of evil wizards comes from information you risked your life to uncover. How could I not find you fascinating?"

Harry watched Snape tuck his head down, wary of accepting Daine's words. Suddenly, there was nothing Harry wanted more than to see the two professors kiss and make up. Come on. She likes you. Give in before the storm blows and we all freeze. But Snape was more skeptical than the Gryffindors had been at the Yule Ball.

"You wanted details. Understandable. Defense Against the Dark Arts is your area of study." Snape released his breath slowly, creating fog in the cold air. "But in all those long talks, you never exhibited any signs—not until you ingested the Adoripotion."

"Signs!" Daine threw up her hands. "Like what? Batting my eyelashes? Wiggling my hips? Simpering? Acting like that spoiled flirt of a mother you've complained so much about?"

Snape hunched his shoulders. "Well, yes."

"I've never simpered in my life!" Daine's cape billowed about her. "Don't you think I'm sick of men assuming that since I'm blonde, my head is empty? Sick of men who wished that was the way I was?" She ran her fingers through her hair as if she'd pull it out. "You know I was engaged once. The day I stopped that zombie from dragging my fiancé into quicksand was the day he broke it off."

"The idiot," Snape muttered.

"Yes! That's what you said the first time I told you. Don't you know your saying that was more powerful than a whole gallon of Adoripotion?"

Snape pressed his fingertips to his forehead. He shook his head yet again.

Clenching her hands, Daine released an animal cry of pure frustration. "I can't believe it! You think me more empty-headed than all the men who ever said, What's a nice girl like you doing in such a hairy subject as dark magic? That's what you're implying when you claim I don't know my own mind, when you insist a potion can control me!"

Snape drew himself to his full height. "The ones I concoct are exceptionally potent. I'm considered preeminent in my field."

"Ooo!" Quivering, Daine stared at his face. "You're putting me off. You know that, don't you? After the most wonderful week of my life, you're dumping me . . . all in the name of your preeminence at potion making!" She turned her back.

A sudden bluster rocked Harry's branch. He hugged it tightly. The wind blew chill on his face. All around him pine trees were twitching and shuddering. Above him the clouds broiled in shades of slate and gray.

Beneath him, Snape passed his hand over his face, his fingers tangling in his long, black, wind-ravaged hair. "Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm saying I acted disgracefully. I'm begging your forgiveness. I'm hoping that . . . after the philter wears off . . . we can once again be . . . colleagues." He stared at Daine's back, then folded his arms inside his robes. Leaning into the wind, he set off toward the castle. This time, he trudged, leaving deep prints.

She didn't turn. Seeing her shoulders tremble, Harry feared she was weeping. Then she jerked back her foot and kicked the snow, sending white powder exploding into the air. Harry's eyes widened. Professor Ariel Daine wasn't crying. She was steaming.

For what seemed an eternity, Professor Daine stayed beneath the Confessing Conifer—clasping and unclasping her hands, stamping the snow, muttering to herself, and occasionally punching the air. Harry kept to his high roost—clutching his arms against the chill, chattering his teeth, and cursing himself for getting stuck in the freezing, damp tree in the first place. He could understand Daine giving Snape a head start to avoid catching up with him, but this was getting ridiculous.

Harry heard clattering in the next tree over and braced himself for what he was sure would be an icy blast of air. When he looked down to see whether the mounting storm would finally send Daine racing for the castle, his stomach lurched. The professor was fighting something besides her own emotions. And that something was invisible.

Harry stared at her struggle with growing horror. All the while, he groped in his shin pocket for his wand and frantically tried to wiggle his leg out of the crook of branches where he'd fixed it. The unseen enemy appeared to clamp a hand over Daine's mouth, muffling her attempts to shout. When she succeeded in slipping her wand from her cloak, the invisible force twisted her arm until her contorted fingers could no longer hold it. Suddenly, she went limp, suspended in mid-air.

Faced once more with a challenge, Harry felt his nerves steadying. An instant later, he freed himself and jumped from his perch. He aimed his wand and his feet for where the thug's back should be. Not knowing what he was tackling, he wasn't sure whether physics or metaphysics would be more effective.

Then, at the last second, his descent stopped with a jolt. His wand jerked out of his hand and kept falling. His legs dangling, Harry thrashed from side to side, violently, pointlessly. He groaned. His big, baggy Weasley pullover had caught on a branch.

Abruptly, Daine collapsed to the ground. Whatever had been holding her was now using both hands to pull an invisibility hood off its head. When Harry saw two familiarly malicious gray eyes staring up at him, he knew it was too late for him, as well. He couldn't see the wand that Wilhelm Avery pointed at him, but he felt its effects when his muscles seized up and he began twitching like a puppet on a string. Some sort of Petrificus Spell prevented him from crying out. The back of his pullover finally unhooked, and he plummeted, face first, into the snow.

Above him, Avery's voice was amazingly, infuriatingly lazy. "So, two birds in the hand—much better for catching the one in the bush. Won't my lord be pleased when I bring both of you?"

Harry felt himself yanked up by his hair. He didn't know which felt worse: his cheeks stinging from the clinging snow crystals, his hair follicles screaming let go, or his fear of what would happen next. From the corner of his left eye, he glimpsed his wand lying useless atop Professor Daine's. From the corner of his right eye, he saw her hanging by her short blonde hair, mercifully still unconscious. Between them, Wilhelm's bodiless face smirked.

"And to think—all semester, I'd been depending on that mug Filch to pull off my lord's schemes."

Wilhelm rose a foot into the air, apparently buoyed up by an invisible broom. A moment later, Harry felt himself yanked off his feet and slung over the handle, along with Professor Daine. As the burdened broom slowly lifted, he heard his captor gloat, "No doubt about it. When you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."

This is the cliffhanger where I left this story ten years ago. This time the final 14 chapters are completed and the next is ready for posting.