Note: Full membership in a guild organisation, such as the Royal Astrocartographic Society or the Special Apothecarist Normal Guild, entitles the member to professionally use the title of Master (masculine) or Magistra (feminine, feminine plural Magistrae). Social usage of these titles is restricted to those witches and wizards who have completed a university degree.

Chapter 32

Vanya

"It is silly, but I never considered that Neal knew Luther at Hogwarts. I mean, I knew they must have done because they were in the same year, but I never thought that they had any interaction. Neal was all Quidditch all the time back then and he was in Gryffindor, but Luther was part of that Slytherin wolf pack that happens every year, you know, the ones that are almost destined from birth to go Dark."

Patience, who was sucking on the tip of a finger that she had just pricked with her needle, nodded and mumbled, "Mm-hm."

"I mean, I don't remember Shipley, but wasn't Luther friends with Lefevre and Dalgliesh?"

Patience nodded and then said definitely, "You remember Shipley, Eva. He had a cousin a year ahead of us, who he would walk to class during our first-year. Usually he just had Lefevre with him, but sometimes he'd bring Luther and Govan. You remember how we used to wait to go out until Leighton had left just in case my brothers were waiting outside?"

"Oh that was Shipley? Thank goodness that your brothers were only at school with us that one year. Well that is proof of what I am saying, isn't it? Luther was always one of the ones to avoid. He is still friends with that lot, too. I don't know, Patience, I always thought of him like something that was pretty to look at, but rotten through to the centre."

"I know, Eva, but he isn't evil. He is just selfish."

"But that isn't a good thing either, Patience! How can one trust him?"

Patience set down her needlework, turned a serious face to her friend, and said firmly, "Eva, one thing about Luther is that he has very strongly defined ideas of both what he wants and what is ethical. Nothing will persuade him to go against his beliefs, not even to get something he wants. However, he will do anything and everything up to the limit of what he thinks is right to have what he wants. He is not fickle, you know. He and Mark Dalgliesh have been friends since before I was born and his Hogwarts friends are all as loyal to him as he is to them even though Luther says that they all disliked Govan."

Eva sighed and said softly, "I know. I do know all of that. I've never understood Luther and I certainly didn't like him, but I have always noticed him."

Patience asked gravely, "If you are afraid that you cannot trust him then why are you seeing him, Eva?"

Eva slumped back into her chair and groaned, "Because I couldn't fight him anymore."

"Eva, you do care about Luther don't you? You don't know how it would destroy him if he found out that you weren't serious."

Eva's expression became very solemn as she replied sharply, "Oh yes I do know, Patience. He loves me. Luther does love me; he is so intense and determined that it is overwhelming. That is not what I doubt about him."

Patience frowned as she asked, "What is it then?"

"Just because he loves me, that doesn't mean that he can make me happy, Patience. He does not like to be thwarted. He wants everything his way."

Patience, who only a year ago could not have understood how being loved was not sufficient to make one happy, now had her own knowledge of how this was not always enough. "Yes, that is true. But he wants you to be happy more than he wants anything else."

"Perhaps, but his ideas of what is acceptable are different from mine. He actually thinks I am ridiculous to be upset about what he did to Bobby last month. When I told him that I had found out, he just laughed and said, "I didn't think that asking nicely was going to have any effect on Fleming, so I just sent him a message he would understand." Argh! What if Shipley hadn't succeeded in stopping Llewellyn's? Luther might have taken matters into his own hands and done something drastic."

Patience clucked her tongue in annoyance. "No, he wouldn't. Don't you know enough about Luther by now to see how he works? I admit that I did not like what he did to Bobby, but he only did so because Bobby had already played dirty with us. Llewellyn's used the law, so Luther did, too."

"But if they hadn't?"

Patience sighed, "Yes, then perhaps he would have responded in kind, but only if he felt that were the best way to handle things. He would do only what was needed to win, no more. I do not understand, Eva. If you feared all this about him, then why did you agree to start seeing him?"

Eva tucked her legs up in the chair and hunched over them as she murmured, "Because I couldn't help it, Patience. I fought it for months, you know, but for some reason that I cannot fathom I cannot resist him anymore. I had myself well in hand, reminding myself that Luther is rather a bastard and would be hell to live with, but then he sorted things with Llewellyn's and was really wonderful about it all and I lost my head. I don't really know how it happened. We had just finished the meeting with Shipley after Llewellyn's delivered the final agreement. He stayed behind to discuss with me the future protection surrounding the Proprietary Charm, which you know is my department. Then he just suddenly turned to me with this look on his face, as if he just could not bear it any longer, and asked me if he had any chance at all. It was so unexpected that I didn't have time to stop myself from telling him the truth."

"He's been almost deliriously happy, Eva."

"I know. At times I am too. Luther kisses as if he were trying to start a fire. It is hard not to be convinced at those moments. But then I am at home with my family and I hear everything that they say and I'm afraid that they are right. They are, really, but I do not want them to be. I am waiting to be convinced, despite knowing that he will undoubtedly disappoint me at times. Either he is going to make some choice that I cannot forgive or he is going to do something to prove himself and I will go up like a house of straw."

Patience looked over at the open window and wondered if Luther's owl would ever return. "Do you love Luther, Eva?"

"I don't know. I cannot imagine a life with him, Patience."

Patience stood up abruptly and crossed the room to lean against the windowsill. It was several seconds before she could respond. "You know, I want you to be happy, Eva. However, he is my brother, so it is hard not to say something. I promised you that I would never try to persuade you to be with Luther. I also told you that I do not think that he is good enough for you. I still believe that, but if you do love him Eva then Luther would turn himself out to please you. I think perhaps if you told him what conditions you could not accept from him then he would restrict himself within the bounds of what you need."

Eva got up and followed Patience to the window, where she slid her arm round her friend and said, "Unlike Snape, you mean."

Patience did not respond. Eva continued gently, "He expects you to conform to his desires and does not worry about what makes you happy, does he?"

Patience pulled away without looking up from where she was slowly turning her ring round her finger. "He is not concerned with happiness. He thinks about safety. It does not matter how I feel about him, Eva, since he cannot take up any more of his time with me. He is busy with things that you don't understand and now that I have a baby and a career to concern me he feels that he can leave me alone."

"Why? I do not understand. He loved you. I could see it. Surely he wouldn't care about your career so much."

"I am not very useful to him, you know. I am not clever, he already has control of my family's money, I don't know anyone influential really, I am busy with earning my letters most days, and now that I am pregnant he isn't interested in taking me to bed."

"That cannot be true, Patience. You thought he loved you, too. He can't have already got over that."

"Eva, he has left me. I am not likely to be mistaken about that. I remember every word he said when he informed me of his decision. He will not be returning until after the child is born and only then to be certain that the baby is healthy. He says that perhaps, in time, when I have grown up and can behave myself then he might move back, since Hogsmeade is far more convenient for him. I am to remember that I am still his wife, of course, and accept whatever his decision is. He is not concerned with feelings, as I said, but his own safety and best interest."

"Oh Patience, I had thought…I don't know, I just thought maybe he was not really as horrid as he seemed at school. It appeared for a while as if your marriage might work."

"Did it? I think we were fooling ourselves, Eva. Even when he did things for me, it was always with a goal. He never said he loved me, Eva. There was nothing truly intimate between us even though we went to bed together. He never kissed me."

Patience rubbed behind her half-asleep Crup's ear as she sat thinking about what she was saying and what her husband had said to her. She was finding it hard to differentiate between the lies that she had been instructed to tell and her own insecurities. He really hadn't ever actually said that he loved her and he had certainly never kissed her. Severus was not likely to display his feelings in such a manner—especially to her.

Eva sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed, looking concernedly at her friend who was so clearly unhappy. She did not know anything to say to comfort her, since the bare truth was that Patience had been abandoned by her husband at a very vulnerable time.

As Eva tried to think of something reasonable to say, she heard the distinctive sound of an owl arriving at the window. Patience got up from the bed to take the small scroll that was tied onto Vanya's leg. After feeding the owl a small treat, Patience hastily unrolled the parchment.

"What does Luther say?"

Patience waved a hand at her friend to indicate that she wanted silence. After several seconds, she responded with relief, "He thinks that things went well. He spoke with three of the greater Magistrae, you know that he thought he would have more success with Magistrae than the Masters because of the pregnancy, and has been given a guarantee that I will be asked to spend no more than three hours in the asterodome each day. Additionally, Magistra Hunley was present at the meeting and she told Luther that Master McFarland had been saying that I was unwilling to begin the project yet. Luther has sorted that, as well. Apparently Aldebaran Shipley wrote a letter explaining the laws about articles of apprenticeship—all RAS students technically are apprentices—and listing the violations in my situation, which Magistra Hunley is going to bring to Master McFarland and Master Murgatroyd."

Eva smiled with an expression that was unusually soft. "Luther must have enjoyed himself. He was really in his element, was not he?"

Patience returned Eva's smile lightly and said only, "Yes."

Eva asked a little anxiously, "When will he be returning?"

Patience, who had just tossed the parchment into the fireplace, said shortly, "Quite soon. Before tea."

Eva stood up from the edge of Patience's heavily canopied bed and walked through to the dressing room, saying, "I'm just going to tidy myself a bit."

Patience murmured something indistinctly and then reached for her wand. With a small flourish of her shiny pale-coloured wand, a drawer front suddenly appeared on the side of her gilt ebony desk. Patience pulled it open and drew out a thin book bound in deep violet leather. She sat down immediately and tapped the front of the book with her wand four times before opening it.

When Eva walked back into the bedroom, her hair now gleaming and neatly pinned into a braided, twisting loop and her robes perfectly creased and smooth, she saw that Patience was writing furiously with an unusually tiny, black quill. "I thought that you had given up keeping a personal diary, Patience."

Eva saw her friend's hand jump nervously across the page as Patience turned to look at her friend. "Well, you know, I feel a little isolated at times. It seemed a good thing to keep my thoughts sorted so I don't go mad."

Eva shrugged and replied softly, "That is probably true, Patty. I was just surprised, that is all. It is a really pretty book. Where did you get it?"

Patience, who had hastily closed the book and pushed it into one of the cubby holes of the desk, stood up and answered evasively, "I don't really remember. I think it was London. Luther is probably here by now, did you want to go into the sitting room and find him?"

Eva suddenly lost all interest in her friend's unusually secretive behaviour and walked quickly to the door without waiting for her friend to follow.