‘Ictusemp-’
‘ASPHYXIASTUM!’
Snape stepped deftly aside and swiped his wand to deflect the spell an instant before it would have hit him.
‘ASPHYXIASTUM!’ Delilah bellowed again, snarling with fury. Again he deflected the spell, then flourished his wand and Delilah’s leapt out of her hand, flying a few centimetres into the air before she snatched it furiously back mid-flight, and immediately made to point it again.
Snape held up his hand, and Delilah lowered her wand to her side.
‘I can’t pretend this approach won’t serve you well in the real world,’ he said, breathing audibly through his nose, ‘but continually attempting to land curses on me is not quite the objective of this lesson, which is to teach you the art of deflecting curses yourself.’
‘I can’t fucking do it though,’ she raged. ‘I have never ever had so much trouble with any wandwork ever.’
‘That’s because you’re not giving it the concentration it needs,’ Snape said impatiently. ‘You want to come at this your wand ablaze, but it is a matter of intensely focused skill. You are in the wrong frame of mind.’
Delilah knew he was right.
It was early February, and since the incident with Julius Prenderghast, and her owl having ruined their chances of finding Connie and Matilda, she had found herself feeling angrier and angrier, consumed with impotent, hopeless frustration. It hummed constantly like low-level background noise, and flared at the slightest provocation. She woke up feeling cross, and seemed to prowl around spoiling for a fight until she found one to unload her temper on to, at which point, briefly discharged and flat, she would be plagued with shame and self-loathing.
And repeat.
Griping with Ariadne, who continued to take smug pleasure in goading her, was one thing; barking at a first-year for getting in her way in the corridor when she was late for Transfiguration, responding sarcastically to an innocent enquiry from a younger Ravenclaw girl who tried to strike up a conversation, snarling at a couple of third-years who were giggling and whispering in the library… these things were hardly laudable, but didn’t keep her awake at night.
As usual, Terry was another matter.
‘Hey, Delilah!’ he had greeted her cheerily in January outside the library, with what appeared to be genuine pleasure. ‘How was your Christmas?’
‘Rubbish,’ she’d snapped. ‘Yours?’
His warm smile collapsed into an expression of concern.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘You stayed here, didn’t you?’
‘How does everybody know that?’
‘Well, we just noticed you weren’t on the train. It’s no biggie.’
‘Oh yeah, rattling around in an empty, freezing cold dormitory by myself on Christmas Day. No biggie.’
Even at the time she didn’t know why she was being so abrasive. Perhaps she wanted him to ask why she hadn’t had a home to go to, so she could break down, lean against him, breathe in his sweet, warm-honey scent, shake off her hard shell and sob into his robes, offload the whole story, have his arms around her, have him kiss her… Have him back. Have something back.
‘Well, sorry it was rubbish,’ he said awkwardly, plainly wishing he’d never asked. ‘I’d better…’ He indicated the library door and edged around her with a stiff smile, turning his back and scuttling off, leaving her to stomp up to the Ravenclaw tower aching with longing and hating herself.
‘What gains do the New Year bring?’ the knocker had trilled.
‘None,’ Delilah snapped. ‘Calendars are arbitrary human inventions, and one year’s just the bloody same as any bloody other.’
‘Technically true,’ the door agreed grudgingly as it swung open.
A few weeks later she had been sitting in the common room on a freezing, soggy Saturday afternoon, and Terry had come in and thrown himself down on the chair opposite her.
‘You’re abstaining from the Quidditch too, then?’ he’d grinned.
‘Too much reading to get through,’ she said, indicating the heavy book in her lap. ‘Apparently the Soothing Solution I concocted last week would have caused severe blistering if it came into contact with human skin, so Slughorn set me extra homework.’
Terry guffawed sympathetically.
‘It’s a tough potion’ he said kindly. ‘I have a ton to get through too, but I’m coming down with something, and I just couldn’t hack the cold out there any more. A bit pathetic, I know.’
‘Not really. I love Quidditch, but I can’t say I think it’s worth losing extremities over. I’m more of a fair-weather fan.’
‘I thought you weren’t much of a fan at all?’ he said in surprise.
‘Well, I’m not fanatical, but my dad always takes me to matches,’ she said without thinking.
The implication in that sentence struck her as soon as she heard it come out of her mouth. She and Ormond would never again don their grey-and-white team scarves and traipse down to the stadium, climb the dizzyingly steep steps to the stands, staggering under rucksacks full of Butterbeer and cauldron cakes, yell encouragement until their voices failed to a croak, chant along with the other fans and hug ecstatically at each goal…
‘Really? Which team?’
Delilah stared down at the page of her book.
‘The Falmouth Falcons,’ she said quietly.
‘Crikey,’ he’d chuckled. ‘When’s the last time they were even in the second division?’
Delilah felt alarmingly like her eyes might be filling with tears.
I remember every sodding word we’ve ever exchanged, and you don’t even remember that.
‘Oh, shut up,’ she said roughly. ‘They’re not that bad.’
Terry blinked in bewilderment.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I was just teasing, I didn’t mean…’
She snapped the book shut and struggled to her feet.
‘I’m going to the library,’ she’d announced curtly, and stalked off, leaving him staring after her.
And of course, the more horribly she behaved towards everybody around her, the more anger she accumulated, and the more she took it out on Snape during their private sessions.
He had started trying to teach her to deflect spells in January, finally satisfied with the improvements in her Shield Charm.
‘You need to assess your opponent’s intentions,’ he had counselled. ‘Put yourself into their shoes, read their body language, predict the nature of the spell, and meet it with an equal and opposite reaction from your own wand in order to neutralise it.’
Delilah knew she was capable of this kind of wandwork, but the aggression that thrummed through her veins made the meditative assessments it required virtually impossible, and, faced with a faux-opponent in Snape, she discovered a savage satisfaction in discharging her pent-up energy by hurling curses around as hard as she could.
‘Breathe, take a moment, and try again,’ Snape said now.
Delilah closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. She opened them and raised her wand.
‘Ictusempra!’
Delilah slashed her wand against the oncoming spell, but only succeeding in refracting its effect, and her knees buckled as her lower legs erupted in piercing welts.
‘Ouch,’ she said feebly, her watering. She sat heavily on the floor and pulled up the legs of her jeans to rub her shins. Snape waved his wand, and the welts faded.
‘Try again,’ he said, motioning her to stand.
She clambered to her feet and raised her wand, but she felt sore and wrung out.
‘Ictusempra,’ Snape intoned again, and Delilah slashed her wand valiantly, but this time it was an even weaker effort and she missed altogether, so the Stinging Jinx landed on her right arm.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she growled, squeezing her eyes shut and clutching her bicep. She doubled over in pain, then unclasped her hand in order to blindly transfer her wand and point it shakily at her own arm.
A violent upward force swiped her wand from her hand, and it clattered to the flagstones.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Snape said, and the pain in her arm dissipated as he waved his own wand over it with a swishing sound.
Delilah crouched to retrieve her wand, and stood with it raised before her.
‘I can heal myself,’ she said through a clenched jaw, to Snape, who now stood barely three feet from her.
‘With your left hand?’ he said sceptically.
‘You always underestimate me,’ she said, burning with resentment.
‘Do I?’ he countered nastily, raising his wand. ‘Ictusempra!’
Delilah, totally unprepared for an attack at point blank range, performed an undignified pirouette to avoid the spell.
‘Why is all this even necessary?’ she flung at him as she skidded back round to face him, more as a delaying tactic than anything, knowing she would break down if he landed another jinx on her. ‘Why does it matter so much that I can fight?’
‘How many times do you need that question answered?’
‘But you said, you and Dumbledore said that he doesn’t even know I exist. What, really, is the danger?’
‘The danger is that you will be captured even without his knowing who you are, and your family connections will be discovered.’
‘But obviously if I were captured I’d just lie.’
‘You’d just lie,’ Snape echoed with a smirk. ‘I wonder why the Dark Lord’s other victims didn’t think of that.’
‘Well, why not? I’m better prepared than most, I can have a cover story ready-’
‘It’s not – that – simple,’ Snape spat. ‘You cannot lie to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord knows, he always knows. He is the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen.’
Delilah frowned.
‘The world’s most…?’ she repeated uncomprehendingly.
‘Legilimency is the art of seeing into another’s mind, accessing their thoughts. Voldemort can always tell when he is being lied to because he can see the inner workings of your mind as clearly as I can see the expression on your face.’
‘But you lie to him, you’re a double agent. How come he doesn’t see through you?’
‘Because I am highly skilled at blocking Voldemort’s access to my thoughts.’
‘Well, then, why not teach me to do that? Wouldn’t that make more sense than all this combat training?’
‘Of course not. Occlumency is a ridiculously difficult skill: the moment you know that somebody is going to access your thoughts, the first thing that you think of is the very thing you least want them to see, and so you end up giving it to them on a plate. It is a discipline which requires immense psychological discipline, and I can tell you from bitter experience that adolescents have nothing like the emotional control required to master it.’
‘Most people my age wouldn’t be able to manage half the things I do,’ Delilah smarted. ‘You could at least give me a chance.’
The words had come out before she had a chance to think through the inevitable result, and Snape bristled in his turn. Delilah’s brain whirred into a blind panic as he raised his wand.
‘Very well,’ he said brusquely. ‘Let’s see you try. Legilimens.’
The first thing that you think of is the very thing you least want them to see…
She felt Snape’s spell burst into her head like a pair of hands closing around her skull and sinking their fingers through her skin, and helplessly, although she internally screamed “No! No! NO!” at her own brain and frantically tried to veer her thoughts towards innocuous subjects, the scene from The Rapture unfolded at the forefront of her mind in hideous slow-motion snapshots: Snape advancing on her, eyes burning with lust; him pulling at the hem of her camisole; his head against her chest, his tongue circling her nipple; his hands grabbing at her with animal frenzy; his head between her thighs, and her scream of violent pleasure; his form above her, groping blindly at her breasts; him bent in a surrendering prostration, his eyes rolling back, transported with pleasure…
She felt him pull out of her with a jolt.
A long silence elapsed and she didn’t dare look at him.
‘You…’ he hissed eventually.
She cringed, waiting for the end of that sentence. He sounded lost for words, speechless with disgust.
‘You are not taking this seriously,’ he said finally in a strangled voice. ‘Get out.’
Delilah risked a glance at him, and saw with alarm that his face had drained to a peculiar grey-green colour, and his eyes were popping slightly. He had backed away to his desk and looked as though he was about to collapse on to it. He clearly wanted to be as far from her as possible.
‘Professor…’
‘I said – get –out.’
She hovered for a moment, and then gathered her satchel and scuttled from the room, hearing the door thud to a close behind her and walking at an absurdly fast pace through the dungeon corridors, up the stairs and across the Entrance Hall as though she could out-walk the embarrassment that was burning all over her, exorcise the shame that washed over her again and again in huge, physical shudders. She pounded the corridors blindly, with no idea where she was going, until she found herself at the door of the library, and, it seeming as good a place as any to hide, crept in and sought a concealed corner alcove flanked by high shelves where she crashed into a slightly cracked leather chair and dropped her head onto the desk, resting her forehead on her arms, her fists clenched, reliving the scene over and over and over in her mind.
*
For the next few days she ran to the Great Hall for dinner straight after her last class and wolfed down a plate of food in order to be gone before he arrived. She peeked around corners before turning them, terrified of running into him. She was dreading her next Defence Against the Dark Arts class so much that she even considered skipping it. Would he torment her? Drag her up to the front of the class again and force her to duel him, or pepper his lesson with veiled remarks aimed at her? Even if he just gave her one of his notorious stares, she felt she would crumble with embarrassment. Why, why, why had she goaded him like that?
She had a rough idea of his timetable during the week and was able to avoid him pretty easily by dashing between lessons and keeping herself to the Ravenclaw common room in the evenings, but when the weekend came she couldn’t easily predict where or whether she might run into him. On Saturday afternoon, after a couple of hours sequestered with her homework and a quick lunch, feeling restless and shut-in, she decided to go for a walk in the grounds.
The crashing rain of the morning had given way to a shiveringly misty, eerie afternoon with a crisp bite to the air, and Delilah hunched her shoulders into her scarf as she strode across the slippery grass. She stomped along the spongy bank of the lake, still dotted with rafts of pellucid ice upon which perched families of red-necked phalaropes huddling in nervous little clusters. She veered away from the lake as it wended away from the school, giving a wide berth to the Whomping Willow which was waving its fists around restively, and found herself assailed by a tiny puppy which bounced up to her, crawling along on its belly and then pouncing playfully at her on its ungainly paws, with an eagerness that reminded her painfully of Matilda.
‘Hello, she said, dropping to her knees, and the puppy launched itself at her chest, crazed with pleasure. She laughed and took it by the paws to avoid getting mud all over her coat, but let the dog nuzzle its warm snout into her neck and lick her chin.
‘I think you’ve escaped from Professor Hagrid,’ she told the puppy sternly, and it sat back, as though trying to look obedient and serious, but its forked tail was wagging so hard that its entire back half shook. Delilah scratched the soft, warm skin behind his ears, and set off towards Hagrid’s cabin, clicking her fingers at the dog, who fell delightedly into step beside her, jumping up to try to lick her hand.
‘Wiiiiilbuuuuur!’ came a deafening voice from through the mist.
The dog stopped dead, its tail prongs standing poker straight and trembling, poised low on its front paws for further instruction.
‘Wiiiiilbuuuuur?’
The dog darted off in the direction of the voice and Delilah ran after it, just about keeping sight of its madly wagging tail in the mist. An enormous figure loomed into view, the tiny shape of Wilbur dancing around its feet, and Delilah stopped to loosen her scarf.
‘Who’s that?’ said the voice.
‘Professor Hagrid, it’s me, Delilah,’ she called, moving closer. ‘I found your dog by the lake.’
‘Stupid pooch,’ he said fondly, leaning down to pat the dog, who closed his eyes with pleasure, positively beatified at the attention from his master. ‘E’s a loose cannon this one, charges off to ‘ave an adventure and then starts cryin’ that ‘e can’t find his way home.’
The dog stared up at Hagrid, panting with devotion.
‘Good job I found him,’ Delilah smiled. ‘It’s so misty today, he’d have a hard time being seen.’
‘’E’s goin’ to have to get used to it though, ‘e’ll be set loose before long,’ Hagrid said sagely, looking down at the puppy, who was now standing with his forepaws resting on the toe of Hagrid’s enormous boot, as though trying to get as close as he possibly could.
‘Why are you letting him go?’ Delilah said in astonishment. ‘He can’t live in the wild, can he?’
‘Can’t live any other way once ‘e’s grown,’ Hagrid explained. ‘Yeh’d be surprised, the animals that seem so ‘elpless when they’re little, how independent they get once you…’
He broke off as Wilbur dropped his shoulders and stared, growling, into the foggy distance. They both followed the dog’s gaze and after a moment, a black-cloaked figure emerged through the mist, a small leather pouch swinging from his wrist.
Delilah’s stomach dropped.
‘Nice to see you Professor Hagrid,’ she said hurriedly, backing away. ‘Just realised I’ve got to…’
‘Afternoon Severus,’ Hagrid boomed, not hearing her. ‘What were you doin’ in the Forest?’
‘Collecting potion ingredients,’ Snape said shortly. He turned to Delilah as though to address her.
‘Thanks Professor Hagrid,’ Delilah said loudly. ‘I really have to get back to school. See you.’
She turned and dashed towards the school, breaking into a trot after a few paces. She only chanced a glance over her shoulder when she reached the top of the school steps, and, when she saw nobody approaching, marched into the hall with her hands sunk into her coat pockets and her head bowed, almost colliding with Ariadne Hornby.
‘Hey! Watch where you’re going!’ Ariadne grumbled.
‘Where are you going?’ Padma said. ‘You look like you’ve just seen a werewolf.’
‘If you’re rushing to the Apparition class, don’t worry, you’re not late,’ Lisa chimed in. ‘We’re still waiting for them to call us in.’
Delilah registered for the first time that a large crowd was assembled in the Entrance Hall.
‘Apparition class?’ Delilah repeated, feeling hot and disarranged.
‘Didn’t you sign up for them? I thought they’d be right up your street.’
‘I didn’t know about them… What, learning to Apparate? Here at school?’
‘Yep, they lift the Apparition Ban for the lessons, just in the Great Hall,’ Padma said.
‘I am so nervous,’ Lisa said. ‘I’m absolutely bound to be the one who splinches myself.’
‘You won’t,’ Padma said soothingly.
‘Apparently Susan did in this morning’s session, Terry told me,’ Lisa said anxiously, twisting her fingers. ‘I’m sure I’ll never get the hang of it, my uncle says some people just don’t.’
‘Of course you’ll get the hang of it,’ Ariadne said impatiently. ‘Delilah, didn’t you take Apparition lessons last year at Beauxbatons? After all, you are repeating a year.’
‘Gosh, am I?’ Delilah said acidly. ‘I’m so glad you take the time to remind me of that six times a fucking week, I might forget otherwise. And no, the law’s different in France, you can’t even start lessons until you’re of age. Anyway, since you bring it up, aren’t you a seventh year? How come you’re still taking lessons? Failed your test, by any chance?’
Ariadne opened and closed her mouth mutely, a murderous expression on her face.
‘Look, they’re calling us in now, let’s go,’ Padma said loudly, obviously keen to diffuse the tension.
‘Coming, Delilah?’
‘She hasn’t signed up,’ Ariadne huffed. ‘She can’t come.’
‘Oh, Delilah!’ came a squeaky voice, as if on cue. ‘I was surprised not to see your name on the sign-up sheet for Apparition classes, have you changed your mind?’
‘I didn’t know about them,’ Delilah told Professor Flitwick. ‘I must have missed the notice. Is it too late?’
‘Of course not,’ he said indulgently. ‘I shall let Mr Twycross know we’ve got another one, we’ll be easily able to make room for you. Just come with me and we’ll get a signature from you; we’ll sort out the payment afterwards. I say, are you feeling all right? You look dreadfully pale.’
‘Thanks Professor, I’m fine,’ Delilah smiled, and followed him towards the Great Hall, feeling Ariadne glaring at her back as she did. She thought she could actually hear her teeth grinding.
‘Apparition requires immense concentration,’ Mr Twycross counselled once the students were lined up along the far side of the hall, facing a line of wooden hoops which marked their targets. ‘You will only achieve a successful Apparition by employing every single grain of concentration you possess.’
Great, Delilah thought disconsolately. Story of my life.
Why had she signed up to something so mentally challenging when her brain felt like it had been swallowed by a whirlpool? If she couldn’t even deflect a spell, how was she supposed to master dematerialising her entire body and transporting it to the other side of the room?
‘…so, time to give it a go yourselves. Don’t worry, you won’t get the hang of it the first time, or at least I’d be astounded if you did…’
She turned determinedly on the spot.
Nothing.
‘Keep trying, keep trying,’ Twycross called. ‘Remember the Three Ds: Destination, Determination, Deliberation…’
She turned on the spot…
Nothing.
She turned again…
Nothing. Again and again she tried, growing more and more frustrated as she spun around with no discernible results, and she knew she’d never manage it whilst she was straining so hard.
She looked determinedly across the Hall, and caught the eye of Professor Flitwick, who was perched on a bench on the sidelines, observing. He gave her an encouraging grin and raised his tiny thumbs, and she grinned anxiously back.
She turned on the spot…
Breathe consciously.
She felt a strange squeezing sensation, and jumped in shock, to find herself standing six or seven inches from where she had been a moment before.
She looked around, but nobody seemed to have noticed: Flitwick had begun a conversation with Professor Sprout, and everybody else was absorbed in their own efforts.
She returned to her starting spot and stared with renewed determination at the wooden hoop at the other end of the hall.
Destination, Determination…
Breathe consciously.
She spun on the spot, and this time she again felt a slight compression of her limbs, like she were stepping voluntarily into the eye of a cyclone, and she resolved this time to follow through: she turned on the spot, frowning with concentration, her fingers and toes screwed up with effort, generating a barely-discernible, shimmering field of magic around her… and then, mid-turn, she caught the eye of Professor Snape from across the Hall, standing in the doorway staring at her, distorted by the waves she had created, and without even pausing to consider she tried to reverse her trajectory to hold his eye contact; a confusion of pain and noise blared around her, and she vaguely registered a crushing feeling in her shoulder as she thudded to the ground.
*
Delilah opened her eyes to find herself lying in an unfamiliar bed, beneath a set of starched white sheets, in a cubicle bordered with blue curtains. Realising she must be in the hospital wing, she tried to prop herself up on her elbows, but her left arm collapsed immediately beneath her, and she flopped back down onto the pillows.
‘You should be careful,’ a voice said from her right side.
She jerked over to see Professor Snape on a chair beside her bed, his ankle resting on his opposite knee, a copy of The Daily Prophet resting in his lap.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘In fact, what am I doing here?’
‘It appears you splinched yourself in half during your first Apparition lesson, and collapsed in shock,’ Snape said drily.
‘I… what?’ she said queasily.
‘Yes. You transported yourself across the Hall, leaving your left arm and leg behind. Quite an achievement for a first effort.’
She remembered feeling a squeezing sensation, and then the sound of her own voice screaming. She pictured herself standing there with half of her limbs missing, furiously windmilling one arm in a comical attempt to retain her balance before toppling slowly, helplessly over.
She examined her left arm, squirming in shame; why did he always have to wander in on her at the most undignified possible moments?
‘Well, I’m fine now,’ she said shortly. ‘I seem to be back in one piece. What are you doing hovering around my bedside? Bringing me grapes or something?’
Snape raised an eyebrow.
‘I was trying to arrange our next lesson, but evidently…’
‘I’m fine. Let’s do it tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ he queried doubtfully.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll be well enough?’
‘You had me duelling with you the day after I had my chest ripped open,’ she said hotly. ‘I’m fine this time, and anyway, it only happened because you burst in on me and broke my concentration.’
Snape gave her a long look. She forced herself to hold his cold, atramentous gaze.
‘Until tomorrow, then,’ he said evenly. He tossed the newspaper at the foot of her bed and pushed himself nimbly up from the chair, and with a flash of the curtains he was gone.
Delilah slowly lay back on the pillows and stared up at the tiled ceiling of the hospital wing.
*
The following morning the Entrance Hall had been filled with large, shimmering pink and white bubbles that floated seven feet above the ground and wafted around, occasionally emitting bursts of fragrant smoke that curled into heart shapes, and little showers of rose-petal confetti. The bannisters had been dressed with twisted bunches of long-stemmed roses, and golden fonts had been stationed at the doors of the Great Hall, overflowing with heart-shaped chocolates wrapped in gold foil.
‘What on earth?’ she said to Lisa as they came downstairs for breakfast.
‘It’s for the Valentine’s feast!’ Lisa exclaimed, giggling as a cascade of petals tumbled over them, catching in their hair and robes.
‘I’d forgotten it was Valentine’s Day.’
‘You’ve really got your finger on the button these days, Delilah,’ Ariadne scoffed, taking a handful of chocolates from the font.
‘Today we’re going to be learning about Captivation Charms,’ Professor Flitwick announced after breakfast as they took their seats in the Charms classroom. ‘A fun little spell, sometimes used by insecure public performers to produce more enthusiastic responses from their audiences, so almost all entertainment venues and political function spaces have restrictions placed against them. Still, since it’s the Day of Love I thought we’d have a little go at them. Everybody please turn to the person beside you and follow the instructions on Page 145 of your books…’
Everybody immediately paired off, and Delilah, at the end of a line of desks, was left out.
‘You and I can practise together Delilah,’ Flitwick said kindly, coming up to her desk, but then he turned as the classroom door slammed.
‘Ah, Mister Boot!’
‘Sorry I’m late, Professor,’ Terry said breathlessly. ‘I forgot my book and had to run to my dorm to get it.’
‘Not to worry, you can pair up with Miss du Lac, who will fill you in on today’s task…’
Terry and Delilah’s eyes met. He gave her a slightly uncertain smile and pulled up a chair beside her.
‘Right, do you want to go first, or shall I?’ he said once they’d discussed the instructions.
‘Don’t mind. You go.’
Terry held his wand up and consulted the book.
‘Scitalis,’ he said, pointing the wand at Delilah.
He watched her tentatively.
‘Try again,’ she said.
‘Scitalis.’
Delilah shook her head.
‘Not sure what I’m doing wrong,’ Terry said with a frown.
‘I think it’s the wand movement. You’re listing to the right a bit.’ She demonstrated with her own wand, and Terry nodded and tried again.
‘Scitalis.’
‘That was better,’ Delilah said encouragingly. ‘I think it’s more like…’ she flicked her wand deftly. ‘Scitalis.’
At once Terry’s eyes widened slightly and he leaned into her, his face rapt with devotion. His hair flopped over his forehead and he tilted his head, spellbound, as though she were the most fascinatingly beguiling thing he’d ever seen. He stared at her with burning eyes, his lips slightly parted, and Delilah’s head swelled with Champagne bubbles and the scent of sweet briar, the flare of fairy wings glimmering in her pupils as she stared helplessly, hungrily back at him, her wand raised, the counter charm lost on her lips.
‘Very good Delilah!’ Flitwick cried, waving his wand so that Terry’s expression cleared. Terry stretched his eyebrows and shook his hair out of his eyes, looking slightly dazed. Delilah coughed and shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
‘Now, what you want to do is cast the spell with the lightest of touches, to achieve the maximum effect with the minimum observable signs; if you hold your wand arm slightly lower…’
Flitwick went on with a flatteringly technical explanation of the finer points of the charm, going into far more detail than he would have with any other student, but although Delilah nodded attentively, she was hardly listening, and soon he was distracted by a burst of laughter from across the room and a shout of distress from Michael Corner, whose arm was being almost pulled out of its socket by a spellbound Anthony Goldstein who was on his knees and dangling from it. For the rest of the lesson she let Terry try again and again to master the spell, but didn’t trust herself turn her own wand on him again.
*
‘Ictusempra.’
Delilah slashed her wand determinedly, and the beam from Snape’s wand deflected onto the carpet, which singed slightly.
‘I did it!’ Delilah squealed. ‘I deflected it!’
‘You redirected it,’ Snape said pedantically. ‘It’s a start, but a true deflection not only redirects the magic, but neutralises it in the process.’
‘Well, it’s better than my usual efforts,’ Delilah said stubbornly.
‘True, but try again. Ictusempra.’
Delilah slashed her wand, and this time met the spell head-on so that it shot straight back at Snape. He waved his wand with no less urgency than if he were facing an approaching bumblebee, knocking it lazily to one side. Delilah felt a stab of resentment towards him for his effortless skill, which mingled with grudging admiration, and the combination produced a surprising tingle between her thighs.
‘Again,’ she breathed, determined to impress him.
‘Ictusempra.’
She concentrated so hard that she nearly broke her back teeth, and the spell bent away from her wand tip and glanced harmlessly against the bookshelf.
Cautious of again celebrating too soon, Delilah looked excitedly at Snape, who gave a thin smile.
‘Now that was a spell deflection,’ he said.
Delilah positively overflowed with pride, and bounced towards him.
‘I did it Professor,’ she said, feeling drunk on adrenaline.
‘You certainly did.’
‘Aren’t you proud of me?’
‘Tremendously,’ he said drily. She couldn’t tell whether there was any sarcasm in that remark, and immediately, quite unaccountably, the excitement and frustration of the last few weeks bubbled up in her with astonishing force. She gave a deep, involuntary exhale, and grasped her jumper by the hem.
‘You haven’t checked on my scar in a while,’ she said brazenly, pulling the jumper over her head and tossing it to the floor.
Snape said nothing.
They stood and looked at each other for a moment, until he cocked an eyebrow.
‘Are you going to take this off?’ he said, gesturing her camisole.
Take it off me, she wanted to say, fucking TEAR it off me, but the words stuck in her throat and she didn’t quite dare, so she peeled it off herself.
Snape bent to peer at her scar, still a knot of bunched, angry violet at its worst along her sternum, but tapering to a pale fuchsia at the edges.
‘It is healing well,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t need any further treatment.’
Delilah stood expectantly still.
Snape examined the scar for a moment longer, but then turned away. He started shuffling a sheaf of papers.
‘That will do for today,’ he said.
Delilah stared at his back and took a step towards him. She felt like her head was inflating and ants were scurrying over her skin, up and down the inside of her throat and through her veins. She edged closer to him and breathed in his distinctive scent, spicy, heady, complex: the smell of vetiver, of the vapour from freshly blown-out candles, of ink-smudged fingertips tearing a handful of fresh oregano leaves.
Snape felt her approach and turned, to find her so close he brushed her bare skin with the sleeve of his robes. He recoiled, holding his hands up slightly.
‘What are you–’ he said guardedly.
‘Touch me,’ she blurted out.
His eyes darted over her face, and his lips twitched as though they were forming the beginnings of a dozen different words, but none came out.
‘Touch me,’ she went on recklessly, moving closer still, her head spinning, ‘touch me properly, not like you’re examining me, do it like you want to, do it like you – like you want – like you want me, like you…’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, but his voice was uncharacteristically weak.
‘You owe me,’ she pressed on wildly, breathing with deranged fervour, grasping at the front of his robes. ‘For the Floo Powder thing, you said you owed me, do this, do this for me…’
A tiny voice in her head was aware of how humiliating this was, how ill-advised, how stupid, but it was drowned out by the thunderous tide of lust that was crashing through her, blinding her, taking over her limbs and her vocal chords.
‘And this is how you want to cash in that favour?’ Snape said.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she breathed, now pressing herself against him and pulling at his sleeves, trying to lift his hands, her eyes half-closed, her head flopping, and she heard him say ‘as you wish’, but she was already insensible to everything except the rough cloth of his robes against her flesh, which flushed a violent scarlet in response, the shock of his skin on hers as he held her waist firmly, and was dimly aware of her knees buckling underneath her and him catching her and guiding her to his desk onto which she fell, leaning back on her hands and tipping her head so that her hair fanned down behind her in pinnate fronds as his hands crawled up her body… at last, at last the deliberate, caressing touch she had so long craved, and she gave a deep moan as his fingertips brushed along her ribcage and his thumbs traced the underside of her breasts. His hands danced over her flushed skin with a maddeningly light touch, circling in closer to her nipples, and then she felt a shock of wet heat as his mouth closed over her ruckled areola.
She whimpered in pleasure and began to gyrate her hips towards him, demented with passion at the feeling of his hands and mouth on her and desperate for even a moment’s glancing friction against her clit, which was pounding with excitement, velvety and slick with the hot, beating tremors which thrilled through her, and she was so tight with arousal that she felt she would scream if he didn’t slide his hands into her knickers that instant, and as he lifted her breasts in both hands to his mouth, still running the flat of his tongue over her nipples, she blindly tried to hook her leg around his to pull him in closer to her.
He twitched out of her reach.
‘Mmmmherenow,’ she groaned incoherently, grasping for his hand, but he snatched it away.
‘No,’ he said, standing up straight and letting go of her.
‘Nnnnoooo,’ she moaned, giving a matter-of-fact little shake of the head as though he had foolishly misunderstood her, grabbing again at his arm and clasping a handful of his robes, trying to guide him between her legs.
He pulled his robes out of her grasp, and she raised her head and opened her eyes slowly.
‘Touch me,’ she pleaded, her voice thick with desire.
‘I have done as you asked.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head again and reaching for his hand, ‘I want…’
‘I know perfectly well what you want. That was not part of the deal.’
Delilah blinked and focused her eyes on him properly, as though waking from a trance.
‘But you can’t just… You can’t just stop, you can’t…’
‘I can.’
‘But you want to, I know you do,’ she insisted, stumbling to her feet and lurching towards him, grabbing at his thigh.
He caught her wrist. She looked up at him; his face was twisted and livid.
‘I want nothing from you,’ he said harshly. ‘I have upheld my end of the bargain, that is all. I know you think your tits are the most irresistibly fascinating things in existence, but they’re not. They hold no interest for me whatsoever.’
He swooped down to the flagstones and retrieved her camisole, jumper and wand, and thrust them at her chest, shoving her so hard to the door that she staggered and gasped. He strode to the door and tore it open open.
‘You have extracted your pound of flesh, you naïve little whore,’ he snarled, breathing like a Spanish bull, ‘now get – out.’
When Delilah just stood, gaping at him in utter confusion, he grabbed her hard by the upper arm and threw her, half-naked, into the hallway, her clothes and wand clutched in a pathetic jumble to her bare chest, and slammed the door with rattling force on her face which stared back at him, stricken with horror.
