By the time Delilah had changed her robes, sluiced the dried blood from her skin and daubed the excitingly familiar-smelling Dermorestorative Poultice on her neck, she realised lunch had already finished, and she had to go directly to Transfiguration.
She had made significant improvements in Transfiguration since joining Hogwarts the previous autumn and could now almost always keep up with the rest of the class, but that afternoon she was so distracted that she made no headway whatsoever with trying to turn her orange into an ostrich. She waved her wand half-heartedly for three-quarters of the lesson, making the orange give a few meek little squawks, shed a handful of mangy feathers, and at one point sprout spindly foot-long legs on which it tottered briefly across her desk before collapsing with an unpleasant squelch on her exercise book. Then she waved her wand so dreamily that it burst into an exquisite bloom of orchids, which multiplied with alarming speed across the desk until Professor McGonagall intervened, and then the bell rang.
Delilah gathered her books in a breathless haze and ran directly down to the Entrance Hall, wheeling off towards the dungeons. She had no more classes that afternoon and was impatient to find Snape again, but there was no answer at his door. She paced impatiently along the dungeon corridors, peering into classrooms and skulking around the corners, until she ran headlong into Professor Slughorn.
‘Miss, er, hello,’ he said in surprise. ‘What are you doing down here?’
‘I was… looking for Professor Snape,’ she said. ‘You haven’t seen him have you?’
‘No, but you know he doesn’t teach down here any more – if he’s not in his office you’d better try his classroom on the third floor.’
‘OK, thanks,’ she said glumly. She turned back the way she’d come and slouched back along the corridor. As she did so she could have sworn she saw a flash of black vanishing around a corner; she sped up and rounded towards the staircase, but there was nobody to be seen. She knocked again on Snape’s door, but there was still no reply.
Was he hiding from her?
She wandered restlessly towards the library, where she pulled out her Herbology homework and stared pointlessly at her half-finished essay for an hour until it was time to head to the Great Hall for dinner. She sat with Padma and Marietta, buttered a bread roll, served herself a bowl of chicken stew, glancing every ten seconds or so at the door to see whether Snape would come through it.
‘Have you heard anything more about the Beauxbatons attack?’ Padma asked, distracting her.
‘Nope,’ she said. ‘There doesn’t seem to have been anything more about it in the papers.’
‘I thought you might have heard something from your friends there,’ Padma said keenly. Delilah got the feeling she was hoping for an inside track on the gossip.
‘I didn’t really have any friends there,’ Delilah said without thinking. Padma glanced awkwardly at Marietta, who stifled a snigger.
She remembered what Terry had said about people ‘not knowing what to make of her’, and realised this was exactly the kind of thing he’d been talking about.
‘I mean, sorry, what I mean is I’ve kind of lost touch with a lot of my friends there,’ she lied clumsily. ‘I’m not such a good letter writer,’ she added with a wry smile. ‘In any case, you know everyone’s so careful what they put in letters these days, they probably wouldn’t tell me if they did know anything. They must be scared out of their wits.’
‘They must be,’ Marietta agreed. ‘Fancy the school being attacked – you can’t imagine that happening at Hogwarts, can you. No wonder they’re all leaving.’
‘Delilah doesn’t think that’s true,’ Padma said. ‘She thinks The Daily Prophet’s making that stuff up.’
‘My uncle works for The Daily Prophet,’ Marietta said indignantly.
‘My dad and stepmother both worked for them,’ Delilah said. ‘Doesn’t mean they’re beyond reproach.’
Marietta scowled and Padma hurriedly changed the subject. Delilah’s attention drifted to the staff table, and with a start she spotted Snape sitting alone at the far end. He must have snuck in whilst she was distracted by Padma. He was examining a folded newspaper and toying with a forkful of food. As on her first evening at Hogwarts he suddenly, unaccountably, looked directly up and into her eyes. They stared across the hall at each other for a moment, and then he pushed away his bowl, threw down his paper, and stood, stalking towards the doorway, limping slightly.
‘See you guys,’ Delilah said, snatching up her bag and slipping out of her seat.
‘Delilah?’ Padma said in amazement. ‘Where are you going? You’ve hardly eaten anything!’
But Delilah was already halfway across the hall, following the path of Professor Snape like a tracker dog. She saw him vanish down the staircase to the dungeons as she rounded into the Entrance Hall, and strode determinedly after him. Even with an injured leg his stride was evidently longer than hers, and by the time she reached the dungeon corridor he’d vanished. She stomped to his office and hammered on the door.
No response.
‘Let me in,’ she said in frustration. ‘I know you’re in there.’
After another moment there was a movement from within the room and the door opened a crack. Delilah shoved her way through it and then closed the door with her shoulder blade. Snape’s arm hovered away from his body by a few inches towards the door, as though he hadn’t intended to let go of it.
‘How’s your leg?’ Delilah said.
‘Healing, but painful. That bastard dog has quite some fangs. And your neck?’
‘The Dermorestorative stuff seems to have pretty much sorted it out.’
‘Good.’
Delilah tilted her head and stared at him for a few moments, then launched herself at him, pressing her body against his as hard as she could, lacing her arms around him to lock him to her and burying her face into his hair with a hot groan of desire.
‘Why were you trying to avoid me?’ she murmured into his neck, breathing in his scent. She felt his pulse against her lips. He didn’t respond, either physically or vocally, but the frustrated passion of that morning bubbled up inside her and she tightened her grip on him, oblivious to his stiffness, clenching all over to squeeze him in closer, every muscle in her body tightening.
‘No,’ Snape said, as he had that morning. She ignored him, nudging her right hand between their chests to tease open the bodice of her robes, her left hand sunk into his hair.
‘No,’ he said again, raising his hands to try and form a barrier between his body and hers. She caught his wrists and drew his hands to meet behind her head, pressing her chest against him, her fingers lacing in his.
‘No, no, no,’ he shouted suddenly, ripping his hands from her grasp and pushing her away. She staggered for a moment but righted herself immediately, her hands still knitted into her mussed hair, her eyes sparkling.
‘No?’ she repeated challengingly.
Snape regarded her with a wariness that bordered on fear.
‘No,’ he said again. ‘Stop this. You will leave now, and you will not come back. This ends here.’
Delilah lifted her chin, her eyes still alight with a look of hard, amused determination, a smile playing on her lips. She swung her bag onto her shoulder and stepped towards him. She was almost as tall as him, and although he recoiled so that his chin almost vanished into his neck like a lizard, he didn’t step away from her. She leaned in closer.
‘I’ll go,’ she said softly, ‘but you won’t get rid of me that easily.’
She pulled open the door and strode along the corridor.
For once, she didn’t hear it slam behind her.
*
After leaving Snape’s office she’d walked quickly, inattentively through the castle, buzzing with adrenaline, eschewing the common room and the library where she might be inveigled into conversation with people she knew.
Snape, you tricky little bastard, she thought as she skittered with needless speed up a winding tower staircase.
She’d spent so long dancing anxiously around the question of whether or not he wanted her – why hadn’t she just trusted the evidence before her? It had been so obvious really – that she could no longer work out where her desire for him ended and her desire for him to desire her began. She tried to think of him objectively – hook-nosed, greasy-haired, unpleasant, sarcastic – to shake into perspective the deep, pulsing sensations that overwhelmed her, but it all seemed entirely irrelevant, a totally abstract exercise. In some ways, her need to conquer him had nothing at all to do with him.
At the top of the staircase she pushed through a door onto what she now realised was the top of the Astronomy Tower, the highest point of the castle, from which she had an exquisite view of the surrounding mountains against a violet evening sky. A gentle but pressing wind was driving wisps of cloud across the horizon. She walked over to the turrets and leaned her elbows on them, trying to organise her thoughts.
‘The classy thing to do would be to ignore him back,’ she said aloud. But that was a dead end: that was letting him win. She could tell instinctively that playing hard to get wouldn’t work on him, that ignoring him wouldn’t inflame any kind of jealous passion. He seemed genuinely determined that he would never touch her again, so if he ignored her and she ignored him, nothing would happen and he’d get exactly what he wanted. Whatever spin she put on it inside her own head would be lost on him. It wouldn’t be a display of independence: it would be one of obeisance.
She jumped when a shadow flickered beside her, but there was nothing there. It must have been a moonbeam reflecting off the restless clouds.
‘Whenever he wants something he just marches up to it and takes it,’ she said into the night air. ‘So why the fuck shouldn’t I do the same?’
But it came back to whether this was what she wanted. Did she want Snape, or did she just want to win?
Really though, what difference did it make?
‘I will win,’ she declared. She felt strange, invigorated, almost high, and staring out over the vast twilit Highlands, the whole situation suddenly seemed immensely clear. A broad smile danced across her face. After several more minutes’ deep thought, watching the waxing moon brighten against the evening sky, she turned and slid down the wall, pulling her rucksack towards her. She dug out her quill and held it between her teeth while she found a sheet of parchment, which she rested it on the hard binding of her Herbology book.
Dear George, she wrote.
Hoping you’re well, and that you and your bro figured things out with Zonko. I wondered if I could ask you a favour…
*
Delilah almost knocked over a platter of scrambled eggs in her eagerness to greet the owl which swooped down to her at the breakfast table the following morning. She tore open an envelope inscribed with a scrawl of unfamiliar handwriting, and found a disappointingly short note inside.
Hi Delilah!
Great to hear from you. Sounds like a fun challenge – give me a couple of weeks, I’ll put my mind to it and figure out how to smuggle a parcel to you.
George x
The owl pecked impatiently at her hand.
‘Ouch! Oh, sorry,’ she said, seeing that it also had her copy of Witch Weekly clasped in its claws. She took the magazine and opened it gloomily, flipping automatically to the Whispers page to give a perfunctory glance to the nonsense entries, then turning to an article about a new American robe designer who was making waves among high-society witches.
She stared at the words on the page without taking them in.
A couple of weeks. She’d have exploded by then. She felt like she’d been chasing him for as long as she could remember, and every time she seemed to have caught him he slithered from her grasp. Or, more accurately, like she’d been play-fighting with a python, and every time she managed to grab him by the head, he’d wind his tail around her until she couldn’t move, then slither off whilst she was still catching her breath. What move could she try next? She briefly entertained a mad scheme involving bribing a first year to send Snape into a bathroom on the pretence of some kind of emergency, then emerging provocatively from a shower stall in nothing but a pair of stockings in the hopes of shattering his resolve… She shook her head and pushed away her cereal bowl, gathering her things to head for her Charms class.
Drifting disconsolately through the castle, she turned over her options. Wait for George’s help – but that would be a fortnight and was no kind of guarantee; play the waiting game, try to incubate her confidence in his desire for her, preserve her dignity and hope that soon enough his resolve would crack; or find some new, aggressive way to take the offensive.
*
Delilah was a woman possessed.
By the end of a week she knew his timetable intimately; she prowled the corridors, always hoping to see his dark figure turning a corner ahead of her, until she was able to adapt her path to deliberately bump into him several times a day.
She feigned a migraine to get out of Herbology and snuck into the Forbidden Forest to hide in the clearing, hoping to spring him if he came by to check on the Henbane, but he didn’t appear, and she only left when she was on the verge of being late for Transfiguration.
On her way back to the common room from the library after a free period, she glimpsed him disappearing through a door off the Charms corridor and discreetly followed him, hoping to corner him in an empty room, but through the door she found a small gallery that was entirely empty except for the wispy form of the Grey Lady, who drifted out through the wall as soon as Delilah entered; presumably there was a shortcut to another part of the castle in there somewhere, but although she pulled aside a tapestry and peered behind the suits of armour, she couldn’t find it.
On another occasion she saw him slip out of the main doors after dinner. She strode recklessly after him, but only made it as far as the bottom of the steps before she was apprehended by a furious Professor McGonagall, who docked ten points from Ravenclaw as punishment for trying to wander the grounds after hours.
In hours, after hours, any hour at all she stalked him through the castle, living for the flash of his cloak vanishing around a corner, for the lingering hint of vetiver left hanging in the staircase, the bluish glint of his hair under the lantern light. She collapsed into her bed every evening in an agony of frustration, cooking up new ways to find him alone, corner him, trick him into ripping off her robes again. She was absolutely obsessed. It had become a game of cat-and-mouse, and soon she could swear she could gauge his proximity by scent alone.
The only time she could be sure of being in the same room as him was Defence Against the Dark Arts class. On Tuesday afternoon, she shovelled down a perfunctory sandwich and then spent most of the lunch break in the bathroom, combing her hair, dabbing Weasleys’ RosyGlow Rouge to her cheeks and then wiping it off again, wondering if it was too obvious, then doing the same with BeeSting Balm on her lips, which made them tingle pleasantly and swell to what seemed to her like obscene proportions. She cast a final critical look in the mirror as a gaggle of younger students clattered in, and headed off to the classroom.
‘Hi Delilah!’ Lisa said as Delilah dumped her bag on a desk in the front row. ‘You look nice, have you done something different?’
‘Thanks,’ Delilah smiled evasively, pulling out her books. She arranged and rearranged her things across the desk until Professor Snape swept in and made for the blackboard at the front of the room.
Delilah’s heart fluttered.
‘Today we will be continuing our work on identifying combative spells in advance of their being cast,’ he said. ‘Turn to page seventy-three.’
There was a shuffling of pages as the students complied. Delilah leaned forward in her chair and rested her chin on the palm of her hand.
‘We spoke last week about attaining split-second advantages when a spell is cast verbally, but should you have the misfortune of facing an assailant accomplished enough to cast non-verbal attack spells, you’ll have to rely on interpreting their wand movements in order to discern their intentions…’
Delilah fixed her eyes on his, willing him to look at her. He went on, occasionally sketching diagrams on the chalk board and demonstrating wrist movements, but seemed to be magnetically opposed to her gaze.
‘Are there any questions?’ he asked finally, casting a glance around the room. His eyes rested on hers for a microsecond, and then flitted away like a cricket.
Delilah lifted her chin off her hand and stuck it in the air.
He looked reluctantly at her.
‘Miss du Lac?’
‘You said that most combative spells are cast in an overhead arc towards the victim’s right shoulder, but doesn’t that change if the caster is left handed?’
Like you, she added in her head.
He could hardly answer her question without making eye contact. She leaned forwards again and ran her tongue over her front teeth, not listening to a single word. As he spoke, she thought with candid technicolour of every sexy thing she could, until her eyes blazed invitingly: his leg shoving against hers at the Christmas feast; him going down on her in The Rapture, groaning with excitement, and her coming against his tongue; him forcing her back against the chaise lounge on Valentine’s Day, ripping at her robes and his own, sweating and panting in desperation to free his throbbing cock from his trousers; the previous week in the clearing when he’d rammed her against the tree and thrown himself at her with growling urgency; her, all alone in the shower, leaning against the tiled wall with eyes blissfully closed, hot water running over her body, running her fingers up the inside of her thigh…
She thought she felt the tiniest twinge around the temples that meant he was looking into her thoughts, but it was so subtle that she might have been imagining it.
‘Does that answer your question?’ he concluded.
He hadn’t taken the bait.
‘I suppose it does,’ she said moodily.
‘Good. I’d like two rolls of parchment from you all on the nature of…’
He didn’t look at her again for the rest of the lesson. She lingered over packing up her bag, deliberately spilling a sheaf of paper over the floor to crouch down and gather it up whilst everybody else left, but when she straightened, she saw he’d left too. She kicked along the corridor, trying to think up new ways to corner him alone. As she reached the bottom of the steps into the Entrance Hall she was confronted with a familiar face.
‘Remus!’ she said in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve just finished with Dumbledore and I’ve got to dash, but…’ He glanced left and right, drew a small, dense package from inside his cloak and handed it to her. ‘George instructed me to give you this, in the greatest secrecy.’
‘Did he say what was in it?’
‘Heavens, no. He said it was especial contraband. Listen, I can’t hang around, but I should be back here in a couple of weeks – fancy a jaunt to Hogsmeade?’
‘Yes! Any time, that’d be wonderful.’
‘Lovely. Well, until then…’
Remus doffed an invisible cap in farewell, winked, and strode across the Entrance Hall and through the double doors. Delilah watched him leave, then turned and took the stairs two at a time. On the way to the Ravenclaw Tower she tore off the note attached to the package.
Dear Delilah,
I had to use my imagination a bit with some of this, but I hope you like it. Don’t be daft about payment – on the house with my compliments.
Instructions herein.
Bon chance!
Your friend,
G x
In the safety of the dormitory, she tore open the package and upended it so that a jumble of things fell onto her bed. She picked them up and examined them in turn, and a broad smile spread across her face.
‘Genius,’ she whispered.
*
It was past midnight. Delilah had been listening fretfully to the other girls’ chatter as they brushed their teeth, changed and made their way to their beds, and now, after several minutes of silence, was tentatively convinced that they were all asleep.
She pointed her wand at the fireplace so that low, flickering flames cast a gentle light across the room and held her breath, braced for someone to stir. Whilst she waited to be sure nobody would move, she glanced again at the note from George.
This is actually from the school kid range – it’s supposed to be just for cheating in tests and copying homework and things –but I’ve always suspected it might have distinctively adult potential…
G x
When there was still no noise, she swung her legs off the bed, tiptoed to the corner, and retrieved a low stool which she’d snuck down from the common room. She placed it in the middle of the room a few feet from her bed, and returned to the bed where a thick, raspberry-coloured envelope lay on the covers. From inside it she took a small metal object like a photograph frame, about the size of a paperback book, and propped it on the stool against a stack of books, then took a thin, floppy sheet of parchment from the envelope and slid it into a slit in the top of the frame.
She consulted the instructions again.
EITHER
Slide the document you wish to copy inside SLOT A of the CribCheat
Slide the CribSheet into SLOT B of the CribCheat
Point wand at the CribCheat and recite the incantation “COPYCAT”
Wait FIVE seconds before removing the CribSheet
OR
Slide the CribSheet into SLOT B of the CribCheat
Position the object you wish to copy before the CribCheat
Point wand at the CribCheat and recite the incantation “COPYCAT”
Wait FIVE seconds before removing the CribSheet
She threw another anxious glance in the direction of the sleeping girls, then peeled her nightshirt over her head. She stood in her underwear before the CribCheat, pointed her wand and whispered “Copycat”. The CribCheat gave a humming noise and lit up for a second, then went silent, and she pulled out the photograph. In it she was standing awkwardly, clenching and unclenching her fists, shifting from foot to foot, half-smiling and chewing on her lip.
Not sexy.
She put in another CribSheet and tried again, this time pouting at the CribCheat and throwing her hips forward a little, straightening her shoulders and putting a hand on her hip.
‘Copycat.’
She pulled out the second sheet and was amazed at the difference: in this one she was fluttering her eyelashes, smiling, tossing her hair over her shoulder and leaning flirtatiously into the lens.
She took off her bra and slid in another CribSheet. She dropped to her knees and sat back on her heels, her thighs spread, and put one hand behind her head, sinking her fingertips into her hair.
‘Copycat.’
In this picture she was thrusting her naked breasts forward, arching her back and twirling her hair, tipping her head back and writhing her hips around.
She took off her knickers and, remembering the cover illustration of Lilith the Lionheart, turned her back to the CribCheat and looked back at it over her shoulder.
‘Copycat.’
In this one she was turning to glance saucily over her shoulder, turning away again, then looking back with a mischievous smile, her hair fluttering down her spine.
Another new sheet. She lay on the bed, her arms over her head, and rolled on her side towards the CribCheat.
‘Copycat.’
She replaced the CribSheet and resumed her position. She slipped one hand between her legs and stroked herself with her fingertips until a warm murmuration started in her thighs.
‘Copycat.’
*
In the next Defence Against the Dark Arts class Delilah was too tense with excitement and nerves to try and lure Snape into her thoughts. She stared unseeingly at her textbook, sucking the end of her quill, her left hand under the desk, rolling a tiny glass bottle in her fingertips.
D-
This was a failed experiment of ours. It was supposed to make the drinker keep turning over thoughts of the object, in a subtle back-of-the-mind type way, tricking them into thinking they fancied you. Unfortunately we went a bit mental with the Satyrion and it ended up having an effect more like a dog chasing a bitch in heat (i.e. total carnage). We toned it down for the kiddy love potions but kept the wonky batch back to experiment with aphrodisiacs, so I thought I’d send you some in case you can find a use for it.
The idea was to mix a few of your own skin cells into the solution (‘from the inside of your mouth, your ear, your navel, or anywhere else suitably orificeish’) and sprinkle a few drops on some of the target’s skin, or slip it into their drink. Delilah couldn’t think of a way of doing either, and she found herself utterly preoccupied with the potion’s potential. She’d already rubbed the sharp end of the stirrer attached to the vial’s lid against the inside of her bottom lip, and was carrying the bottle around in hopes of inspiration or opportunity.
Total carnage…
The bell rang.
‘Please bring your homework to my desk.’
Delilah jumped at this, even though she’d known it was coming. She leaned over her desk and rummaged in her bag, feeling ridiculously exposed, and pulled out the roll of parchment. She grasped it tightly as she approached Snape’s desk, so it was slightly dented when she dropped it in front of him.
‘Enjoy,’ she said, giving him a meaningful look.
He glanced at the parchment, but not at her.
*
Delilah vibrated with expectation for the rest of the day, flooded with adrenaline and impatient for the payoff of her scheme. It wasn’t until several hours later that it occurred to her to wonder what exactly it was she was hoping for. When did Snape even mark homework? He always handed it back a week later, so for all she knew it might sit on his desk for six days before he turned his attention to it. She’d been dreamily preoccupied by the vision of him unfurling the parchment, the photographs spilling out onto his desk, and his keen interest as he perused them, bending closely over them, flipping through them with mounting excitement, stroking them with one fingertip, one hand vanishing under the desk… but what was she expecting to happen next? For him to come and find her?
She was walking back towards the Ravenclaw common room after dinner as she turned all this over. Her hand went to the little glass bottle in her pocket. The pictures would weaken him, she was sure of it, but she’d have to be there to take advantage, or he’d probably just pull himself together and never mention them to her. If only she could combine the effects of the picture with the effects of the potion…
She would have to redouble her efforts to run into him.
Over the next few days she found ingenious hiding places from which to stalk him throughout the castle: she discovered that from behind a particularly large suit of armour in the Entrance Hall she could see both the door to the Great Hall and the top of the staircase down to the dungeons, so she could easily wait for him to sit down to dinner and then follow him in and sit directly in his eyeline. On free periods she slipped out of the castle and found an enormous, ancient tree at the boundary of the Forest which had a large, low branch at the back with a convenient nook for sitting in, from which she could spy on the castle entrance, hoping he’d head for the Henbane clearing where she could corner him again.
In spite of wracking her brains fairly constantly, she still hadn’t thought of a single way to smuggle George’s potion to him. Getting it onto his skin seemed like the more likely option – he wasn’t in a thousand years going to drink or eat anything she gave him, or consume anything sent to him anonymously, and she could hardly spike his drink right in the middle of the Great Hall – but since she had barely been within six feet of him since she’d last been in his office, that wasn’t proving any more fruitful. She’d tried to work out if she could drop it on his head from a great height, say from above him on a moving staircase, but as she played it out in her imagination, she quickly saw how ridiculously implausible that was. Even if by some miracle she pulled off the precise timing and trajectory to actually land it on his scalp, he’d snap his head up the second he felt it and see her face mooning down at him. Could she hand him something soaked in the potion? Would it be enough to drown her next piece of homework in it, or just send him an owl with a soggy unmarked piece of parchment? What was the worst that could happen if she poured it into a beaker, moseyed casually towards him as he came along a corridor, then suddenly threw it directly in his face? Or could she confuse him somehow, lurk in wait in a deserted passage until he approached, spring out from behind a suit of armour under heavy disguise screaming “TAKE THIS!” and shove a dripping rag into his hand, before sprinting off in the other direction?
Just as she’d given up hope, her luck suddenly turned. She’d lingered at the end of her Charms class, knowing he’d be leaving a classroom just around the corner as soon as the last students were gone, and hung around outside the classroom waiting for the sound of his footsteps, intending to intercept him as he rounded the corner. She heard the babble of students leaving the classroom, and then the clip clip of his shoes in the empty classroom, and then in the corridor, approaching her –
‘Severus!’
She heard him stop.
‘Pomona.’
‘How’s the hayfever been?’
‘Better, thank you – I’m much obliged, I’ve never suffered so badly in Spring before.’
Professor Sprout clucked sympathetically.
‘It’s the tree pollen, it catches you out sometimes without warning. You’re not the only one, everyone seems to be suffering this year, I’m convinced the young birches have cross-pollinated with something… Anyway, glad it’s helping – that dose’ll be wearing off now, shall I drop some more over to you this evening?’
‘That would be most kind.’
Delilah was so struck by the possibilities of this snippet that she momentarily forgot where she was, and so, when Snape rounded the corner, he found her standing in rictus abstraction staring straight ahead, and very nearly collided with her before reeling back from her petrified form. She bared her teeth at him in a vague smile, and drifted off after Professor Sprout, leaving Snape to watch after her in bemusement.
Timing would be everything here. If she went too soon she’d blow it; too late and she’d miss her chance altogether. From the Entrance Hall she watched Professor Sprout stride towards the greenhouses, and saw her go into Greenhouse Two. After a few moments she followed, giving Greenhouse Three a wide berth and circling around the back to approach Greenhouse Two from the side. Through the murky glass she saw Sprout pottering around inside, gathering up handfuls of cuttings and bundling them into a leaf bag on the workbench. Suddenly she turned to reach for something and Delilah had to drop out of sight to avoid being spotted.
Fucking greenhouses, being glass. How the fuck are you supposed to spy on someone in a greenhouse?
‘Afternoon Delilah,’ came a curious voice from behind her. Delilah looked up guiltily.
‘Oh, hi Professor Hagrid.’
‘What yeh doin’ down there in the mud?’
‘Oh nothing, I just… well, I dropped my wand. And then I, er, I realised my shoelace was undone. So I was just… doing it up again.’
She stood and brushed the dirt from the knees of her robes, wondering whether he thought she was completely insane or just rather dim and strange, and inched him around to try and conceal herself from Sprout’s view.
‘How’s Wilbur?’ she asked.
‘Thrivin’,’ Hagrid said happily. ‘Caught a bloody great porgle the other day and dragged it all the way to my door and sat there waitin’ for me. Looked pleased as punch with ‘imself.’
‘What’s a porgle?’
‘Sorta like a badger, but bigger, with floppy ears like a basset hound, and dopey as a slug. On’y reason they still exist is that they live in trees an’ they’ll eat anythin’. Poor thing was jus’ lyin’ there when I opened the door – mind you, it’d probably fallen asleep.’
‘You mean Wilbur didn’t kill it?’
‘Nah,’ Hagrid chuckled. ‘’E’s all mouth an’ no trousers, didn’t even break its fingernail. Just took it on a walkin’ tour o’ the grounds and delivered it to me.’
Past Hagrid’s elbow, Delilah glimpsed Professor Sprout wandering out from the back room with a small bottle in her hand, which she placed in front of a cauldron on the furthest worktop.
‘Well, give Wilbur my love if you see him,’ she said to Hagrid. ‘I love that dog.’
‘Will do Delilah,’ he said, taking his cue to leave. ‘Pretty sure it’s mutual.’
Delilah walked back around the greenhouse and through the door, closing it carefully behind her.
‘Hello Delilah!’ Professor Sprout said, glancing over her shoulder. ‘What brings you here?’
‘I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about the homework you set this week,’ Delilah said, swinging her bag onto the worktop.
‘Of course,’ Professor Sprout said, taking the lid off the cauldron and glancing inside. ‘Just finishing off this potion, I’ll be right with you.’
‘What are you brewing?’ Delilah asked casually.
‘A hayfever tonic,’ Sprout said. ‘Everyone seems to be suffering this year.’
‘I thought that’d be Professor Snape’s department,’ Delilah said.
‘Snape?’ Sprout said. ‘You mean Professor Slughorn?’
‘Oh yes,’ Delilah said hastily, ‘I meant him.’ She blushed as though she’d been caught out, but if Sprout thought that a strange mistake from a student who’d only ever been taught potions by Slughorn, she didn’t show it.
‘It would ordinarily,’ she agreed, ‘but the onion root is most effective straight from the ground, so it makes more sense for me to brew it here in the greenhouse.’
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘That’s sweet of you. Hop up here and finish mincing the onion roots for me if you like – nice and small, like I’ve been doing it.’ Delilah took up the slightly rusty-handled silver knife that Sprout had left on the worktop, whose blade proved to be so sharp it sliced through the roots as easily as cutting hair, and worked carefully through the pile whilst Sprout measured out a quantity of thick, treacley stuff from a pottery jar, spooning it straight into the cauldron and then lifting the spoon high in the air and twirling it to catch the viscous tendrils. Assisting in making the potion which Snape was going to drink felt strangely intimate; she imagined it slipping down his throat, hopefully laced with the contents of the glass bottle in her pocket…
‘I think that’s enough,’ Sprout said, glancing across the worktop. ‘Any smaller and you’ll start losing the juices.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ Delilah said, putting down the knife. ‘Shall I put them in the cauldron?’
‘Yes, I think we’re ready – you need to put them in all at once, so gather them into a little mound.’ She lifted the lid off the cauldron and gave the contents a stir, then motioned for Delilah to add the roots. Delilah tipped the roots from the board into the cauldron, and the liquid inside turned a greenish purple and emitted a burst of violet smoke.
‘Lovely,’ Sprout said with satisfaction. ‘That’ll be a good batch.’
‘Should I measure some into this bottle?’ Delilah asked with careful nonchalance.
‘Not yet, it needs to cool for a few minutes. Now, what was it you wanted help with?’
‘Oh, I… it was the thing about the phases of maturity in moonwort – I got a bit confused about how you know when it’s ready to be harvested. Also my notes say it’s harmful to hippogriffs, but is that only if they eat it, or what?’
Delilah, who in fact had already finished her Herbology essay and couldn’t have cared less about how moonwort affected hippogriffs, hardly listened to Sprout’s lengthy answer, instead watching her keenly as she tidied up the potion ingredients.
‘…so it’s only if the moonwort is very thick and grown up, and if your hippogriff is covering lots of ground on foot. Of course, it’s all moot really since using hippogriffs for transport fell out of fashion years ago, but you never know what the next fad might be. Is that any clearer though?’ Sprout concluded, putting the paring knife blade-down in the pocket of her leather apron.
‘Oh yes, I understand much better now. Thank you, that’s really interesting.’
‘If you want to know more about it, I’ve got a book somewhere around here you could borrow,’ Sprout said, clearly pleased by Delilah’s interest.
‘That’d be brilliant,’ Delilah said, counting on the search for the book taking Sprout away for a moment. ‘Is there anything else I can do to help? Do you think the potion’s cooled yet?’
‘Yes, it should be – you could pour some into that bottle if you don’t mind, and then rinse off the ladle.’
Delilah, hardly believing her plan had worked out so well, fingered the little glass vial in her pocket. She carefully ladled a measure of the potion into the small glass bottle and, her heart pounding, upended the vial into it.
‘Here we are then,’ Professor Sprout said, coming up to Delilah at the sunken copper sink in the work bench, brandishing a slim chartreuse hardback with a mildewy spine inscribed Fern or Foe? By Saxifrage Spruce.
‘Thanks so much Professor,’ Delilah said. ‘That’s so kind of you. I’d better get back to the castle for dinner, but I’ll look forward to reading this.’
Professor Sprout beamed as she waved Delilah out of the greenhouse, and Delilah felt a slight twinge of guilt as she waved back, resolving to try and unearth a renewed interest in Herbology in future, to match the one she’d feigned for her own ends this afternoon.
Even as she reached the castle though, thoughts of Herbology were fading.
I did it! I fucking did it! she trilled in her mind as she trotted up the castle steps. When would Sprout take Snape the potion? She’d said she’d do it this evening, and Delilah had to be on hand when she did – how long could she hide behind the Suit of Armour in the Entrance Hall without risk of being caught? Was there a window from which she could keep a watch over the grounds? She could always watch from the Astronomy Tower, but she’d have to lean over the ramparts for goodness knew how long, and if she tired and had to sit down she could easily miss Professor Sprout. She decided that the main thing was to be ready for Snape when he drank the potion, so she started by going up to the dormitory and changing into the red button-down dress – still the only decent item of clothing she owned; she really must rectify that – and her matching red underwear. She sat cross-legged on her bed and pointed her wand at the wall, whispering ‘Spiegellora’: a useful charm she’d stumbled across a few days earlier, which turned any surface reflective. Her first several attempts had only produced the quality of reflection you see in a dark window, but after experimenting with her wandwork and inflections, she was now pleased with the effect, which was almost as good as a proper mirror. She brushed her hair and tipped her bag of WonderWitch stuff onto the bed, peered into the little patch of mirror, and fiddled with her appearance until she was satisfied.
It shouldn’t matter, of course, what she looked like: if George was to be believed, Snape would be deaf, dumb and blind with lust when he found her, and would hardly even see her. (The thought made a quiver of excitement twinge through her.) But it mattered to her. It was a sort of pre-game ritual. It made her feel armed, somehow.
As she pulled on her shoes, she decided that the best course of action would be to conceal herself in the dungeons, at least until dinner. She knew that Snape was teaching another class at the moment, and that he always went back to his office before dinner, so, she reasoned, even if Sprout intercepted him on that journey she’d still be perfectly placed. And if not, from there she could follow him to and from dinner and just wait it out…
Annoyingly, the classroom from which she normally spied on Snape’s office was being used by Professor Slughorn, so she had to conceal herself in a tiny broom closet off the corridor, leaving the door open a crack so she could peep out whenever she heard a noise. A long hour passed, and she wished she’d brought something to read. She sat on an upturned bucket and leaned back against the wall, entertaining herself by imagining what ravages would befall her when Snape finally drank her potion. …like a dog chasing a bitch in heat… maybe she should run when he came for her, lead him on a chase through the castle, whip him up into a frenzy, see how long she could make him wait… She knew her way around the castle better than ever now, having stalked him so assiduously, she knew just which tapestries to slip behind, which little hidden staircases wended up in a teasing spiral. She imagined outrunning him, him growling with desire behind her, snapping at her heels, snatching at the hem of her robes so that she crashed down with him on top of her, captured, defeated…
The bell rang through the corridors, jolting her upright. She pulled her skirt down, stood up and leaned against the doorframe, listening for the sounds of the classrooms emptying. She heard the shouted tones of Professor Slughorn, an uplift in chatter, the slamming of desktops, the scraping of chairs, jostling and joking. It all seemed to take a very long time down in the dungeons, probably because of the amount of equipment everyone had to pack up. She pressed her eye to the crack in the door to watch for Snape, and saw students coming out of the classroom, lots of them hanging around for their friends. Overhead she could already hear the Entrance Hall filling up. A girl with long red hair came out of the Potions class, for whom several of the other students seemed to have been waiting, and they all finally began to move towards the stairs. Delilah opened the door further to lean out slightly and see past them.
Suddenly the sound of a scuffle came from the top of the staircase. Someone shouted in protest, a few people laughed, and then somebody screamed.
‘Oi! Get off!’ a voice yelled.
‘LET ME PAST!’ roared another.
Delilah leaned out of the closet to try and see what was happening, then, curiosity winning out, stepped out and made towards the staircase. There was a ripping sound and a handful of glass bottles rolled down the stairs and smashed at the bottom.
‘What the fuck? What’s wrong with you?’ a girl shouted.
Now there came the sound of thunderous footsteps galloping down the stairs, and Delilah felt a thrill of apprehension as she realised she was completely alone in the corridor. She froze as the footsteps came closer, then their owner came into view – a thin, broad-shouldered boy with a mop of curls and a mottled scarlet face. He reached the bottom of the stairs so quickly that he skidded on the bottom step and then turned to look at her, and she had a fleeting impression of blistering red eyes which fixed on her with terrifying intensity as he made for her, and she barely had time to raise her wand before he reached her, slamming her against the wall and crushing himself against her so hard that her head smacked against the wall. Her vision blacked out for a moment, and her hands went so weak that she dropped her wand.
‘Get off me,’ she wheezed pathetically, but he was forcing himself against her with crazed, aimless lunges, gnashing into her hair, his hands groping her all over, grabbing great bunches of her clothes and flesh as though trying to tear handfuls out of her, yanking her skirt up to her waist and scratching savagely at her thighs. Delilah struggled madly, trying to scream but he was pressing into her throat and she was unable to catch enough breath. She dimly heard shouts, and from the corner of her eye saw a the crowd assemble at the bottom of the stairs, but he was even taller than she was and when he moved he blocked her view so she could only see the front of his robes and a stripe of the wall behind him as he pressed into her, now actually biting at her ear and neck, tearing at her with his teeth, and she felt a rising panic as his hands grappled at the hem of her knickers, then shoved inside them and jerked into a horrible claw, and as if by instinct, she rammed her knee upwards straight into his crotch. This didn’t make him double over in agony as she’s hoped, but it did make him pause enough for her to shove him hard and drop out of his grasp, crouch and snatch her wand, which she pointed it straight upwards, hitting him in the chin. Her ‘Stupefy!’ was echoed by at least two others from the staircase, and she saw two jets of light hitting the boy in the side of the head at the same time as hers, so that he was buffeted for a moment before he fell backwards to the ground. She looked up to see a crowd of aghast students staring, and the red-headed witch and Professor Sprout with their wands out.
Delilah lay sprawled on the floor, still feeling groggy, too stunned to register the details of what happened next, except that Professor Sprout sprinted over to her, hat askew and robes flapping, looking more fierce than Delilah had ever seen her, and flicked her wand at the boy on the floor so hard that it made a sound like a whip being cracked, and reams and reams of rope flew through the air and bound him from neck to ankle. There was an enormous commotion as students were shushed and ushered back upstairs, chattering rapidly amongst themselves. Someone discreetly pulled her skirt down over her thighs.
‘What happened here?’ said the sharp voice of Professor Dumbledore.
How on earth had he got there so quickly?
‘It’s Finch-Fletchley. He seemed to… well, he seemed to lose his mind,’ Sprout said. ‘I met him in the Entrance Hall to give him his hayfever tonic, and a few moments later he just went… berserk.’
Delilah blinked hard.
Shit.
‘He attacked Miss du Lac?’
‘Looks that way. I just saw him tear off to the dungeons, I was already on my way into the Great Hall…’
Delilah heaved herself into a half-standing position, and Professor Sprout ducked and caught her elbow.
‘Delilah dear, don’t rush, you’ve had a terrible shock,’ she soothed.
Delilah struggled upright.
‘I’m fine,’ she said firmly. She looked down at the supine form of Finch-Fletchley, now looking calm and peaceful above his mummy-like bindings, except for the puffy red aurae distorting his eyelids, and red raw patches either side of his nostrils.
‘Severus, can we take this into your office?’ Dumbledore said. Delilah snapped her head around to see Snape watching her from the back of the crowd, his eyes narrowed, his tongue tucked under his top lip, stroking his front canine. He turned without a word and his office door sprang open. Delilah was led into the room and to the chaise lounge, where she sat stiffly beside Professor Sprout. She saw Snape stalk straight out again, presumably to tend to Finch-Fletchley.
‘Pomona,’ Dumbledore said, ‘you say you gave Mr Finch-Fletchley a hayfever tonic?’
Professor Sprout looked stricken.
‘Yes, but – surely it wasn’t the tonic, it’s the same one he’s had before, many times, he’s had it every summer for six years, since his fist term here…’
‘Could anyone have had the opportunity to interfere with it?’
‘No – I mean, well – only Delilah. She was in the greenhouse this afternoon and helped me chop some ingredients. But obviously…’
Delilah’s insides felt like they’d turned to porridge. She chanced a look up at Dumbledore, who was looking at her without appearing to see her. Snape reappeared in the doorway, and she felt, rather than saw his gaze go from Professor Sprout, to her, and back again. She could practically hear the click as he slotted it together in his mind.
‘Mmmm,’ Dumbledore said eventually. ‘Pomona, please escort Miss Weasley to the Great Hall, and then help Poppy take Mr Finch-Fletchley to the hospital wing.’
‘It’s OK, I don’t need escorting,’ the red-headed girl said. ‘I just wanted to wait to make sure everything was OK.’
‘Thank you, Miss Weasley,’ Dumbledore said, nodding as she left.
Professor Sprout was sitting next to Delilah on the chaise lounge, and hadn’t let go of her arm since she’d helped her to her feet. Now she squeezed her wrist, gave her a fond pat on the hand and stood, and Delilah had to repress the urge to grab her by the robes, pull her back and cling to her. Dumbledore murmured a few words to Sprout as she left, and then closed the door after them.
‘So?’ he demanded, turning to Snape.
‘A tincture of some kind,’ Snape said. ‘Hard to say. Nothing I’ve seen before.’
‘And it made him…?’
‘Yes.’
‘Specifically…?’ he gestured towards Delilah.
‘Looks like it. I’d need a sample of the potion to be sure, but I think the bottle smashed – there’s broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, so even if there were any remnants they’ll be contaminated.’
Dumbledore stared at Delilah for a second, then wandered over to the fireplace and brandished his wand at it so ferociously that flames jumped out of the grate and almost set fire to his robes.
‘You were supposed to teach her to defend herself,’ he said without turning around, his voice wavering with fury.
Delilah jumped to her feet.
‘He did!’ she protested. ‘He made my Shield Charm a thousand times better, and I learned loads of defensive spells, and I can deflect curses, and-’
‘But today you were defenceless,’ Dumbledore said.
‘No, I was just too slow, and anyway, he wasn’t trying to kill me, he was trying to…’
‘You were not prepared,’ Dumbledore said heavily.
Delilah gaped at the back of his head, glad she didn’t have to look into those piercing blue eyes as she once again caused him undue angst. He stood for another few moments and then, without even the aid of Floo Powder, stepped into the grate and was gone.
Delilah and Snape were alone.
‘Well, that went well,’ Snape said drily.
Delilah continued to stare into the fire. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
‘And how convenient that you were dressed up to the nines and in your gladdest rags on the night a random student is poisoned with an unknown drug which makes him determined to rape you.’
She continued to look into the flames, but she couldn’t ignore the pressure of his eyes on her. She looked up at him through her eyelashes.
‘What are you playing at, Miss Blackthorn?’ he hissed, so quietly she could hardly hear him over the crackle of flames Dumbledore had left in the grate.
She raised her chin.
‘You know what I’m playing at,’ she said evenly. ‘Just stop fighting me and nobody else needs to get hurt.’
Snape regarded her. He gave a tiny, soft laugh, shook his head and walked straight out of the room, leaving her alone.
