When her alarm clock gave a muffled trill from under her pillow at half past six, Delilah sprang out of bed as though she’d been lying wide awake, waiting for its permission to get up. She had in fact been asleep, but it had been a dreamless, buzzing kind of sleep, content but impatient for the morning. Normally she pulled on thick socks and a heavy cardigan that she kept beside the bed before she reluctantly emerged from her warm sheets, but this morning she bounced onto the freezing floor and hopped from foot to bare foot across the flagstones, simultaneously wincing at the cold and grinning to herself, pulling her socks on in a clumsy hurry and yanking on her jeans.
‘Severus Snape,’ she whispered to herself. She’d have sung his name aloud if it hadn’t been for the dormitory full of sleeping girls.
She tugged on her favourite red check shirt and spirited through the dormitory with her bag clutched under her arm, then crept into the common room, disturbing a house elf laying the fire, who jumped up and stood to attention, looking mortified at the sight of her. She scampered through the common room and down the spiral staircase to the bathrooms where she brushed her teeth, washed her face, brushed her hair, and again conducted tentative experiments with her collection of WonderWitch products. By 7am she was trotting down the main staircase and through the Entrance Hall, wending her way down to the dungeons.
She thrummed her fingertips lightly at his door, and it swung open straight away.
‘Morning,’ she whispered, as though there were still sleeping people in earshot.
‘Morning,’ he murmured, mirroring her undertone. She had wondered if she’d find him in his pyjamas, perhaps in a dressing gown, but he was already buttoned to the chin in his formal robes. She tumbled through the door and pressed her face into his neck, breathing in his scent with a swelling, indescribable pleasure.
She looked up at him, and a huge smile broke across her face.
‘You are remarkably chirpy for 7am,’ he said drily, but with an expression of suppressed amusement.
‘That’s because I can smell coffee,’ she said facetiously, wrapping her arms around his torso and resting her chin on his shoulder. His chilly little office was indeed infused with the rich smell of coffee, and also the scent of burning logs: over his shoulder she saw that the fireplace had been laid and lit, and before it he’d set up a tiny wooden table with two stumpy little brown pottery cups and a matching cafetiere. It was an oddly intimate sight.
‘I only just brewed it,’ he said into her hair, ‘it won’t be ready for a few minutes.’
‘Whatever will we do with ourselves for a few minutes?’ she purred.
The previous day, after they’d collapsed, spent, on the flagstones and lay in a breathless, sweaty tangle, she’d listened to his heart hammering through his chest and wondered what he was going to do next. She’d wondered if he’d throw her out and restart the whole cycle of avoidance, this time with even stiffer resolve. Would she be able to break him again? Would she even be able to find the energy to try?
He’d heaved a huge sigh and pushed himself up on his elbow.
‘Come on,’ he grunted. ‘You’ll freeze lying there.’
‘I’m sweltering,’ she smiled.
‘I’m sure,’ he replied, with a ghost of a smile in return, ‘but you won’t be for long on this floor. In any case I have another class to teach.’ He tapped her hip and she rolled off him, reaching for her bra. She pulled her robes over her head, forgetting that she’d torn them down the middle, and laughed when they fell straight off her shoulders. She held the fabric together and pointed her wand at it, muttering ‘Reparo.’
‘I rather liked them like that,’ Snape had said.
‘I thought you might. I have to go and find Professor Flitwick in a bit though, to make some excuse for skipping Charms, and I’m not sure he’ll be quite as appreciative.’
‘Mmm, perhaps not.’
‘I’ll let you rip them in half again later.’
She was tying her shoelace with her foot on the chaise lounge as she said this, and watched his reaction.
‘I look forward to it,’ he said.
She’d straightened and walked over to him, catching his hands and taking over the fastening of his robe buttons.
‘I mean it,’ she’d said, looking straight at him as she buttoned. ‘I’m coming back later. You lost. I won.’
‘I suppose resistance is futile.’
‘Yes,’ she said with a pettish smile.
‘Not tonight though. Staff meeting.’
She tilted her head.
‘So…?’ she prompted.
‘So tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘First thing.’
She’d spent all the rest of that day in an utter daze: she slipped back to the empty, sunny common room to wait for morning classes to end, curled up in a chair by the fire and hugged her knees to her chest, smiling to herself; she’d made a grovelling visit to Professor Flitwick to plead a crippling headache and collect her homework assignment; she poked her head around the door of the Great Hall at lunchtime but, not seeing Snape in there and not in the least bit hungry, preferred to stroll the grounds in the sunshine, watching the yellow flashes of the Hufflepuff team at their Quidditch practice. From the edge of the lake she’d seen Professor Hagrid come out of his cabin, slam the door behind him and stride towards the Forest, reaching barely ten metres from the perimeter before an ecstatic barking filled the air and Wilbur galloped through a gap in the trees and bounded in insane, exuberant circles around him.
In her Potions class that afternoon they were brewing Composure Concoctions – used to restore mental acuity to those who had been bamboozled by dark magic – which had deceptively simple brewing instructions but required unerringly attentive, regular stirring in order to be successful. Delilah expended all of her concentration on preparing the few ingredients, but being in the Potions classroom, being in the dungeons at all, made her think of Snape: she remembered that this had been his classroom, imagined him seated at the handsome desk at the front of the room, circulating among the work benches, gliding up behind her and peering over her shoulder into her cauldron, and she lapsed into a trance, hopelessly lost in the memory of his touch…
As it turned out, this was exactly the right state in which to brew the Concoction, and at the end of the lesson Slughorn delightedly announced to the class (and to an amazed Delilah) that she had produced a perfect potion.
As they’d packed up their equipment she’d lingered over her bottles and books, reluctant to leave this Snape-soaked place, so that by the time she left the classroom the stampede up to dinner had left the corridor empty, and as she passed Snape’s door it suddenly opened, he stepped out into the small alcove and they came face to face. In an instant she’d sidestepped into the alcove and he’d shoved her against the back wall and kissed her roughly for five or six furious seconds before the sound of footsteps made them leap apart and make their separate ways up the stairs, Delilah’s cheek stinging from the scrape of his stubble on her skin. During dinner she’d again barely managed any food and had glanced at him across the room as often as she dared, sometimes fleetingly meeting his fathomless eyes, other times feeling his glance flicker over her.
Now she ran her hands up his back, electrified by the intensity of the desire and happiness that she felt from being here at this unorthodox hour whilst everyone else slept, which somehow made it feel the more forbidden and secret, so close to him, smelling him and touching him, and she squeezed him as close to her as she could. It was a restless, hyperactive need. She felt a crazed urge to bite his earlobe, sink her fingertips into his flesh hard enough to bruise him, pull his hair, scratch his skin, as if ordinary proximity somehow didn’t satisfy her desire for closeness.
‘Fuck,’ she breathed, almost involuntarily.
The taut urgency in her limbs seemed to reverberate through him and he grabbed her by the jaw and gave her a biting kiss, his hands massaging her arse and then lifting her easily so she wrapped her legs around him, and he walked her to the door and rested her back against it. Without releasing her lips from his, she unbuttoned her jeans and braced her shoulder blades against the door to slide them off her hips, then set about unbuttoning his robes from the navel downwards, as he twitched her blouse open and growled in pleasure to find her breasts naked and swollen under it. They grappled together with his belt buckle and then he pushed her up, leaned his hips into her, and she slid down onto the hard length of his cock with a stammered inhalation at the unexpected sensation of the angle. He pressed his whole body weight into her in order to hold her against the door and used one hand to support her thigh and the other to trace tiny circles around her nipple with his thumb, his palm massaging her breast and then sliding along her collar bone, gripping behind her head, wrapping his fingertips around the soft hairs at the nape of her neck as he pulsed in and out of her, her forearm rigid on his shoulder, lifting herself up and down in concert, his breath becoming staggered, then coming out in yelps, until he came so hard and suddenly that he collapsed against her, crushing the helix of her ear into her scalp like a pressed maple leaf.
They stayed where they were for a moment, wilting with gradual grace back into standing positions, Delilah wrapping her arms around his slack form and straightening to support his weight, and she led them to the chaise lounge where they fell into a warm tangle of disarranged limbs and clothing. She propped herself up on her elbow to pour two cups of coffee, handed him one, and then leaned back against his chest, both hands around the warm mug. They half-sat, half-lay in peaceable silence, the heat of the fire washing over them, just gazing at each other.
Eventually she looked around the room.
‘Do you sleep here?’
‘Of course. Where else would I sleep?’
‘I don’t know. I never really thought about it.’
‘Did you think we had dormitories?’
‘Totally. You and Filch cosying up in your jim jams with mugs of cocoa, arguing about whether or not Mrs Norris is allowed on the beds.’
‘What a chilling thought.’
‘And Professor Flitwick of course, grumbling about you two gossiping after lights out while he’s trying to sleep.’
‘Do shut up. The bedroom’s just through there,’ he said, indicating a door beside the fireplace with his cup.
‘Can I see it?’
‘If you like.’
She stretched her legs and swung them off the chaise lounge, walked across the threadbare rug carrying her mug and pushed open the door. An austere bed with a high headboard had been assiduously made in plain white sheets with black edging, and a bedside table housed a pewter jug, a goblet and a stack of books. Besides that there was nothing but a wooden wardrobe in the corner, another bookshelf, and a line of hooks with four or five cloaks hanging on the wall. She walked around the bed to another door, which led into a surprisingly spacious bathroom with a high, square tub in the corner like the one at Grimmauld Place.
‘You’ve got a bath!’ she called through.
‘Yes.’
She walked back through the bedroom.
‘Can I use it some time? I love baths, I really miss them here. We’ve just got showers in our bathrooms.’
‘I don’t see why not.’ He sat up and drained his cup, then set it purposefully back down on the table.
‘It’s not that time already?’
‘Eight o’clock: almost time we were at breakfast, and you’re not even in your robes yet.’
She went back over to the chaise lounge and leaned a knee on it, catching his wrist playfully and trying to straddle him, but he pushed her off.
‘Go on. Get out of here.’
She allowed herself to be shoved to her feet, and swung her bag over her shoulder.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Tonight?’
*
They had met that night, and almost every day and night thereafter, with or without a pre-arranged plan.
Leaving the library at 9ish after a punishing evening trying to combat her stack of backlogged homework, she encountered him on a winding staircase, and he wrenched aside a tapestry to drag her into a room she’d never seen before and wouldn’t again, and they’d fucked with clamorous speed against the wall before going their breathless separate ways.
During a free period on a Thursday afternoon she’d stepped out into the grounds for some fresh air, and as she crossed the lawn some mysterious instinct had caused her to turn to look back at the castle at the exact moment that its doors swung open with him between them, and a single glance was enough to communicate exactly where and when they should meet, some ten minutes later in the Henbane clearing, from which she emerged with a smarting green smudge on her tailbone and spiny burdocks tangled into her hair.
During his Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons he taught with sanguine detachment from the board for a while before setting an assignment which allowed Delilah, under the guise of bending over her textbook and parchment, to summon the sexiest, most outrageously filthy thoughts she could and flick them directly into his waiting gaze with frequent lingering glances up through her eyelashes, plumbing wanton new depths of decadence with her ever-stretching imagination, biting her lips and silently vibrating with excitement under her robes.
‘Are you coming to the Quidditch tomorrow Delilah?’
Delilah had been staring out of the window, completely engrossed in a daydream. She snapped to attention.
‘Quidditch tomorrow?’ she repeated stupidly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘There’s an Apparition class in the morning,’ Lisa pressed, ‘then we’ll all be going straight out from lunch.’
But if the whole school was going to be out in the grounds…
‘Do come Delilah, it should be a good one,’ Cho joined in.
‘Delilah will probably be creeping off somewhere on her own,’ Ariadne said.
‘Eh?’ Delilah said distractedly.
‘Sacking off to go and hide in the Forbidden Forest, maybe,’ Ariadne said pointedly.
Delilah turned sharply. Her stomach contracted.
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘I saw you slipping off into the Forest last week. I’ve seen you doing it twice. You must know it’s out of bounds. What were you up to?’
‘Shagging one of the centaurs,’ she said. ‘Why, want me to hook you up? They’re incredibly well-hung. I’m sure he has a friend.’
Cho and Terry snorted with laughter.
‘Delilah!’ Lisa shrieked, clapping a scandalised hand over her mouth.
‘Very funny,’ Ariadne said sourly.
‘Since you ask, I offered to help Professor Hagrid with his crups. That OK with you?’
Ariadne had scowled and returned to her book. Delilah pretended to be interested in the resumed conversation about the next day’s Quidditch match as her racing pulse slowed. She hoped she hadn’t blushed with guilt at Ariadne’s interrogation, or at least that if she had, nobody had noticed. Soon afterwards she made an excuse to leave the common room and made her vague way towards the Great Hall, but it was still far too early for dinner, so when she found herself in the West Tower she wandered up to the Owlery, her mind still whirring. When she pushed open the door and padded across the sawdust, a welcoming hoot came from the corner, and Hedwig flew down with a downy rustle and landed on her arm.
‘Hey Hedwig,’ Delilah said softly, stroking the owl’s head. ‘Thanks for taking Connie and Matilda’s presents to them. I should’ve come earlier to thank you.’
The owl blinked in acknowledgment.
‘That must’ve been dangerous for you. I didn’t mean to put you in danger. I didn’t realise you were such an awesome owl.’
Hedwig ruffled her feathers and rubbed her head against Delilah’s hand, as if to say that it was all in a day’s work. Delilah wandered over to the window and rested Hedwig on the perch beside it, staring out into the grounds and stroking the owl’s feathers for a long time. It wasn’t until the hoops of the Quidditch pitch were cast in a creamy gold that she realised it must be dinner time, and she noticed that Hedwig had fallen fast asleep, lulled by her rhythmic stroking. She slipped out of the Owlery and down the stairs.
‘Fancy meeting you here.’
She turned to see the shaded form of Severus in a doorway, and her stomach gave an excited flutter.
‘Is everyone in the Great Hall?’ she whispered.
‘No, they’re all on their way down. Too busy, we’d be caught.’
‘If we haven’t been already,’ Delilah said, feeling a stab of irritation at Ariadne.
‘What?’
‘Oh, just that bitch Ariadne was making some bitchy remark earlier.’
‘About us?’
‘Yep, she seems to have seen me going into the Forest, and was being-’
She was cut off as Snape grabbed her by the upper arm and dragged her into the room behind him, slammed the door and shoved her back against the wall.
‘What did she say? What does she know?’ he demanded hoarsely, leaning into her and squeezing her arm in an iron grip.
‘Well, nothing really,’ Delilah said, taken aback by his alarm. ‘She just saw me going into the Forest and was being weird about it.’
‘Did she mention me?’
‘No, of course not. Look, don’t panic, she doesn’t know anything. She just hates me, so she’s always sneaking around trying to catch me out at something.’
‘Why didn’t you mention that before?’
‘Well, because…’ Delilah floundered. ‘What do you mean? Why would I?’
‘Why would you?’
‘Severus, she doesn’t know anything. Why are you freaking out?’
Delilah’s arm began to throb with the pressure of his grasp. She shook it, and he released his fingers but didn’t move his hand. His face was its usual inscrutable mask, but his body was tense and his breath was quick, almost panicked.
‘What would happen if we were found out?’ she asked after a moment.
‘I don’t know. Nothing good.’
This was, incredibly, the first time she’d ever considered this question. For a few seconds his fear was infectious, and visions of confrontations by Dumbledore, McGonagall, Flitwick, even Remus flickered briefly through her mind, before she tossed them aside. She shook her arm entirely free and took Snape by the shoulders.
‘Nothing’s happened,’ she said firmly. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s nothing. Ariadne’s a full-time cunt who spends her sad little life trying to find things to accuse me of, and I was just pissed off with her for riling me again. I put her off the scent, and she doesn’t suspect a thing. Just forget it.’
He regarded her for a moment and then nodded, but he stepped away from her and left the room without another word.
*
Delilah had pretty much got the hang of Apparition; towards the end of Saturday morning’s class, Professor Twycross stretched the limit of the Apparition Ban by laying a hoop just out of sight in the Entrance Hall, and looked delighted when Delilah swirled neatly into it.
‘Splendid!’ he appraised from the doorway, waving his wand to vanish the hoop.
‘Splendid indeed,’ came a voice from behind Delilah. ‘I still can’t Apparate that elegantly, and I’ve had my license for about as long as you’ve been alive.’
She wheeled around.
‘Remus!’ she gasped, and in a completely spontaneous gesture, she threw herself into his arms. He laughed and caught her, so she picked her feet up and he swung her around.
‘Are you here for the day?’ she asked as he set her down. ‘Can we go out for lunch?’
‘I am indeed. I’m on my way to Dumbledore’s office, then I’m all yours if you’ll have me. Oh, but–’ his face fell as a handful of students walked past holding broomsticks. ‘Of course, there’s a Quidditch match this afternoon. Would you like to watch it? I won’t mind at all if you’d prefer to do that. I could join you in the stalls.’
‘Oh fuck no, let’s definitely go to Hogsmeade,’ she said fervently, already imagining the freedom of the school gates swinging open before them.
‘If you’re sure,’ Remus laughed. She went back into the lesson as he bounded off with his usual energy, and when they filed out, there was already a crowd of impatient students waiting for the Hall to be transformed back into a dining room so they could wolf down a quick lunch and rush off to the Quidditch pitch to claim a plum seat. Obviously she was lunching in Hogsmeade, so she stood in the Entrance Hall, briefly wondering what to do with herself, before a smile curled across her face and she hurtled off to the dormitory. Whilst there she took the opportunity to change into a pair of battered denim shorts and a white blouse, and grabbed George’s envelope from her trunk, taking out two ordinary-looking pieces of parchment. She also retrieved her sunglasses and her old red handbag, into which she stuffed the parchments along with a quill, and made her way back downstairs feeling fresh and excited. She carried on down through the castle until she reached the dungeons, strode to the alcove outside Snape’s office and, glancing around to check nobody was around, slid one of the pieces of parchment smartly under the door. Then she went back up the stairs, through the Entrance Hall, pushing her sunglasses down onto her nose, and perched on the top step outside in the sunshine. Almost everybody had congregated at the Quidditch pitch, and the few students who passed her did so at a sprint, so she pulled out the plain piece of parchment, flipped her handbag to form a flat surface, and hovered her quill above the page.
I want you, she wrote at last.
Pathetic. It looked pathetic on the page.
I want you so badly, all the fucking time she appended.
Better.
She held her quill aloft, trying to think of something to add, but she heard footsteps behind her and folded the parchment. She glanced over her shoulder to see Remus, so she tapped the parchment to send the message and shoved it in her bag, and turned to him with a smile.
‘There you are!’ he exclaimed, holding out a hand and tugging her to her feet. They walked down the steps and started out across the lush lawn towards the castle gates.
‘How’s it been this term?’ he asked. ’Looks like you’re a pro at Apparating.’
‘I am now,’ she said. ‘First time I tried it I left half my limbs behind.’
‘Oh, that’s a rite of passage: when we were at school, my old friend James once managed to splinch off his teeth, his ears and every strand of hair on his head including his eyebrows and eyelashes. He looked fantastically funny.’
They fell into an easy chatter as they strode across the grass until a roar of enthusiasm erupted from across the grounds, and they both turned and shaded their eyes to see the tiny figures of the Quidditch players launching into the air, to the muffled accompaniment of an amplified commentator’s voice.
‘And is everything still going well socially? Got lots of friends? Not missing your old ones too much?’
‘Oh yes, everyone’s nice enough. I hardly ever think about Beauxbatons, to be honest. Weird really, when you think I was there for five years. It feels so much like a part of my past though, like it was years ago. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I do, actually.’
‘Speaking of which, though, do you know anything about the attack on Beauxbatons? The Prophet article wasn’t very forthcoming.’
‘The Daily Prophet seldom is these days. Dumbledore’s been in touch with Madame Maxime about it, and it’s all a bit weird. Obviously everyone assumed it was something to do with Voldemort, but the attack was woefully unsuccessful, almost amateurish in its execution, which makes us wonder whether someone else was behind it.’
‘But who else would want to attack a school?’
‘That’s the question. They seemed to be acting alone, so we can’t rule out the possibility that it was just a lunatic on the rampage, possibly someone hoping to curry favour with Voldemort, but it’s a bit of a mystery at the moment.’
‘Someone was killed though?’
‘Yes, but it sounds like she was just unlucky. The attacker was waiting at the gates and attacked the woman right when the gates opened, which would suggest he killed her in order to get past her and into the school, but then he vanished without a trace, never even setting foot inside the grounds.’
‘Hmm. Maybe he was the advance guard and was just clearing the way for others, but something went wrong?’
‘Possible I suppose, but that isn’t typical of how the Death Eaters operate – they don’t use stealth and cunning when they could make a dramatic entrance. It’s all theatre with them.’
He pointed his wand at the gates, and they clicked softly. He pushed the gate and held it open for Delilah. He smiled at her as she passed before him.
‘Is it possible that you’re even taller than you were at Christmas?’
‘I fear it is – I’ve noticed my sleeves are getting a bit skimpy. I’m almost as tall as Snape,’ she added thoughtlessly, regretting it immediately.
‘I bet he loves that,’ Remus said, letting go of the gate and falling into step beside her, not appearing to register the non sequitur. ‘He’ll struggle to scowl down his nose at you if you’re at eye level.’
‘Amazingly he manages it anyway. He sort of tips his head back to make an artificial height from which to peer down at me.’
Lupin chuckled.
‘He hasn’t been giving you any more trouble, has he?’
‘Trouble?’ she repeated, worried she was blushing and fervently wishing she’d never introduced the subject. ‘No, he mostly just ignores me.’
‘Yes, me too. Poor Severus.’
‘Why poor Severus?’
‘Oh, I just think it must be a lonely life.’
‘Because he doesn’t have any friends, you mean?’
‘Exactly. It seems to me that Severus only has two registers: hero worship and haughty disdain. It must make it very hard to have any normal relationships.’
‘You don’t think he considers anyone an equal? What about Dumbledore?’
‘Oh no. Whether or not he shows it, he hero-worships Dumbledore.’
Delilah turned that over in her mind for a few moments, watching a tawny owl glide through the air overhead and then disappear into the Forbidden Forest.
‘Did you ever hear of a person called Clare Prince?’ she asked Remus.
‘Crikey, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. She was a political journalist many years ago – before you were born I think. Why?’
‘Did you know she was Snape’s aunt?’
‘No, I had no idea. That’s interesting. How do you know?’
‘I just chanced on it – I was looking up Prenderghast in the library, and she was next to him in the filing cabinet. It said she was killed in 1980 by the Death Eaters, and I thought…’
‘Hmm. Yes, I follow you.’
‘So, would Voldemort have made Snape do it himself?’
Remus pondered that.
‘I think that rather than make him do it, he’d wait for him to offer, as a sign of his loyalty and devotion.’
‘And if he didn’t?’
‘It wouldn’t really be a choice, would it? He probably wouldn’t still be a Death Eater if he hadn’t done it. Certainly not in the position of trust he’s in now.’
‘So then…’
‘Well. We can’t know for sure. Why were you looking up Prenderghast?’
‘Just curiosity really. What’s going on with him?’
‘Nothing much that I know of. We kept him in Grimmauld Place for a bit, then put him in a safe house. I’ve hardly seen him since then. He asked to join the Order a few weeks ago but Dumbledore refused.’
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t say. I guess he doesn’t think he’s trustworthy.’
‘You don’t either, do you?’
‘I don’t really know him. What do you think?’
Delilah thought for a moment.
‘It’s tricky. I got a bad vibe from him that time in Dumbledore’s office, but that whole thing was so confusing, and… well, he and my Dad were so close. I found this old newspaper clipping of my Dad winning an award and Prenderghast was there, he was so nice about him. They go way back. Connie too, I think. I don’t like to think of my Dad trusting someone who wasn’t trustworthy.’
‘That’s understandable.’
‘I suppose what I’m saying is, I feel like I should respect my Dad’s opinion of him, but it goes against my instincts. I don’t have anything except that one meeting to go on though, so maybe I thought that by looking him up I’d get a better picture.’
‘And did you?’
‘No, his file was completely empty.’
Remus thrust his hands into his pockets and stared thoughtfully at the ground ahead.
‘Well, let’s say he isn’t trustworthy. My take, for what it’s worth, is that I’ve found people are seldom entirely one thing or another. People are different with different people, and at different times in their lives, and in different circumstances – and by anyone’s standards, these are very different times we’re living in now. War tends to bring out the best and the worst sides of people.’
‘Isn’t that just another way of saying it brings out the true side of people?’
‘That depends on whether you think there’s such a thing as a “true” side of people. I think it’s perfectly possible for Prenderghast to have been a good and loyal friend to your father for many years, and be a coward under pressure.’
‘What’s the good of a friend like that?’
‘I don’t think there’s any one answer to that. What do you think Ormond would say?’
Delilah watched a nuthatch vanish into a hole in a tree trunk with a leaf clutched in its beak. She summoned her father to mind, standing at the kitchen window in his old grey jumper, staring peaceably out at the colours of the autumn leaves, the radio crooning softly beside him. He could be ferocious when he needed to be, and had apparently been especially so when he was young, before she was born. But the overwhelming impression he’d left on the earth was one of generosity: an explosive generosity which flooded irrepressibly out of him, a restless drive which propelled him out of his armchair by the fire of an evening to pen an owl to a friend whose birthday he’d suddenly realised was the next day, or simply to check in on someone who’d crossed his mind. A generosity which had him out of bed at 5am on the morning that Delilah was going back to school, to make a special breakfast for her because he knew, even when she’d never admit it, that she was dreading going back, and which he pretended not to notice that she barely ate a bite of.
The year that Elspeth Frink’s husband died, he’d insisted that she spend the whole Christmas week with the Blackthorns – in spite of protestations which Delilah now blushed to remember – because otherwise she would be all alone, which he couldn’t bear to think of.
When Delilah had told him about a first-year boy at Beauxbatons who was being bullied because of his speech impediment, and had made friends with a House Elf who brought him meals to a toilet cubicle so he could avoid having to sit in the Dining Hall, he had winced, actually flinched away for the sake of the loneliness of a child in another country whom he’d never met. He’d asked after the boy every time he’d seen her for the last four years of his life.
He took absurd, childlike joy in the simplest things: a sunset, the turning leaves, a robin plashing in the bird bath outside the kitchen window. He would bound into the living room to tell the family about these tiny pleasures, even stop strangers in the street to draw their attention to them, and this, she realised now, was another example of his wondrous generosity.
‘Dad would’ve forgiven anything,’ she said, her voice painfully constricted. ‘But that’s because he was the kindest, most generous person in the world. Not necessarily because Prenderghast deserves it.’
‘So where does that leave you?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not good and generous and kind like Dad was. But maybe I should be. Maybe I should want to be, at least.’
Remus put his arm around her shoulder and tugged her bracingly in beside him for a moment, then hooked his arm through the crook of her elbow as the Three Broomsticks hoved into view ahead.
*
After a long, cosy afternoon by the fireplace, culminating in bowls of apple and blackberry crumble topped with pools of Madame Rosmerta’s homemade vanilla custard, Remus slipped off to the bar and was sidetracked into a conversation with an animated young wizard in olive green robes emblazoned with some kind of badge, leaving Delilah in a languorous slump in her armchair. She was staring quite absently into the flames when she felt a strange sensation: a vibration against her thigh. It took her a moment to register the significance of this, before she hurriedly scrabbled to pull out the piece of parchment from her handbag, resting beside her on the armchair. She unfolded it and saw her own message in black, and a reply beneath it in green.
I want you so badly, all the fucking time.
Do you now?
She glanced over her shoulder at Remus, who was deeply engrossed in conversation with the young wizard. She retrieved the quill from her bag and rested the parchment on her thighs, which were slung over the arm of the chair.
Yes. Constantly.
Be more specific.
She hovered the quill’s nib over the page, biting her lip.
I can’t even concentrate on anything. It’s like my body exists for you. When I’m sitting in Charms class or in the library or at lunch or whatever, I sometimes feel the weight and warmth of my breasts (she ran her wand over that word to delete it, and substituted it for tits; then deleted that and replaced it with breasts again) under my robes and think about if I were with you, and I just pulled my clothes off, and how it feels when you run your hands over me. I feel it between my legs, it makes me clench, and it just feels pointless to be in lessons, pointless to be in the library, when I could be with you, with your hands on me, touching me, giving me
‘Ello darling,’ said a voice. Delilah immediately stilled her skittering quill, turned the parchment face down and looked up into the leering, vaguely familiar face of a short, mottled man with stringy ginger hair, standing behind the chair that Remus had just vacated.
‘Writin’ a letter?’ he went on, his eyes roving over her in a way that made her feel queasy.
‘Yes,’ she said, that seeming the easiest answer.
‘Writin’ to your boyfriend?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed again.
‘Lucky boy,’ he crooned softly, leaning over the high back of the chair to peer at her, ‘’avin a pretty girl like you to write to. ‘Tellin’ him how much you miss him?’
Delilah just raised her eyebrows in response.
‘Tellin’ him how you think about ‘im when you’re all by yourself?’
‘Mundungus?’ came a sharp voice. Remus had returned, holding two glasses.
‘Remus!’ the man exclaimed, straightening at once and adopting an affable, oily disposition. ‘What brings you to ‘Ogsmeade?’
‘I was about to ask you the same. What are you doing here?’
‘Oh y’know Remus, bit o’ this, bit o’ that, toutin’ me wares. Gotta make a livin’ somehow,’ he laughed wheezily, and suddenly Delilah recognised him as the street vendor from Diagon Alley all those months earlier. ‘Didn’t mean to interrupt your date.’
‘This is Delilah du Lac,’ Remus said stiffly. ‘A student at Hogwarts.’
‘Oh!’ Mundungus said with pantomimic delight, turning back to her, ‘this is young Delilah then! ‘Eard so much about you, nice to meet you at last!’
‘Yeah, you too,’ Delilah said acidly. ‘A real pleasure.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you to your… drinks,’ Mundungus said, backing away deferentially. Remus gave him a cold look and sat back in his chair.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said, setting two more drinks down. ‘I was waylaid by someone I taught during my brief stint at Hogwarts, he’s raising awareness for victims of Squintlock, obviously thought I’d be a sympathetic mark…’
Delilah folded the parchment and tucked it back into her inside pocket.
*
Twilight was falling when Remus dropped her back at the castle gates, a gorgeous smudgy purple-red sky which cast his tufty beard in bronze. He hugged her warmly and saw her safely into the grounds, and she watched him Disapparate through the gate, wishing the day wasn’t over. As she crossed the grounds, a deliciously exciting vibration once again tickled her thighs, and she almost tore the parchment in eagerness to pull it out of her bag.
Giving you…?
She was a little drunk now, and didn’t feel like playing into his hands. She pulled out her quill and, having nothing to lean the parchment on, wrote shakily, What do you want to give me?
She stared at the parchment as she continued towards the castle, waiting for his response.
I don’t want to give you anything. I want you naked on my desk, writhing and pleading and trying to wrap your legs around me, tipping your head back and gasping and tossing your hips around in desperation, trying to pull me in towards you, dying for me, gagging for me. And I want to say no. It makes me hard just thinking about it.
You think about it a lot?
Constantly.
Dinner was already over, and the Entrance Hall was striped with lines of dusty sunlight as she re-entered the castle and made her way to the Ravenclaw tower.
‘What defines victory?’ asked the knocker.
‘When the other side gives in and admits defeat,’ Delilah said.
‘Doesn’t that define surrender?’
‘What’s the difference? Who ever surrendered when they could have won?’
‘Fair point.’
Before Delilah was through the door, Lisa was upon her.
‘Delilah, there you are! Where have you been? We’ve been so worried!’
‘What? Why?’
A strange tension hung in the air, and she looked around the common room at a line of sombre faces. Cho and Marietta were sitting side by side around a small circular table with their heads resting on their fists; Terry was sitting stiffly in an armchair staring down at his lap, crumpling, straightening and re-crumpling a piece of paper; Anthony Goldstein and Michael Corner were standing by the window talking in muted tones, and Padma had smudges of black make-up under her eyes.
‘Has something happened?’
She waited for a sarcastic response, but none was forthcoming.
‘It’s Ariadne,’ Lisa whispered, at the exact moment that an inkling of suspicion flared in Delilah’s brain, so that she felt rocked by a weird sense of déjà vu. ‘She’s… she’s been taken to St Mungo’s.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘She was attacked in the Forbidden Forest.’
‘What was she doing in the Forest? What attacked her?’
‘Good question, Delilah,’ came a ringing voice from across the room, and Delilah turned to see Marietta suddenly on her feet, her hair standing out from her temples in wild ringlets, her thick mask of makeup clotted around her nostrils. ‘And where have you been?’
‘I’ve been in Hogsmeade having lunch with a friend.’
‘Oh, sure,’ she spat. ‘The rest of us mere mortals are only allowed out of grounds on Hogsmeade weekends, but Frenchie gets to swan off whenever she likes. That’s likely.’
‘Marietta,’ Cho hissed.
‘Look, I don’t know how to prove it to you,’ Delilah said. ‘You can ask Dumbledore if you like, he knows where I was. Or any number of people in the Three Broomsticks. But what exactly is it that you’re accusing me of?’
‘Ariadne said she was following you into the Forest. She left right after kickoff, and the next thing we knew, once the match was over, she was being carried into the castle and – and…’ Marietta’s voice broke.
‘She’s been cursed really, really badly,’ Lisa said in Delilah’s ear.
‘She was trying to follow me? Can’t you lot see how fucking creepy that is? And yet I’m the villain here?’
‘She’s our friend,’ Marietta snarled.
‘Which makes me your enemy, I suppose.’
Nobody, not even Lisa, responded to that. Delilah turned on her heel and walked straight back out of the common room. She was already at the bottom of the steps when she heard a shout.
‘Delilah!’
Terry came clattering down after her. Delilah carried on walking.
‘Hey, don’t storm off – Marietta didn’t mean it.’
‘Yes she did.’
‘Look, she’s really scared, and-’
‘I can’t believe she actually thinks I lured Ariadne into the Forest and cursed her. You don’t believe it, do you?’
‘No, of course not. You were… you said you were in Hogsmeade?’
‘YES. For fuck’s sake, I’m not going to have this fucking stupid conversation again. Go and ask Dumbledore if you don’t believe me.’
‘I don’t think you did anything,’ Terry said hastily.
‘Go and tell Marietta that then, rather than just sitting there like a squatfly while she accuses me of trying to murder your friend.’
‘Like I said, everyone’s just in shock. You weren’t there, it was so scary. We were all on our way back across the grounds and then Snape just appeared at the edge of the Forest carrying her, she was sort of floppy and convulsing, it was horrible-’
‘Wait – Snape?’
‘Apparently it’s a lucky job he found her when he did. Flitwick’s been in touch with her mum and they think she’ll live, but she probably won’t be back at school this year.’
‘That’s awful,’ Delilah said weakly, her mind racing.
‘I know, with her N.E.W.T.s this year…’
‘Mmm,’ Delilah said. ‘Look, I need to send an owl, but I’ll see you later, OK?’
‘Oh come on, come back up. I’m sure they’ll have calmed down by now.’
From where she was standing, looking up the staircase, Delilah could see the door which led into the little room in which she had almost fucked him. She gave him a long look.
‘You know what I really can’t forgive?’ she said.
‘Huh?’
‘It’s the lack of courage. You’re not a bad guy, you’re not malicious, but… you’re just such a coward.’
She left him with a frozen expression on his face and continued along the corridor.
*
‘Yes, yes yes yes YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!’
Delilah squeezed her thighs harder around his neck but he dug his nails into her flesh, leaving a sprinkling of pink crescents around the avian joint of her knee, and held fast, keeping his distance, hovering his face above her skin so that she could feel his breath, touching just the dextrous tip of his tongue against her with a teasing, undulating pressure as she grew hotter and more incoherent above him, ramming her shoulder blades into the mattress and arching her back, blinded and deafened by the hammering of blood through her veins; he was driving her mad, she couldn’t stand it any more, she sank her fingers into her scalp and then into her mouth, suffocating another scream of absolute ecstasy – and then, so suddenly that it rocked her straight up into a sitting position, she came with a startled exclamation. She clawed into his hair as though she’d rip it out, and bowed over him as she caught her breath, her pulse pounding through her breastbone against the top of his head. Then she collapsed in a panting sprawl back onto the pillows, and Severus slithered up the length of her body to lie beside her. Without opening her eyes, she rolled into him and slid her fingers into the tangle of his chest hair.
After a few moments, he pulled away from her to lean over to the bedside table. She opened her eyes to see him pouring two goblets of wine.
‘Thanks,’ she said breathlessly, taking one and propping herself up on her elbow. He took a long, leisurely gulp from his goblet and then rested back on the headboard, eyes closed.
Delilah looked around the room at the sparse furniture, the wardrobe, the bookshelf, and the slice of the dark bathroom visible through the half-open door. How long had he slept in this room? From the lack of pictures, the absence of any detritus at all, he could have moved in last week. She looked at the line of cloaks hanging on the wall. They all looked the same from where she was. Did he just have a handful of identical ones which he cycled through, or were they subtly different for different occasions?
Was one of them his Death Eater cloak?
‘Severus?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you kill your aunt Clare?’
He opened his eyes.
‘No,’ he said without looking at her.
‘Why not?’
He stared straight ahead for a few moments, then gave a spasmodic grunt of laughter.
‘What a question.’
‘I know. Sorry. Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me.’
He reached for the bottle and refilled both of their goblets, even though hers was hardly touched. She nestled back into his chest and they both lay, half-illuminated by the stuttering light of the brackets.
After a long time, Delilah tilted her head upwards to look into his face, foreshortened in the last gasps of the candles. His eyes, lidless and almondish from her upward perspective, flickered under the rooty membrane of his eyelids like shooting stars. Meanwhile, Delilah’s captured a light from no particular source for minutes, and minutes more, after he slept.
