Chapters 231-240

Pity

‘Yes,’ interrupted Professor Weasley. ‘You could allow Professor Snape to read your mind.’

Father Brown frowned. ‘Is that possible?’

Bill nodded. ‘It is a highly specialised branch of magic. But Professor Snape excels at it.’

‘I cannot recall having asked for your opinion,’ Severus snapped. ‘Or having invited you into my rooms.’

‘No,’ Bill replied evenly. ‘You didn’t. Headmistress McGonagall did. But Legilimency is the obvious solution.’

To more than one problem.

Severus could read Professor Weasley’s thoughts as clearly as if the DADA teacher had spoken aloud.He didn’t know if he ought to be glad that the other man shared his mistrust or if he ought to throttle him for the invasion of his privacy.

‘Very well.’

It took a moment for the meaning of the priest’s words to register. A second later, Severus pressed his wand to the man’s temple. How easy it would be to whisper the words ‘Avada Kedavara’ and be done with him…

‘Legilimens!’ he hissed and plunged into the little priest’s mind.

What he found, was worse than his worst fears.

Honest shock and deep concern.

A secret meeting with a high-ranking church official, a cardinal no less, who was just as shocked. And worse—scared.

Secret archives, stacks of paper, shelves overflowing, and documents dating back to when the Holy Inquisition was discontinued nearly a hundred years ago, when it was transformed into ‘The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office’ in 1908. A papal order signed and sealed that disbanded a certain secret Order within the Inquisition.

The discovery that certain documents detailing the identities of the members of this Order had disappeared. A first trace that connected this very Order with the death of a Pope.

Personal thoughts at the back of the priest’s mind. A mixture of love and shame concerning a younger sister. A woman Brown thought of as ‘a flamboyant, butch, Lesbian Wiccan of all things’. A stoic refusal to repudiate these familial ties in spite of his acute embarrassment. Instead a resigned acceptance of the fact that this connection would always keep him in the fourth tier of Church hierarchy.

And, very much at the top of the priest’s emotions, pity.

Deep, heartfelt pity for a man in black robes so strangely similar to the priest’s own. Pity for a pale man with black hair and a face haggard and worn with grief.

Severus came back to himself with a gasp. He dragged a shaking hand across his face. ‘Do you have everything you came for?’ he asked in a whisper.

The priest, his face as calm and yes, as foolishly trusting as before, nodded.

‘Then get out,’ Severus said very softly. ‘Get out of my sight and only come back when you have news of my wife.’

oooOooo

Hermione wrote.

They did not allow her pens. Probably because you could kill yourself with a pen. You could stick it into your guts if you wanted to die badly enough. Or through your eye into your brain. That would work, too.

But they did give her a laptop for two hours each day—as long as the battery lasted. Obviously they did not trust her with a cable. The nuns who took care of her were not unkind. Hermione wondered what they had been told about her. Maybe that she was mentally disturbed? That seemed most likely. Whatever it was had to be a very reasonable explanation, because neither her screams, nor her tears, nor her quiet explanations and pleas moved any of the nuns to break her vow of silence.

Not that Hermione supposed that they could actually understand a word of what she was saying. She surmised that she was no longer in Britain. The hills and woods she could see from her tiny window seemed Mediterranean to her. And though she had no idea whether the subdued Latin songs that drifted through her window were sung with an Italian, French or Spanish accent, it did not sound as if their native tongue had ever been English.

After more than two months in captivity, Hermione had trained herself to sleep most of the day. This was not difficult. She was always exhausted, even though she never left her cell and barely moved. At first she thought that being without magic, without wands, for the first time since she was eleven, caused that condition. But as the days went by, she began to suspect there was more to her fatigue.

Strangely enough the idea that the wards of her cell must act like the original leeching spell did not scare her. Instead it brought her a measure of comfort.

she wrote,

oooOooo

But in her sleep, she dreamt. Of magic. Of magic and sex and Severus, always Severus.

And death, of course.

She would throw her head back in the ecstasy of orgasm. But when her vision cleared, she would hold not her husband’s face, but a skull. And patches of decaying black hair would stick to her hands.

She’d wake then, sobbing. She’d stumble and crawl through the archway opposite her bed to the toilet in the corner and vomit until only bile came up. At last she would sink back against the wall and stare at her hands. In the nightly shadows they would turn to bones. Beautiful, fragile bones. White like the porcelain of the toilet beside her.

But when she finally collapsed on the floor, one treacherous hand would slide down her body, to the apex of her thighs, and slip between her legs. And she would find herself wet with the desire of her dreams.

Hermione wrote.

oooOooo

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