A Rock and a Hard Place

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“Who?” Trudy stammered.

In the semi-darkness, the Professor shot her an unreadable look. “The Dark Lord. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. The one who has your daughter.”

“He—he sends you…messages?” Trudy felt stupid. She wasn’t thinking fast enough. What could this mean? This couldn’t mean— Oh, please God, it couldn’t mean— “He sends you messages?” she repeated in a raspy voice.

“Take off these clothes and put on your old ones,” he said flatly. “You’re going as a Muggle.”

“He sends you messages?” she screamed.

“Yes!” he grated out. “Now take off those clothes, or I Vanish the lot!”

Trudy began tearing off robes, corset, garter—“Whose side are you on anyway?” she whispered, as she peeled off the stockings, heedless of their ripping.

The Professor only threw her another unfathomable look and tossed her, her old dress. She yanked it over her head. As soon as her feet were in her awful, ugly ballet flats, the Professor said, “Hold onto me.” When she hesitated, he grabbed her hands. The next thing Trudy knew, she felt as she were being jerked through an impossibly small slot by a string located somewhere behind her stomach.

She staggered. The Professor caught her shoulder in a painful grip that steadied her. Then he knelt and kissed the hem of a figure in the shadows.

“My Lord.”

“Snape,” said a high, cold voice.

An invisible band snagged Trudy’s ankles and jerked her feet off the ground so that she dangled upside down. Panic surged like a jolt through her heart and like copper in her mouth. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. Her mouth seemed impossibly dry and locked. Her heart hammered painfully in her ribs. Terror washed down her back in cold sweat. Her skirt was upside down, too, exposing her body to the pitiless gaze of the Professor and...whoever his Lord was. Trudy revolved slowly in mid-air, an unheard scream on her lips, unspoken gibberings for mercy caught in her throat.

As she slowly revolved, she noticed a hissing in the room. She turned her head as much as she could, and her mouth opened on another soundless scream. A young girl of plain features and a serious expression sat in the corner. Hovering above her undulated a snake as thick as a man’s waist, a snake that rose up almost to the ceiling. They were hissing together, their eyes locked on one another’s. It was...obscene.

Elizabeth! Trudy wanted to scream. But no sound escaped her lips. And her daughter, her beloved daughter, never flicked a glance her way.

Snape pushed his pity to the far corners of his mind and pushed forward his clinical observation of Trudy’s body. Even in the dim light, her stretch marks showed silver along her sides. Her hips were almost bony and pale as a fish belly above her thin legs. Her hair, in this light, looked false, brassy, and tangled. One of her shoes had fallen off, and as she turned slowly, mouth moving in silent pleas, she had the look of a vagrant.

“How is it, Snape, that the curse meant for Dumbledore has become yours?” the cold voice asked.

“Dumbledore saw through the plan and put me in the curse’s path, my Lord,” the Professor replied, as if the matter were of little concern to him.

Trudy’s heart caught in her throat. She hadn’t known she had been meant for Dumbledore. So Snape had not just been the unwitting target of the curse, but not the target at all… And yet, he still had accommodated her needs, every time, with no recriminations. She should feel…grateful. But he was kneeling before the wizard who had taken her daughter and cursed her, the wizard everyone feared. And the Professor called this wizard “my Lord.”

“And how is it, then, that you did not send any message to me to tell me what had happened?”

This was the question Snape had known would come and which he dreaded answering. Now he occluded assiduously. “My Lord,” he said, his eyes never leaving Voldemort’s, “when one is answering the demands of a curse as ancient and as powerful as this, one does not immediately summon owls—nor anything else—to one’s bedside.”

The tight skin on Voldemort’s face curdled. “I see,” he hissed. “You are telling me, then, that the Muggle means nothing to you, that you did not hesitate to inform me because you had, perhaps, grown to enjoy a woman in your bed, no matter how ugly and stupid she might be?”

Snape willed himself to feel calm. He pushed forward his detached appraisals of Trudy’s looks and personality from when he had first met her. He bowed his head in homage to his superior. “I have borne the curse as well as might be,” he said neutrally.

Voldemort’s face creased into an evil smile. “Then certainly you won’t mind her disposal, now that she is of no use to us,” he said. Raising his wand, he pointed it at the frantic, dangling figure. “Avada—"

Snape swept his arm around to point at the girl in the corner. His voice cut across the high cold one: “My Lord, look.”

Voldemort paused, lipless mouth drawn back over slightly pointed teeth. The girl in the corner had stood up. Though her face was still turned to the enormous snake’s, she was wringing her hands together in a childish imitation of her mother.

“She stands,” Voldemort said. “It is nothing.” He raised his wand again. The sound of hissing filled the room. The girl was speaking Parseltongue loudly. The snake responded, almost striking at her with its huge head.

“Nagini, Nagini,” the Dark Lord soothed coldly. His red eyes flashed at the girl. He opened his mouth and a stream of hissing poured out. The girl answered, though her eyes never left the snake, and a verbal duel of Parseltongue began.

Snape’s eyes darted from one to the other. He never lost sight of the Dark Lord’s wand hand, still half-raised at his side.

At last, Voldemort turned slowly from the girl. He raised his wand at Trudy, who still dangled upside down from some unseen manacle. Before Snape could stop him, he slashed his wand through the air. Adrenaline spurted through Snape’s veins. With a massive force of will, he compelled himself stand silent and motionless. Trudy thudded to the ground with a short squeal. Snape kept his eyes on the Dark Lord.

“For your sake, Snape, I will release this specimen from the curse,” Voldemort spat. His wind jabbed the air at Trudy, and her body jerked as if hit by a bullet. “The girl Parselmouth has made the release of her mother a condition for her continuing with my plans. I have no choice...…for the moment...but to accede to her wishes. Take the Muggle, Snape.” A sudden, searing pain ran up Snape’s arm like a knife ripping through the skin. He couldn’t suppress a gasp, as he sank to his knees, feeling something warm and sticky soaking through his robes. “Take the Muggle. And remember how your Mark works--or at least, how to operate owl post,” Voldemort said coldly.

“Yes, my Lord.” Snape staggered to his feet, gripping Trudy’s arm and praying that she was conscious and could walk on her own power. His prayer was in vain: The arm was limp and lifeless. Snape hauled the body to its feet and turned on the spot, Apparating as close to Hogwarts as he could.

He came out panting near the gates of Hogwarts.

“Get up,” he muttered at Trudy. He slapped her face lightly. In the pale light of a grudging dawn, he saw that Trudy’s face was sickly, her eyes sunk in dark sockets. He cursed under his breath and slung one of her arms over his shoulder, using his hip and other arm to keep her more or less upright, and began half-dragging her through the gates and back to the castle.

Filch halted him in one of the corridors. “Out late, Professor?” Filch said in oily tones.

Snape reached for his wand. “That’s none of your concern, Filch.” He delighted in seeing the Squib’s face pinch in impotent fury. “Get back to work.”

Once in his rooms, he let Trudy sink onto his couch before rummaging through his potions cabinet. Where was the blasted dittany? He carefully peeled back the sodden sleeve of his robe. Good. The bleeding had stopped. His arm was sliced open from forearm nearly to elbow, right through the exact middle of the Dark Mark burned on his arm.

Trudy stirred. Snape cast a baleful glance her way and began applying medicinal drops to his arm. A few minutes later, Trudy came slowly to a sitting position. She looked around in confusion before settling her gaze on Snape, a look of shame coming over her features.

“You can’t faint every time events do not conform to your wishes,” Snape bit out.

Trudy looked at his arm, turned even whiter, and said only, “What happened to you?”

“Nothing. A small reminder of my duties.”

Memory flooded Trudy. “What kind of...duties?”

Snape let his bottomless gaze linger on her moment, and Trudy felt herself shudder. “I think you have an idea what kind,” he said.

What little color remained in Trudy’s face bleached out. “You—could have contacted Vold—"

“Don’t say it!” Snape barked at her, and Trudy’s enormous eyes got a hunted look in them.

“Then Him. You could have contacted Him at any time, any time, saved my daughter—"

“I cannot save her. He has her,” he snapped.

“You’re his man.”

He only stared at her again with an expression difficult to read. “How is it that your daughter speaks Parseltongue?” he said at last.

“She—I-I don’t know.”

“You know,” he said flatly. “I should have asked you before. I allowed...circumstances...to distract me. How is it that she speaks Parseltongue?”

“I r-really don’t know,” Trudy said. Her eyes darted away.

Snape looked at her a moment in silence. Then he said softly, “Don’t lie to me. Who was her father?”

“I told you—Daniel. My ex-husband.”

“Daniel what?”

“Jones.”

Snape’s eyes narrowed. Joneses. They were a penny a pound at Hogwarts. One could hardly cross the threshold without tripping over two or three of them every year. But no Jones had ever been a Slytherin, much less spoken Parseltongue. “That’s a lie!” he said harshly.

Trudy laughed, a high, hysterical sound. “That was what he told me to say. He never told me his real last name.”

Snape felt his heartbeat begin to pick up speed. “But you know anyway.”

She looked away again. “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I went through some of his stuff once. Real quick, when he was at work, and I was back from lab.” Her eyes got a faraway look. “It was all parchments. Freaked me out. I found some of his old Hogwarts papers, I think. The first name was the same.” Snape’s heart began to pound. He said nothing. “But I’d never heard of that last name before.”

Snape’s heart hammered in his ears. He leaned forward. “Which was..?”

Trudy’s gaze skittered away. “Lestrange.”