A Rock and a Hard Place

Trudy pulled herself slowly to her elbows. What had he said? She shook her head gingerly… . Stupefy. And that was how she felt. What had they been doing? She saw the stick of wood near her right hand, and memory began dribbling back.

They had been practicing. She was supposed to say “expel-yarn-us” or something like that and then… . She couldn’t remember what was supposed to happen next. She felt numb, stupid, just as the spell said. She lowered her head slowly to the wood floor again. Maybe she could rest a moment.

“Get up,” snapped the Professor.

Trudy couldn’t find her voice. Getting up seemed far from her present capabilities, but she was unable to say so. She tried to raise her head again.

“Get up,” the Professor’s voice cracked like a whip.

Trudy heard it distantly, as if it were being said to someone far away. She felt herself quivering, trying to raise her head. Her heart sank. He wouldn’t help her, her difficult Professor. Or if he did, it would be without any physical contact, some magical spell—

Hands closed around her arms, and she was hauled not ungently to her feet, where she swayed uncertainly. When the floor stopped threatening to meet her chin, she lifted her gaze to meet the Professor’s. She felt his hands drop away from her arms.

“Shall we try again?” he said coolly. She looked straight into his eyes, probing their depths, trying to read something in that opaque, black sea. He moved not a muscle, gave no hint of any reassurance or gentleness. And yet, her eyes sought his appealingly.

At last she collected her tattered pride. “No,” she said, matching his tone. “These lessons won’t work.” She would not swallow, would not show him how close to tears she was. He certainly could not be worse than the evil wizard who had Elizabeth. And yet, his harshness stung. She couldn’t deny it, and she struggled to conceal it.

After a moment, she saw him lower his wand in tacit agreement. Was it relief? “Then we might try another spell.”

Trudy sighed sharply with frustration. “You know that won’t work.” She clamped down on the rush of words she wanted to say, and the moment ballooned with tension, like a huge bruise. At last, she choked out, “You are so harsh.”

The Professor was quiet for a moment before remarking, “Self-pity ill becomes you.”

“Self…?” Furious, Trudy cast around for some way to hurt him, some well-aimed blow… . She thought about his vulnerabilities—his unrequited youthful love, his thwarted ambition, his loveless childhood—and found she didn’t have the stomach for inflicting more pain on him. The weapon came into her hand easily, then. “But cruelty becomes you well. You seem to love it. Is inflicting cruelty the best way to prepare students for more cruelty?”

“Really, that’s—“

“What? None of business? You’re above criticism?”

“American insolence—“

“English coldness!”

They glowered at each other.

“I am the teacher here—“ he began with affronted dignity.

“Some teacher! Knocking your pupil to the floor and insisting on doing it again. Oh, that’ll instill some gratitude in your pupil!”

Snape’s lips compressed until they were a thin, white line. “I don’t have to teach you,” he ground out. “I suffer teaching you, at your insistence. For your daughter.”

“These aren’t lessons! They’re abuse! Find some other method! Or are you saying you can’t think of any?”

“I teach by my own methods!” he bellowed.

“Bullying! Intimidation!” she shouted over him. “It’s what that dark wizard does, and you know it!”

One of her words must have hit home. Snape pulled himself up, then seemed to deflate. He didn't say anything for a long time. Trudy could hear her own breathing. She wanted to punch something. She wanted to cry.

"You're right," he said finally in a low voice.

"What?" Trudy could hardly believe her ears.

"I have bullied you. I have tried to make you afraid."

"Why would you do that?"

"It is what--" he began, then checked himself.

"What?"

He covered his eyes with one hand and didn't answer. Trudy stared at him. Then she came to his side and hesitantly put an arm on his shoulder. "Why did you try to make me afraid?"

He didn't move and he didn't speak. Then suddenly, he had wrapped his arms around her and had her head under his chin. She was enveloped in his arms, his chest, his cloak. She breathed in, and her hurt and anger evaporated, to be replaced with a soaring feeling.

"It's how I was treated," she heard him say above her head. "No matter. I see it now."

"Severus--" she began.

"I'm sorry."

She heard the words with disbelief, and then he was kissing her, and she didn't think at all for a long time.

*

When they reconvened for the lesson, somewhat refreshed with sleep and washing, Snape seemed to have recalled himself. He set his lips in a straight, narrow line and stroked the side of his mouth with a long finger. “Ye-es,” he said thoughtfully.

At last, he said, “Right, then. You seemed to have had some success with cleansing spells at Ollivander’s. Try a Scourgifying spell.”

“What do I do?” Trudy said.

“Point your wand,” he replied, in tones suggesting he was speaking to the very thick, “and say, ‘Scourgify’.”

Trudy straightened up. So he would still take that tone with her? She would show him! She slashed her wand in the air and intoned, “Scourgify!”

A small, bright green spark shot from the end of her wand and winked out a half-second later.

“Hm,” Trudy said, flicking the wand tip lightly in the air. She tried to look as if she had known that would happen all along.

The Professor leaned back, his arms crossed, an expression both supercilious and assessing on his face. “Do it again.”

Without a thought, Trudy slashed her wand more dramatically than before. “Scourgify!” Nothing happened. “Scourgify!” She shouted again before Snape could say anything. Again, the wand did nothing. “Scourgi—Scourgify!”

“Stop!”

“Scourgify! There, I think I saw a spark! No, I guess that was a reflection. Scourgi—“

“Stop!” he shouted again. “You’re not thinking about the thing. You’re not focusing.”

“I didn’t focus before.”

“You did, but you didn’t realize it. Beginner’s luck,” he added with a twist of his lip. “Focus your energy, clear your mind—“

It was on the tip of Trudy’s tongue to yell “Scourgify” again, focusing be damned, but she took a deep breath and tried to collect her wayward thoughts. At last, she flicked her wand and said lightly, “Scourgify.” A spark, clear and bright, shot from the end of her wand.

“You see. It is possible,” Snape said, leaning back and folding his arms.

"Yes!" Trudy said happily, and she beamed at him. A small smile twisted his mouth. He reached out then and tucked a tendril of her hair behind her ear.

"You will have to practice, every day," he said. "There's no telling when the Dark Lord will call me, but when he does, we will have to be ready."

*

They did not have to wait long.

After a week, Snape came to Trudy's rooms at the Hog's Head looking pale and grim.

"What?"

"I have been to see the Dark Lord--"

Trudy began to speak, but he raised his voice and spoke over her. "You will come with me to see him."

He took her arm in a strong grip, not quite painful but not resistible, and pulled her out the back way of the tavern. As they passed the bar, he paused.

"Aberforth."

The bartender looked up from the dusty glasses he was wiping off with an equally filthy rag.

"If I do not return in 12 hours, tell Dumbledore."

The bartender gave a grunt that Trudy took as an affirmative. Then Snape pulled her out the door into a debris-stewn courtyard behind the tavern and turned on the spot.

She felt as if she were being compressed into the tiniest space imaginable. She could hardly breath. And then, she was standing in a dark room, a room with a stone floor and stone walls, a hard room whose only illumination seemed to come from torches flickering in wall sconces. People were milling about the room, people wearing black masks. Trudy shivered.

"Trudy Mills," said a cold voice.

Trudy's head snapped up, and she saw a skeletal figure, ghastly white with red eyes, staring down at her. By his side, as before, was Elizabeth, now staring transfixedly at the awful wizard before her.

Trudy's throat thickened at this sight of her daughter, but she forced herself not to cry. She turned back to the one called the Dark Lord.

"You do not answer me. You do not acknowledge me as your Lord."

"M-my Lord," she whispered. Anything, anything to get back Elizabeth..!

Voldemort turned to Snape. "You have kept something from me, my faithful servant," he said mockingly.

"My Lord," Snape said in a steady voice. It had been a calculated gamble that Voldemort would not find out that he and Trudy were lovers. Someone had talked, no doubt some patron at the Hog's Head, or perhaps, Draco Malfoy had puzzled something out, what with all of Snape's unexplained absences.

He braced himself for the worst.

*

Sometime later, Snape knelt on the stone floor, trying to marshal his strength. His left eye was swollen shut. His nose must have been broken. The pain almost blotted out everything else, and blood was gushing at a frightening volume. He was spitting blood just to keep breathing. Worse was to come, he knew.

“I regret having to treat a faithful servant this way, Snape,” Voldemort said in his high, cold voice. “Perhaps next time you’ll be more forthcoming with me.” Snape saw the yew wand slice the air. “Crucio!”

Snape’s arms and legs felt as if they were being torn from their sockets, his entrails as if they were being drawn from his body with a hook. He could hear himself making dreadful noises. Any more of this and he would confess to anything, everything…

Abruptly, the pain ceased.

Snape lay sweating on the cold flagstones, choking on his own blood.

“Well, Snape. Do you consider that enough punishment?” Voldemort asked, sounding bored.

Snape could hear Trudy trying to stifle convulsive whimpers. He spat a mouthful of blood and managed to clear his throat. “My Lord knows best the correction of his servants.”

“Indeed.” The red slit eyes flashed, and a cruel smile crossed Voldemort’s face. “Crucio!”

Even though Snape had known it was coming again, his second plummet into agony wrung scream after scream from his raw throat. He was dimly aware of the guffaws from the other Death Eaters and of Trudy’s terrified cries, “Stop! Stop!”

The pain evaporated again. As before, Snape lay gagging on the flagstones.

“Your woman does not approve of your treatment,” Voldemort observed indifferently.

Snape felt his stomach lurch. He doggedly kept his face impassive. “How she feels is a matter of complete indifference to me, my Lord,” he rasped.

“Good,” the Dark Lord said. “Muggle, come forward.”

Through the eye that wasn’t swollen shut, Snape saw Trudy take one step forward, but remain standing. Fear forced him to stagger to his feet and limp to her side.

“Kneel!” he ordered.

Trudy jumped, as she always did when he raised his voice at her. She started to sink down, then checked herself. Instead, she gave Voldemort a level stare. Panic rose in Snape’s throat. Now she was going to be brave? He put all his strength behind his arm and walloped her across the back, sending her sprawling. “Kneel to your Lord!” he said, standing over her. He shut out any thought of how she would cringe from him after this, how he was breaking her spirit and trust.

The Death Eaters laughed uproariously, and even Voldemort gave a thin-lipped smile.

“Very good, Snape,” he said. “But in what other matters have you trained your Muggle? She has a wand, it seems. Yaxley! Dolohov!”

The two came forward, both heavily muscled in contrast to Snape’s whippy narrowness.

“Hold him,” Voldemort said. “If he struggles, beat him.”

Yaxley tightened his mouth, and Dolohov gave Snape a mocking leer before they grabbed his arms, holding him in painful locks. Snape could offer no resistance.

“Force him to the floor,” Voldemort said. Snape found himself forced to his knees. Dolohov added an elbow to Snape’s jaw, and Snape sagged between his holders, his vision pixellating to static for a second.

“Now, Muggle,” Voldemort said in a travesty of a charming tone, “show me what you can do with that wand. You are a Muggle, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” came her thick voice from the floor. Snape feared he had knocked out some teeth, or worse, that she was crying. But she pulled herself slowly to her knees, feeling her face gingerly.

“Then, please, hold up your wand and show us what you can do,” Voldemort said lightly.

Adrenaline shot through Snape’s body. What she could do…? He tried desperately to make eye contact with her, to communicate a hastily formed plan. He caught her eye and gave her the most imperceptible of nods. She looked at him as if she had never seen him before, and he despaired. She was too easily broken...

"Muggle!" Voldemort's icy voice snaked through the air like a whip. "Show me your skills as a witch or I kill your lover now."

Oh, God, Snape thought. If the Dark Lord were making threats like that now, then he really meant to kill him. He must be of no further use to Voldemort. Voldemort had Elizabeth. He meant to strike Dumbledore's Army soon, tonight perhaps, and if he failed, he had a ready body for his soul to repair to. But he did not mean to fail, and he would not need a spy at Hogwarts any more. Trudy must, must be made to do as he asked!