A Rock and a Hard Place

As alicia notes, and as I noted in Chapter One, I owe Subversa for this story premise. I'm happy to say it again.

To lf: Yeah, another Yank. Yeah, Mary Sue much. Don't know much about Brazil, South Africa, Canada, et al., but if you do, write a story with a protagonist from there! Thanks for the edit.

*

Snape could do nothing but stare at Trudy as he knelt on the cold, stone floor, trying to will her to read his mind. He was still groggy from the elbow to his jaw, and his shoulders screaming for relief as Dolohov and Yaxley's held him in armlocks. Before him loomed the pale oval of the Dark Lord's face, a faint smile playing on the thin lips.

Evidently, the Dark Lord had not forgiven him his earlier transgression and now wanted to punish him for continuing his relationship with Trudy. He must have sensed that his best spy was slipping away. How best to regain the Dark Lord's trust? The answer came, quick and merciless: Sacrifice Trudy.

Trudy staggered to her feet and pulled out her wand. The Death Eaters laughed uproariously, and the Dark Lord's smile widened. Trudy's head swiveled slowly, seeming to see without comprehending. Snape's heart sank still deeper. It was worse than he'd thought. Her spirit was truly broken. She wasn't even aware of her surroundings now. She grinned idiotically at the assembly around her. Then suddenly she rose onto her tiptoes and whipped her wand up over her head. The room went abruptly silent. Even the Dark Lord's thin smile seemed to waver.

The wand came down with a slash. "Abra--cadabra!" Trudy yelled.

There was a brief silence, and then the room erupted with harsh laughter.

The Dark Lord's face contorted into a contemptuous mask. He raised his wand casually in the air. "Avada--"

Trudy spoke at the same time, so her word was lost. And someone else spoke: "Mommy!"

Trudy's wand emitted green sparks, palely illuminating the pale, frightened face of Elizabeth Lestrange, her 8-year-old daughter, for once ignoring the huge snake wrapped around her.

The Dark Lord lowered his wand, a look of puzzlement in his eyes with the slitted pupils. "Let him go," he said to Yaxley and Dolohov. Snape's arms were released. He pushed his hands deep into his robes, grasping his wand, and began saying some non-verbal spells.

"So, Snape. The Muggle is not quite a Muggle," the Dark Lord said.

"Not quite, my Lord, but close enough. A few sparks, as you've seen. Nothing else to speak of. A Wanderer."

The Dark Lord frowned. "What is a Wanderer?"

Snape grit his teeth. Of course the Dark Lord would not know what Wanderers were--why learn about the weak? "An old race, my Lord. Little more than a Muggle, much less than a wizard. Dying out."

"So this one--" the Dark Lord waved his wand almost too casually in Elizabeth's direction--"is part Wanderer?"

"And part Muggle. Yes, my Lord."

Voldemort's pale tongue passed over his teeth, and Snape knew he was calculating the pair's worth. A half-blood with some kind of bastard blood in her would be worthless to him as a Horcrux or any other protection. Snape's brain crashed this way and that. He had wanted Trudy to behave differently, to bow and scrape. By spreading her cards on the table, she had probably signed her and her daughter's death warrants.

"What else do can Wanderers do? What is their power?" the Dark Lord demanded of Snape.

"Unusual sensitivities, my Lord. Great powers of concentration, abilities to sense others' emotions and motivations--"

"They are Legilimenses, then?" the Dark Lord said harshly, cutting Snape off.

"No, my Lord. But they come closer to it than Muggles."

"Such a vessel is not fit for my soul."

"No, my Lord," Snape said neutrally, ruthlessly stamping out all thought and emotion from his mind and meeting the Dark Lord's red-slitted eyes calmly. So Elizabeth might, just might be freed.

"On the other hand, such could easily be Imperiused to do my will at Hogwarts."

"Yes, my Lord," Snape said, then added casually, "but I have already done so."

The Dark Lord turned his flat, red eyes on Snape.

"She was not made for keeping secrets, my Lord. It has been a necessary precaution. She has been handy for running errands and being a general dogsbody."

The Dark Lord held his gaze for a full minute, and Snape felt rather than saw his thoughts and the events of his recent past unspooling into the Dark Lord's mind. Suddenly, the Dark Lord laughed. "So I have gained yet another servant! And this one easily manipulated and of useful ability."

Snape bowed his head, tamping down any elation. "Yes, my Lord."

Voldemort beckoned with his long, pale fingers at Elizabeth, and the girl stepped forward without reservation, bowed low and kissed the hem of Voldemort's cloak.

The Dark Lord watched, a satisfied smile on his lips. "Go now, Snape," he said. "And take my new servants with you."

Snape turned, hearing Trudy and Elizabeth fall in step behind him. He could feel the Death Eaters' thick resentment in the air. "No! My Lord, it's a trick!" screamed a woman's voice.

Snape coolly met her half-crazed eyes. Then he turned, raised his hands in the air, and brought them down forcefully to his sides. As one, Trudy and Elizabeth turned to Voldemort, knelt and bowed their heads to the stone floor.

The Dark Lord cocked his head. "Ah, Bellatrix. Your loyalty is touching, but perhaps you spent too long in Azkaban. You may go, Snape." He waved Snape off.

Snape heard Bellatrix's scream of rage as Trudy and Elizabeth rose. He grasped their arms and Disapparated. They emerged at the Hog's Head. The bartender gave Trudy a piercing gaze from under his bushy white eyebrows, and she had the unnerving feeling she had seen those eyes before, on someone else.

"I was getting ready to send for Albus," he said gruffly.

"No need," Snape replied. "A firewhiskey, if you please." His arms, his muscles, his bones seemed to be in pain. He didn't doubt he had at least one black eye, maybe two.

"You need something more than firewhiskey, mate."

"And I shall have it. After the firewhiskey."

Trudy made a sound.

"What?" Snape said.

"Three," she repeated.

"Your daughter's underage."

The bartender put two firewhiskeys and a butterbeer on the counter. The shot glasses were chipped, and the mug looked as if it hadn't been properly clean in Elizabeth's lifetime. Nevertheless, Trudy downed her drink quickly. Elizabeth didn't touch hers. "Beer doesn't taste good," she confided in the bartender, who gave a surly grunt. Snape took his drink in one swallow. When he felt the burn hit his head, he pulled out three galleons and set them on the counter.

"No need," the bartender said brusquely.

Snape didn't answer. "I shall see you tomorrow," he said to Trudy and turned to go. It seemed to him that she started to say something, but he didn't turn around and she didn't stop him from going.

At Hogwarts in his rooms, he wearily stripped off his clothing and stood for some time under the shower spray. He put some dittany around his eyes. Then he fell into bed and didn't think any more until morning.

*

Trudy lay in bed, her daughter lying on the pillow next to her. An unfamiliar feeling of peace had crept over her.

"How did you know to kneel when the Professor lowered his hands?" she couldn't help asking.

"Mom! Do you think I'm stupid? That's what everyone does around that guy."

Trudy smiled in the dark. After a few minutes, she heard the change in Elizabeth's breathing and knew that the girl had fallen asleep. She reached out and touched Elizabeth's soft hair. After a while, she drifted off to sleep, oblivious to her scrapes and bruises.

*

Morning dawned bright and uncaring. Snape squinted into the gray light. Within a few moments he was washed and dressed. A corner of his mouth twisted wryly as he surveyed his reflection in the spotted and stained bathroom mirror. He looked more kempt than usual.

In the dungeons he prepared for his first class. A slight flutter of black made him look up. It was Trudy, quietly arranging ingredients at the back of the room. Not in the north corner, he observed.

"Where is your daughter?" he remarked to the parchment in front of him.

"In Gryffindor Tower, with some of the girls there," Trudy said. "She understands I have to work. We'll join up again at dinnertime."

Snape pretended he didn't hear her response and continued reviewing his notes.

"There is a 15-minute break after first class," he remarked without raising his eyes. "I should like a word with you after that." No "if you please."

"All right," Trudy said even more quietly.

First class passed uneventfully. Trudy noted that the Professor's voice rarely rose above a whisper and that the students, all of them about 12, seemed to tremble around him. She smiled reassuringly at one or two of the most fearful-looking ones, and earned a glower from the Professor.

When the last student had departed, Snape closed the heavy classroom door. Trudy's eyes widened.

Snape paced a bit. Finally he said, "We can't continue like this."

Trudy said nothing. She could feel the bottom dropping out of her heart. The shock of the previous night, and now this... . She felt unequal to speaking. Somehow I'll get through this. Somehow.

"The students will start to gossip," Snape went on. "They may have done already."

Trudy waited. When would he come to the point? She closed her eyes briefly and willed herself not to interrupt.

"And so," Snape pressed on, "I think it would be best if we formalized our...arrangement."

Trudy breathed a small sigh of relief. "Oh, OK. Just give me the papers or whatever. I'm your assistant, right?"

Snape gave her a strange look. "No," he said slowly, as if she were a thick child, "You are coming and going from my rooms at all hours. I am making so many trips to Hogsmeade that the faculty is starting to stare. These are not the relations between a professor and his assistant."

"No. Obviously," Trudy said, flustered, and sputtered into silence. What did he mean?

"We should marry and silence the gossipers."

Trudy blinked. "This is a proposal?" She could not help sounding a little sarcastic.

Snape looked irritable. Then, to her utter surprise, he strode toward her, lifted her hand in both of his, and said, "I am proposing marriage. Will you marry me?"

Trudy looked into his eyes. As usual, they were black and fathomless. "You will be stepfather to my Elizabeth?"

Snape cleared his throat. "Yes."

"You'll protect her?"

A corner of his mouth twisted ironically. "Yes."

"You'll be...how do I say this?--kind to us?"

Here he paused a second. "I shall do my best."

"And--" Trudy couldn't bring herself to look at him any more. "Do you, ah, love me?"

There was an uncomfortable silence. "I believe I love you well enough," he said finally. "I don't think I know what love is any more."

"Are you still in love with Harry Potter's mother?" she asked, still looking at the floor.

"I love her," he said in a flat voice. "But it's the kind of faded love you feel for someone who has been dead a long time and never was yours to have nor ever could be yours. I think," he cleared his throat again, "I think this might be more...real."

Trudy felt a strange blooming feeling in her chest. Maybe, just maybe, he did love her!

"Then, yes, I'll marry you."

Snape released her hand and became all business. "Then we shall see Dumbledore tonight, and if all goes well, we shall be married before bed."

"Wait! Where will we live? Where will Elizabeth live? Is this all just for, for You-Know-Who?"

Snape grimaced. "Not for him. For me. I can't--I can't live this way any more. No more talk. Here comes the next class."