All We Shall Know for Truth

As always, my profound thanks to RedSkyAtNight. I've buried a tiny little hommage to her in this chapter; it's so obscure even she will never find it.

"These quantities are all so subjective," Hermione said disapprovingly. "It's not like a proper potion formula at all."

Rawa nodded. "That is why you are working with me, no? To write these out in 'proper' form. I think if anyone is able to do that, you are the one."

"Well, yes, all right," said Hermione, slightly mollified by the compliment. "But how do you know exactly how much it is? Just here, for example, it just says 'tumpa.' That means 'a little bit,' doesn't it? But how much is a little bit?"

"You have to look at the next two or three strings as well." Rawa teased apart the strands of the quipu. "Here. I'll read the quantities and pour out the amounts. Then you can write how much it is."

Assembled on the table where they were sitting was an assortment of laboratory glassware borrowed from Snape. She selected a small graduated cylinder and poured a minute amount of water into it, then passed it to Hermione, who examined the markings on the side.

"Five fluid scruples," she said, and wrote f ℈ v on the parchment in front of her. "And what's this?" she asked, frowning. "Yawar is blood, isn't it? What kind of animal is a drako?" She grinned suddenly. "There's a question many would like the answer to."

"Not an animal, a tree. Yawar drako is a tree sap. Good for many things...stops bleeding right away, heals ulcers. There's no English equivalent, I think; just write sangre de drago."

"Drako sap," said Hermione, still amused, as she wrote. Then, looking at the next section, "These are dry measures. Have you got some scales and a set of weights?"

"No. I'll have to see if Professor Snape has some he can lend me."

"I've got to stop for today, anyway," said Hermione apologetically. "I promised Ron I'd help him practice for the Transfiguration exam, and if he starts without me, the consequences could be dire." She rolled up the unfinished parchment, and began gathering up her things. "Same time tomorrow?"

"Only if that is convenient for you. I know this is a lot of work for you at a busy time."

"Oh, not a problem! I'm just excited about actually seeing my name in print!"

When she had left, Rawa walked down the hall to the Potions classroom, glad enough of an excuse to pay Snape a visit during the daylight hours. Since that Sunday night, they had continued the same strange divided existence: workdays spent as polite colleagues, followed by nights of violent passion. They had never discussed it, never agreed to the compromise; it was just a pattern they had fallen into naturally.

Rawa had not yet asked him about Lily. She knew that it was a conversation that must happen sooner or later, but she had put it off, fearing that it would mean the end of his nightly visits to her room.

Snape was nowhere to be seen, but the Potions classroom was still unlocked. She was looking through the student supply cabinet when a noise behind her made her turn around to see not Snape, but Sirius Black, holding a thick leather-bound book and standing rather too close for her comfort.

She tried to hide her disappointment. "Sirius! Shouldn't you be at Quidditch practice?"

"I just skipped out for a minute to return Snivellus's book."

His use of the puerile nickname irritated her, but she tried not to show it. "I'm sure he'll be right back...he never leaves this classroom unlocked."

"Just as well; I'd rather see you than him anyway." He stepped in even closer, and her heart sank. "I've been wanting to talk to you." He laid a hand lightly on her arm. "I was thinking of spending a weekend in Spain, before it gets too hot there. Maybe Bilbao; have you ever been to the Guggenheim?"

"Sirius, I...thank you, but I can't."

"Don't give me an answer yet...just promise you'll think about it." He grinned mischievously. "You might as well say yes and save us both some time. You know I'm not going to give up, ever." Before she could move aside, he had leaned in and was kissing her.

She pushed him away, breaking free of the kiss just before she heard Snape's dry voice behind him say, "Sorry, am I interrupting something?"

"Snape!" said Sirius genially. "Just dropped by to return your Karjane." He set the book on a desk and looked at Snape, who was not even attempting to conceal the mixture of anger and dislike on his face. "Something wrong?" Then, looking back and forth between the two of them, "I believe our Severus may have a little crush on you, Rawa." He turned back to Snape. "Good luck," he laughed. "Got to get back to Quidditch practice," and he left.

Snape looked at Rawa for a long moment, then said, in a low, even voice, "I would appreciate it if you would refrain from public displays of affection with our colleagues."

"Severus! I did not do anything! He just..."

"You would do well to remember that...at least on paper...you belong to me."

"That is not fair! And besides, you cannot expect Sirius to know that!"

"I rather think it's up to you to discourage this sort of thing."

"Really?" Now she, too, was angry. "Why not just urinate in a circle around me and save me the trouble?"

He grasped both her arms, holding them fast against her sides, his body trapping hers against the cabinet. There was anger showing in the set of his mouth now. "You belong," he repeated, "to me."

Releasing one arm, he reached behind her to take a handful of hair and pull her head back. His mouth came down hard on hers, and there was no affection in this kiss, only resentment and frustration. She tried to match it, tried to maintain the pitch of her outrage, but she could not: her body responded to him as it always did, and after a few seconds she leaned into the kiss, bringing her free hand up behind his neck and caressing it.

Some of the tension left his body, and the kiss became gentler but no less insistent. He let go of her hair and reached into his coat pocket for his wand. Without taking his mouth from hers, he pointed the wand toward the door, and she heard the lock click into place.

Then he reached down and untied the drawstring of her cotton trousers. "Now," he said thickly. "I want you now. Here."

Her hands were working at the buttons of his frock coat. "Severus," she murmured. "Qanta munani. I love you."

She had never said this to him before, but it was out now and there was no unsaying it. To her horror, he froze for a moment and then stepped back. He said, his voice cold and deliberate, "Don't lie to me."

"I am not lying," she said, her voice trembling. "Why would you say that?"

"I will not let you make a fool of me with other men, and I will not be lied to."

"It is not a lie!" she insisted. "How can you think it is a lie?"

"Because I have no illusions: I know who you are, and who I am, and I know why you married me."

"I married you because I love you!" she cried. "Have I not shown you love these past nights? Do you think I would let you take me here, on a classroom floor in the middle of the afternoon, if I did not love you?"

He looked at her contemptuously. "This is not love," he spat. "This is . . . I know it excites you when I touch you in certain ways. That's evidence of nothing, except that you are a female animal like any other."

She slapped him, hard. "¡No seas cochino!" She was crying now, tears of hurt and anger spilling from her eyes. "Why will you not believe me?"

"Why would I?" His cheek was reddening where she had struck him.

She pushed away from him and went into the little storeroom. There was a ladder there, and she scrambled up it, rummaging through the dusty bottles until she found what she was looking for: a tiny crystal bottle labeled Veritaserum. Returning to the classroom, she set it on the table and saw Snape's eyebrows rise a fraction.

She filled a glass beaker with water, then added a few drops from the vial. Her eyes never leaving his face, she drank deeply, then sat down at one of the tables. "Ask me anything," she said. "Anything."

He pulled over a chair and sat facing her. "You know this is forbidden," he said.

"I do," she said. "It is a very bad idea. But I do not have a better one, so ask."

There was a long silence. He swallowed, then took a deep breath and said, "What do you feel for me?"

"I love you more than air."

"Why?"

She considered this. "I do not know," she said finally.

He thought for a minute, then said, "When did it begin, this feeling you say you have for me?"

"The day that I met you."

He gave her a long, calculating look. "Everyone knows you can compel truth in others. How do I know that it is not among your abilities to resist the power of Veritaserum?"

"Why must you think that?" she cried. "Why is it so hard for you to believe I would love you?"

He looked at her, skepticism written clearly on his features. Slowly he began to shake his head.

"You married me so you could stay at Hogwarts. I am better off accepting that truth than believing some romantic fable."

"Severus, por el amor de dios!" She slapped her palm on the table in exasperation. "Why do you think I wanted so desperately to stay here?"

"To help the Order."

"A la mierda with the Order! It was to be near you . . . you stupid, stupid man!"

For a long time, he did not reply. Finally he said, "Have you had other lovers?"

"Yes," she said.

"Sirius Black?"

"No."

"Never?"

"No."

"Why would you choose me and not him? Women buzz around him like flies around a dunghill."

"What a . . . repulsive image." She had tried to say lovely, but the Veritaserum did not permit sarcasm.

"Answer me."

"Severus, how do I know? En el corazón no se manda."

He looked at her steadily. "I know he is much better looking than I am."

"Yes, he is." The potion was merciless.

"And more socially adept."

"Yes."

"What, then?"

She considered for a bit. "Most people," she said, "we reach adulthood and life has beaten us a little. We do not always get what we want. We have loss, and grief. It is part of what makes us who we are." She paused. "I do not mean to say that Sirius has not had more than his share of pain and loss. The time in Azkaban has clearly taken . . . taken a great price. But somehow he has come out of it the same person he was when he was in school here."

"But surely that's a good thing?"

She shook her head. "Maybe that is what helped him endure, in that horrible place. Maybe he learned to go away in his mind. Whatever the reason, he is still the same Sirius who ran with James Potter and Remus Lupin, who played, what do you call them, heavy jokes..."

"Practical jokes."

"...practical jokes, who skipped classes and broke all the rules and called you demeaning nicknames." She smiled. "Severus, if I wanted to make love to a seventeen-year-old, I am surrounded by them."

They sat in silence for a while. Then, slowly, she pushed the beaker towards him.

"Your turn."

He looked up in alarm, and she regarded him unblinkingly. "Are you afraid?"

"No." He lifted the beaker and drank.

"Who is Lily?"

His eyes widened, and his face tightened with pain.

"Harry Potter's mother."

"But she is dead!"

"Yes." He closed his eyes.

"Do you love her?"

"I did love her, yes."

"And now?"

"I feel . . . her memory is sacred to me. My love for her is what has driven me all these years."

She did not really know what this meant for her. Surely it was good that there was no living rival with a claim on his affections, but how could she compete with the perfection of an idealized adolescent love?

"And you never fell in love with anyone else?"

"Not before now, no."

She bit her lip. It was terribly hard not to ask what he meant by this, but she had resolved to ask him nothing about his current feelings for her. She liked to think that this decision was motivated by integrity and a sense of fairness...after all, the Veritaserum had not been his idea...but knew in her heart that it had more to do with cowardice. Better not to know if he cared for her, than to know for certain that he did not.

But there was one thing she could not resist asking.

"In February, when I was trying to teach you the Hark'apay Charm..." She could see by his face that he knew exactly what she was going to ask, and was not especially pleased. "I put your arms around me and you pushed me away. Like I disgusted you."

"No."

"Why, then?"

"Because I didn't want you to know you'd given me a raging hard-on."

"A what?"

"Hard-on. Erection."

"You felt desire for me then? And when you carried me back to the castle, and watched me get out of the bath...then, too?"

"'Desire'?" he said dryly. "You could call it that. Certainly I wanted to fuck you. I've always wanted to fuck you, from the first time I saw you."

"Why were you so unpleasant to me, then, that day when I brought you the poisons?"

"I never said I liked you, I said I wanted to fuck you. Don't know much about men, do you?"

This was straying into dangerous territory, and she cast about for a harmless question.

"Tell me about the church windows."

She saw the relief behind his rueful smile. "I was ten. I knew it was forbidden for me to use magic, but I was wild, and full of bitterness, and let's just say I was left to my own devices a lot. One Christmas Eve for sport I blew out all the windows of that church during a candlelight service. The Ministry had to Obliviate the whole congregation, and half the neighborhood. That's when I met Dumbledore...the Ministry brought him in to talk to me, convince me I had to behave if I wanted to go to Hogwarts the next year. And he repaired the windows, but I spent the rest of the winter polishing all the woodwork in that church by hand."

She leaned forward, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. He reached for her and gathered her to him, pulling her into his lap to sit astride him as he unbuttoned her shirt.

Almost ritually she whispered in his ear, "Severus, what do you want?"

She had quite forgotten about the Veritaserum, and remembered it only when she saw the look of panic cross his face a fraction of a second before he blurted out, "I want to fuck you up the arse."