Invisibility Fabric

Disclaimer: Rowan, Edgar, and Ariadne are mine; the rest belong to Jo. Well, Ariadne thinks Edgar is hers, but he's mine, I tell you!

Author's Notes: Kudos to the ever-patient Verity Brown.

Chapter 19: Invisibility Fabric

Ariadne and Edgar both noticed that their friend seemed out of sorts since the Christmas holidays. Studying together in the Ravenclaw common room, they discussed their observations. Ariadne remarked that she hadn't seen Rowan knitting in front of the fire in the evenings in weeks. Edgar thought she was eating less; she looked like she'd dropped some weight.

"I didn't know you were looking at her figure that closely..."

"I wasn't. I mean, I'm not. I mean, have another chocolate frog?" Edgar was just the sensible type, who knew the only right answer to certain questions.

Mollified, Ariadne accepted the frog. She opened the package and looked at the card inside. "Ethelred the Ever-Ready. Do you have that one yet, Edgar?"

"Nope."

"Well, here then."

"Thanks, Ari," he said with a grin, taking the card.

Ariadne kept a firm grip on the frog's body, so that it couldn't jump away when she bit its head off. When she had completely consumed the amphibian confection and then wiped her hands so she wouldn't stain her homework, she returned to the topic of Rowan.

"Has she said anything to you about what's bothering her?"

"No. I'm a bit afraid to ask. I mean, I'm hoping it isn't you and me," Edgar said, a little shyly.

"I don't think it is. I know what you mean, and I was worried too, but she really does seem to be okay with it. How is she in classes? I've got Charms and Transfiguration with her. We always sit together, and she seems the same as ever."

"She's my partner in Potions; I think she's been a little quieter. That's why I thought it might be me, I mean us. She seems pretty normal in Arithmancy, but there's no lab for that class, so it's harder to tell."

"Maybe there's someone in your Potions class. Do you see her looking at anyone?"

"No, but then it's Potions, isn't it? We all just pay attention to Snape, if we know what's good for us."

"All but the Slytherins, right?" Ariadne asked. Edgar had complained to her more than once about their preferential treatment. The Ravenclaws had shared Potions classes with only Hufflepuffs through O.W.L. level, so it hadn't been an issue before.

"They pay attention too; they like Snape."

Ariadne shuddered. "I am so glad I dropped Potions."

"I know what you mean. If I didn't really need to know advanced Potions for the farm, I'd have dropped it too."

"What are you studying tonight?"

"Care of Magical Creatures."

"How's that going?"

"Pretty good," Edgar told her. "We're helping Hagrid with the thestrals. That's kind of wild since only a couple of students in the class can see them. The rest of us are just brushing and hoping we don't miss bits of them, and checking their hooves for stones by feel."

"Do you wish you could see them?"

"Sometimes, but if not seeing them means I don't have to watch anyone die, I can just live with them invisible." Edgar's expression became grim, and his voice dropped to match. "I'm guessing more of us will be seeing them sooner or later, once we've left school."

Rowan joined them then and, dropping her armload of books onto the table with a grunt, sank down into the nearest available chair.

"How are things going?"

"Not bad," Ariadne answered her. "I've just about finished my Transfiguration essay. Want to practice for the Charms quiz tomorrow?"

"I was hoping you'd ask." They'd finished advanced mending and had moved to the next topic on the syllabus, with which both girls were now struggling. Rowan took her text, Something out of Nothing: Practical Conjuring for All Occasions, from the pile on the table and picked a question to quiz Ariadne:

"Why is conjuring food a dangerous practice?"

"It's only dangerous if you eat it because when the spell wears off you'll be hungry again, and you'll starve if you do it all the time."

"Right. Your turn..."

Edgar continued his Care of Magic Creatures homework, and the remainder of the evening passed productively until bedtime.

Rowan didn't notice her friends' concern. She worked and studied and kept plugging at her invisibility fabric project. The potions which Professor Snape had suggested were complex and had several steps which required aging. At last, though, she had them completed, and they each looked exactly as they were described in the book.

Rowan took another few squares of fabric and dipped them into the potions. She tried a few combinations of potion and charm, labeling each sample with a hangtag and noting the specifics of each in her project book. When she had prepared all the combinations she planned, she had only three pieces left; if none of this batch worked, she was going to be out of chances very soon.

She rolled up all the samples into a towel to remove the excess moisture and carried them up to her room. She unrolled the towel on the stone hearth so the heat would dry them sooner. Saying a small prayer to whatever spirit was responsible for magical textiles, she left them there and went to look for Edgar and Ariadne – they were probably watching Quidditch practice.

As she walked through the grounds, a cold wind whipped the edges of her cloak up over her knees, making her shiver. It was spring now, but the weather was changeable and today was windy and cold. The dungeons retained a fairly constant level of damp chilliness, but the temperature in the rest of the castle went up and down with the outside, although not to the same extremes.

Rowan was very pleased that she would pass no more winters wearing little skirts and knee-socks. Once she left school it would be floor-length skirts and as many flannel petticoats as it took to keep out the drafts and chill. Of course, this might not matter so much if she weren't still living in the castle next winter. Rowan sighed; the uncertainty of her future depressed her. While she knew it would involve being married to Snape, that was just about the only thing she knew. If she didn't live with him, she had no idea where she would stay or what she would do.

Halfway down to the pitch, Rowan met her friends on their way back to the castle. She turned around and walked back in with them to dinner. She ate quietly while they chattered, not noticing the looks they exchanged over her head. Rowan glanced up at the staff table, but Snape appeared occupied with his own dinner. Able to eat no more, Rowan started pushing gravy around her plate with a bit of bread until the meal was over.

Back in the common room, she sat with her friends and took out her homework. Edgar and Ariadne both had essays to write and were mostly quiet. The problems she had to do for Arithmancy were hard enough to keep her mind occupied the rest of the evening, for which she was thankful.

In the morning, Rowan got out of bed and crossed the room to the hearth to check her samples. All were still visible, but one had a shimmery ethereal sort of look to it. She picked that one up first and held it across her hand. She was thrilled when her palm vanished. She could still see the tips of her fingers where they extended past the edge of the sample. She wiggled them experimentally; the disembodied fingertips danced in the air. She'd done it.

Rowan was ecstatic. All her hard work had actually paid off, and she had accomplished something both difficult and significant. She picked up the sample and went hurrying down the stairs towards Snape's dungeon, to show him.

He was in his workroom with the door open. Well, it really was rather early in the morning for even Slytherins to be getting into trouble. Rowan imagined Snape must have guessed this would be so, and that he had taken advantage of the relative peace to get some work done.

Clutching the scrap of fabric, she knocked and entered.

Snape straightened from his task of mincing Doxy toes. He looked annoyed at being interrupted until he saw that it was Rowan, then his expression became carefully blank. "Yes, Miss Bourne, is there something you need?"

"Look, Professor!" Rowan held the scrap of fabric over her hand. Snape could see the floor straight through where her fingers were. He looked up from her hand to her face, alive with the joy of success.

"Well done, Rowan," he told her softly. Rowan looked up at the sound of her given name. Severus was looking at her so oddly, she almost thought he was sad.

"I don't know why I'm so happy about this. It seems like such a useless thing to have spent so much time on lately. I mean, since it can't affect my grade or anything," Rowan said smiling, then she laughed and admired her missing fingers. "Still, it's nice to have accomplished something I set out to do. It gives me confidence for the future."

Rowan paused, her joyful glow dimmed. What was her future anyway? She was going to have to be tied to this man. She thought back to the beginning of the year when she'd started this project. She had wanted to impress Snape so that maybe she'd have a chance at catching his interest. She'd gotten better than his interest now; he would marry her, and he did seem impressed – but it was all upside down and in the wrong order.

"I would not say it was pointless." Snape's reply broke into Rowan's thoughts. At her puzzled look, he slipped unconsciously into his teaching voice as he explained.

"I think you have not fully appreciated the magnitude of what you have done. Invisibility Cloaks are extremely rare and monstrously expensive. You are now the sole person capable of making new ones."

"I suppose that is true. I hadn't exactly thought of setting up shop; I was just interested in the problem." Rowan laughed a little.

"I suspected you hadn't considered the ramifications beyond the technical issue. How like a Ravenclaw. The essential point, which has clearly escaped you, is that you now possess a significant amount of power."

"Power? I don't understand. The cloaks are useful, but they don't give you any stronger magic."

Snape's tone betrayed a hint of impatience at her lack of perspicacity. "Half the wizarding world would like to have such a cloak, Miss Bourne. Since there are not currently any new ones being made, few have them. Mostly Aurors, because few but the Ministry can afford to buy them when, occasionally, one comes up for sale."

"You think I should make a career of this?" Rowan asked in confusion. "It's not exactly what I had in mind. I was hoping to go into research and work for the Department of Mysteries."

"If you were to make and sell new cloaks, no one would be able to afford to refuse to do business with you. Wizarding society could not snub you, no matter what scandal might surround you. Not if offending you meant that you might sell a cloak to one's enemy and not to oneself," Snape told her pointedly.

Rowan was shocked. "I couldn't behave that way. It would be so..."

"Devious? Manipulative? Shrewd?"

"Slytherin."

"Exactly," Snape replied. "Of course, it is not necessary for you to do so. You will benefit simply because people think you might."

Rowan looked ill. "That's even worse."

"Is it?" Snape's mouth curled into a sardonic smile. "You may do business as honorably as you choose, and you will still have this power. You are hardly responsible for how others behave if they misjudge you."

What an appalling idea! Or was it? Really, it had a certain innate justice – if people who thought such a thing of me were afraid to treat me badly, what fault was that of mine? Was this how Slytherins always viewed the world? Rowan eyed her professor with speculation.

Snape's face became serious again, and he drew himself up straighter. "You would have a reliable income, one that provided a decent living, even some luxury. If you still wanted to work for the Ministry, they would not dare refuse you a position. Not if they wanted control over the source of new Invisibility Cloaks, or anything else you might invent in the future."

Suddenly the pieces fell into place for Rowan. "You mean we wouldn't have to marry, don't you?"

"Precisely," Snape replied, seeing that she had finally grasped the essential point. His face betrayed no emotion, but he observed hers minutely for a reaction.

"Oh." Rowan felt oddly empty. Her feelings for her professor had swung so wildly in such a short time that winter – months of unrequited longing had been replaced by shock and violation, then despite all common sense she found herself fearing for him and even protecting him and, finally, agreeing to marry him.

Although she had had no choice, she had become reconciled; that kiss they had shared seared her more than she had even imagined it would. Even now, just remembering made her feel warm and woozy. She had been certain he had also been affected and, up until they had fought, things had looked quite promising.

Since that terrible argument, all her thoughts and energy had been taken up with trying to find a way to cope with the frightening reality of his position with Lord Voldemort. He had been distant, cool, clearly disappointed in her.

Now, she perceived that it was suddenly all moot. He could not honorably retract his proposal, but he was showing her a way out. Rowan felt numb and desolate. She looked up into Snape's face but could not read it any better than she ever could when he wished to be unreadable.

What sort of a mind could foresee such a situation, plan for it? Rowan looked up at Professor Snape, wide-eyed. How long ago had he realized what it would mean for her to succeed at her project? Was that why he had instructed her to continue working on it?

She must have been gaping like a fool, because Snape finally lost patience waiting for her to say something. "If you must stand around with your mouth open like that, I suggest you do it in the Great Hall, where there is food."

That was it then, it was too late. Rowan might have had a chance with him, but she'd blown it. He didn't want to marry her, and he'd made sure she knew she didn't have to marry him. "I suppose you want this back, then." Rowan said, pulling the ring on its chain from under her shirt.

Snape stopped her before she could lift the chain over her head. She started at the touch of his fingers on her wrists and looked up again into his eyes. His expression was still unreadable, but he spoke less harshly: "Please keep it. It is spelled to protect you, and you may need that for a while longer."

"All right, then," Rowan said softly, then added, "Thank you."

Author's Notes: So does this count as making Rowan's life less complicated or more so? Hopefully you'll all let me live to post the rest of the story.