Chapter Thirty-Five – Occupational Hazard

Gaelina pursed her lips and waited for the man to speak. It was too early to tell how this was going to fare, and had she not been assured by Hagrid that this man was indeed looking for a Striker, she would have been at a loss as to why he was here at all. Since entering her home, he'd not spoken one word. Perhaps she was just used to Hagrid's garrulousness, she thought, trying to keep an open mind.

He was an interesting specimen...pale and verging on gaunt, like a vine grown in moonlight. He sat stiffly opposite her, his eyes darting periodically around the room, assessing, judging, so dark that she couldn't tell where the pupils ended and the irises began. There was hardly any colour to him, only tone with his pale skin, black hair and eyes and obsidian clothes with underlying white at collar and cuffs: a very rigid dress sense to match his manner. He'd failed to remove the heavy overcoat that would have protected him against the icy wind outside but would surely grow uncomfortably hot inside the house. The way he held himself suggested he did not wish to be here long.

Gaelina tried not to let her puzzlement show on her face. Hagrid regarded this man as a friend? She gave a small sniff. There were few that Hagrid did not regard as such, but Gaelina wondered if this man saw Hagrid in the same light.

He pulled his gaze from the bookshelf and stared at her impassively. She had to suppress a smile. It was like a stand-off between two animals unfamiliar to each other...one encroaching on another's territory. He was giving every indication that she was the encroacher, watching her with an equine dignity that could easily turn aggressive if a threat was detected. Gaelina decided to make the concession. Her past experiences had taught her that to yield a small measure in the beginning meant gain later on.

"Tea?" she offered lightly, lifting the round pot off the table.

He blinked slowly. "No, thank you."

The teapot wavered as her grip on it faltered. Ah, not so colourless after all! Such a beautiful voice for so austere an appearance. Ordinarily, this would have been a welcome thing for Gaelina, but the problem was that she had heard this voice before, only out of a different face. She put the teapot back in its place carefully. This was a much trickier situation than she had first realised.

Gaelina had a good ear...she needed to in her line of work. A person gave away all kinds of clues in the way they spoke, and as a Screen it was her responsibility to be as cautious as if she were stepping into a bear's den.

It was possible that the vocal similarity was a coincidence. Possible, but unlikely. His voice was too distinctive.

She folded her hands into her lap and tried to remain calm. She recognised him, in a fashion, but did he remember her? If so, it would explain his very guarded attitude. Since Hagrid had described the man to her, Gaelina knew that his appearance at the pub must have been a disguise...perhaps through Metamorphagy or Polyjuice Potion.

He quirked an eyebrow at her as if having heard her thought, but his glance at her empty cup allayed her fears.

"I'm not an appreciator of tea," she explained with a smile.

"Indeed," he remarked. "I would guess that red wine is your preference."

Yes, he had recognised her. Gaelina had no clear idea how to manage this situation. The man was indirectly linked to Trint, which of itself was of little concern, but the fact that Trint had been making concerted efforts into gathering information on seevy changed the flavour of the interaction.

Gaelina had been in the pub to keep a watch on Trint. Whom Trint had been meeting with was not of any consequence to her at the time, and she had been unable to divine anything useful from their conversation.

"Hagrid tells me you are in need of assistance," Gaelina stated, watching the man carefully.

"Perhaps," was the minimalist reply, delivered with a dangerous evenness of tone.

"In order to assess whether or not the assistance I can provide will be adequate to your needs, I will require some information as to the nature of the work," she said in as reasonable a manner as possible.

"Madam, in order for me to assess whether such assistance will be adequate, I will need to know the vector in which this assistance will operate," he counteracted coolly.

Gaelina's mouth curved slightly at the man's parry. "That is not an option, sir. The service I provide requires a very specific level of anonymity that is non-negotiable."

He considered this quietly for some moments, a ghost of a smile on his own mouth.

"I have been disappointed in the past by those who claim to be able to find what I require. What assurance can you give me that your service will be different?"

"No client has been disappointed by the service I provide," she replied. "If you are seeking testimonials, I have none to give you, since privacy is of paramount importance to my clients."

"That leaves very little from which to form an opinion," he noted.

"Just so," she admitted, bowing her head slightly in confirmation. "You will just have to trust me."

His brows drew down, shadowing his eyes. "Trust is very expensive, madam."

"Not as expensive as inexperience," she countered.

He stared hard at her, his gaze drilling through her eyes. "Just so," he agreed faintly.

"What do you seek?" Gaelina asked him, starting to feel slightly unnerved by being under such unwavering scrutiny.

"Information on a deceased person," he replied and failed to elaborate further.

"Since the number of dead people is rather large, I will need to know specifics," Gaelina pointed out dryly. "Date of death, name, gender, age, physical description, last known loca..."

"Deceased approximately three months ago at St Mungo's."

The plump, hen-like woman's brows drifted upwards. "I gather the nature of the death was suspicious in some way?"

"Murder."

Gaelina's eyes lifted to the ceiling, creases of thought on her forehead. "I seem to recall an incident around that time reported in the Daily Prophet," she said quietly, and then looked back down again, awaiting more information patiently. The silence stretched out until she was forced to prompt him.

"You have no more information?"

The man's mouth twisted slightly. "Little, which is, after all, why I am here," he pointed out with a touch of impatience. "All I can tell you is that the deceased was male."

"Can you be more specific about the cause of death?"

"Uncertain. However the corpse was shredded beyond recognition."

Gaelina's hands clenched in her lap and he felt the blood drain from her face. "Shredded? Are you certain?" Her heartbeat sped up, causing her to pant ever so slightly.

The man opened his mouth to reply and then abruptly closed it again. His eyes narrowed to slits and his whole demeanour shifted from suspicion to outright hostility.

Gaelina blinked at him in surprise, having no idea what had caused such a rapid change in attitude.

His nostrils flared briefly, and then his eyes searched the room again.

"Who else is here?" he demanded to know, voice harsh.

"There is no-one else in this room but you and me," she replied, leaning back slightly at his tone.

His gaze latched onto her again and he sneered before standing up to loom over her. "Technically true, but I question your assertion that privacy is as high on your list of client services as you claim, madam. Good day." With that, he turned and left the house, slamming the door behind him loudly.

Gaelina stared after him, lips pressed firmly together, clenching and relaxing her hands.

She heard movement behind her, past the doorway that led into the dining room.

"That went well," said Avella wryly in her throaty voice.

"Not my finest effort," Gaelina admitted, propping an elbow on the table to lean her head into her hand. "I didn't think he'd bolt like that."

"He knew I was trying to read him," Arla mentioned from behind her sister with some degree of wonderment.

Avella looked back over her shoulder at her with a curious expression. "You're not normally so clumsy," she responded.

Arla sniffed loudly. "I was extremely careful, thank you very much!" she said tartly, shaking her blonde hair with a toss of her head.

"I've seen him before," said Gaelina with a sigh. "And he I. That's why he was so edgy to begin with."

Avella drifted into the room and sat down in the seat their visitor had just vacated. "So have we."

Gaelina lifted her head to look at her. "Really? Where?"

Arla followed her sister into the room and stood behind her. "He's been into the shop. Looking for information on theriomorphs, he said." She sighed. "He had a really bad hangover," she recalled.

"Someone else poking their nose in where they shouldn't," said Gaelina, rubbing one eye. "He's been employing that Trint, you know."

Avella frowned. "That must be how the Teveringtons found the house," she concluded. "Those mangy bastards couldn't locate their own backsides with an instruction manual!"

"No-one's been at that house since then," Arla confirmed. "Compromised beyond use."

Gaelina exhaled heavily. "She must be at Hogwarts, then."

"Of her own volition?" Avella wondered aloud, resting one hand on the table.

No-one knew the answer to that, so they sat in silence for some time, considering, postulating, wondering. The tick of the clock on the mantle measured out the silence into even, heavy sections.

"He has pretty eyes," said Avella out of the blue.

Gaelina snorted.

"Didn't you notice his nose?" asked Arla in a tone of awe.

Avella huffed in amusement. "I did notice you noticing," she remarked with a sly glance back at her sister, who blushed.

"I was thinking of you!" Arla replied a little shrilly.

"He's a bit... uptight for me," Avella muttered, "however pretty his eyes might be."

"Did you know he's a Dual?"

The older sister turned in her chair. "Are you sure? Why didn't you mention it before?"

"I thought he might have been, back at the shop, but I wasn't sure. That's how he knew I was trying to read him."

Gaelina sat back into her own chair. "An unattached Dual, and a freeborn one at that." She mused on this unexpected piece of information, rubbing her hands together slowly and gently. "You heard what he said about the murder?"

Avella shrugged slightly. "If what he said is true... " She looked up and behind at her sister.

"It isn't a lie, but whether it is a fact... ?" Arla returned her Handler's shrug with one of her own.

"If so, can we be certain that she did it?" Avella asked, her blue-green eyes glittering in the lamplight.

"That she did it is not the issue," Gaelina sighed, rearranging her woollen shawl across her shoulders to counteract the chill that had gone through her. "The question is why?"

"We can't be sure right now that it was Luke," Arla pointed out, running a finger along her bent nose absently. "It could be some other man."

"Then why have we not been able to find him?" her sister asked with some asperity, a crack in the façade of her calm betraying her frustration. "Why would he vanish?"

"Someone else could have got to him."

Avella snorted lightly. "And leave no trace for you to track? Unlikely." She slid the pads of her fingertips over her lips lightly, lost in thought.

"Regardless of who it was, why would she kill him?" Gaelina whispered.

The Striker stopped rubbing her nose. "There could only be one reason: that her life was directly threatened. Which meant whoever it was, they were there to kill her."

Avella whistled lightly through her teeth and shook her head slightly. "This is a very strange set of circumstances, but one thing's for sure: we need to get a hold of Chara, before her time runs out."

"I need you."

Parr's eyebrows shot up and she stopped chewing her mouthful. She gazed at him for a few seconds before opening the door further, and turned away from him. The book in her hand was tossed lightly onto her bed to allow both her hands to rummage noisily through the drawer of her side table. Having located the object of her search amongst the pens, combs, bits of paper and boiled sweets, some of which had rained down onto the floor during her fossicking, she slammed the drawer shut with her hip and turned back to him, the dark red fabric of her loose trousers swirling around her legs with the motion.

Snape looked at the toothbrush in her hand and tutted.

"Not that."

Parr examined the toothbrush, still finishing her mouthful. "Good. I don't think I'd be able to clean very much with the three bristles that are left." It landed on the side table with a clatter. She turned back expectantly and could not have failed to notice the way his eyes travelled down her body all the way to her black-clad feet. She cleared her throat faintly.

"Surely, Professor, you didn't think that I wore my uniform all the time?"

"You consider what you wear during school hours to be a uniform, Striker?"

She shrugged ever so slightly, the motion pulling the cotton of her white and red panelled top up enough to expose a sliver of bare midriff. "How is it that my attire is not considered uniform if that worn by students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang is?"

Snape thinned his lips. "Get your 'uniform' on. You can't do what I need you to do wearing that." He gestured at her clothing with his jaw.

Parr stared at him keenly. Time flattened and twisted in on itself, wrenching into something smaller than an atom and greater than the night sky. Snape clutched at the doorframe as the disorientation threatened to floor him.

Her face shifted into an expression of undisguised eagerness, her hands opening and closing. She took a step towards him before she could stop herself, her hair swaying forward and shifting back against her body.

"My knife," she whispered, eyes so wide that the light in the room gave them an eerie glow, like clouds shielding the full moon. "I need it." Not a request.

He wondered if he'd be able to stand if he took his hands from the doorframe, his fingertips white with the pressure exerted in order to hold him up.

Parr took another step forward, nostrils flared. "I cannot do what you ask without it." Insistent.

"How do you know what I will ask you to do?" Each word sounded wrong the moment it left his lips; poorly-chosen, inadequately-phrased, grossly childish.

Her blink shuttered the slate irises that had already begun to shift into green. "You have already asked it." Another step closer.

He took the risk and released his grip on the doorframe to step inside the room and turn to face Parr's knife above the doorway. The Sticking Charm broke at his words and the blade found its way straight to Parr's hand. To touch it himself seemed an insult he was not willing to impart. He didn't know why such a consideration had arisen in him, but the impropriety of ignoring it was so tangible that it left a bitter taste in his mouth, a promised commination that would cut him in half before he even realised it. Snape averted his eyes from Parr to stare at the shrouded corridor wall opposite.

"You have five minutes to be at the front gate or I will leave you behind," he vowed and left the room before she could see his hands shake.

How would he hold her back? She was tipping on the edge of control before they'd even left the grounds. Worse still, she was pulling him with her down into that swirl of untrammelled agitation. He blinked, eyes unseeing as his focus turned inward.

That dichotomous gymnastic time had performed was not what had disorientated him. After all, he'd felt it before, though he still didn't know what it signified; a symptom of some condition he couldn't diagnose. No, it had been the way Parr had pulled his awareness toward her before he could even think about resisting. It had been like a physical intoxication that caused the room to spin and petrify at the same time, and his consciousness didn't know which the true state was. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither. All he knew at the time was that he had to get away from her, get away before he drowned again, get away before he grasped for it willingly.

A gelid gust of wind pulled desiccated leaves across the ground in front of him with a brittle rattle, shifted the hem of his overcoat and mercilessly cut through the clothing underneath. Snape shuddered briefly and debated if going through with this was a good idea.

The greater the distance he'd placed between himself and Parr, the faster the mental confusion had left him. The frigidity of the air outside had returned his objectivity, making what had just occurred in Parr's room increasingly indistinct, a dream that faded upon waking, like water slipping through fingers. Perhaps he'd eaten something bad at dinner?

His mouth compressed into a thin line. He'd barely eaten the entire day, so it was unlikely. In fact, he'd eaten little for most of the week, ever since he'd told Parr to stop palming her hunger off onto him. Dutifully, she had done so. The sudden and intense pangs of starvation no longer bothered him and his usual insipid appetite had returned. He found, with some degree of irritation, that he missed being able to eat as enthusiastically as before. He'd even tried to do so without the assistance of now-vanished hunger, but the food had tasted oily and wholly unappetising, so he'd given up, albeit reluctantly.

The wind died just as it brought evidence of Parr's arrival. Snape closed his eyes tiredly, waiting for that chaotic churn to return and deracinate his mental stability. It never came. It unsettled him to realise that was not as much of a relief as it should have been for him.

"Five seconds late, Striker," he pointed out.

"Five seconds early, Leash-holder," she countered, coming to a stop to his left.

He opened his eyes again and looked askance at her. She stared straight ahead and through the bars of the gate to the clouded horizon, her face just beginning to arc outwards in a gentle curve. A flush of light from the near-full moon threw the hills into sharp silhouette, their edges harsh and unforgiving, while it ignited her hair into a cold fire, each strand a line of a knife's cut resting on the black fabric of her coat.

The tips of his fingers touched the velvet pouch in his right coat pocket, feeling the contours of the metal inside it. Did she know he had it with him? He brought his hand out of his left pocket and held the vial out to her. She took it from his fingers but didn't voice the question.

"An anti-emetic. I don't want you spewing on my shoes the way you did with Lupin," he sneered at her nastily.

She downed the greenish contents in one gulp and returned the container to his outstretched hand.

"So certain I wouldn't poison you?" he crooned softly.

"You would gain nothing from it," she explained calmly. "As for another day?" She shrugged. "Who knows?"

He didn't know what to make of her comment. She sounded more sad than accusatory, giving him little reason to snap a smart comment back at her. They stood next to each other in silence as the wind lifted once more.

"It tastes like shit," she noted after a couple of minutes.

Snape raised his eyebrows. "Metaphorically or literally?"

Parr tutted.

Another minute passed as the clouds shifted and drifted restlessly.

Her sigh pulled his gaze to the left once more.

"There is something that we must speak of," she began, raising her hands to chest height, the index and middle fingers of each hand straight and overlapped in parallel. He turned his head to stare more fully at her, but she refused to return his gaze, keeping her eyes firmly trained on the horizon. "In order to do what you require, it is necessary to..." She paused. "... hold your mind," she finished through gritted teeth. Her hands dropped to her sides.

"No."

She flinched as if slapped. "I cannot do it, then."

His brows drew down. "Cannot, or will not?"

"As well expect a carpenter to work without tools," was her fractious response, low, bitter and shamed at his accusation.

"Is that what you think I am, Striker? A tool?"

She twitched in an echo of her flinch. "That is what I am."

And that was certainly how he had used her for the past three days. She had scrubbed, polished, gutted, sorted, distilled, crushed and moved whatever he had demanded her to, from the minute her classes had ended to the moment he'd grown too tired to continue watching her, from the second he left his private quarters in the morning to the time her classes began again, determined to blunt or break her, to dull the edge of her until she were nothing but a flat, formless mass that could do nothing but be discarded for the useless implement it had become. Every evening she thwarted his attempt to do so, honing herself in the hours he slept, steeling the will inside her to withstand his use of her. He detested her defiance with an irrational intensity.

He made her disembowel live rodents. She didn't shy away. He demanded she split dead Bowtruckles until her hands bled from the splinters. She voiced no complaint. He told her to clean already-spotless equipment five times over. She didn't pause. He tried to find a way to make her hesitate. She didn't let him. Even in punishment she overcame him, driving him towards the last, most childish attempt to fracture her.

Her grey eyes had been wide and terrified, her body shaking like earth in the grip of a quake, her face whiter than pearl, but she pulled each palm-sized spider from its underground burrow with implacable determination, her eyes fixed on the trees at the border of the Forbidden Forest as her hands disappeared into the nightmare he made her gasp through.

The tool that couldn't be blunted. When he realised that, the opportunity to wield her became too great.

"I would not hurt you." Her words pulled him back to where they stood and made his temper roil.

"You flatter yourself that you could, Striker!" Snape hissed at her, outraged, his eyes narrowed to slits.

Parr clenched her teeth so that the muscle in her jaw rippled with her effort at restraint, closer to breaking than he'd seen her all week. "You must be stronger," she told him. "Or I will walk all over you." Her head turned and her bi-colour eyes stared straight through him, into him. "Can you do it?"

And there was the challenge before him. Could he hold her to a straight course, or would his grip be too weak to stop her from turning on him, cutting him into a thousand pieces as he fought for control? Tougher choices had been placed before him, more deadly than this, and he had survived. It had been a long time since he'd been labelled a coward. He would not let tonight be when that ended.

Snape smiled spitefully at her. "Don't let your hold falter. I know how to turn as fast as you."

Take it, Striker! I want to see if your grasp is as strong as you think it is. I dare you!

He braced himself for it, for the suffocating, smothering ligature he was certain she'd implode him with, his body taut with the effort that spilled from his mind to flex against hers, fingernails digging into his palms.

His every barrier dissolved, rendered useless as she wrapped her mind around his with a pressure so subtle he nearly missed it, like a sigh across marble. She didn't need to break what she could swallow whole, couldn't cut what she had made as much a part of herself as her own flesh, wouldn't surrender what he had given her in his impulsive desire to show her just how strong he was.

Bound. Intertwined. Locked.

The blade set in the scabbard.

He did not know whose grip was tighter. He didn't care. Was this how it was between Striker and Handler, merged together, closer than lovers, stronger than Death herself?

"Then let us visit the fat man once more," Parr replied, the moonlight refracting into her eyes so they glowed, the fingers of her left hand wrapped around the extended two fingers of her right.

Circe's heart, how would he hold himself back?