16: The Forest Clearing

The Great Hall was entirely deserted at 7am on Saturday morning when Delilah sat down and poured herself a cup of coffee. Even the teachers’ dais was empty as everybody slept off the previous night’s revelries. She clasped her hands around the mug and nibbled half-heartedly at a crust of toast, staring at the same paragraph of an article in Witch Weekly for a full hour, jumping at slight noises and darting her eyes towards the door every few seconds, watching the hands of the clock creep agonisingly along.

By 8am she had been joined by Professor Sprout, who peaceably ate a bowl of muesli whilst reading a newspaper which she had propped up against a jug of pumpkin juice. Delilah stood and, and as she strode out of the Hall, encountered a handful of yawning, grumpy-looking Gryffindor students in Quidditch robes who had evidently been roped into an early morning practice. She walked across the Entrance Hall and out into a morning that was heavy and sodden with February rain, and through the grounds to where the caretaker was looking bleary-eyed, huddled into a scarf at the school gates.

‘Hogsmeade visit cancelled for underage students,’ he intoned wheezily, evidently suffering with a cold.

‘I’m seventeen.’

‘Better be.’

She thrust her hands deeper into her pockets and made her solitary way along the road to the village, breathing easier as the distance between her and the castle grew.

She didn’t know whom she least wanted to bump into: Snape or Terry.

It was strange to be on the picturesque little High Street before the shops had even opened their shutters, and it was so miserably drizzly that she considered making a beeline for Madame Puddifoot’s, which she knew opened early for breakfast. She’d been too jumpy and anxious to eat anything much in the Great Hall, but managed to fantasise for a moment about a plate of buttery toast with scrambled eggs and slivers of fresh Scottish smoked salmon, before the memory of the previous evening made her stomach give a nasty lurch, and she knew she couldn’t possibly face any food.

She wandered aimlessly through the town, enjoying being incognito, utterly unnoticed by the townspeople, who bustled about their quiet routines paying her no notice at all. She drifted along a side street, thinking how strange it was that for the people who lived here this banal, quaint little scene was comforting and familiar, was home, whereas to her it was anonymous and meaningless, like the fictional houses in the old painted advertisements her mother was fond of collecting. After turning down six or seven streets it began to feel oddly oppressive: the curtains, the milk bottles, the corner shop, the tiny pub on the corner, so cosily intimate, like she’d broken into someone’s house whilst they were out, and was poking around their bedroom. She was relieved to escape into a country lane where a tangle of hedgerows lined the far side of the path. A few colourless little elderberry buds were already struggling through the ragwort and burdock, and she paused for a moment to listen to the fluted throttle of a thrushling who was sheltering somewhere in the shrubbery.

She followed the path until it joined a larger one and began to climb, and she clambered with relish up a treacherously rocky route, loosening her scarf as beads of sweat began to gather on her hairline in spite of the damp wind which whipped her hair across her cheek, until the path reached a plateau from which she could tell she would have had a spectacular view of the village if not for the obscuring mist, through which rooftops and weather vanes far below loomed briefly into view before being swallowed again.

She sat down heavily on a rock and stared bleakly out at the low-hanging rainclouds.

After Snape had booted her out of his office she’d stood in the corridor, naked from the waist up, staring at the closed door in absolute shock, absolute incomprehension. Part of her was convinced he would open the door again, pull her back in, because she couldn’t, surely she couldn’t have got it so dreadfully wrong… But soon the sound of a group of Slytherin boys approaching from around the corner had jolted her into action and she’d yanked her jumper over her head just in time, turned away from his office and walked in a funk through the castle, replaying the scene in her mind, interspersed with others, flashing and flickering over and over like a demented magic lantern: his hand on her waist, guiding her to the desk; his thigh pressed hard against hers; his hand closing over her breast; the decanter of port and empty tumbler; his finger nudging against hers as they each clasped the stems of their goblets; his black eyes burning into hers…

‘Hey Delilah!’

She’d been halfway up the spiral staircase of the Ravenclaw tower. She stopped and regarded Terry’s smiling face for a moment, biting her lip, her brain whirring with calculations.

I know you think your tits are the most irresistibly fascinating things in existence, but…

She suddenly made up her mind and, without a word to him, grabbed Terry by the arm and pointed her wand at a door to her left, which sprang open to reveal a small disused room off the staircase, housing nothing but a collection of broken chairs piled up in one corner.

‘What are you…?’ he laughed uncertainly as she pulled him through and slammed the door closed after them, but she broke off his laugher by pinning him back against the wall and pressing herself against him, sinking her hands into his hair and kissing him hard. His hands hung stiffly by his side in shock, and she detached herself in order to pull her jumper over her head, then grabbed his hands and drew them up to her breasts. He gave a disbelieving whimper and she could see his wide, hungry eyes in the moonlight that streamed in from the tall window, drinking her in. When she let go of his wrists he froze for a moment, hands hovering over her breasts like they might burn him if he touched them. His fingertips were trembling violently, and he grazed her skin tentatively; he gave a little gasp, then expelled a rushing exhalation before pawing at her with inexpert haste, squeezing and massaging her flesh, almost hyperventilating with excitement. Delilah dropped to her knees and pulled him down with her so that he slid down the wall to the freezing flagstones, half-laying, half-sitting against the wall as she straddled him on her knees, and she ran her hand down his side and across his thigh to where she felt his cock bulging through his trousers with such raging vim that it seemed in danger of splitting the seams.

‘You like that?’ she demanded in a frenzied whisper.

‘Yes,’ he whispered back throatily.

‘Tell me you like it.’

‘I… I like it.’

‘Say you like touching my tits,’ she hissed hotly in his ear.

That seemed to tip him over the edge: he went rigid and gave a muted groan, trying to direct her hand back to his throbbing cock, fumbling at her wrist, his eyes clenched shut and his face contorted…

‘I’m coming,’ a blaring voice shouted from the staircase, ‘I’m just looking for Terry, he was coming down right behind me and then he vanished.’

‘Fuck,’ Delilah muttered, and with incredible speed she had pulled her jumper back over her head, snatched her satchel up and slithered from Terry’s grasp. She spirited through the door, and, through its small round window, she caught a final glance of him on the floor in a tumescent sprawl, propped up on one elbow, his hair sticking up at the back, staring after her in dumb, open-mouthed surprise.

She’d managed to catch the door before it closed behind another student rushing to the feast, and continued through the deserted common room with a pounding pulse and drenched knickers, sprinting down to her dormitory before Ariadne could spot her. She paced up and down in front of the fire opposite her bed, trying to make sense of a knotted helix of thoughts.

If she took Snape at his word, she had to believe that he felt nothing for her: that she had imagined the whole thing. The more she thought about it the more plainly, undeniably plausible it seemed: he had always swung between indifference and palpable irritation with her, at times even to apparent disgust… but could she have imagined everything? Although Snape and Terry and were very obviously not the same person, he had been neither disgusted nor nonplussed by her advances. This gave her a burst of confidence, but she scanned at triple-speed through her every encounter with Snape, searching for clues, and succeeded only in travelling in ever-decreasing circles, revisiting the same scenes over and over, each conviction being trounced by an equally convincing counter.

One memory in particular seemed to recur with insistent force: that long-ago day in Grimmauld place, you will bathe if I have to strip you and do it myself… She remembered his eyes burning into hers, his hands restraining her, his body pressing into her, his mouth just there, how her thoughts had turned quite involuntarily to sex and it was almost like he’d known it, had deliberately caused it, and she felt a fresh galloping of excitement at the memory, strip you and do it myself…

With a spasm of resolve she turned towards her bed, tugged her jumper over her head and stepped out of her jeans and knickers. She kneeled naked a the foot of her bed, rummaging in her trunk for the red lacy underwear that she’d bought in Hogsmeade but still hadn’t worn, and slipped into the brand new knickers. She hadn’t worn a bra at all since she’d received the wounds on her chest, so it felt strange to be clipping the clasp behind her back, and as she glanced down at herself, it suddenly occurred to her, somehow for the first time, that her body was permanently and irrevocably disfigured.

Every time I ever want to have sex with somebody ever in my life, even every time I want to wear a bathing costume, I’ll have to explain these fucking scars. Every single time.

But there was no explanation required with Snape: he had seen them much worse than they were now, had treated them, had summoned her to his office and ordered her to take off her clothes, had pressed his thigh into her…

She threw all of her clothes out of her trunk. Why hadn’t she bought herself anything nice to wear in Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley? Ever? All she had that was remotely attractive was the blue silk dress she’d worn to the party, but she immediately tossed that aside – the dress she’d bought to wear on the worst night of her entire life. At the bottom she found a red summer dress that Genevieve had bought her to wear to a birthday party a couple of years earlier, with a little round collar and buttons all the way down the front. She pulled it on and walked up to the next dormitory to assess herself in the cheval mirror. It was short on her, was wildly inappropriate for the season and looked faintly ridiculous worn with her trainers, but it was the best she was going to manage. She shoved her wand in the dress’ pocket, turned from the mirror and left.

She’d skulked through the castle, empty due to the Valentine’s feast, and through the freezing dungeons, where she found an empty classroom close to Snape’s office to hide in, which she’d paced around restlessly until she heard a stampede overheard announcing the end of the feast. She hid beside the door with her back to the wall as the dungeon corridors filled with the chattering voices of Slytherin voices, then stayed where she was as their voices all died down and the last of them emptied into the warmth of their common room. After the corridor beyond the door stilled she stood for a few moments with her eyes squeezed shut, swinging her arms with nerves, bashing her closed fists against her thighs, trying not to think about what would happen next if this went wrong. Finally she took a deep breath and strode out of the classroom, straight up to Snape’s door, gave it a hard, unhesitating knock, and…

Nothing.

Instinct told her that he wasn’t ignoring her: he simply wasn’t in there.

How long she stood beside his door she didn’t know. It had felt like hours, her courage failing again and again, resolving again and again to give up and go back to her dormitory, but realising again and again that if she didn’t act now there would never be another moment. She ran through ten dozen scenarios, practising so many speeches, arguments, retractions and seductions, that when he appeared beside her, as suddenly as a light being switched on, she just gaped at him with no idea what to say; but it didn’t matter because he grabbed her like he’d entirely expected to find her there, bundled her through the door without a word, and set upon her with tremblingly urgent fervour. Her shell-shocked body had barely time to react to his hands ripping her clothes off, exploding in an electric storm of excitement, before he was inside her knickers, the very thing she’d pleaded of him, and a shock of intense, suffocating pleasure shook her as she felt his fingers against her skin, before the strange sensation of them cramming inside her, and then, all too soon…

She could hardly even remember what had happened once it was over. All she had been able to think about was getting away. She had somehow retrieved her clothes and dressed as he collapsed on to the chaise lounge and lay with his eyes closed, and she’d said something absolutely asinine, received no acknowledgement whatsoever, crept out and made her way to the Ravenclaw bathroom, wincing with every step, biting back tears of confusion, of shame and disappointment, and she closed herself in a shower cubicle, undressed again, and sat for a long time on the tiled floor with her forehead resting on her knee, letting the water run over her.

She stood up from the rock she was sitting on and stamped her feet, which had gone numb with cold. The damp of the rock had seeped through her coat and the seat of her jeans, and she couldn’t feel her fingertips or the end of her nose. She started back down the path, which was even more treacherous in the descent, made harder still by her stiffened muscles.

What was wrong with her? she wondered as she made her faltering way down the path. In her books, in the films she’d caught on television when her mother was elsewhere, the women had always gone weak with pleasure when they were… she searched for a better word than penetrated, but couldn’t find one. And yet when Snape had – when he’d parted her thighs and… she’d been dizzy with excitement beforehand, so much so she felt she’d fall over from it, but then…

There was obviously something wrong with her. Something badly wrong.

She took a different path back through Hogsmeade, along two main roads until she found herself back on the High Street.

‘…AND GET – OUT – OF – HERE!’ came a bellowed admonishment from along the road.

Delilah peered curiously through the mist.

‘Come on, Zonks, be reasonable…’

She approached cautiously to see a balding man storming through one of the doors on the High Street, which he slammed in the face of a young man in an aubergine-coloured suit who stood dejectedly on the cobbles, watching after him, his arms hanging by his sides. As she approached, the man turned to look at her and she suddenly recognised him as the redheaded proprietor of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes.

‘Sorry for the disturbance,’ he said contritely.

‘It didn’t sound like you were the one making it,’ she said. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Not really,’ he sighed, looking sadly up at the shop front before them. ‘My business proposition didn’t go down very well.’

‘Are you trying to buy Zonko’s?’

The man looked at her with penetrating blue eyes.

‘I know you. You’ve been into the shop, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, we met in your…’ Delilah faltered. ‘Your back room.’

‘I thought I recognised you,’ he smiled. ‘Well, yes, essentially. We wanted to open up shop here, but out of respect for Zonks I came here to offer him a partnership; we’d take over the site and employ him as a named partner, so he could keep his job rather than go into competition with us, but…’

‘But he wasn’t up for it?’

‘Seems not.’

‘So will you just open up without him?’

‘I don’t know,’ the man sighed again. ‘My brother and I grew up on Zonko’s products, we’d be nothing without his influence. It just seems…’ he trailed off glumly.

Delilah nodded sympathetically, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Well, look,’ the man said with forced cheeriness, and stuck out his hand. ‘I’m George, and sod the yardarm but I’m off to the Brooms. Care to join me?’

Delilah smiled hesitantly, put her hand in his and shook it.

‘Go on then. I’m Delilah.’

They walked together to the pub and Delilah allowed George to buy her a pint of Butterbeer as they settled into two tall stools at the empty bar.

‘It’s coming back to me now,’ George said, clinking his tankard against hers so that a rivulet of foam ran down the glass and across her knuckles. ‘You were hiding from my darling future sister in law and dashed through the curtain with no idea what you were getting yourself into, right?’

‘Yes,’ Delilah laughed, taking a swig of her drink. ‘I was staring at all that stuff with no idea what was going on for at least ten minutes.’

‘Y’know, that’s one of the main reasons old Zonks has taken against us. He actually came to our Grand Opening and was full of talk about passing on the baton, and how proud he was of his two favourite customers branching out. He kept saying how he had no children and considered us to be his natural successors, sort of surrogate heirs. But then when he realised we were doing things a bit differently he completely changed.’

‘Perhaps he feels threatened?’

‘I think that’s part of it: he thinks the industry as he knows it will die out and he’ll become obsolete. I think he envisaged us just carrying on in the same vein as he always had, making stink pellets and exploding hats. He wants to keep the joke shop biz all jocular and children-based, but we’re trying to be more… Well, more progressive.’

‘It’s probably a generational thing. The idea of buying sex toys on the high street must shock him a bit. Especially in a shop traditionally marketed at kids.’

‘That’s part of it, but I think it runs deeper. Like everyone else, he’s scared out of his mind, and in some ways I think the joke industry is his sanctuary. He didn’t say it but I think it started when we launched the Defence range. He absolutely hated it, kept saying a joke shop should be a place where people come to escape from the real world, and we were confronting them with it. Then the sex stuff brought it all to a head; he said it was depraved and not in the sprit of a joke shop, that it would sully the industry’s reputation, and that we were a bitter disappointment to him.’

George gazed glumly into his tankard.

‘Well, he’s wrong,’ Delilah said stoutly. ‘The proof is in the pudding; I overheard your brother telling Fleur about how successful the Defence range has been, and the shop was completely rammed, so people obviously weren’t put off. You’re just giving people what they want, whereas he’s giving them what he wants them to want. And does anyone even really know about the sex stuff? It’s not like it’s advertised from the outside, you almost have to know it’s there to find it.’

‘That was the idea,’ George nodded. ‘We’ve worked hard to keep it out of the papers so that people wouldn’t be afraid to be seen coming into the shop, all very discreet, and we wanted the back room to have a kind of salon-y speakeasy feel to it. Not to make people feel ashamed to be in there, but it adds a sort of frisson, and maybe makes it feel less seedy.’

‘You’ve done it brilliantly. The room feels really classy, and the products are great.’

‘You bought ‘The Rapture’, didn’t you?’ George said, brightening at last. ‘How did you get on with it?’

‘It was amazing. I’d love to know how you did it.’

‘Did you find it realistic?’

Delilah hesitated. She remembered how absolutely detailed the room in her vision had been, how convincing the smells and sounds, the feeling of the rough chaise lounge under her skin and the heat of Snape’s breath… but then she remembered how, as it progressed, it had become a nebulous blur of pleasure, and realised that the potion, however realistic, hadn’t been able to overcome her woeful lack of experience.

‘Honestly, I… I don’t have much to compare it to,’ she admitted. Having not eaten since the previous lunchtime, the Butterbeer had gone straight to her head and loosened her tongue. ‘In fact, when I used it I had nothing to compare it to. If I’m honest, the reality was a let-down in comparison.’

‘I’m not quite sure how to take that,’ George grinned. ‘I guess that’s a compliment to the product, but I’m sorry to hear it nonetheless.’

‘Well, at least your potion makes the prospect of a lifetime of chastity easier to face,’ Delilah said in a dejected attempt at humour. ‘If I’ll never have a decent sex life at least I know there’s a good alternative. You could set up an owl order subscription service for me and send me deliveries to my lonely bungalow where I’ll live with my cats.’

‘Yeesh Delilah, the first time’s always a bit ropey – you don’t need to let it put you off for life!’

She frowned.

‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is! You don’t know what you’re doing and it’s all awkward and clumsy. You get into the swing of it soon enough.’

‘That wasn’t the problem though: he knew what he was doing. It was just…’

‘Just not that enjoyable?’

‘That’s quite an understatement, but yes.’

‘Well, look, I’m no expert on these things, but I’m pretty sure that’s perfectly normal.’

She looked at him as though hardly daring to believe it.

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously.’

‘It’s normal the first time to feel like you’re being ripped in half?’

‘Fucking hell,’ George winced. ‘Sounds like he was really rough. Did he know it was your first time?’

‘Um… I don’t know. I didn’t say it was.’

‘But he didn’t ask?’

‘No.’

‘What the fuck? You’re what, eighteen?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Older.’

‘Well, he’s an arse. A complete arse who doesn’t deserve you. You don’t do that, you don’t just make assumptions and barrel through like that.’

‘You think it might be better next time though?’

‘Or the time after. I dunno. Like I said I’m the wrong person to ask, but if I were you I wouldn’t take out a subscription to Bungalows Weekly yet. Just promise me you’ll find a more deserving partner for next time. You won’t go back to this clown will you?’

Delilah answered with a non-committal smile, and gazed thoughtfully into the depths of her glass.

*

George Weasley had soon looked at his wristwatch and said he had to leave to meet his brother, so after thanking him warmly for the drink, Delilah wandered off along the peaceful high street. With no underage students around and evidently very few older students keen to venture out into the drizzle, the village was tranquil and cosy, and she enjoyed exploring the shops at her leisure. She had been in such a funk that morning that she hadn’t thought to bring much money with her (and in any case, the point had been to escape the castle rather than a shopping trip), so once the drizzle penetrated her jeans and trainers, she headed reluctantly back to the castle, pondering her conversation with George.

She couldn’t at all decide how she felt about the events of the previous evening. She couldn’t quite shake the shame and disappointment which had plagued her for the past several hours, but now, in the bracing February gale, with the gravel crunching underneath her feet and a pint of Butterbeer sloshing in her otherwise empty stomach, she wondered if it had really been so bad.

She even found herself reliving tiny portions of the evening with jolts of pleasure.

She allowed herself to replay the entire scene, from the moment he grabbed her wrist, dragged her into the room and crushed her to him with such consummate longing, through all of the wild explorations his tongue and hands had undertaken. She remembered his hot, stubbled face right in front of hers, his hair stroking her bare shoulders, his hands tearing off her clothes and his wild eyes roving over her body as though he were about to be tested on its every detail; the gasp of incredible excitement that had escaped him when his hands slid into her knickers, and the strangeness of feeling his hands on her…

A huge, delicious shiver ran through her.

Maybe there wasn’t something wrong with her after all. He’d taken her by surprise, and it had all happened far too quickly, but maybe George was right. She knew now that she couldn’t let this be it. Maybe next time…

If only she had someone to discuss it with. Someone who knew more than she did, or could at least sympathise. She tried to imagine one of the other girls doing what she and Snape had done the previous night – Lisa for instance, so quarry-eyed and guileless that she seemed at times barely older than Matilda, with her thick blonde ponytail and pink-and-white skin; she couldn’t imagine her ever wanting to do what she’d done, or understanding why anyone else would. She entertained herself with the thought of telling her about what had happened.

I went to Snape’s office last night and he bent me over his couch and fucked me.

She almost laughed out loud at the idea.

I thought I was going to faint when he slid his fingers into my knickers, I was so desperate for him.

But what was it like when you actually did it?

It hurt like you wouldn’t believe. He tore something inside of me and afterwards I bled all over my knickers and had to chuck them away.

What are you going to do now? Are you going to report him to Dumbledore?

Fuck no. I’m going back to do it again tonight. And this time it’ll be on my terms.

Do it again… Would she? Could she?

Why on earth not?

What would Lilith do?

As she arrived at the school gates, a familiar sable-black owl appeared against the greyish cloud coverage, and wove a leisurely path through the air towards her. She held out her forearm for it to land on, and pulled a scrap of parchment from its claws.

See me.

The bird took off and Delilah closed her eyes and smiled to herself. She flung her arms out wide and spun in circles for a few moments, then laughed aloud and hugged herself, staggering to regain her balance. She started towards the school at a run, her cheeks pink from exertion, her eyes sparkling. She skittered across the Entrance Hall and wheeled around and down the staircase to the dungeons, retracing her journey of the previous night, and turned into the alcove where his door was. The door sprang open as she approached it, and she walked in to find him standing at a collapsible cauldron mounted on his desk.

‘Hey,’ she said softly, closing the door behind her.

He didn’t say anything, but tapped his wand on the lip of the cauldron so that the flame beneath it extinguished.

Delilah edged closer to him, waiting for him to look at her. He turned his back to her to lift a small crystal beaker from a high shelf, and busied himself again at the still-smoking cauldron. She wished she could think of something to say.

What would Lilith say?

Severus… I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I need you again right now…

‘Drink this.’

Snape thrust the beaker at her with his left hand, still staring into the cauldron. She took it automatically.

‘What is it?’ she said, blinking stupidly.

‘A contraceptive potion.’

She was so wrong-footed, she almost dropped the beaker.

‘For… for what?’

Snape finally looked at her.

‘For what?’ he repeated in disbelief.

‘But I mean… for yesterday?’

‘Just drink it,’ he snapped, turning away. Delilah drained the beaker of the thin, light potion which smelled of parsley and spearmint but tasted of hardly anything, and then stood awkwardly with the beaker in her hand. Snape was crouching over his desk, now sorting through a pile of parchment.

She took a step towards him, so that she was close to his hunched back. She wanted to inch up to him and snake her arm around his waist, but she knew instinctively that he would slap her away.

‘P… Professor?’ she said timidly.

‘Leave the beaker on the desk,’ he said without turning. ‘You may go.’

She put the beaker down but didn’t leave.

‘Professor?’ she said again.

He sighed and turned to her, leaning backwards slightly when he found her standing so close. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, not sure of what to say.

‘Last night…’ she ventured.

‘Let us be absolutely clear,’ he interrupted through a clenched jaw. ‘Last night was a foolish mistake on both of our parts. I suggest we both forget it ever happened.’

‘But…’ she stammered. ‘But didn’t you… enjoy it?’

‘It meant nothing whatsoever to me. It was a moment of madness, and it will not happen again.’

‘Oh.’

Her happiness of a few minutes earlier had not only deflated but grown leaden, and now pressed down on her misery and confusion, making them hurt the worse. She suddenly realised how extremely tired and drained she felt, and thought she might burst into tears.

‘You may go,’ Snape said again, and she turned obediently, too broken to object. She slouched through the open door and into the dungeon passage, leaving the door open.

As she turned along the passage, the door slammed so hard it made the bracket lights flicker.

*

Delilah lay on her bed with Lapsie resting on her chest.

Well. That’s that, then, she thought morosely.

The strange thing, she reflected, was how she hadn’t even necessarily wanted him to fuck her again, or kiss her or grab at her, which was what she’d always wanted before: what she’d longed for was for him to simply open his arms and let her sink into them.

It had been so, so long since anyone had hugged her properly.

Ormond gave the best hugs. He’d always laughed as he opened his arms to her in greeting, not out of mirth but of sheer happiness at being close to her, and even by the time she was the same height as him he always managed to enfold her in a huge, enveloping Dad Hug, her face pressed into the clean smell of that old grey jumper he always wore, and the worn cotton of his shirt collars. He felt warm and familiar and perfect, his arms over her shoulders, her face pressed into his chest, as if the groove between his shoulder blade and his sternum had been designed for her face to nestle into.

‘My little girl,’ he’d always said into her hair. ‘My big little girl.’

Unexpected tears suddenly spurted from her eyes and she stifled a huge, heaving sob, as she realised she would never, ever again snuggle herself into that exact little space, and never, ever again feel his arms around her, squeezing her into a warm little hunch of contentment.

She wished she had a picture of him to look at. Why didn’t she have a picture of him? It seemed somehow like a terrible betrayal that she didn’t have a single one. She felt that if their positions were reversed, he would never allow himself not to have a photo of her. She entertained a mad fantasy of somehow escaping to The Briar House to retrieve the family photo album, before she remembered the old Daily Prophet records she’d stolen from the library a few months earlier. She scrambled off her bed and crouched at its foot to retrieve the newspaper clippings from her trunk.

‘DAILY PROPHET PHOTOJOURNALIST WINS CHAMBERS PRIZE’. There was Ormond, her beloved Daddy, exploding with pride at his achievement, nudging his friend in the ribs with his elbow, his colleague grinning back…

Delilah peered more closely at the photograph.

‘Fucking hell,’ she murmured. ‘Prenderghast.’

So, that was where she’d seen him before. She sat down on the edge of the bed and scanned the article.

‘The details of the blood rituals would never be known were it not for Ormond’s bravery in following the tribespeople through the jungle,’ said Julius Prenderghast, the reporter who broke the story of the Todd Sacrifice. ‘His photographs were invaluable, but his testimony even more so. To be completely honest, I ran for my life when we realised what was going on, but Ormond was made of sterner stuff, and he followed them at a distance for hours through the jungle with nothing but his camera and his nerve, for the sake of the story. A great man.’

She flicked through the rest of the papers in the file, but being a photojournalist, the rest of the records merely referred to Ormond, and didn’t picture him. He was almost never on the other side of the camera.

She tucked the single page containing the photograph of Ormond under her pillow and gathered the rest back into their paper file, then headed off for the library, thinking that after all this time, she should probably return them to the Records and Archives Room. She held the file close to her chest as she entered the library, worried that Madame Pince’s sharp eyes would catch it and know that she’d stolen it; she reflected that she should have brought a large book with her to hide the file in, and ducked into an aisle of bookshelves to try and find something suitable for the purpose. No sooner had she done so, though, than a voice at the end of the aisle said ‘Hey Delilah!’ and she turned to see Terry standing on a small rolling ladder. She smiled brightly and backed out again, afraid of attracting Pince’s attention, deciding to make a dash for the Records and Archives room without further delay.

Thankfully Madame Pince was not at her desk, so Delilah managed to dart through the door without being seen. Once in the room she headed straight for the cabinet at the back from which she’d taken the record, and flicked through the drawer until she found the empty ‘Blackthorn, O.’ entry, into which she slid the file. Then, on a whim, she opened the next drawer and flipped through the Ps until she found a file marked ‘Prenderghast, J.: 1944–’. She pulled it out and opened it curiously, but, to her disappointment, found it completely empty except for a single newspaper clipping, evidently mis-filed, announcing the untimely death of one Clare Prince. The short announcement was accompanied by a grainy photograph of a stout, thin-lipped woman with wiry bobbed hair that sat stiffly atop her head and ended in a blunt line like a thatched roof. Delilah peered into the open drawer of the filing cabinet and saw that the file beside Prenderghast’s was labelled ‘Prince, C.: 1924-1980’. She dropped Prenderghast’s empty file back into the drawer and pulled out Clare Prince’s in order to return the death announcement to its proper place.

As she made to put the clipping into the file, something caught her eye and she paused to scan the page.

Daily Prophet Reporter Clare Prince, 56, was found dead in her home last Wednesday night, with the Dark Mark, the symbol of You Know Who, cast above her residence. Her death came mere days after the publication of her first book, ‘An Honourable Defection? Harold Minchum, The Wizengamot and the Misuse of Power’. The book examines allegations that former Minister for Magic Harold Minchum accepted bribes to secure lesser sentences to what he apparently called ‘benign Death Eaters’, and asserts that his term in office was increasingly characterised by deference to agents of You Know Who’s regime. It alleges corruption at the highest echelons of the Wizengamot under its previous administration (the post of Chief Warlock having been taken over last month by Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore), and is openly critical of Minchum, whom Ms Prince accuses of ‘kowtowing to the so-called Death Eaters in the most nauseating imaginable manner’. Several senior members of Minchum’s ministry, including Ackerley Wilkes and Evan Rosier, are named as being undercover agents of You-Know-Who.

Ms Prince is survived by a sister, Eileen Snape, and a nephew, Severus, both of whom were unavailable for comment.

‘Severus Snape,’ she breathed to herself.

So Clare Prince had been Severus’ aunt. Her eye was drawn again to the first line: “…with the Dark Mark, the symbol of You Know Who, cast…”

She rootled through the rest of Clare Prince’s file: she had evidently been an indomitable woman, dedicated to innumerable causes in the face of much public resistance, and at times ridicule. She had written impassioned articles arguing for the rights of Centaurs, Squibs and House Elves, and had launched a letter campaign against the dubious practices employed by what the papers called “houses of ill repute” in Knockturn Alley, alleging that a blind eye was turned by senior Ministry officials who received “reciprocal advantages” in return, for which she apparently earned the nickname “Killjoy Clare”. She’d written a sizzling five-page exposé of a Ministry Official who had been conducting an illicit affair with a glamorous teenage witch who had turned out to be a spy in the employ of a foreign intelligence agency. Delilah felt her indignation rise as she scanned an opinion piece by a repulsive-looking bald, bespectacled columnist who dubbed her a ‘boring, dried-up old trout with a wonky wand and a Head Girl complex’; but she found no further mention of the Snape family within the file.

She put the file away and wandered out of the library. She walked through the dark corridors, lit only with the dim, flickering light of the wall scones, turning over the details of Clare Prince’s story in her mind, until she turned to mount the stairs of the Ravenclaw tower.

‘Delilah?’ came a low voice from the shadows. Delilah jumped and turned to see Terry leaning against the wall.

‘Terry?’ she frowned. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack, what are you doing hanging around in the dark?’

‘Waiting for you,’ he smiled.

‘Er, OK,’ she said, bemused. He stepped closer to her.

‘Come to the Shadow Garden with me?’ he murmured, taking her by the elbow.

‘OK,’ she said again, allowing herself to be led back along the corridor. She felt confused and wrong-footed: after spending the whole year wishing she could be alone with him, she now, especially after their dalliance on the staircase, felt strangely reluctant to follow him. What was wrong with her? Wasn’t this exactly the kind of scenario she’d so often hoped for?

He clambered through the window into the Shadow Garden and turned to help her through. She felt his breath on her neck as she climbed past him, his hand supporting her forearm.

When she straightened on the flagstones, he didn’t let go of her arm. There was a rustling hush of plant leaves opening around them, like a whisper running around the courtyard. They stood side by side for a moment, and then he turned and pushed her against the wall.

‘Delilah…’ he murmured.

It should have been so exciting, should have been what she’d been dreaming of for the past several months, but he was like a different person to the Terry she knew: he seemed to be giving off a rough, animal sort of heat, his voice was low and insistent, and he looked at her with lidded, lazy eyes, like he’d been mildly drugged. He leaned against her heavily and thrust his cold right hand without preamble under the hem of her jumper, running it up her stomach and over her ribcage so that she squirmed at the pressure, and he pushed his other hand up her back and ran freezing fingers up her spine. Already he was groping at the cups of her bra, and he kissed her with such lunging ineptitude that the back of her head smacked against the wall and her nose was crushed against his cheek.

She shoved him hard, and he took a staggering step backwards, looking astonished. She turned her head away from his gaze, unable to speak.

‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ he stammered at last. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Is this what you think of me?’ she said in a strangled voice.

‘No! I was just, after the other night, I just…’

‘You barely even acknowledge my existence all year, then you think you can just drag me out onto a rooftop for a quickie without even… even talking to me?’

‘No, that’s not it at all – I do talk to you – I just thought after last night – oh come on, don’t cry, I’m really sorry…’

‘I’m not crying,’ she lied pointlessly, wiping her eye with the sleeve of her jumper. She blinked hard and gazed across the courtyard to where a small cluster of moths fluttered over the crumpled trumpet of a newly-opened Datura. The scent from a night-blooming jasmine gusted over her, and she slid slowly down the wall, resting her wrists on her bent knees.

After a moment, Terry came and sat beside her.

‘Why does everyone think I’m some kind of whore?’ she said bitterly, breaking the awkward silence that had elapsed between them.

‘Who’s said that?’ Terry said.

‘Well, nobody’s said it. But you’re not the first guy who seems to think I’m the kind of person they can just bend over and fuck without needing to… I don’t know. Woo me.’

‘Woo you?’ Terry repeated.

‘Well, I don’t know. Pursue me, then. Guys don’t seem to fancy me, take an interest in me and try and win me over, like it’s supposed to go; they just take it into their heads to fuck me and then pounce, assuming I’ll just go along with it and then politely disappear when I’m no longer required.’

‘I honestly don’t think that,’ Terry insisted, looking alarmed. ‘It was just last night, the way you were, I haven’t stopped thinking about it and…’

‘Last night,’ Delilah echoed. ‘Yeah. I guess I’m being a bit of a hypocrite after that. Maybe I am that sort of girl.’

Terry tipped his head back and stared up at the sky.

‘I don’t really know what kind of girl you are,’ he said at length. ‘I don’t think anybody does. You’re kind of a mystery to all of us.’

‘What?’

‘Well, you must realise people are a bit wary of you. Don’t get me wrong,’ he added hastily, turning and seeing her expression, ‘people like you – Lisa and Padma are always saying about how funny you are, and you’re obviously smart as hell – they just don’t know what to make of you.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you showed up out of nowhere, one minute you were a seventh year and the next you were a sixth, you’ll be being friendly and then you go sloping off on your own; you vanish from classes, suddenly go hurtling off saying you need to need to find Dumbledore… And I must say,’ he said with a half-smile, ‘you do have a bit of a habit of biting people’s heads off.’

‘Great,’ Delilah said acidly. ‘Glad to know I’ve been dissected in such detail. Sounds like you’ve all had some lovely cosy chats about me when my back’s turned. So what does everyone think, I’m some kind of psychotic loner who’s best avoided?’

‘Not at all,’ Terry said quietly. ‘Most of us think something very bad’s probably happened to you.’

Delilah squeezed her eyes shut and leaned her head back against the wall.

‘We’d really like to be your friends if you’d let us.’

She spoke without opening her eyes.

‘I assume you’re not counting Ariadne in that.’

Terry snorted.

‘Ariadne’s just jealous of you.’

‘Jealous? Of what?’

‘For one thing that you’re such a talking point. When you showed up on the Hogwarts Express you were all anyone was talking about, and she hated it – she’d love to be centre of attention like that. I can hardly ever remember anyone joining the school after first year, it just doesn’t really happen, so there was a huge buzz about you, and Ariadne seems to think –‘ he hesitated, obviously trying to find a tactful phrasing – ‘she seems to think you sort of play up to being all mysterious to keep people talking about you.’

‘That’s demented,’ Delilah said furiously. ‘I don’t do that, I didn’t know anyone had even really noticed me.’

‘I know. I’ve told her that, and so have the others. But she took against you before she even met you, and the more we stick up for you, the more wound up she gets.’ His face broke into a grin. ‘It’s a pretty good game to be honest.’

‘I’ve always wondered what you guys see in Ariadne. She’s such a colossal bitch.’

‘You do only get to see the worst side of her. I guess we just all go way back, she didn’t used to be so bad. She and I had a bit of a thing a few years ago, actually.’

‘You and Ariadne?’

‘It was a very brief thing, back in third year – her fourth year. I was the one who broke it off, and she never quite forgave me. I suspect that’s another reason why she’s jealous of you though.’

Delilah raised her eyebrows.

‘Meaning…?’

‘Well,’ he said with a suggestive smile, ‘I may have made a comment or two about your… charms.’

‘I must assume you’re referring to my unparalleled mastery of the Impervius Charm.’

Terry guffawed and nudged her with his shoulder.

‘So, what do you say? Friends?’

‘OK,’ she said, smiling back at him. ‘I’ll try not to bite your head off again. Not unless you deserve it, at least.’

He clambered to his feet and held out a hand to her.

‘Come on, let’s get out of here before we freeze,’ he said. She put her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet. Once she was standing he kept hold of her hand for a moment before letting it go, and gave her a long look, his head cocked slightly. He reached up a hand, hesitated for a second, then took a strand of hair which had fallen across her forehead, and tucked it behind her ear.

They climbed back through the window to the corridor, and walked together back to the Ravenclaw Tower.

*

‘Do you know anything more about it Delilah?’

‘What?’ Delilah said distractedly, looking up from the open book beside her plant pot on the table. They were in the greenhouse pruning Acus plants (‘sometimes called the Bodkin Bush,’ Professor Sprout had added informatively at the start of the lesson), ugly things which looked like rather spiky aspidistras but with a growth of bright red flowers at their centre and long, razor-sharp-edged leaves which swayed menacingly when approached.

‘Remember,’ Sprout called from the front of the greenhouse, ‘once the Acus realises you’re trying to prune it, it will become defensive of its bloom, so you must start with the outermost leaves and only let it get within striking distance of your protective gloves…’

‘The attack at Beauxbatons,’ Lisa said.

‘What?’ Delilah said in alarm, almost dropping her secateurs. ‘What happened?’

‘You haven’t heard?’ Padma said in surprise. She tossed a copy of The Daily Prophet across the table to land on Delilah’s book, open at a page with a small column bearing a headline ‘BEAUXBATONS SCHOOL TARGETED IN LATEST ATTACK’. The page was illustrated with a photograph of Madame Maxime, which Delilah recognised as having been taken at Hogwarts on the year of the Triwizard Tournament. She put down her secateurs and picked up the newspaper.

Students have been leaving Beauxbatons, the French Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in their droves after an attack was launched on the school last week, she read. The school’s security measures were breached by an assailant who appeared to be acting alone, and in spite of an attempted cover-up by the school’s administration, we can reveal that at least one individual, an unnamed female, was killed in the attack. The victim is not believed to have been a student.

Confidence in the capabilities – and indeed loyalties – of the school’s headmistress, notorious half-Giantess Madame Olympe Maxime, has been diminishing since her blood status was revealed in an exclusive article in French daily newspaper L’Hérault in the spring of 1994. ‘Loads of us didn’t want to come back to school at all after we found out about Maxime,’ said our source, a sixth-year Beauxbatons student who wishes to remain anonymous ‘but we were afraid to anger her. We didn’t know what she’d do to us. We’ve all been living in a climate of fear, and now this has happened. It’s what we’ve all been scared of all along.’

Questions have previously been raised about Madame Maxime’s management of school safety following the serious injury of a fifteen-year-old child who was trampled by one of the headmistress’ Abraxan horses in 1992, and…

Delilah threw the paper down.

‘What a load of rubbish,’ she said furiously. ‘If a single student has actually left the school I’ll eat my secateurs – every single one of them is devoted to Maxime, and that numbskull who fell off the horse was dared by the other boys to break into their paddock and try and ride one, we’re not allowed within thirty feet of them. And anyway, he wasn’t trampled, the horse just kicked him off when he tried to clamber up its side.’

‘So you don’t think there was an attack?’

Delilah scowled thoughtfully down at the paper.

‘Well, I guess that bit has to be true, even this fucking rag wouldn’t just make up a whole–’

‘Language Miss du Lac,’ came an admonishment from Professor Sprout. ‘Five points from Ravenclaw. Now stop gabbing and get on with your pruning, or it’ll be ten.’

Delilah jumped guiltily and turned back to her Acus.

‘Do you think someone was really killed?’ Lisa whispered anxiously.

Delilah snatched up her secateurs.

‘I guess so,’ she muttered back, rotating the plant pot distractedly to get to the leaves facing away from her, ‘again, it sort of has to be true, even The Daily Prophet wouldn’t – OUCH!’

She had leaned over her plant to be heard by Lisa and Padma, and snipped so inattentively at a browning leaf that the plant lunged at her and managed to strike her on the side of the neck. She slapped her gloved hand over the wound, inhaling sharply with pain, and took it away to see her dragon hide gauntlet covered in blood.

‘Professor Sprout!’ Lisa squealed.

Sprout was already bustling over, pulling off her own gauntlets.

‘Oh Delilah,’ she said in gently chastising tones, peering at the wound, evidently having forgiven Delilah her transgression of a few moments earlier. ‘You don’t have much luck do you, you silly sausage. You really must concentrate. Oh well, at least it’s quite a shallow cut. Here –’ she reached into the pocket of her gardener’s apron and pulled out a small brown glass pot – ‘I thought we might be needing some of this. Just pop some Dermorestorative Poultice on it and it should clear up within a couple of hours. Keep the jar and put some more on later this evening if it’s still red. Mind you bring it back when you’re finished with it though, I don’t fancy battling with the Devil Trees more often than necessary.’

Delilah took the pot and stared at it, feeling blood run down inside her robes.

‘But isn’t it dangerous?’ she said, looking up at Professor Sprout.

‘Dangerous! Bless my soul,’ Sprout chuckled, ‘perhaps when collecting the nectar for it, but the balm itself’s no more dangerous than a daisy.’

‘I thought it was poisonous if it was ingested?’

‘What on earth gave you that idea?’

‘Er, I don’t know,’ Delilah said vaguely, ‘I must have got… confused…’

She tailed off, staring out of the greenhouse window. As if summoned by her swirling thoughts, through the murky shaded glass she saw the saturnine figure of Professor Snape striding across the grounds towards the Forbidden Forest, his small leather pouch swinging from his wrist.

‘Professor,’ she said, ‘since the lesson’s nearly over, can I run back to my dormitory to clean up and get some fresh robes?’

Sprout shook up the sleeve of her robes to glance at a heavy brown wrist watch.

‘Yes, go on then, but mind you put the Poultice on straight away, it’ll help with any scarring if you’re–’

‘Thanks Professor,’ Delilah said hurriedly, stuffing her books and equipment back in her satchel. She swung her bag over her shoulder and rushed out of the greenhouse, letting the door slam shut behind her.

She strode across the grass towards the Forest.

…extremely dangerous if even a tiny bit of it should be accidentally swallowed, so I must insist on administering it myself…

The implications of this lie swelled in Delilah’s chest; a broad smile curled across her face, and she broke into a trot. At the edge of the Forest she glanced over her shoulder to check that she wasn’t being watched, and then stepped into the shade of the Forest path, taking the route she thought Snape had entered by. In the hush and diminished light of the Forest she slowed her pace, listening for movement above the sound of snapping twigs, her own laboured breathing, and the sound of her pulse pounding inside her head.

I know you think your tits are the most irresistibly fascinating things in existence, but they’re not. They hold no interest for me whatsoever…

She smiled more broadly.

‘Oh, Severus Snape,’ she said softly to herself.

The path carried her deeper into the Forest and then wended around into a small clearing where a shaft of sunlight shone through a break in the tree coverage, illuminating the crouched form of Professor Snape amid a profusion of tall leafy plants with dark-petalled flowes, the roots of which he was examining carefully. She approached soundlessly, but like a fox sensing nearby movement, his head snapped up as she reached the clearing, and he straightened.

‘What’s that?’ she said, indicating the plants.

‘Henbane,’ he said. ‘It needs to be picked at the right stage of maturity. It isn’t ready yet. What are you doing here?’

‘I followed you.’

She saw his gaze slide down to her neck.

‘You’re bleeding,’ he said tonelessly.

She took a step towards him.

‘Yes’ she said, holding up the pot Professor Sprout had given her. ‘Luckily I have some Dermorestorative Poultice. Should sort me right out.’

His eyes lingered inscrutably on the pot.

‘Only, do you want to hear something funny?’ she went on in a low, suggestive tone. ‘Professor Sprout didn’t seem to know anything about it being dangerous if ingested. Isn’t that strange? You’d have thought she’d know all about that, being an Herbologist.’

As she spoke she continued to move slowly closer to him, until they were inches apart. They were almost the same height but he held his chin aloft so that he was gazing at her down the length of his nose.

He turned away from her abruptly.

‘Students are not permitted to enter the Forbidden Forest,’ he said, crouching to retrieve the leather bag from the ground. ‘I will escort you back to the castle.’

A determined throb of power juddered through her.

‘Severus,’ she said commandingly. It came out almost involuntarily and, it seemed to her, so loudly and firmly that her voice rang around the clearing.

He straightened slowly, his back to her. He stood still for a moment.

‘You will address me as Professor Snape,’ he said quietly.

‘Fine. Professor Snape. Look at me.’

He turned stiffly. She stepped closer to him again.

‘You did want me,’ she said, her voice now so soft it was almost a whisper. ‘It wasn’t a moment of madness, the other night. You wanted me all along. You lied about the Dermorestorative Poultice so you’d get to touch me. Just admit it.’

He regarded her, his thin lips parted.

‘And if I did?’ he said, in an unexpectedly defeated tone. ‘I acted for your own good. This should never have happened, and it cannot continue.’

She released a huge, sighing exhalation of desire, and took another step towards him, ramming into his chest. She snaked her arms around his waist and pulled him in towards her, resting her chin on his shoulder to bury her face in his neck, feeling the rough skin of his cheek against her own, breathing in his spicy scent.

‘No,’ he said weakly, standing perfectly upright, his hands hanging straight by his sides, but she ran the tip of her tongue over the tense stem of his throat and could feel his pulse galloping against his skin. She lifted his hands and placed them around her own waist, pressing herself hard against him.

‘No,’ he said again, but his voice was barely a grunt; the leather pouch dropped to the ground with a soft rustle, and his hands were already exploring her body. He shoved her backwards so that she crashed into a tree trunk, and he fell on her, digging his hands into her hair and breathing hoarsely in her ear. She arched her back against the rough bark and stretched her neck in ecstasy so that the barely-clotted slit in her skin burst open again and a fresh surge of hot blood rushed over her. He made a small sound in his throat and pressed his bare fingertips against the wound to stem the flow, tipped her head back, gazing at her face with a look of animal hunger, and then with his other hand began to pull at her robes, tugging them up to her waist. With her own hands she fumbled with the buttons at the front of her robes, pulling them open at the chest as he grappled at her thighs…

Suddenly there was a rushing sound through the undergrowth to their right and Delilah turned in alarm just in time to see a flash of white, and a ferocious snarl filled the air before Snape reeled away from her, roaring in pain.

‘WILBUUUUUUUR!’ came a thunderous voice, and the huge form of Hagrid crashed into the clearing through the trees. Delilah blinked in bemusement, refocusing her eyes to see Wilbur, Hagrid’s crup, hanging from Snape’s calf, his teeth sunk into his skin through his robes.

‘WILBUR, DOWN! BAD DOG!’ Hagrid bellowed, and the dog obeyed at once, sitting back but still panting and glaring malevolently at Snape.

Nobody moved or spoke for several moments. Snape was breathing heavily, holding his torn robes away from his leg; Delilah was still leaning frozen against the tree trunk, and Hagrid stared in amazement from one to the other, taking in Delilah’s tangled hair, half-open robes and bleeding neck, and back to the crup who sat with his hackles raised, still growling softly.

‘What’s goin’ on?’ he said at last.

‘Your stupid mutt tried to tear my leg off is what’s going on,’ Snape said furiously. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

Hagrid ran his hands through his unruly mane of hair.

‘I dunno Severus, I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just takin’ the pack for a walk and ’e suddenly froze and then shot off. I reckon’ ’e’s taken a liking to Delilah ‘ere after she rescued ‘im from the fog that time, and musta thought you were attackin’ her or somethin’.’ Again his eyes roved over Delilah’s unbuttoned robes, and she straightened them uncomfortably, trying to discreetly fasten them.

‘Miss du Lac is taking additional duelling classes with me on Dumbledore’s orders,’ Snape said smoothly. ‘That must be what the mutt picked up on.’

‘Oh,’ Hagrid said, his expression clearing. ‘That’ll be it. So he was right in a sense, yeh were attackin’ her…’

‘With her consent. At her instigation, in fact.’

‘Look, Severus – Professor Snape, tha’ is – you’d better get yer leg looked at, shall I fetch someone or can you…?’

‘I am perfectly capable of walking,’ Snape snapped. ‘Just keep that creature away from me.’ He shook his robes straight and limped off down the Forest path. Wilbur watched him go, then turned to Delilah and bounced towards her, suddenly a playful puppy again. She dropped to her knees, light-headed with adrenaline, and fondled his soft ear. He nuzzled his head into her hand and closed his eyes with pleasure, pushing his warm little body into her lap. She took the opportunity whilst she had her back to Hagrid to hurriedly finish refastening her robes.

‘Silly dog,’ she said to Wilbur, ‘you didn’t need to bite Professor Snape just for me.’ He opened his eyes and gazed up at her balefully

‘Taken a right likin’ to you, ‘e ‘as,’ Hagrid said. ‘Very loyal creatures, crups.’

Delilah stood and turned back to Hagrid.

‘Nice to know I have a defender,’ she said with a smile.

‘I’d best go and find the rest o’ the pack,’ Hagrid said. He snapped his fingers and Wilbur bounded back to his master’s side. ‘You OK, Delilah?’ he added anxiously, looking pointedly at her bleeding neck with his crinkled black eyes. ‘Looks like you’ve taken a bit of a batterin’ – was it Professor Snape that did that?’

‘No,’ Delilah said, her hand automatically flying to her neck to cover the wound, ‘it actually happened in Herbology class earlier, Snape – Professor Snape – just… reopened it. It’s OK, though, as he said it was just part of the lesson. I’d better get back to the castle actually, lunch is almost over and I need to get cleaned up before my next class.’

Hagrid nodded, his black eyes lingering one last time on her wound, then he waved his enormous hand in farewell and disappeared into the Forest.

Once the sound of his enormous footsteps began to recede, Delilah leaned back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes.

She stayed in the clearing for several minutes before making her way back to the castle.