Rest with Your Dream in My Dream

Coward

1 May 1998; 22:55

She didn't know she was going to try to kill him until she did it.

"Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva?" he asked. "Because if you have, I must insist —"

She found herself casting the second Unforgiveable curse of her evening, a wordless Avada Kedavra she meant as fully as she'd ever meant any Expecto Patronum. And yet . . .

He was less than ten feet in front of her, but her spell flew wide of the mark, raising nothing more lethal than an explosion of green sparks from the wall behind him. She had no time to puzzle out her own failure to connect, however, because his Protego nearly knocked her off her feet.

He wasted precious time laughing at her stumble rather than immediately casting an offensive, a foolish mistake that surprised her.

Potter shouted behind her as she Transfigured a wall torch into a circlet of flames and sent it at Snape, intending to grab him by the neck and either throttle or scorch him into submission. It wasn't a spell he'd have been expecting from her, so even if he managed to escape it, she hoped it would catch him off balance and unable to counter immediately. But her flame-lasso missed him, and she cast a strong wordless and wandless shield, expecting a powerful attack from her opponent.

What he sent back, however, was a spell he'd used many times in their sparring matches, an ethereal black serpent with a gaping maw that she knew from experience would slither around her shield but would only sting a little when it swallowed her. It was a spell meant to distract, to tease, not to seriously harm or kill.

Fury enveloped her. Was he mocking her? Reminding her of the hours she'd spent training him in duelling as Albus had trained her, patiently teaching him how to control his powerful magic so that it would kill only if necessary and not by accident? It had been no accident that night on the Astronomy Tower, when Albus had been all but helpless, she thought bitterly. Severus could have avoided killing him, of that she was certain. He could have given Albus time to regroup, muster his wandless magic and escape the Death Eaters who'd had him trapped. But Severus had chosen to point his wand at the man who'd given him a chance to redeem himself. And he'd killed him.

As he was conspicuously failing to kill her, she realised.

He could do it — one thing she'd learned from their sparring over the years was that Severus's magic was stronger than hers, even if her control had been far better and her magic more mature when they'd first begun.

But rather than the devastatingly effective killing curse he'd aimed at Dumbledore, Severus had cast this . . . this private joke at her. 

She backed away from the snake's snapping jaws, shielding Harry and Luna with her body, and exploded the creature with a slash of her wand. Without thinking about her next move, she Transfigured the remains of the snake into daggers and watched, half horrified, half exultant, as they flew at Snape, the vibration reverberating in her magic as the daggers sank into the armour he'd pulled in front of him.

Filius's voice came from behind her, and the crackle of a strong spell whizzed by her to batter at Snape's shield, but rather than relief at having competent reinforcements at hand, Minerva felt only rage as her opponent struggled against the now-animated armour that clutched at him.

He broke away and ran down the corridor, casting a Shield Charm behind him so that anything Minerva and her allies cast zinged harmlessly off his back. 

He disappeared through the door to the old Alchemy classroom, and she followed, pulled onward by anger.

She didn't want to die, but his refusal to try to kill her made her question everything that had happened over the past few months. She wanted answers, and he wasn't going to give them to her.