Pawn to Queen
Chapter 35

The Clemens family villa off the coast of Italy dated back to the Roman Empire--- though it had not, of course, always been in precisely this location. Her parents had given it to her and Michael on their wedding. Generations of the magical family has taken their ancestral residence with them whenever circumstance or preference caused them to leave, strategically or otherwise.

And it was appropriate, Claire Snape/Clemens-Zabini thought as she and her husband stood in the portico, that one of the family should choose to fly to that home in a time of need. They had sheltered the residence since the Caesars; now it would shelter one of them.

Michael rested a hand on her shoulder. "Cara mia." Not a request--- nothing more than the simple statement. She said nothing, just leaned against his shoulder.

They always Apparated here--- not within the house itself, but to this point outside, where Claire could look over her family home.

With a sudden pang of nostalgia she remembered three-year-old Blaise clinging to her hand as they'd double-Apparated to this spot. "Mamma--- that's our house!"

Blaise loved this place as much as she did.

Michael read her mind as he sometimes did. "We'll have to come here this summer, cara mia. See if our strega fia wants to bring some friends--- fill the house with laughter."

She turned grateful eyes on him. "Yes." And squeezed that hand resting on her shoulder. He smiled back, leaned in and brushed her cheek with his lips, then took her hand.

She squeezed his fingers again, but drew back. "Not yet, caro mio---"

He put a hand to her lips. "Of course." Another kiss. "I'll see you upstairs." And he turned and went inside.

After a moment, Claire followed him--- into the great front hall, up the stairs, and along the gallery.

Michael would have gone on to their room, but Claire moved along the gallery and out along the concourse to her study.

It was a dark, almost cozy room, all pine paneling and bookshelves and leather, the huge desk with the openwork hutch and the overstuffed leather chairs and sofa, the dark pine table and the leatherbound books, Muggle and magical alike. It was her favorite room in this house.

It had been her father's, when her parents had lived here. She could remember hours playing here, on the Persian rug in front of her father's desk, while he read or balanced the accounts. When she was, oh, three or four, she had crawled onto his lap to find out what he was doing. And he had explained, and suddenly the arcane squiggles in the ledger had formed neat and orderly rows in her mind, and the language of numbers had come open to her, and she had found the one thing she would love for her whole life.

Not just any finances, of course--- her family's money. Her family's investments and the family fortune, the way the Snape/Clemens assets snaked their way across the boundaries between the Muggle and the magical world.

She smiled softly, thinking that she was fortunate to have found a man who could share that with her. Michael's head for numbers was but minimal--- but he understood the joy of balancing between the two worlds... and of taking the step that her father had never dared, and trying to bring them together.

Blaise... Blaise shared her passion for that high-wire act, and for numbers.

Blaise.

Claire moved past the desk to the admittedly anachronistic stereo system lurking behind closed doors in the cabinet along the wall. A few button-pushes later, and dear old Bette Midler's voice rang out.

"From a distance, there is harmony...."

From a distance--- harmony. Up close--- chaos. It was the underlying principle of strega: to truly understand a situation, one had to be embedded within it, to experience all of its complexity and ambiguity.

From a distance, everything looked fine. And conviction--- the absolute certainty of right and wrong--- was a luxury of those on the sidelines. That wasn't merely a truth of strega, or even of Slytherin--- it was a truth of life.

Her fingers trailed along the bookshelves until she found Aspasia's works; she drew out the heavy volume and settled behind the desk.

But she didn't open it. Her fingers lingered over the binding, but left it closed.

How much of this must be Blaise's doing?

And how much could not be?

Memory assailed her, fragments with meaning only to her--- Bea Teasdale's horrified face, and her eldest daughter's contorted one. Newspaper clippings from the society column, disgusting at first, then downright appalling when taken in context.

She was not the first of the current strega---her mind winced at that grammatical construction, but Aspasia had not left them an easily manageable title--- to face this situation. From what Cousin Severus had told her, the parallels were alarming. And Cousin Severus, of everyone alive, would be the one to know.

It was the same story. And the difference--- she saw with painful clarity--- lay more in the mothers than in the children.

Bea Teasdale was... what? Technically a Slytherin, but the wife of a Gryffindor--- House loyalties didn't, perhaps, mean so much in the adult world, but like sororities in America, they told you a little about what you were dealing with. And Bea... was more Gryffindor than Slytherin, when it came to cases.

Cases like her eldest daughter, hysterical and panicked, having nightmares of a boy she thought had tried to attack her. Wanting a mother's support, a mother's sympathy.

And getting--- from what she'd heard--- platitudes. Because Sirius Black had not--- from what anyone had been able to determine--- actually attempted to assault Claudia. Terrify her, yes, insult her and the dignity than any true Slytherin witch had--- but not assault her.

But tell that to a frightened eleven-year-old who was already prepared to think him a monster and murderer, and not without cause.

You couldn't. Not without losing that eleven-year-old's trust and respect. But Bea had done so--- and Claudia had taken her trust and laid it all firmly at the doorstep of her Cousin Severus.

Not her mother. Not ever again. And Bea had, by rushing her way to the end of the situation, forever lost any hope not only of holding her daughter's love, but of saving her daughter's sanity.

Claire... would not do the same.

The most important thing was to keep Blaise trusting her, for now. The business of humiliating Malfoy publicly had been a master stroke--- fair was, after all, fair.

But now....

She flipped through cousin Severus' letter; the same passage jumped out at her. "Florian Teasdale is arranging the audiovisual equipment....."

She set the letter aside and sighed. Layers and layers.

The kind of young person who got Sorted into Slytherin tended to be... what? Not more extreme, certainly, than the Gryffindors... but a Slytherin with a goal in mind could easily give a Hufflepuff a run for its money in tenacity. With the difference that Slytherins also liked demolishing any obstacles in their path.

Which was clearly what her daughter was planning on doing. But in blowing up a stone wall, it was far too easy to get buried in the rubble--- if you didn't know what you were doing.

Which meant she needed to see to it that her daughter knew what she was doing.

She set aside the letter and picked up the book in front of her. One of Aspasia's lesser-known works, and with good reason. Head games and bed games--- often one and the same, and very few people could successfully pull off either, much less the both at once.

Certainly Claire herself couldn't. That was why she'd been careful to marry a man whose personality and goals and talents complemented her own--- so that there would seldom if ever be a question of "Lysistrata" or any other such games.

She didn't know if Blaise would have that in her; it was, for obvious reasons, the sort of talent one didn't find out about until adolescence, and sometimes later.

Sometimes later.... Something was nagging at the back of her mind. She pushed it aside; her daughter's welfare was the important question now.