In three days time, Mag told him, there would be a Fourth of July celebration on the waterfront, hosted by GeneCo. They could meet there, if he wanted; once the opener for the night was done, she was free to get lost in the crowd and mingle (With her guards no less than ten feet away at all times). If Rotti asked, she could always say that he was an old friend from her school days.

He could tell, in spite of her expert poker face, that Mag was silently savoring the idea of keeping a secret, however innocent, from Rotti Largo. It would probably be the only secret she'd ever kept from him, seeing as how the secret of her magic wasn't so secret anymore.

He liked Mag.

If asked, he wouldn't be able to name any one thing in particular about her that drew his attention. Was it her intelligence? Oh yes. She was clever, far more so than the idiots she so often seemed to be surrounded by. Was it her wit? She had a dry sense of humor, just like him. Warped by years of loneliness, her smile was often little more than a smirk, not unlike his own.

Was it because in spite of their more obvious differences (Her lack of total bitterness and shyness, and her generally pleasant attitude), he could see that they were very much alike?

That was the one that probably hit home the most.

...

He hated crowds.

The one at the Sanitarium Waterfront was thick, noisy and, from what he could hear, almost totally drunk. Almost the entire crowd was made up of young people (Though he was now thirty, in his own mind he hadn't qualified as young since graduating from Hogwarts) in scantily-clad outfits and too many ridiculous piercings and tattoos to keep track of.

He could feel his lip curling in disgust right up until he spotted Mag coming up to the platform with Rotti Largo. He'd caught sight of her before the rest of the crowd did, and noticed that her face was completely blank until Rotti tapped the microphone. As soon as he started to speak, that sweet, endearing, utterly false smile appeared from cheek to cheek.

"224 years ago," Rotti boomed with a wide, winning smile on his sagging face, "Our forefathers set about securing the independence for the fine citizens of what would be the United States of America. Today, we gather here to honor their efforts and celebrate their success!" Applause followed.

"Our fine government was made by the people and for the people. We decide the laws, and we decide how our lives are to be led. On behalf of GeneCo- Yes, you knew I'd throw in some advertisement here- let me ask you all to do your part in running this country well, and vote NO on Prop 598, and keep the repossessions legal!"

The crowd clapped and cheered with gusto, and he felt much like he might throw up. Rotti was a total sleazebag, but he was, unfortunately, also an articulate sleazebag. He knew how to win a crowd. Of course, looking around, this particular brand of the average idiot might not have been so hard to sway.

Did any of them realize the danger they were in? Probably not. To them, only idiots and losers who couldn't keep up on their payments got organs repossessed. But did any of them realize that they were only a slip-up away from joining the who-knew-how-many others that had died in repossessions?

The next act, however, soothed his irritation quite a bit. Mag sang a rather beautiful rendition of the national anthem, which was received even more enthusiastically than Rotti's patriotic speech. He had heard snatches of her songs before- they were unavoidable, seeing as how she was the face and voice of GeneCo and GeneCo ran this entire damn island. But this was the first time he'd heard her sing completely.

She had an amazing voice.

So amazing that by the time he'd snapped out of it, the crowd had dissolved to mingle, and he'd lost sight of Mag. Music started blaring, whoops and hollers of excitement went up, and everyone started pushing and shoving to get where they were supposed to be. Merlin did he hate crowds.

He ended up finding Mag quite on accident. Off to his right, he'd heard an unusually loud and violent commotion starting up, the kind of noise that carried above the rest, and so he went to investigate. It had taken him maybe a minute and a half to break through the lines of people and see one of the more ludicrous things he'd seen in his life.

Luigi Largo was currently straddling a young man on the ground. Largo looked furious. The man beneath him- he seemed to be a waiter, an attendant of some sort- looked terrified.

Luigi Largo, he knew, had a nasty habit of assaulting people; more often than not, he used a rather large knife. Tonight, however, it seemed that Rotti Largo had tried to cut back on the embarrassment his eldest child tended to incite and made Luigi leave the knife at home, or otherwise confiscated it, because the eldest Largo child was currently beating this attendant over the head with a particularly long baguette.

Of course, it was entirely possible that he did have the knife and, in his rage, happened to grab the nearest thing at hand.

"MUSTARD? WHO PUTS MUSTARD ON PEPPERONI? ARE YOU FUCKING BRAIN-DEAD? ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!"

Given that this instance was lacking Luigi's typically fatally destructive nature, more people were laughing than trying to help the poor man. It was, perhaps, an indicator of something that Mag was the first and only to try and stop the attack.

"Luigi!" For the first time since he'd seen her, she actually looked cross. The look reminded him oddly of one Minerva McGonagall tended to adopt when she was scolding students for casting nasty but harmless spells on one another. Luigi had been raising the baguette up on high before bringing it back down on his hapless victim, and Mag caught it as it hovered over his head.

"What the-?" She seized his moment of confusion and ripped the bread out of his hands, tossing it off to the side.

"Get off him, Luigi!" She would make an excellent teacher. She had a rather intimidating tone of authority. The brunette stared up at her as he regained his senses. The stare soon turned to a glare.

"Mind your own business, bitch!" Luigi snarled, swatting at her. There was no real force behind the blow; violent though he was, there were no words to describe the hell that he would catch if he hurt Mag.

"Do I need to get your father?" She hissed. Luigi sobered up immediately and climbed off the assistant, who half-whimpered, half-sobbed and dashed off into the crowd, trying to put as much distance between the two of them as possible.

Luigi looked sorely tempted to say something awful to Mag, or maybe to try and scare her, but that wouldn't work, and he knew it. Instead, he offered her one last frigid look before storming off, scattering the crowd in their haste to get out of his way.

Mag ran a hand through her hair, a momentarily world-weary look in her eyes. She looked tired, but lovely; her dress was red and blue-striped, and sprinkled with tiny white stars for the occasion. White, sparkly powder had been spread around her eyes, forehead and cheeks, and her hair had been straightened, laying flat over her back while clipped back with an ornate hairpin in the shape of the American flag.

She finally caught sight of him and smiled a genuine smile. As she moved to approach him, however, she stopped, looked to her left, did a double take and then froze. Before he could register the odd behavior, Mag broke into a wider, cheesy smile and allowed her eyes to twinkle happily at him.

"Severus! Is that you?" She said it a little louder than necessary, moving forward and giving him a gentle hug around the shoulders. Alarmed at the sudden contact, he pushed her back and stared at her questioningly. Her smile never faltered. "Don't you recognize me? It's Magdalene, from school?"
She met his eyes, then glanced sharply to the left again before looking back. He chanced a glance in the same direction and saw the cause of Mag's sudden change in behavior; the heads of Rotti Largo's two tall henchwomen were visible over the heads of the nearest people, very close by and moving closer. And in front of them, just in sight, was their boss, heading straight for him and Mag.

He quickly looked back. "Magdalene. It's been too long." He played along. "How have you been?"

"Oh, I've been-" He was spared from a rehearsed answer when Rotti finally got to them, smiling that smile that he was growing to hate so much.

"Mag! There you are, I've been looking for you." Rotti stopped and finally noticed that Mag had actually been conversing with someone that he didn't know. At his inquiring glance, Mag smiled.

Maybe it was his talent at legilimency, or maybe it was because he'd stalked Mag for two weeks, but he found that he was quickly learning the different nuances of her smile; the happy, sad, tense, fake and real. It seemed to be a talent unique to him alone, given how everyone seemed to have the impression that Mag was quite pleased to work for GeneCo and Rotti.

Right now, her smile was genuine, but with a shade of nervousness. Could she deceive Rotti, who probably knew her well enough to know when she was lying to him? That would depend, he realized, on how often she tried to lie to him. To him, it seemed like a relatively futile effort, given how deeply entwined into that contract she was.

"Rotti," She said delicately, glancing between the two men, "This is Severus, an old friend from primary school." Rotti directed what he must have thought was a winning and friendly smile at the new man.

"Really! That's lovely. I'm surprised you recognized him, Mag- I could have sworn that you were blind as a child. And voices certainly change over the years." He could almost her Mag's heart stop beating in her terror.

However, a second later, she surprised him with that keen intellect once more. "I found myself nostalgic a few months ago, and decided to look up all of the old schoolmates I could remember online. I found his picture there."

While he was unfamiliar with the muggle contraption known as the 'internet', even he knew that the answer sounded a little convenient. Rotti, however, seemed to buy it, nodding.

"Well! Any friend of Mag is a friend of mine. Do enjoy the evening!" He motioned to his henchwomen, and the three of them walked off. If they had suspicions of their own, they kept their mouths shut and their expressions blank.

Mag let out a slow sigh of relief, eyes sliding shut. "God."

"You really think he bought it?"

"I think so. All the same, we shouldn't let him see us together again after tonight."

"I can do that. I've no desire to see him after tonight either." Mag sighed and stared longingly up at him.

"What I wouldn't give to be rid of him." She'd mumbled it so quietly he had to think a moment to work out what she'd said. Once he did, he realized that it might be best to direct themselves away from any and all Largo-based territories, both physically and mentally.

"Is there someplace quieter we can move to?" Along with wanting to get away from the Largos, he'd already been jostled enough tonight to heighten his temper. If he didn't get away from said crowd soon, he'd become irreversibly unpleasant, and he would like to avoid offending the first woman he'd spoken on friendly terms with in years.

Mag motioned to him with a finger and set off through the crowd. For a celebrity of her status, she went widely unnoticed by those they passed, having to throw on a smile only once or twice to those who recognized her.

She led him to a narrow, concrete staircase that led down to a walkway that overlooked the ocean- though he couldn't honestly imagine a person who'd want to look at this particular view. The water ahead of them was littered with the crumbling remains of what once must have been a series of stone structures, most likely buildings. Really- You were only supposed to see ruins in ancient countries.

Mag went ahead of him, heels clicking on the steps and dress dragging slightly behind, forcing him to watch his step as he followed. It was only when she reached the walkway and looked back up towards him that she frowned.

"We're not going anywhere."

"What?"

"Not you." He stopped on the last stair and turned to look behind him. On the top step was one of Mag's bodyguards. He couldn't see her face, the lower half covered in a black cloth mask; he only assumed she was female because of the tall, white, Marie Antoinette-reminiscent wig she wore, as well as the long cloak that obscured her body from the neck down.

The guard didn't speak. Instead, she pumped the rifle in her arms and glared at him. He glared right back until Mag grabbed his shoulder and pulled him off the steps to stand next to her. "We're not going anywhere. Stay up there and watch from a distance if you like, but you're not eavesdropping in on our conversation."

For a moment, the guard didn't move. It was a silent battle of wills, and Mag seemed to be on the stronger side, even if her opponent had a gun and a license to shoot it. Eventually, the guard shuffled out of sight, though he had no doubt that she was somewhere nearby. He sniffed. "Is she a good shot?"

Mag gave a wry smile. "Oh yes. Ever had a chaperone like that on a date before?"

Date. Interesting choice of noun.

"I wouldn't know. I've never really been the dating type."

In retrospect, not the best statement on his part.

"How many women have you been with before?"

… Because she would have to ask that inevitable question. He took a slow, deep breath, torn between answering honestly and staying as far away from a certain subject as humanly possible for as long as humanly possible.

"Physically or emotionally?"

"Both." He sniffed.

"Never both. Two of the three were strictly physical." The two physical encounters with women in the past had been purely mechanical, purely for the sake of sex. He didn't dwell on them, and indeed they only served as evidence that he was no longer a virgin.

Mag stared at him with those large, icy blue eyes, and he looked away and leaned on the railing that overlooked the ocean, knowing without a doubt what she was going to ask next.

"And what about the one you were emotionally invested in?" He stared down at the waves and didn't respond for a minute or so.

"Nothing came of it. We fought and went our separate ways. She married. Had a child." He couldn't avoid the bitter tone that crept into his voice. He could almost feel the pity from Mag's stare. And he definitely felt her hand on his back a second later.

"Do you still see her?" His heart seemed to tighten sharply at this.

"She'll have been dead nine years ago this October." Her hand started to move up and down along his back.

"I'm sorry." He shrugged in a belated attempt to appear indifferent. Where had his strong veneer of neutrality gone? Mag had plowed through it like a rhino through decorative tissue paper (And somehow comparing a woman like her to a rhino seemed sacrilegious). And the scary thing was, he wasn't certain how he was supposed to feel about her ability to bring down that surface layer.

"And how many men have you been with?" Mag gave a wry laugh.

"That would be a resounding 'none'. I was blind before my contract with Rotti, and the only boys who were interested in me were the ones that thought they'd be able to get away with tricking me into grabbing parts of their anatomy without realizing what I was doing. Marni was always careful to keep them away."

"Marni?" Now it was Mag's turn to look away whilst trying to guard her emotions.

"An old friend." Ah- he remembered.

"Rotti's lover? The one that died?"

"Yes. In childbirth. Also nine years ago. Not with Rotti- She left him and married a man named Nathan Wallace." She folded her arms over her stomach and stared down at them, determined not to meet his eyes. "She was like a sister to me. I was supposed to be the godmother to her child, but… She- the baby, Shilo- died too. I haven't spoken to her husband, Nathan, in years." She shrugged. "Which means any old friends I ever had are gone now. Thanks to Rotti."

And he thought he was lonely. He wouldn't exactly call them friends, but at least his fellow Hogwarts Professors were… friendly. All Mag had were the Largos and any sympathetic seamstresses, assistants, secretaries or GenTerns- the ones that had the courage to speak to her, at any rate. And even then, what could they say when she was surrounded by Rotti and his men?

But here was another point of similarity, one that drew him to her; she too knew the keen sting of significant loss. Many others he'd met had known that sting as well, but Mag's personality, along with that fact, was what endeared her further to him.

"What do you think of me?" She asked curiously, tilting her head to the side as she stood next to him at the railing. The unspoken question seemed to be, Do you think I'm as bad as Rotti? Am I bad for working for him? She must not have seen him that night when she'd faced off with that reporter.

He shifted uncomfortably. He wasn't good with deep questions- probably because no one, save Dumbledore, bothered to ask him them. Should he go with all-out honesty, or should he maybe tone down exactly how fond of her he was becoming?

"I find you to be extremely attractive, intelligent and kind. I believe you judge yourself much too harshly to make up for a reality you're not certain on how to deal with. I think you're abusing yourself for the guilt you feel about your situation, and that whether you know it or not, no amount of punishment will be enough to satisfy that sense of guilt." He took a deep breath. "I also love it when you sing."

All out it is, then.

Mag had a strong suspicion that she was seeing a side of him that was rarely, if ever, displayed, and wondered just how deeply he buried it when around others. She stared at him with a sort of sad hope. "You mean that?"

His eyes narrowed. "Do I look like the sort that waxes poetic to women for the hell of it?" She laughed. "And what, if I may, do you think of me?"

Mag thought for a moment. "I think… That you are also attractive, intelligent… And quite a bit kinder than you let on. You have a tendency to get snippy when you think that someone's coming a little too close to your more sensitive side. I think you're very good at hiding what you really think and feel, and prefer to make sure that no one gets a good look at either of those things." She smiled. "I also love your dry sense of humor." He smirked.

They were very close. Their arms were pressing together.

He suddenly felt a surge of awkwardness, the kind he'd always had around pretty girls (Like the term gave her justice) that had never quite died.

"How old are you?"

For a moment, he cringed inwardly, realizing that he'd broken a major rule in dealing with women: Never ask their age. Mag, however, did not seem bothered by the question at all. Bearing in mind, every year she lived threatened by the Repoman was a memorable one, so maybe she had a different view on aging.

She smiled. "Tomorrow's my birthday. I'll be twenty-nine. You?"

"Thirty as of last January." He paused. "I'll drop in to celebrate with you, if you'd like." Mag almost glowed at that sentence. She opened her mouth to speak, but then, just as quickly, snapped it shut and turned her face away; but not before he saw a blush spreading over her cheeks.

"Hm?" He prompted her.

"I… It's just… No one's done that since Marni died. And we haven't even known each other that long." He sniffed and shrugged, trying to appear indifferent.

"I like you." He hazarded a quick look to his left and found himself stuck there, eyes trained on her face. She was still smiling.

"And I like you."

They were so, so close. Very close. Leaning towards each other. He could smell her hair. And then, then that complex of his kicked in with a vengeance, ruining the moment- Or so he thought. "Your guard is probably watching." He whispered. Mag smirked, settling her hands on his shoulders.

"Let her."

And they kissed.

It was the first enjoyable kiss he'd ever had. He'd never kissed Lily, never even came close. There hadn't been much kissing with the other two- recall; it'd been purely for the sex. He was careful to keep his hands on her back and stray no lower, though he did pull her closer as it deepened.

It was all a bit insane, really: He'd followed her around for two weeks, met her by chance in person in a graveyard, liked her immediately, went back to her apartment and talked, met up with her at a festival and now they were making out? This couldn't be right. More often than not, fate and luck had a habit of spitting in his eye and kicking him in the ass, so why was this going so well? Maybe he was only meant to have lucky days once every decade or so.

Of course, it would completely destroy the laws of the universe if that luck lasted.

"Mag! Where the fuck are you?"

They pulled apart sharply when they heard the screech. Looking around, they saw that no one had spotted them yet, but Mag gave a soft sigh-groan and let her head fall forward onto his shoulder.

"That would be Amber."

He fingered his wand in his jacket pocket. "I could wipe her memory. Make her forget why she's looking for you." His eyes were narrowed unpleasantly. Whether she knew it or not, he was serious. She swatted his arm gently and pulled back, straightening out her dress.

"Aren't there laws about hexing muggles?" He sniffed.

"No one would ever have to know." She smiled sadly.

"No thank you. Rotti would take it as a blaring alarm if his daughter ended up cursed on the one night that Blind Mag actually had a friend around." Mag started for the stairs. "Are you coming?" He shook his head.

"I think not. I have the feeling you'll be detained for the remainder of the evening." He tried to pretend he didn't see the disappointment in her eyes as he said that. For once, he actually knew how to rid someone of such a look. "What time would you like me to be at your apartment tomorrow?"

Mag broke into a wide, sincere smile, and he was suddenly pleased that he'd finally buckled to Dumbledore's nagging and taken a vacation.

...

Every night for the next three and a half weeks, he came to her apartment, and they talked. Sometimes they kissed. Sometimes they went a touch further than that, but never all the way. Mostly, they both privately reveled in the fact that they'd found a person to be physically and emotionally close to without feeling the instinctive urge to push them as far away as possible.

As their time together progressed, they started telling each other about the deeper, more sensitive issues; the kind they threw into a trunk, padlocked, drove to the nearest cliff and threw off.

Namely: Lily and Marni.

It was his last night in Sanitarium. In the initial phases of these two particular discussions, both participants knew the bare facts- Well, Mag knew a bit more than the 'bare' facts; He had never told anyone, save Dumbledore, that he'd been in love (his wording with Mag had been 'emotionally involved') with Lily.

Going in depth about Lily basically meant relating the dirtier details of how'd they'd met and why, exactly, they'd "gone their separate ways". He'd be lying if he'd claimed he wasn't nervous about elaborating on the precise event that had driven Lily away for good; This was the sort of story that garnered negative reactions.

But when he finally told Mag what he'd said, when he'd made the third biggest mistake he'd made thus far in his life, Mag merely stared at him with one of her more unreadable expressions and idly toyed with the fabric of her skirt (Though never breaking eye-contact with him).

"Why did you do that?" She inquired. And damn her, her tone was just as unreadable as her eyes. He'd just been starting to pride himself on being able to read her pretty well, and then she had to pull out that.

Knowing that he might, for once, not be able to manage an equally inscrutable expression, he kept his gaze locked on the coffee table in front of him, tracing the patterns on the wood with his eyes. "I don't know. Too many years in Slytherin House mixed with horrified embarrassment for the situation and how, exactly, I was 'rescued' from it- It's not a day I tend to linger on for too long."

It hurts too much.

The story only got worse after that: He'd joined up with the Death Eaters the next year through Bellatrix Black and Lucius Malfoy (Biggest mistake in life number two), and then, when he was twenty, unwittingly signed Lily's death warrant by overhearing and relating the details of Trelawney's prophecy to Voldemort (Winner of the Biggest Mistake Ever Made contest, hands down).

But to his relief (and shock) Mag was decidedly unaffected by this information. At least, as far as he could tell; she had an excellent poker face. "I'm sorry- Does this bother you at all? I just told you about the three most idiotically destructive things I've ever done, and you don't look concerned at all."

Mag drummed her fingers on her knee. "You made some mistakes. You've obviously learned from them, and you've most certainly paid dearly for making them. My heart aches for you, Severus, really." He stared at her for the longest time. She was sincere; and even though he hadn't expected any sarcasm from her, he was surprised that none was there at all. She really did sympathize.

Then came Mag's story about her and Marni. Mag gave a gentle shrug, having put up her guard a little stronger this time. "It's not as ugly as your story; Marni died a close friend, and we never had a falling out like yours and Lily's." It sounded so odd to hear her say Lily's name, to hear her acknowledge Lily's existence to him; he'd never spoken about Lily to anyone but Dumbledore before.

"I can, however, sympathize on another aspect." He waited for her to go on, but she didn't, instead picking up her glass and taking a sip of her drink. He thought she was pausing as she tried to piece together the rest of her story, but all she did was give him a little side glance before fixing her gaze on the window.

It clicked.

Or rather, it hit him like the hoof of a rampaging hippogriff.

"You and Marni…?" Mag shook her head.

"Me. Not Marni. We were never romantically involved, but I can't deny I wanted it." She met his eyes. "I watched her fall in love with Rotti, and hoped that she would eventually grow tired of him and be with me. Then she fell in love with Nathan and, as badly as it hurt to see her with him, I loved her- and him, for that matter- too much to wish them ill. Especially after Rotti." She shuddered.

He was still reeling from this information. "But you…" Mag's lips twitched upward spasmodically.

"Surprised? Obviously I'm not a lesbian-" She allowed herself a smirk that could be interpreted as lewd. "-but I'm not at all closed to the idea of a relationship with a woman."

He blinked, and she giggled at this new expression. Getting him to show emotion was a kick. "Does it bother you?" He shook his head a little more vigorously than was necessary.

"No." Honestly, he was trying to decide which he was leaning more towards: Arousal or disgust.

Mag made sure that she had that face he was wearing remembered thoroughly. She could replay it to him a while from now and irritate him. "Ten years ago, Marni left Rotti at the altar; he was furious. You had better believe that the tabloids were all over it. 'Head of GeneCo Snubbed By Future Bride', 'Rotti Largo, Savior, Dumped By Daring Dame'." Mag chuckled. "That one was my favorite."

"Remind me: Did you have your eyes then?"

"Yes. I'd had them for… Hm. Not long. A month, maybe? Definitely before Marni left Rotti. I don't think he would have hesitated to cancel the surgery if it had happened after the fact." Mag's face darkened. "A month later, he was fine. Completely forgiving. Said that Marni and Nathan were so sweet with one another he knew he'd get over his own pain."

"Did he?" Mag shrugged.

"I don't know. He doesn't talk about Marni, and I'm not stupid enough to bring it up. I'd much prefer that he wasn't associated with my memory of her at all, frankly." She paused to take another drink.

"And Marni died a year later?" Mag tapped her finger on the side of her glass.

"Roughly. She married Nathan, and a month later she told me she was pregnant. Roughly nine months later…" Mag paused, eyes misting slightly. "… She died. Nathan said that she'd been sick, and one morning she just…" Her eyes darkened with despondence as she was dragged back to those unbearable times.

Really, maybe they should have covered all of this at an earlier time; there were leaving this at a rather depressing note, until he (hopefully) came back next summer for another visit. In the meantime, they'd have to make do with letters.

"I'll be leaving tomorrow."
She'd known that because she'd asked, about a week and a half previously, about when exactly it was that he would be required to return to Britain. He would spend the rest of August at the castle, getting ready for the new term and settling back into the quiet of summer at Hogwarts before the brats arrived.

He leaned over and kissed her, hoping to distract and maybe bring her around to a slightly more cheerful frame of mind. She smiled into it and curled her arms around his neck, pulling him down to lie half on top of her.

He shivered. In his mind, he had been constantly making comparisons with Lily, wondering if it would have been this nice to kiss her, to hold her, to be able to express his love for her physically; but now he found that the automatic comparisons were dying down. Lily was coming to mind less and less often when he got that familiar pang of extreme affection on his chest.

He sighed. Damn it all, he just wasn't good with sentiment.

"Perhaps," He mumbled after pulling back, "I should be getting back to the hotel." Mag's expression was collected, but he could see a twinkle of unmistakable mischief in her eyes.

"You needn't go so quickly. I'd like to give you a proper… Sending off, so to speak." He raised an eyebrow at this, but she offered no verbal explanation.

Instead, she slid out from under him, stood up, strode over to her bedroom door and pushed it open. She stood in the doorway and tilted her head to the side.

Well?

He stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. Then, slowly, he rose from his seat and followed her inside.
And what a way to say goodbye it was.

...

You may have noticed a slight detail change in this chapter: This story takes place in 2000, one year before Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I bumped the story line ahead by ten years: Harry was born in 1990, which would mean that Snape would have been born in 1970 (Along with Lily and James).