Victoria awoke to find herself carefully tucked into the sheets of an infirmary cot that smelled like Severus Snape. She sat up, looking around.

"Good morning," said the formerly smooth voice of Severus Snape from the doorway. "I've just spoken with Minerva. I'll be reclaiming my place as Potions Master in the fall. Draco is taking the Dark Arts job on Potter's recommendation. And since the hospital wing is back to a more manageable condition, Poppy would like it back. I was hoping to move you into my home today, if that is agreeable."

"Oh," she muttered sleepily. "I'll have to pick up a few things at St. Mungo's, but that's fine."

"Excellent," he croaked softly. "We can use Minerva's Floo."

He helped her to her feet, allowed her to straighten her robes, and led her to the Head's study. Professor McGonagall wasn't there, but they used her fireplace to go to the St. Mungo's Floo System. Victoria led the way to the staff lockers.

"Oh, Toria, darling!" shrieked a familiar voice. "I looked for you at the funeral but Georgie said you weren't going!"

"Good morning, Sophie, dear," sighed Victoria. "It's lovely to see you as well. You remember Professor Snape, don't you? Severus, I think you may recall Sophie Kirby? She is another former student and a spy in the war, like you."

"Oh, Toria, darling," laughed the petite brunette. "You glorify my work! Sleeping with a few people for information to pass off through the Weasley twins–"

"Ah," croaked Severus. "That would by why Yaxley's plans never worked out. You are a Healer, Miss Kirby?"

"One more year!" she said with a proud nod, her short espresso hair bouncing around her head. "What can we do for you, Professor?"

"Nothing, Sophie," said Victoria quickly, inexplicably nervous as to her old friend's intentions with the war hero. "We're just picking up my things. I've found a place to stay. Tell the girls I said hello as I came through, dear."

Victoria grabbed a single rucksack out of the locker below Sophie's, kissed her friend on the cheek, and allowed Severus to lead her out to the Apparition point in the lobby. On their turn he croaked, "Hold tight," and when she assured him she had a firm grip, he turned, giving her the familiar sensation of being squeezed through a pipe as she zoomed through space.

They landed in an unattractive Muggle neighborhood up north. Not letting go of her hand and his other hand holding his wand underneath his robes, he led her to an old-fashioned house at the end of the street. Once inside, Severus dropped her hand and told her to stay put while he went to check the house.

There were no pictures in the foyer, or friendly welcome mats or even inviting hat stands. It was empty, lonely, and cold, with no tangible signs of habitation. Victoria could feel the hair on her arms stand on end.

"Toria?" she heard Severus calling from the staircase. "I think everything's fine. Are you hungry?"

She nodded, suddenly realizing how long it had been since she had last eaten. Severus came back down the stairs and led her to the kitchen.

"I had some of the house elves deliver some food here while you were asleep," he said, "so we should be fine for a while. Would you like tea or wine?"

Victoria blinked at him. Wine so early in the day?

"Tea, please," she said softly, feeling incredibly uncomfortable suddenly. She felt as though she was intruding on her former professor's private domain, where she was sure to learn to see him in a light she might not be altogether comfortable with, and the thought terrified her. Perhaps accepting his invitation was a bad idea in hindsight, but it was too late to turn back now. He would be insulted if she did.

"I suppose the housing market will be overfull of demand at first," she mused as he handed her a cup of tea. "I promise, though, as soon as I am able I will be out of your hair, so to speak."

Perhaps Victoria imagined a flicker of some unknown emotion making its way across Severus's face at the word "hair", and she probably had. After all, who would have a reaction to such a typical word? It was a silly thought. Still, he shook his head vehemently as he sat down across from her.

"Nonsense, you're staying here as long as you'd like. It really would be best if you stayed until we have a potion for your sleeping problems, but if you truly don't want to be here you can leave. It would be far more convenient if you stayed, I won't deny, but I wouldn't want you to feel uncomfortable."

Did she feel uncomfortable? Oh, yes, incredibly so. But he didn't need to know that.

"Then I'll stay," she said bravely, thinking her Gryffindor friends would be so proud. After all, he couldn't be as bad as they had all imagined. He had just given her tea that didn't seem to be laced with poison. She was, after all, still alive. Perhaps she could come to enjoy his company.

The evening passed agreeably. They had tea, he made dinner, and they sat in the study reading. He found her some books on Charms theory in Healing that were a bit outdated, but interesting nonetheless. He used the time to do research on possible substitutes for valerian roots in sleeping draughts. When she began to yawn quite a bit, he led her up to a room he had cleaned up for her stay that didn't appear to have been lived in in quite a while, but longer than the rest of the house.

It was hard to sleep that night. Every time she closed her eyes, Victoria saw the cold, unmoving face of Fred staring up at her as she had seen in when the battle was over, when George and Sophie asked her to come down to help with the injured and dying. Those blue eyes, those laughing blue eyes, dead, empty, cold. Nowhere in them could she find the love she had seen in them so often. Was there anything she could have done? If she had gone with him when he asked, gone into hiding, could she have found a way to keep him from fighting? To protect him from the explosion that had been his death?

And Tien, the sweet, kind little Vietnamese girl…her laughing eyes had been extinguished; none of the tricky light in them was to be seen. Her face had not been cold and frozen in laughter. It had been contorted with anguish, a large scar across her left cheek, a gash that went straight through to her mouth, which had been full of congealed blood. Even Sophie had cried at that.

Getting out of bed, dizzy with fear and nausea, Victoria made her way downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water, for anything to get those pictures out of her head, the haunting pictures of the people she had known and loved in their final, bloody hours. How easily that could have been Sophie, Cora, Vi, Victoria herself even?

And then there had been Severus. Throat ripped out by a snake, left to bleed to death by the very ones he had protected so long…. All alone in that decrepit old shack, not a friend in the world…. Would that be how Victoria might have met her own death? She had played both sides so long she wondered who would have thought to look for her if it had been her lying on that shack floor, who might have bothered to cry at her death. The thought made her feel even sicker.

"Toria?" said a now-familiar voice from behind her. "Is everything all right? It is rather late."

She summoned all of her inner strength and attempted to piece together a smile as Severus lit his wand between them.

"Just having a hard time sleeping, thought I'd come and have something to drink."

"Let me take care of that," he said softly. "You have a seat."

He must have seen her shaking. She acquiesced and sat, fighting a losing battle against the tears that were forming rapidly in her eyes, threatening to fall.

"What were you thinking of, if you don't mind me asking?" he whispered, setting glass of water in front of her.

She bit her lip. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't. Everything was fine. She wouldn't let him see her like this.

"It's all right, you know," he croaked, "to be whoever you need to be with me. It's safe to let go here. There's no one to impress, nothing to hide. For, everything you've seen, everything you've thought, everything you've done... I've seen, thought, and done much worse."

As a single tear fell down her cheek, she realized he was right. There was no point in fighting anymore, not around him, not in this place. She had come here to heal, to rebuild herself after the war. To do so, she would need to strip herself down to the main part of the problem. Holding back wouldn't fix anything. Suddenly, the tears were coming down like a flood and she told him of all the things she had seen, all the images that had crossed her mind.

He listened quietly, not interrupting her feverish retelling, merely watching her with his glittering black eyes and rested his large, rough hand gently on her thin arm.

"I wish I could say it will get easier," he said softly, "but I imagine it will only get worse first. I can, however, promise to be here if you ever need anything, and that includes someone to talk to in the middle of the night when the memories are at their worst."

"Thank you, Severus," she whispered, unsure of what else she could say.

They sat in silence for several minutes before he said softly, "Would you like me to escort you back to your room?"

She nodded and he stood beside her, holding out his arm for her to help herself to her feet with. The journey back up to her room was a blur, but she knew his warm frame helped her to weakly maneuver the path, helping her along every step of the way.

/-/

Severus tucked the girl into bed, seeing that she was completely exhausted and knowing she would not wake up in the night. He wanted so badly to touch her cheek, to watch her sleep, but if he stayed only a little while he would not be able to make himself leave, and what would she think when she found him watching her come morning? It simply wouldn't do.

So he made his way downstairs, searching the cupboards for something, anything, to take his mind off the angel sleeping in his childhood room upstairs. That bed where he had spent so many nights, wishing his father was dead, pretending to be asleep in hopes that if that man looked in he would leave him be, dreaming about Lily Evans….

But that was before the war, either war. That was before his father strangled his mother and shot himself in a drunken rage, before Voldemort killed Lily, before Severus sold his soul to Dumbledore out of love of her memory. That little boy didn't exist anymore. Lily Evans was dead, her son was safe, Dumbledore was dead…. Severus was free.

But free to do what? He would teach, as he always had. He would continue to brew potions. Potions had been one of her favorite subjects. But all of his spare time had been devoted to serving two masters and watching out for the safety of his students… three in particular who didn't seem to be able to watch out for themselves. Now what would he do?

There was a beautiful young woman in his bedroom, or rather, the bedroom he had once lived in. Not slept in, lived in. He had spent almost all of his childhood in that room or in the park, watching Lily Evans.

It was amazing how much Victoria Lane resembled her. For a moment, as he was tucking her into bed, he had a memory of standing over a fourteen-year-old Lily, that night in August when she had talked him into sleeping under the stars together, in the park, the day they got their Hogwarts letters.

Ah, there it was, the firewhiskey. He didn't drink the stuff regularly. It wasn't pleasant to taste and certainly did a number on one's reflexes, but he was alone, the war was over, and all he needed was to forget her. Her? Who?

Lily. He needed to forget Lily. Maybe...but….

Victoria. He needed to forget her as well.

So much forgetting to do. He'd better get started.

He pulled a glass out of a nearby cupboard and filled it halfway. He lifted it to eye level, gazing at the amber liquid with an expression that might have suggested curiosity, had anyone been around to see it. Before he had time to think about what his expression might have suggested about his state of mind, he lifted the rim to his lips and downed the drink in one.

One.

He poured another.

Lily had hated drinking. She used to complain about those silly Marauders, as they called themselves, and how they managed to get the whole of Gryffindor drunk after Quidditch matches, even ones James Potter didn't play in. She never read too much into why they had done it, but Severus knew: James Potter was trying to get her drunk and Sirius Black was trying to get everything else in a skirt drunk. It worked for Black, but Potter probably wondered for quite a while why it wasn't working for him. He wouldn't, of course, have been observant enough to notice that Lily didn't drink. But she married him anyway and it got her killed. Foolish girl.

Two.

He poured another.

He remembered an incident, years ago…. How many years? Oh, it didn't matter now, but years ago, when a group of students, mainly Gryffindor, were caught wandering the halls late at night, drinking and incredibly underage…. Third year? Fourth? Third, he thought. Victoria had been among them, but she had been sober. The Weasley twins had been involved; he thought they may have orchestrated the whole thing.

May have. Ha, of course they had. They lived to orchestrate more paperwork for Severus.

Severus had been called, but not because of the Weasley twins. Two of his own House had been involved and he made sure that Miss Hampson and Miss MacCarrick were properly disgusted with their behavior by the time he was through with them.

Three.

He poured another.

Wasn't he supposed to be forgetting something? He had forgotten. Something…. No, no, someone. He was supposed to be forgetting someone.

Lily. That's who he was forgetting. Or rather, who he was supposed to be forgetting. Her beautiful auburn hair: that gorgeous dark red. Those eyes…those green eyes…. He had thought he was going to die thinking of her, looking into the eyes that so resembled hers, her son's eyes. What did it matter that it hadn't really been her? They were still her eyes. Why couldn't he have just been allowed to die with that one last sight?

Four.

He poured another.

Victoria. She had saved him; she had been the reason he couldn't have died with that one last sight. Well, her and the Weasley, but that was irrelevant.

And the first sight when he had woken up was her eyes - so very much like Lily's - and in his delirium, identical. Now that the delirium was past he could see the differences. They were subtle, but to an eye as well attuned to these matters as his, an eye with so much vested interest, they were worlds apart.

Five.

He poured another.

Worlds apart…. That wasn't to say that Victoria wasn't just as beautiful as Lily Evans. She was truly a wondrous creature, perhaps even more beautiful…. No. No.

Nobody was more beautiful than Lily. Even if it were true he couldn't allow himself to think such things. He had made a promise.

Six.

He poured another.

Seven.

He poured another.

Promise…to whom? He never promised Lily a thing while alive, as he should have done. She wouldn't have hated him so much. Of course he thought of doing so only after she was already dead.

No, he had promised Dumbledore. Dumbledore, who was also dead. Dumbledore who had used him, Dumbledore who had forced him to do what he didn't want to, for that bloody Greater Good. But he was dead, and Severus was beholden to none.

Eight.

He poured another.

Beholden to none.

Nine.

He poured another.

He wondered vaguely how Victoria would find him in the morning. Would he make it back to his room, or would he accidentally go to hers? Would he not even make it to the stairs, perhaps, and pass out somewhere on the first floor? She would probably be frightened with the state he would be in, perhaps panic. If she cared about him at all.

That would be a change, someone caring about him. Someone wanting to make sure he was okay. That wouldn't be a familiar thing at all. His soul…. Dumbledore was dead…. What sort of state was his soul in now? She wouldn't want him anyway.

Who? Who was he talking about? Lily? Victoria?

Did it matter?

Ten.

And he poured another…another…another…another…and he poured, and poured, and poured….

And eventually, somewhere in his path to forgetting (what was he forgetting?), he slid off the stool, his face feeling the welcome coolness of the hard tile floor, and the world faded to black.

A/N: Sorry about my horrific lack of updating. Midterms and all that. I had a few minutes before breakfast and should have been working on French, but I got this idea and had to write it out for you guys. Read and review and I'll try so hard to make the next update quicker! BTW, if you're looking for something else to read, might I suggest Maybe I Know? It's a Sirius Black/OC fic, dual POV co-written by myself and the lovely xyellowconverse. It's on her profile, so go and check it out!

-C