Shadow-Walking (1/?)
::Disclaimer:: I only own Summer Bailey and Arlé Reed and all of their families... A large apology goes out to JKR, wherever she is, for tormenting her characters in this fanfic (but if I were her I wouldn't be complaining too much: after all, how many of us have fans writing fiction with our characters?) And the cheesy eggs belong to my friend, Jess, for whom this side story was created!
::Spoilers:: SS/PS, CoS, PoA, GoF, "Harry Potter, the Phoenix, and the Snake" (a story of my own creation)
::A/N:: This is going to be a previously undetermined amount of chapters about my new favorite character, Snape, and Summer Bailey, a character of my own creation. This story will be enhanced and will enhance the story "Harry Potter, the Phoenix, and the Snake", again of my own creation, but it is not essential to read that story to understand this one. Fortunately, I think all of you reading this are Harry Potter fans and would not turn down the thought of reading something about Harry Potter, even if it is one of my scatterbrained works. This begins the summer after GoF, and will finish wherever I want it to... I'll try not to repeat many scenes for those of you that are actually reading my other story. I'm sure I've bored you beyond belief with this Author's note so without further ado, Shadow-walking.
::Chapter One::
He dropped a pile of books onto his desk and cursed out loud as a fragile glass container toppled off the desk and shattered on the floor.
"Reparo," he hissed, and the glass shards pulled back together. Another deft twitch of his wand and the container was back on the desk.
Severus was already in a bad mood—Dumbledore was insisting on questioning the Dark Mark and whether he had felt its pull recently, and he had been rather cheeky with the Headmaster. As much as he appreciated all that Dumbledore did for him, there was a point when he went too far. And Severus knew he had stepped across the boundary quite some time ago, when he had assumed that Severus needed help to control the Mark's urges after almost fifteen years of dormancy.
He was trying to help but wasn't getting very far... And Snape's patience was wearing thin.
He sighed gustily and focused on the large collection of books in search for a potion he had set his mind on locating and making.
He was searching for a potion that could control the nearly over-powering urges to return to his Master; as much as he would like to put the Mark and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named behind him, some things just didn't occur that way. Its urges were becoming quite a hassle, and he could only guess as to how strong they would be by the time the students returned to Hogwarts. He was not afraid of it but was wary of what it might do at any given moment when he was unprepared. And although he understood that he would have to return to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named eventually, he wanted to have something to fall back on. Just in case...
His mind wandered, quite of its own volition, to the events of the night before. She was an "Elemental," as she had put it, and he had decided that she was a fire-Elemental, a "pyr-psychic." But he had no proof and he was not about to go up to her and ask straight out if she were so.
Her past, too, seemed dark and shadowy. He was under the impression that private tutoring after Durmstrang meant that she had some talent that needed much mastery and command. Her pyr-psyche, if it was indeed hers, was the most challenging of all the Elementals to control.
He shifted the books on the desk absently, frustrated that he couldn't seem to focus on them, and the crashing of glass brought his mind back to the present. He had bumped the same beaker he had broken not five minutes earlier, and he growled out the spell to put it back together.
He settled back to his task with a firmer mind and was not distracted again until his stomach broke his solitude, and then went down for breakfast.
* * *
She woke slowly, her body protesting the changed time schedule. She was, as the Muggles termed it, a night owl, going to sleep at three in the morning and waking up around noontime.
Sneaking a glance at the clock beside her bed told her that the time was 9:30. She hadn't been up this early since the last time she had pulled an all-nighter... She smiled at the memory and dreamily rose from the bed, determined not to fall back to sleep.
She could remember fondly her all night studying sprees at Durmstrang, even though she had only been fourteen at the time. Durmstrang was highly competitive, and because she was one of the few girls there, she had to study extremely hard to stay there.
Her mind drifted back, oddly enough, to the first time she had gone to the Divinations class at Durmstrang. It hadn't been called Divinations, but it still taught the basic concepts of divination. The purpose of the class was solely to sort out those that were truly gifted in the Inner Eye, and it was only mandatory to take it for a half-year course. The teacher had looked her in the eye once--and apparently once was more than enough for her. Many true psychics found the turmoil within the mind of an Elemental too much for their Inner Eye. Even though Merlin, a great psychic, had had a few friends that were Elementals, they had separated as the years went past and their skills had grown apart.
She dressed quickly and stopped before going out the door to tame her hair in the mirror. She smoothed down her outfit, slowly revolving for a final inspection. She knew that she wasn't beautiful, but she wasn't ugly either, the main factor in her beauty her deep eyes and long lashes. She might have had any man she had wanted – except for the slight glow within her eyes, a tell-tale sign of being an Elemental. Most people thought that there was much Dark Arts in the Elemental's control of nature, a common misconception.
She could remember well the day she had first discovered her Elemental abilities. Her mother had been so surprised when she had gotten an owl home, telling how her daughter had nearly burned down the classroom. Professor Karkaroff, her Transfiguration professor, had been so pleased at her unexpected talent, explaining wildly that she was Durmstrang's first Elemental. Fortunately, she hadn't injured anyone with it, but the threat of losing all self control to the fire was overpowering at times.
Despite all of the bravado and fanfare surrounding her psyche, she had only a small amount of psyche in her blood. Summer could only imagine how a pure pyr-pysche lived; torn between sating the desire to burn and controlling that despire. Fortunately, true Elementals were extremely rare, and Fire Elementals the rarest of all Elementals.
She found it odd that all of the teachers had taken to her so well. She had heard a bit about the previous takers for her position; one had been allied with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. The one after him had been a complete idiot, using the power of the Memory charm, probably the only charm he could perform correctly, to create a false impression of his bravery. One had been a werewolf, and although he had been a great teacher, he was eventually hoisted out of the position because of the parents anger at having a werewolf in the school. And the most recent one had been a Death Eater, hiding within the body of another by drinking Polyjuice Potion.
She stopped her reminiscence and went down to the Great Hall, determined not to be taken away from this job as all of the others had been. She actually wanted to be here, and was happy to be teaching.
McGonogall watched her intently as she walked into the large hall, gazing up at the clear morning sky on the ceiling. Summer was immediately self-conscious and coughed irritably into her hand. She almost regretted telling that cooty old Trelawney that she was an Elemental.
Almost. The look on her face was well worth the troubles it had caused, and it saved Summer from an awkward situation later.
She sat down in the same spot as she had last night, and was delighted to see that several of the teachers around her were actually quite chatty. As much as she hated gossip, she truly loved to hold conversations. A dishful of food magically appeared before her, as it had last night, and she eyed it appreciatively.
A tall, rail-thin woman with bright eyes and cropped, spiky hair smiled at her response to the food here. "I've never seen such good food for breakfast," Bailey said in response to the gentle question this teacher's eyes seemed to ask. "Actually, I'm not much of a morning person at all; I usually wake up just in time for lunch."
"Hmm," the professor said in response, eyes atwinkle, "I know what you mean. I've had my share of long nights. Why, back in my fifth year here, I got a bludger in the nose and had to spend a sleepless night in the Infirmary... Quite dreadful, I might add."
"Do you play Quidditch?" Summer asked.
"Yes," she grinned back. "Name's Hooch, Robin Hooch."
"Summer Bailey, but I'm sure you already knew that."
"Do you play Quidditch at all?" Hooch asked and then took a bite out of her toast with marmalade.
"I did, actually. I played a Beater for one of Durmstrang's House teams."
"Really?" Her eyes lit up as if finding a soul mate. "Not a lot of the other professors have ever played the sport; they all think it's too dangerous."
"Well, it is," Summer pointed out, "But it's well worth the danger for the thrill of flying."
"Indeed it is," Hooch responded merrily, raising her glass of pumpkin juice to Summer appreciatively. Their glasses clinked together and Summer had to fight a smile while she sipped from her goblet.
After almost a quarter of an hour of comparing passes, moves, and feints, Hooch glanced down at her watch and tutted in dismay.
"I'm sorry dear," she began, "But I promised I'd help Sprout with her Greenhouses... You know how she is about promptness... So I'll catch up with you later." She eyed Summer and then her eyes seemed to travel up above Summer's head, and then she shot from her seat, heels clicking on the floor as she went.
"Making friends, I see," a cold voice said drearily from behind her. She spun in her seat and was startled to see Snape looking across at her, inches away from her face. He slid into the chair beside her and scrambled eggs appeared in his plate. His goblet was filled with a deep red wine, and the flavor wafting from it made her mouth water.
"I make better friends here than I did at Durmstrang," she said back, making him pause midsip and look at her curiously. He was probably wondering why she was bringing up Durmstrang; and inside she was wondering too...
"Is that because you're an Elemental, or because you've matured over the years?" The seriousness of his response unbalanced her slightly.
"A bit of both, I guess. I hope its because people have changed their opinions on Elementals," she added.
"Could it be the fact that more Elementals are surfacing now than ever before? I've heard that there are nineteen in Europe alone."
"Perhaps. But there's six or seven water Elementals alone," she stated and took a sip of her pumpkin juice, trying not to wince at the bitterness when compared to the wafting smell from his wine glass.
Her eyes traveled over to his goblet of their own volition.
He saw her eyes flick to his glass and quickly conjured up a crystal goblet of his wine for her. She looked at him with one eyebrow cocked, not sure why he was being so nice.
He misinterpreted her movement as wondering why he drank wine instead of pumpkin juice; she wondered rather angrily if he had deliberately misconstrued her meaning. "I don't prefer pumpkin juice at all; I drink wine whenever I can." He motioned to her goblet and took another sip from his own.
She brought the glass to her lips and took a cautious sip—and was immediately glad she had only taken a sip. The flavor was so strong, so sweet, that she could barely swallow it.. This wine was nothing like the wine from the previous night. She wondered if this was from his private stash: if so, she was honored.
"What type is this?" She asked holding it up at eye level to see the multi-colored sparkles through the crystal side of the goblet. She noticed as well that he had a greyish goblet not at all like hers; it looked to be made of pewter, and glancing up and down the table she noted that all of the other goblets were made from pewter.
"It is a batch a friend of mine made for me. He calls it 'Revenwyne.'"
So it was from a private stash...
"It's very good," she supplied, taking a larger sip. "What's so different about it; did he ferment it differently?"
"He let it sit for ten years. Although why he would let it sit for that long when he could just as easily aged it magically, I'll never know."
His eyes darted along her arms briefly, as if searching for something. She watched his dark eyes flick up towards her temples, and she understood what he was looking for.
"You could ask about it, you know," she said with a smile, and he looked up at her eyes again.
"What type of Elemental are you?"
"Fire," she responded smugly.
"The rarest of all Elementals," he stated amiably, but behind his easy visage things were clicking together. His eyes darted down to her left forearm as if trying to see through the sleeve, and then removed his eyes.
"How do you know so much about Elementals?"
"I've been bred to know."
"Are you one?" She asked taking a sip of her wine.
"No, although my mother was a water elemental."
"Full or half?"
"Pardon?"
"Was your mother full-psyche or half-psyche?"
"Ah. More along the lines of quarter." He tightened up at this point, something about the thought of his mother bringing back memories.
"Are there any students you should forewarn me about?" She asked, steering the conversation onto safer subjects. She took another bite of her eggs and decided that she liked them with cheese.
"Oh yes," he responded, a wicked grin touching his lips. "If you've got Longbottom in your class make sure you know the countercurse to everything you might be studying. He's a Gryffindor--although why he was sorted into that House I'll never understand. He is the shyest, clumsiest boy that Hogwarts has ever seen.
"And then there's Potter." He spat the name like it was the killing curse.
"Is this Harry Potter we're speaking of?" She asked.
"The very same," he agreed, grimacing as he took a sip of wine. She had a feeling that the grimace was reserved for the Potter boy.
"And what has he done?"
"Everything from destroying the Dark Lord to uncontrollably bringing him back to power."
Her glass was halfway to her mouth when he finished saying this, and it slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor, narrowly missing her leg. Silence slid across the table like a cloud across the sun, eclipsing the conversations with some undetermined silence.
Snape reached out his wand and snapped, "Reparo totalus." The wine glass reformed on the table as if someone had recorded it breaking and then played the recording backward. The wine floated up into the cup almost lazily, and Snape turned his dark eyes on her once more.
"Did you just say that... the Dark Lord is back?" she whispered, eyes wide.
"I did." Snape appeared more than concerned at this point--alarmed was a better adjective to describe him at the moment.
"Excuse me," she said through a tight throat and swept from the hall, silence and stares following her out.
::Please review!::
::Disclaimer:: I only own Summer Bailey and Arlé Reed and all of their families... A large apology goes out to JKR, wherever she is, for tormenting her characters in this fanfic (but if I were her I wouldn't be complaining too much: after all, how many of us have fans writing fiction with our characters?) And the cheesy eggs belong to my friend, Jess, for whom this side story was created!
::Spoilers:: SS/PS, CoS, PoA, GoF, "Harry Potter, the Phoenix, and the Snake" (a story of my own creation)
::A/N:: This is going to be a previously undetermined amount of chapters about my new favorite character, Snape, and Summer Bailey, a character of my own creation. This story will be enhanced and will enhance the story "Harry Potter, the Phoenix, and the Snake", again of my own creation, but it is not essential to read that story to understand this one. Fortunately, I think all of you reading this are Harry Potter fans and would not turn down the thought of reading something about Harry Potter, even if it is one of my scatterbrained works. This begins the summer after GoF, and will finish wherever I want it to... I'll try not to repeat many scenes for those of you that are actually reading my other story. I'm sure I've bored you beyond belief with this Author's note so without further ado, Shadow-walking.
::Chapter One::
He dropped a pile of books onto his desk and cursed out loud as a fragile glass container toppled off the desk and shattered on the floor.
"Reparo," he hissed, and the glass shards pulled back together. Another deft twitch of his wand and the container was back on the desk.
Severus was already in a bad mood—Dumbledore was insisting on questioning the Dark Mark and whether he had felt its pull recently, and he had been rather cheeky with the Headmaster. As much as he appreciated all that Dumbledore did for him, there was a point when he went too far. And Severus knew he had stepped across the boundary quite some time ago, when he had assumed that Severus needed help to control the Mark's urges after almost fifteen years of dormancy.
He was trying to help but wasn't getting very far... And Snape's patience was wearing thin.
He sighed gustily and focused on the large collection of books in search for a potion he had set his mind on locating and making.
He was searching for a potion that could control the nearly over-powering urges to return to his Master; as much as he would like to put the Mark and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named behind him, some things just didn't occur that way. Its urges were becoming quite a hassle, and he could only guess as to how strong they would be by the time the students returned to Hogwarts. He was not afraid of it but was wary of what it might do at any given moment when he was unprepared. And although he understood that he would have to return to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named eventually, he wanted to have something to fall back on. Just in case...
His mind wandered, quite of its own volition, to the events of the night before. She was an "Elemental," as she had put it, and he had decided that she was a fire-Elemental, a "pyr-psychic." But he had no proof and he was not about to go up to her and ask straight out if she were so.
Her past, too, seemed dark and shadowy. He was under the impression that private tutoring after Durmstrang meant that she had some talent that needed much mastery and command. Her pyr-psyche, if it was indeed hers, was the most challenging of all the Elementals to control.
He shifted the books on the desk absently, frustrated that he couldn't seem to focus on them, and the crashing of glass brought his mind back to the present. He had bumped the same beaker he had broken not five minutes earlier, and he growled out the spell to put it back together.
He settled back to his task with a firmer mind and was not distracted again until his stomach broke his solitude, and then went down for breakfast.
* * *
She woke slowly, her body protesting the changed time schedule. She was, as the Muggles termed it, a night owl, going to sleep at three in the morning and waking up around noontime.
Sneaking a glance at the clock beside her bed told her that the time was 9:30. She hadn't been up this early since the last time she had pulled an all-nighter... She smiled at the memory and dreamily rose from the bed, determined not to fall back to sleep.
She could remember fondly her all night studying sprees at Durmstrang, even though she had only been fourteen at the time. Durmstrang was highly competitive, and because she was one of the few girls there, she had to study extremely hard to stay there.
Her mind drifted back, oddly enough, to the first time she had gone to the Divinations class at Durmstrang. It hadn't been called Divinations, but it still taught the basic concepts of divination. The purpose of the class was solely to sort out those that were truly gifted in the Inner Eye, and it was only mandatory to take it for a half-year course. The teacher had looked her in the eye once--and apparently once was more than enough for her. Many true psychics found the turmoil within the mind of an Elemental too much for their Inner Eye. Even though Merlin, a great psychic, had had a few friends that were Elementals, they had separated as the years went past and their skills had grown apart.
She dressed quickly and stopped before going out the door to tame her hair in the mirror. She smoothed down her outfit, slowly revolving for a final inspection. She knew that she wasn't beautiful, but she wasn't ugly either, the main factor in her beauty her deep eyes and long lashes. She might have had any man she had wanted – except for the slight glow within her eyes, a tell-tale sign of being an Elemental. Most people thought that there was much Dark Arts in the Elemental's control of nature, a common misconception.
She could remember well the day she had first discovered her Elemental abilities. Her mother had been so surprised when she had gotten an owl home, telling how her daughter had nearly burned down the classroom. Professor Karkaroff, her Transfiguration professor, had been so pleased at her unexpected talent, explaining wildly that she was Durmstrang's first Elemental. Fortunately, she hadn't injured anyone with it, but the threat of losing all self control to the fire was overpowering at times.
Despite all of the bravado and fanfare surrounding her psyche, she had only a small amount of psyche in her blood. Summer could only imagine how a pure pyr-pysche lived; torn between sating the desire to burn and controlling that despire. Fortunately, true Elementals were extremely rare, and Fire Elementals the rarest of all Elementals.
She found it odd that all of the teachers had taken to her so well. She had heard a bit about the previous takers for her position; one had been allied with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. The one after him had been a complete idiot, using the power of the Memory charm, probably the only charm he could perform correctly, to create a false impression of his bravery. One had been a werewolf, and although he had been a great teacher, he was eventually hoisted out of the position because of the parents anger at having a werewolf in the school. And the most recent one had been a Death Eater, hiding within the body of another by drinking Polyjuice Potion.
She stopped her reminiscence and went down to the Great Hall, determined not to be taken away from this job as all of the others had been. She actually wanted to be here, and was happy to be teaching.
McGonogall watched her intently as she walked into the large hall, gazing up at the clear morning sky on the ceiling. Summer was immediately self-conscious and coughed irritably into her hand. She almost regretted telling that cooty old Trelawney that she was an Elemental.
Almost. The look on her face was well worth the troubles it had caused, and it saved Summer from an awkward situation later.
She sat down in the same spot as she had last night, and was delighted to see that several of the teachers around her were actually quite chatty. As much as she hated gossip, she truly loved to hold conversations. A dishful of food magically appeared before her, as it had last night, and she eyed it appreciatively.
A tall, rail-thin woman with bright eyes and cropped, spiky hair smiled at her response to the food here. "I've never seen such good food for breakfast," Bailey said in response to the gentle question this teacher's eyes seemed to ask. "Actually, I'm not much of a morning person at all; I usually wake up just in time for lunch."
"Hmm," the professor said in response, eyes atwinkle, "I know what you mean. I've had my share of long nights. Why, back in my fifth year here, I got a bludger in the nose and had to spend a sleepless night in the Infirmary... Quite dreadful, I might add."
"Do you play Quidditch?" Summer asked.
"Yes," she grinned back. "Name's Hooch, Robin Hooch."
"Summer Bailey, but I'm sure you already knew that."
"Do you play Quidditch at all?" Hooch asked and then took a bite out of her toast with marmalade.
"I did, actually. I played a Beater for one of Durmstrang's House teams."
"Really?" Her eyes lit up as if finding a soul mate. "Not a lot of the other professors have ever played the sport; they all think it's too dangerous."
"Well, it is," Summer pointed out, "But it's well worth the danger for the thrill of flying."
"Indeed it is," Hooch responded merrily, raising her glass of pumpkin juice to Summer appreciatively. Their glasses clinked together and Summer had to fight a smile while she sipped from her goblet.
After almost a quarter of an hour of comparing passes, moves, and feints, Hooch glanced down at her watch and tutted in dismay.
"I'm sorry dear," she began, "But I promised I'd help Sprout with her Greenhouses... You know how she is about promptness... So I'll catch up with you later." She eyed Summer and then her eyes seemed to travel up above Summer's head, and then she shot from her seat, heels clicking on the floor as she went.
"Making friends, I see," a cold voice said drearily from behind her. She spun in her seat and was startled to see Snape looking across at her, inches away from her face. He slid into the chair beside her and scrambled eggs appeared in his plate. His goblet was filled with a deep red wine, and the flavor wafting from it made her mouth water.
"I make better friends here than I did at Durmstrang," she said back, making him pause midsip and look at her curiously. He was probably wondering why she was bringing up Durmstrang; and inside she was wondering too...
"Is that because you're an Elemental, or because you've matured over the years?" The seriousness of his response unbalanced her slightly.
"A bit of both, I guess. I hope its because people have changed their opinions on Elementals," she added.
"Could it be the fact that more Elementals are surfacing now than ever before? I've heard that there are nineteen in Europe alone."
"Perhaps. But there's six or seven water Elementals alone," she stated and took a sip of her pumpkin juice, trying not to wince at the bitterness when compared to the wafting smell from his wine glass.
Her eyes traveled over to his goblet of their own volition.
He saw her eyes flick to his glass and quickly conjured up a crystal goblet of his wine for her. She looked at him with one eyebrow cocked, not sure why he was being so nice.
He misinterpreted her movement as wondering why he drank wine instead of pumpkin juice; she wondered rather angrily if he had deliberately misconstrued her meaning. "I don't prefer pumpkin juice at all; I drink wine whenever I can." He motioned to her goblet and took another sip from his own.
She brought the glass to her lips and took a cautious sip—and was immediately glad she had only taken a sip. The flavor was so strong, so sweet, that she could barely swallow it.. This wine was nothing like the wine from the previous night. She wondered if this was from his private stash: if so, she was honored.
"What type is this?" She asked holding it up at eye level to see the multi-colored sparkles through the crystal side of the goblet. She noticed as well that he had a greyish goblet not at all like hers; it looked to be made of pewter, and glancing up and down the table she noted that all of the other goblets were made from pewter.
"It is a batch a friend of mine made for me. He calls it 'Revenwyne.'"
So it was from a private stash...
"It's very good," she supplied, taking a larger sip. "What's so different about it; did he ferment it differently?"
"He let it sit for ten years. Although why he would let it sit for that long when he could just as easily aged it magically, I'll never know."
His eyes darted along her arms briefly, as if searching for something. She watched his dark eyes flick up towards her temples, and she understood what he was looking for.
"You could ask about it, you know," she said with a smile, and he looked up at her eyes again.
"What type of Elemental are you?"
"Fire," she responded smugly.
"The rarest of all Elementals," he stated amiably, but behind his easy visage things were clicking together. His eyes darted down to her left forearm as if trying to see through the sleeve, and then removed his eyes.
"How do you know so much about Elementals?"
"I've been bred to know."
"Are you one?" She asked taking a sip of her wine.
"No, although my mother was a water elemental."
"Full or half?"
"Pardon?"
"Was your mother full-psyche or half-psyche?"
"Ah. More along the lines of quarter." He tightened up at this point, something about the thought of his mother bringing back memories.
"Are there any students you should forewarn me about?" She asked, steering the conversation onto safer subjects. She took another bite of her eggs and decided that she liked them with cheese.
"Oh yes," he responded, a wicked grin touching his lips. "If you've got Longbottom in your class make sure you know the countercurse to everything you might be studying. He's a Gryffindor--although why he was sorted into that House I'll never understand. He is the shyest, clumsiest boy that Hogwarts has ever seen.
"And then there's Potter." He spat the name like it was the killing curse.
"Is this Harry Potter we're speaking of?" She asked.
"The very same," he agreed, grimacing as he took a sip of wine. She had a feeling that the grimace was reserved for the Potter boy.
"And what has he done?"
"Everything from destroying the Dark Lord to uncontrollably bringing him back to power."
Her glass was halfway to her mouth when he finished saying this, and it slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor, narrowly missing her leg. Silence slid across the table like a cloud across the sun, eclipsing the conversations with some undetermined silence.
Snape reached out his wand and snapped, "Reparo totalus." The wine glass reformed on the table as if someone had recorded it breaking and then played the recording backward. The wine floated up into the cup almost lazily, and Snape turned his dark eyes on her once more.
"Did you just say that... the Dark Lord is back?" she whispered, eyes wide.
"I did." Snape appeared more than concerned at this point--alarmed was a better adjective to describe him at the moment.
"Excuse me," she said through a tight throat and swept from the hall, silence and stares following her out.
::Please review!::
