True story: Every time I upload a new chapter of this story, FFN crashes. Here goes nothing.

Major "Just to Be" spoilers in this chapter. Also lots and lots of angst.

Harry Potter couldn't stop his leg from shaking.

It had been four hours since Ginny left to see her mother. Three hours and forty-seven minutes since his last shot of crystal meth. Two hours and seventeen minutes since his last drink. One hour and forty-five minutes since his last hit of cocaine.

The leg wouldn't stop shaking. It craved more. He craved more. Always more.

He knew he was a disgrace for this. He knew that it was unfair to Ginny, who blissfully was unaware of his problem (as far as he knew). He knew that as Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, he should not be living like this. Living a lie. Living like a junkie.

But he couldn't stop. The drugs and alcohol helped him forget. And after all he had seen and done and heard and learnt in the past few years… he needed to forget. He couldn't do Occlumency for shite. The Auror Office was no help in that respect; they regarded memory charms and the like as not worth the effort. There was no one to talk to about it who could handle it. Ginny and Ron were still cut up about Fred's death and Molly's problems. Hermione… she was so withdrawn he hardly recognised her. She seemed to be floating along in life, not really working toward anything. Going along to get along.

None of them needed to be burdened with his problem. It was entirely self-created. It was up to him to dig out of this mess he called a life and get back on track. Focus on his job. Focus on his fiancée. Focus on becoming the man he knew he could and should be.

One hit a day had been enough to keep himself calm for months. But today the toxic cocktail of narcotics and alcohol wasn't enough.

It was a problem. He knew he needed help.

But he would not ask for it. He would do it on his own.

His leg twitched again. Raising his wand, Harry Summoned a bottle of alcohol and took a deep, long swig. He'd Freshen himself before Ginny came home. He didn't want her to see him like this. Just a few more sips and he'd be okay again, he just knew it. Hopefully it would be enough to get him through the rest of the day.

Hopefully.

"You want to teach… them?"

Glastonbury's penciled-in eyebrows rose to touch the top of her broad, shiny forehead. Severus gave her one of his trademark barely-perceptible nods. A small action that conveyed far more gravity and authority than one might expect.

"But… I don't understand…"

"Hogwarts will not have me back," he explained, his tone conveying far more patience than he actually had for this woman. "And I find I am ill-qualified for any other position. Those for which I would be qualified… well, employers tend to be hesitant about me due to my background. I have heard that you have a hard time attracting staff. Besides,"—he fought to keep his voice steady as he said this last part—"I have unfinished business with these children."

Glastonbury's face softened in understanding. "Ah, I see," she said. "Well, Mr. Snape, perhaps you and I can help each other out."

"Indeed," he said, smirking like a cat.

"The Ministry is always after me to find staff for the long-term residents, and their meddling is rather bothersome."

"So I can imagine."

"If I could tell them that I'd found a full-time staff member, I could get them off my back and return to the autonomy that I feel best serves this institution."

"It sounds like we could help each other out, then." She narrowed her eyes at him through her cat-eye glasses. "I presume you have some preconditions?"

His smirk grew. "A few."

Severus had never been more knackered in his life.

And it was only day three.

The screaming. The crying. The refusal to eat. The inability to speak. The lack of things to give them to eat. The lack of attention they gave to him regardless of what he tried to teach them. It would have annoyed him in another context, but it had not taken him long to understand that the children didn't pay attention to him because they couldn't pay attention to him, at least not for more than a few seconds.

Each one had a glassy-eyed look that shut the world out.

What horrors had they seen whilst in that place?

They wouldn't say.

Glastonbury was due to bring in the medical records tomorrow. He knew it wouldn't be pretty.

After the first month, he wondered why he bothered.

He hadn't been able to get through to a one of them. Not a single one. They wouldn't meet his eyes, wouldn't stop cowering in fear when he approached, wouldn't trust him.

Severus was fairly certain they weren't getting worse, but they also weren't getting better.

He tried wearing different clothing. Black seemed to frighten them. Reminded them of their parents' Death Eater robes, no doubt. But to no avail. They still trembled in terror whenever he got near to any of them.

He couldn't be there every hour of every day. He was often sent to his office to complete tedious paperwork that Glastonbury insisted be done on time or she would terminate his contract. So he would do it. But it did not escape his notice that someone else (he couldn't tell who, exactly) went into the room with them while he was gone.

His suspicions were raised, but he couldn't prove that anything bad was happening. If it was, the children weren't talking.

At night, he thought about Lily. He thought about Lily a lot.

He'd had a lot of time to meditate about her during his convalescence. About how things had ended between them. About how empty his life had felt without her, and how taking up her son's safety as his Cause in life had been the only thing that gave him meaning. About how, when he lay dying, looking into Potter's eyes, he'd prayed that he'd done enough to make it all up to her.

He'd wanted to give her everything. In many ways, he had.

At the same time, he'd had a lot of time to reflect on what their relationship had been and what it hadn't been. It had been an intense love for him, an all-consuming thought. His greatest triumph and greatest regret. But for her... he had just been a teenage sweetheart. One of several. But still he had given her everything. He had wanted to, and he did not regret it. He would do it all over again.

Now he had nothing left to give her. It would have to be enough.

He could put her to rest now. He'd never stop loving her, never, but he supposed he could stop mourning her the way he had for nearly twenty years. He could put away her emblem as his reason for living. He could do one final thing for her: let her rest in peace.

He wondered if he'd ever find love again.

He mentally scoffed at the thought. Him, find love? No woman would want him. Very few had ever wanted him in a sexual sense in his life, and he wasn't going to hold out hope for more. He'd had one purely carnal encounter in his life, and he'd hated every second of it. It had made him feel empty and unfulfilled. He didn't want to admit that he was nauseatingly sentimental, but bedding a stranger for the the sake of anonymous coupling to assuage a need wasn't high on the list of life's pleasures for him. Perhaps it was because his first time had been with someone he truly loved, and so anything less had been a disappointment. After Lily there had been a couple women here and there whom he'd seen rather casually. Not quite relationships, but not quite purely physical arrangements, either.

And then there had been Narcissa.

Despite his years of association with Lucius, he hadn't known Narcissa terribly well. She was quiet and aloof and, frankly, cold. They'd exchanged pleasantries in social situations, but he didn't really know her as a person. Not until that day she'd come with her sister to his home and begged him to save her son's life. He hadn't known that she even knew where he lived. He really hated the idea that Bellatrix knew where he lived.

He'd banished Wormtail into the little room behind the bookcase, Stunned him, cast a silencing charm, and tried to pretend as much as possible that he was alone in his home. He always Obliviated him afterward so that the Dark Lord would not get suspicious.

She'd come back later that evening, alone. He'd been drinking more and more as the day went on and the implications of what he'd agreed to do had begun to sink in. She stood there, eyes red, hair disheveled and wet from the rain, standing on his doorstep.

They had been vulnerable and frightened and perilously close to the edge.

Severus was not raised to believe it acceptable to touch another man's wife. He found he didn't care. She was there, and she knew, and she sought him out, and her husband was in Azkaban, and her son had received a death sentence, and he had just signed away his soul, and her eyes really could be quite pretty when she looked at him with a mixture of desperation and desire, and so few women had ever given him the time of day, and the world was collapsing all around them both… they couldn't help but fall into each other's arms.

He used it to his advantage, of course. She would speak about Draco and what half-baked plan he had cocked up this time, and it would give him a chance to intercede. She would let things slip that Lucius had told her over the years that Severus had not been privy to.

There hadn't been many times together, and they certainly had not fallen in love, but there had been enough between them to sustain them through a very, very bleak period.

It ended the way it had began: suddenly and without a word passing between them. Lucius escape, and Narcissa returned to his side to continue to play the role of the Good Wife, and Severus was alone once again. And lonely.

And would likely stay that way forever.

Hermione wiped the tears from her eyes as the sound of Ron's Apparition faded away.

It had been both easier and harder than she'd ever thought possible to end things with him. He hadn't been that upset, not really. He understood. He accepted it with a quiet grace, a resignation, as if he'd expected it.

He knew her so well, he probably had.

He'd taken a lot of things well. Her inability to trust him after he left them on that horrible night in the tent. Her encounter with Harry. The fact that she couldn't see a future with him. That made it harder for her. If he'd yelled, screamed, pitched a fit, insulted her, she could handle that. She could understand that. Nodding his head, giving her a kiss, squeezing her hand and telling her that he understood and would always be there for her… that was too difficult to deal with. She couldn't. It was more than she thought she deserved from him.

She sat motionless in her living room, with one thought coursing through her mind.

Now what?

This wasn't the way things were supposed to turn out. She was supposed to obtain top NEWT marks, take the Ministry by storm, marry Ron, and live happily ever after. Hermione Granger had always followed her plans. She had always taken great pains to ensure that her plans had come to fruition.

Now… she was lost. She had to come up with a new plan.

What that would be, she did not yet know.

She hated not knowing.

After six months he was beginning to tear his hair out, both literally and figuratively.

He'd done everything he could to try to get through to these children so that they would at least interact with him. That was the bare minimum he wanted to accomplish—there was very little he could do if they refused to acknowledge or respond to him.

Severus was neither gentle nor patient by nature. He understood why people acted the way they did on an academic level—he never would have lasted five minutes as a spy otherwise—but failed to really understand it on an emotional, human level. So why he knew in theory why these children were being so bloody difficult, he found it more and more difficult to keep his frustration in check.

He valued ironclad control over himself and his emotions, and valued it highly in others as well. He had not been lying to Potter when he had told him that wearing one's heart on one's sleeve was nothing more than a weakness. It was more difficult than he ever admitted to himself to keep a rein on his fears, emotions, and frustrations. It had taken every ounce of control not to slap Draco Malfoy across the face that night after Slughorn's Christmas party. The boy's defiance had unnerved him. He had been reckless, and seemed to not appreciate that he was not merely playing with his own life, but that of his family and Severus himself. It had taken every ounce of strength and training to keep himself from betraying his complete and utter terror that the boy would continue to play with fire.

But this… this was unlike anything he'd ever experienced.

As a teacher, he'd been through the standard training to spot signs of physical abuse, poor health, and parental neglect. It hadn't really been necessary for him, having grown up experiencing all of the above, but he'd gone through it all the same. He had rudimentary training about what to look for and what to do about the situation—namely, contact the authorities. When you were the authorities, said training was not terribly helpful.

He'd sought any and all books on the subject, but the Wizarding World was surprisingly bereft of any sort of authority on the subject of abused and neglected children, let alone those suffering from war trauma. The usual ways of approaching them seemed to backfire. He had begun to read Muggle texts on the subject, but so far he'd been unable to find a way to implement the suggestions.

The children weren't making things any easier for him.

They weren't eating, they weren't sleeping, they weren't speaking, they weren't responding, they weren't interacting, they weren't developing, they weren't growing. They weren't doing anything but either sitting before him catatonically or screaming. As a result, Severus wasn't sleeping, was barely eating, and was chronically in pain between the headache between his eyes and the ulcer in his stomach.

He'd dealt with difficult children before, but nothing like this. Nothing could have prepared him for how difficult it was. He was used to wasting his best efforts on idiot waifs who would never appreciate it. There was still fulfillment to be had. This? He was giving and giving and giving of himself—his time, his energy—to receive nothing in return but frustration and emptiness.

If one—just one—would show some improvement, it would be worth it.

He wasn't even teaching. He couldn't even get to that point. He was something between a social worker, a Healer, and a guardian.

The frustration of it all was so great that he still wasn't able to repair his Occlumency shields. Over half a year he'd lived without them. Everything—his emotions, his fears, his anxieties, his memories—was constantly bomboarding him. If he could shut it all out he might be able to focus on this. But dealing with all of his baggage, and all of theirs?

It was breaking him.

After everything he'd been through, everything he'd fought against, everything that had been hurled at him, he was just exhausted and broken.

What had he got himself into? He had only intended to provide care for two dozen or so war orphans. He found himself instead focusing on therapy and social services. There was no authority he could turn to on the subject—he was the authority now. And he didn't like it.

He'd lived through hell and escaped death. Was this how he wanted to spend his second chance—fighting yet another uphill, endless, hopeless battle? Was this really how he wanted to spend his life?

Was it not time to finally do something for himself?

He looked around the cramped office where he was surrounded by towers of paper and parchment. Heard the sobs and the screams through the walls. Thought of the woman upstairs. He considered what he'd signed up for: attempting to teach and help those who would not—could not—listen; work in the shadows and for no appreciation; work for and fight against a sadistic personality who harmed innocents. It was agonizingly familiar. Only this time, he had an out. He could walk away if he wanted to. They'd be no worse off. As for him... he might not be worse off for it either.

He'd lived that life once. He wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to continue.

But what would you do with yourself instead, the voice asked. Dungeons and darkness and thankless work are where you belong.

Is that really where I belong, he asked himself. Or is that just where I've always been told to go?

Before he could change his mind, he strode out of the office.

And didn't look back.

Don't hate me!

And yes, the Narcissa thing was in the background of JTB the entire time. I so desperately wanted to include it somewhere, but never found the right place. Maybe this isn't the right place, but oh well. It needed to get out there.