.I did say I couldn't guarantee a steady schedule, right? But at least this time I was a good deal closer to when I said I'd post. As in a matter of days, rather than months.

Not much new to say here, only that this chapter should really be read as a finishing of the last one. The next chapter will bring us back to the present, which (from the point of view of an author who has been enslaved by Rose's demands for flashbacks for the last three months) is something to look forward toand then we may even get back to the actual story! How strange!

Special thanks to Cyiusblack and Laurakyna as reviewers of the last chapter. I'm glad the story is enjoyable! As always, anyone with comments or criticism of any sort is more than welcome to drop a quick review; I can't improve my writing without feedback!

Also as always: Enjoy!

Chapter Twelve: In Which Rose Really Does Remember Everything Part II

The first day passed in near silence. The children huddled in front of the fireplace, together under a large blanket Gran had pulled from the bag Severus had given her. The old witch herself was noncommential, not correcting her wards' slips of tongue or telling them which activity to perform when as she usually did. Instead she sat silently at the rickety dining table, occasionally sighing as she switched which hand was folded into the other listlessly. The children did not venture farther than a little lavatory tucked in under the cobwebbed stairs at the end of the hall.

The second day, when the children woke curled up on the floor, Gran had cooked up bacon and eggs, and after breakfast she and the children searched for kitchens in the dusty front room, but when Rose got too close to the windows Gran nearly shouted at her to come away. They spent the rest of the day much as they spent the first, only slightly more comfortable on the cushions than they had been on the floor. Gran didn't cook lunch or dinner, but brought out sandwiches from the depths of Severus's bag.

The third day Gran cleaned.

Stacks of books were pushed out into the hall to make way for bowls of soapy water to slosh across the floor and be pulled back in to Gran's wand. She did this over and over again until the floors shone, then found some old brooms tucked away in a little cupboard and told the children to sweep under the furniture and in the dark corners while she beat down cobwebs from the ceiling. The air was so full of dust Rose had a sneezing fit until Gran could clear it away with another spell, and then she had to clean the floors all over again. She gave the children rags to wash the walls, brightening considerably the pastel pink wall paper. By six o'clock the kitchen was pristine and the children exhausted, and they fell asleep on the floor again without bringing in the dusty cushions.

The fourth day Gran made the children wash away the dust from the covers of each book as they returned the stacks to their original places in the kitchen. Rose was quite slow at this, as every cover with a word she did not know—and there were many—she would nag for the definition from her brother. Gran shut herself in the lavatory, and when she came out again there was no longer slick black sludge at the drain of the shower or a scuttling sound in the walls when one came in to releive themselves.

Day five, day six—every book in the hall had its cover was washed and was moved to the kitchen, where they waited as gran attacked the hallway in the same manner she had attacked the kitchens. When she was done she worked some sort of charm on the books that arranged them by subject—or so she told Rose, who'd never heard of "Dragonlark Immunology" or "Experimental Physics". She also charmed candles to float midair, avoiding the gaslights like a curse.

Seven, nine, thirteen—it was the thirteenth day, November the seventh, when Rose woke in the dark of the kitchen to hear the murmur of voices in the front room. She left her brother on the cushions they had arranged on the kitchen and snuck into the hall on tiptoes.

"It's all over," she heard a shuddering voice say. "We had only hoped—but now it's done. Finished. Everything's over."

The girl peered around the corner. Severus, dressed as she'd always seen him in his heavy black robes, was huddled in one of the cushion-less armchairs, a mug of something ignored in his pale death grip.

"Tell me everything, Severus," Gran said at length, from another stripped seat. "From the beginning. What happened to my daughter, from beginning to end."

Severus sighed, his brow furrowed, but he did not hesitate long. "The Dark Lord, in the early days of October, seemed to be going rather... he was losing his grip on reality. He only amassed the amount of power he did through paranoia, of course, but certain conflicting informations had him on edge. He had those of us in charge of information working double, to gather twice as much information and to check everyone else's, because the Dark Lord would not trust anything—and then one day it was as though nothing had happened. He mocked us for wasting time checking each other's reports, and dismissed half the matters we had been looking into... that must have been when Black first contacted him."

"Black?" interrupted Gran, repeating the name Severus had spat out. "I had thought Regulus turned on the Dark Lord?"

The man shook his head. "Not Regulus... Sirius," he spat.

"Sirius?" Florette stayed at him. "The younger Black—until he ran off and left them behind back in his school days, is that right?"

"The embarrassment of the Black family," said Severus shortly. "And the last person the Order expected to turn—foolishness."

"Regardless—what did Black do?"

Again Severus shook his head. "He was a deep part of the Order. Dumbledore had suspected a leak for some time, but he'd always suspected Pettigrew—but then Black went and blew him up—"

"My daughter, Severus..."

"I suspect that when Black contacted the Dark Lord, the easiest information to sell was that of the Order's spies. I was sworn to Dumbledore himself, so even if Black had somehow found out about me—but Char and Matt were only sworn to Vector. They were gone on a mission when the Dark Lord started to deal with traitors, and I did not have a chance to warn them to call off their meeting with Vector. So they were followed..."

In the moment of silence Rose grew aware of an itch on her scalp, and tried to scratch it as discreetly as possible , but she was not so careful in lowering her arm and caught her sleeve on one of the precarious stacks of books, sending it and the pile beside it crashing against the wooden floorboards. In an instant a wand was inches from her face. She followed the line of the arm that held it up to meet the cold eyes of Severus, who quickly lowered it again and stepped quickly back.

"Rose!" Gran chided as she came to the doorway. With a sweep of her wand the books picked themselves up and flew into much stabler stacks than they had been in previously. "Come now," the woman ordered, grabbing the girl by the shoulder and steering her back to the kitchen where her brother still slept soundly. "Back to sleep with you!"

"When's mummy coming?" the girl piped drowsily, climbing back onto her cushions. "When are we going home?"

"Hush now, child," the woman commanded as she tucked the girl under a heavy wool blanket. She tapped her wand on the girl's forehead, making a tingling sensation slip down her body. "Go back to sleep..."

.

..

...

The girl was dawdling on her way back to the Great Hall. Even out in this corridor the noise echoed off the castle's stone floors and walls, at a volume she was not comfortable with; she had spent the last five years alone with the quiet of books, for the most part. At her grandmother's affairs she had found dark corners to lurk in to avoid the hassle of playing the part of playing the part of the sweet orphan child hostess for the nagging adults, though in the recent months she had taken to escorting some poor soul closer to her own age range to the gardens, where she would abandon them to linger at one of the gazebos where she had kept stashes for sunny days. She would remain in her garden sanctuary for the duration of the party, and when the guests were preparing to leave she would find her victim again and make a show of thanking them for the time spent together.

("It was too short!" she exclaimed, grasping her apparent new friend's hand together in hers. "I do hope you'll come again!")

Yet it was her first day at Hogwarts. Her trunk, an older student had assured her, had been moved for her into her new dormitory, and she did not know where the library was. The library-she could imagine it perfectly, from all the questions she had barraged her brother with in her letters over the course of his first two years, but she had never thought to ask him of its location. So she had had no escape, kept sitting among her new Slytherin housemates, playing her new role of perfect societal mannerisms that her grandmother had drilled into her, but she was unaccustomed to such extended affairs. When the third round of food arrived she had excused herself with the ready excuse of searching for the lavatory, although the route she was taking to return was as winding as possible.

Away from the crowds packed into the Great Hall, she found that she rather liked Hogwarts. Where there were windows she found views of the castle's many courtyards, unlit on this night but surely a sight to see when the sun was out. She found benches—niches, really, built into the masonry in odd places. One bench was behind a stone lantern pillar, so even though it was so tucked away it was well lit. Many of the windows had ledges large enough to sit on. And the number of rooms—she had not dared open the countless doors; she would save that for later, when she would have a better idea of which doors were for classrooms and which were not. Yet there were so many of them! Her young imagination was flying over the possibilities of what could be tucked away within. She longed to explore them all, but it would have to be done at a time when everyone was gathered elsewhere as they were then—her brother always gushed about how celebrated Halloween was, and by then she would know her way around the castle well enough to explore efficiently…

It should perhaps be observed that the girl was so rapt by her imaginings and plannings she lost track of time. The tolling of the bells from outside brought her back to earth with harsh abruptness, and she turned on heel to take the turn she had last skipped in avoidance of the return to the Great Hall she now realized she had put off far too long. Upon rounding the corner, however, she came across something she did not expect—a boy, perched in one of the window seats, just as lost in his own thoughts as she had been.

He turned at her footsteps and saw her just as she saw him, bringing them into eye contact. The girl, having been caught off guard, just stared for a moment, but quickly remembered herself and broke away from the gaze. The strange boy was only about her brother's age, and from the looks of his robes a fellow Slytherin, so she was not timid. "Excuse me," she said in her most polite tone. "Would you be so kind as to point me towards the Great Hall? I seem to have lost my way."

When he did not reply but to hop down from his perch and approach her, the girl did find herself a bit puzzled by his behavior, but then a smile crossed the boy's face. "You're a first year, then?" he asked. "I'm in third, myself, and I guess as your upper classman it's my duty to help out young ones, isn't it?"

"Well, I don't know about that," said the girl a bit quietly. Now she was nervous, but only because although he smiled and spoke with a certain charm, this boy was a Slytherin, and a look like that could not possibly be a good one.

"Oh, no need to be shy," he said, flashing another wolfish smile. "But—I can see you're a clever girl, aren't you? So maybe you can help me work out a little problem of mine. What do you say?"

Though the girl longed to step back, she held her ground and put on her best undaunted façade. "And what problem is that?"

The boy smiled in a dramatic fashion. "You see, my cousin bought me a new spell book at the beginning of summer, and of course as any good student would I read it through three times over break, but I haven't had a chance to test out my new spells yet, have I?"

"Well," the girl said as politely as she could. "I'm afraid I am not so sure I could help you, as I haven't had any classes or used any magic, myself. Besides, wouldn't an upperclassman be more useful?"

The boy laughed softly, but he was drawing his wand and taking a few steps back from her none the less. "No need to worry love," he assured the wide-eyed girl. "All you're to do is to stay right there and I—well, you'll see. Ready?"

"Now really, I—"

"Levi Corpus!" the boy cried with a swish of his wand, and the girl's world was turned upside-down. Perhaps screaming was a natural first response to finding herself in the air of a sudden, but it was not what one would expect—especially considering that as she had just mentioned, the girl had yet to begin her magic lessons—when the girl reflexively whipped out her own wand from her cloak and screamed "Infringo!" at her assailant.

She crashed to the floor as he flew back down the hall, landing a good twenty meters from where he had stood. The girl was vaguely aware of a throb from her wand arm, but the wind had been knocked out of her and so she really was not thinking much at all. If she had been, she would have comprehended the boy with the broken nose as he glowered over her, pointed his wand, and hissed out some spell. Still, her dulled mind saved her a world of pain as her vision blurred into darkness.

.

..

...

A voice murmured what could have been a melodic line in low undertones from somewhere far above her. She heard that first, before she felt the ache throughout her body, before she tried to peel open her eyes to the blinding lights. When the voice ceased she had grown present again, and she tried to move—tried, as she was facing difficult getting a response out of her limbs.

"If ending up in a bloody mess on the floor your first night is supposed to be a sign of your plans for the rest of the year, I would suggest you request a transfer to a different house immediately."

The girl's green eyes quickly flashed open, regardless of her in-adjustment to the light-and she quickly found the black eyes peering back down at her. "Severus Snape?" she squeaked hoarsely.

The man raised an eyebrow. "Professor Severus Snape, indeed," he corrected.

Ignoring the wave of dizzy nausea that swept over her, the girl pushed herself up. "No, Severus—I mean I—well—you see I—" she shook, flustered as her throbbing head tried to piece together what she was supposed to be saying. "WHat I mean to say is—I'm Rose."

The other eyebrow rose to join the first.

Rose sighed. This was not going as she had originally planned, and in her dizzy spell she did not entirely trust in her ability to ad lib, but there was nothing for it now. "I mean to say—I'm Rose Hawthorne. I've been wanting to apologize for your books."

The man's expression was kept carefully unchanged as his voice remained monotone in repeating the word—"books?"

"Yes, I—" she paused a moment to regain her focus on his eyes—"I mean, when I understood about my parents I did not know what to—how to deal with myself and the books—I loved the books so much—I seem to have had a spell of trying to take out everything out on them and it was most inappropriate, and I truly am sorry. I do hope the books were not harmed too badly—we left so quickly, and..."

The dark professor continued to stare at her for a moment, then one corner of his match twitched into a slight smile. "Although you left the attic quite a mess—and it was a wonder Florette did not find that—I assure you that it was nothing a spell or two on each will not fix."

"That's a relief, then," said Rose, trying to push herself up to her feet. A firm hand pushed her back down, and she saw the smile fall right back off the professor's face.

"Give your body time to recover. I just siphoned a quarter of your blood off the floor and back into it."

Rose had to take a moment to register what the man had just said before she looked at her belly and gasped at the nasty sight. "My sweater!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Gran will be furious with me, won't she? A day in and I've already ruined a sweater!"

The professor stared at her incredulously. "A true Hawthorne, like Florette, I see," he said dryly, but then he frowned and drew his wand across the tear in the girl's sweater, where the threads seemed to grow eager to weave themselves back together and the dark stain faded back into the grey wool.

The man tucked his wand away as the girl stared incredulously as her belly, yet then she seemed to remember herself and gave him another too-bright smile. "That trick alone may make me study twice as hard for charms class," she said candidly.

Severus seemed to be resisting the urge to roll his eyes, but his monotone voice moved on to a new matter. "So tell me, miss Hawthorne, what prompted you to break an older student's nose? Sheer stupidity?"

"I broke his nose!" Rose exclaimed with minor horror, but as the professor nodded slight satisfaction was unmissable in her changing tone. "Well, it serves him right! Tossing a girl up in the air like that." Severus's expression asked enough—she quickly explained. "I was on my way back to the Great Hall when I ran into him and, so as to be polite and not say nothing I thought to ask him for directions. But then he asked me to help him with some magic and used some spell to make me fly up in the air." She scowled mightily.

"So you broke his nose?"

The girl blinked. "Well, I must have. I tried the first spell that came to mind—something I picked up from my reading of A Standard Book of Spells, I believe—but it went a bit wrong and he went flying himself, so he dropped me and I fell and hit my head. Frankly, everything's a bit of a blur after that."

"Ah." The professor sighed, the furrow in his brow growing a bit deeper. "Now I should warn you, Miss Hawthorne, that a standard indicator of a Slytherin is a natural talent for self-preservation. How you managed to get sorted into my house, thus, is a mystery, if your survival instinct is dull enough to allow you to try and hex the one student who would have no qualms about openly making your life a living hell. I only came looking for a problem when Adrian returned to the feast with a bloodied nose. If her had not come back, or had I not noticed, the damage to your body could have been severe. And while he is certainly the most carefree about his aggressive behavior, Adrian is certainly not the only dangerous student at Hogwarts. If you do not look after yourself, Miss Hawthorne, you will leave this school within the year, on a one-way trip to Saint Mungo's. I owe it to your parents to—"

"You say his name is Adrian?" Rose cut in abruptly, halting Severus's speech.

"Yes, Adrian LaConner. A third year."

"I should think he would make a good ally, for someone like me," the girl mused, earning another peculiar look from the professor. "Although I suppose at this rate that would be impossible."

Severus continued to stare at her for a minute longer, then stood abruptly and offered the girl a hand up. "The feast will be ending soon," he said blankly. "You should be using this time to make allies with the other first years, not making enemies of the upperclassmen. I'll show you the way back."

The way Severus led was certainly faster than the route Rose had intended to take, and it led to a small door quite close to the first-year end of the Slytherin table. She hurried back to her seat, giving a laughing excuse that she had gotten lost on her way back. Looking down the table she found the blond third year glaring at her with such intensity she couldn't help but to giggle, and to complete the gesture, she waved cheerfully. When a moment later the headmaster rose to address the students again, her eyes fell instead on Severus, who raised an eyebrow to her but quickly looked away.

"A spectacular feast, as usual, to start off a new year at Hogwarts!" the headmaster's aged voice boomed over the hall. "I can only hope that you have all been happily reunited with your old friends and met a few new ones! But before we send you off to your dormitories to share the latest gossip—the school song! Everyone pick your favorite tune..."