A/N: This chapter is dedicated to recent follower, AGRIMLIKEDOG, whose username I very much approve of. Thanks for joining the family, and may you long enjoy!

-C

Lydia and Albus stood in the middle of the dream; Lydia's dream-self panicked as James told Lily to take Harry and run. Albus was silent as the door to the cottage burst open, and it was not the Dark Lord, but Sirius that came through. Lydia's dream-self was too calm, but Lydia was shaking. She hated this dream, hated it more than almost anything else they'd looked at.

Sirius exploded James without hesitation. The blood and viscera filled the air, splattered, and Albus made a small sound, although it didn't seem to be of surprise or disgust. Pity, perhaps. Sirius held his hand out to dream-Lydia and said, "Come, my love."

Lydia watched herself take his hand, and the room was no longer the front room, but now they were in the nursery. Lily was pleading, and Sirius pressed a knife into Lydia's hand.

"I don't want to be here," Lydia whispered, watching Sirius coax her into using the knife.

"I can understand that," Albus said. "But I think this dream is important."

It almost certainly was. Dream-Lydia's arm raised, about to strike Lily, and suddenly they weren't in the cottage anymore. They were in the forest, Sirius behind Lydia, Dalia in front of her. Dream-Lydia's arm was still raised, poised to strike, but Dalia spoke calmly, levelly. They watched her coax Lydia's arm down again, and Dalia instructed Lydia to hand Sirius the knife, which she readily did. Lydia watched herself agree with everything Dalia said. She watched the pair close in on her, Sirius from behind, Dalia from the front. Dalia caressed Lydia's hair, and Sirius was pressed against Lydia's back. She didn't fight as Sirius pressed the knife to Lydia's neck.

"How very interesting," Albus said as Sirius pressed the knife into Lydia's skin.

"What?" Lydia asked, wanting to tear her gaze away, but not feeling able to look anywhere else.

"The knife has changed. Look at the points."

"Yes. It's two-pronged."

"But it wasn't in Godric's Hollow," Albus said. He hummed. The dream abruptly stopped, and when they stood in his office again, he said, "Lydia, did you have a physical wound after that dream?"

Lydia frowned, trying to remember. She had quite a few of those dreams after Priam attacked Tonks, and she thought perhaps this version was from the first few months of the twins being at Hogwarts. Her stomach sank.

Quirinus's first year. She started smelling the strange smell more frequently then. Her nightmares became consistently about Sirius. And that's when she first woke up with a physical manifestation of a nightmare. This might have been the very first one, even, with two bleeding wounds on her neck.

"Albus," she whispered, "I…. The nightmares started first."

"Lydia—"

"He can't be responsible, because the nightmares started first."

Albus pressed his lips together thoughtfully, paced up his office, then back down to his notes.

"It is odd," he said softly, "but if I didn't know myself that Sirius was locked away quite securely in Azkaban, I would suspect he was responsible. But even Severus wouldn't blame him for this, as much as he'd like to, because we both know he isn't a threat to you where he is."

Lydia shivered. She still couldn't decide, day by day, whether Sirius was ever a threat to her. Some days he seemed like the most dangerous person she'd ever known, others he seemed like a man caught in a desperate mess and trying to protect what little he had. Of course, the two could be the same, but she really didn't know what to believe.

"It needs to be someone who knows you just as well as Sirius did," Albus said, not looking up from his notes. "Perhaps better than anyone, bar Severus. And yet, it must be someone as up to date on your life as Severus. And I don't think even Remus fits that bill. Quirinus certainly doesn't. Quite frankly, Lydia, I don't know what to make of it. The shape of the very faint scars on your neck? Those are rodent teeth, too flat and narrow to even be a knife blade of the type we saw, and certainly not vampire puncture wounds. You were bit, if I were to hazard a guess, by a rat."

"You're saying a rat is stalking me," Lydia said dryly.

Albus laughed a humorless chuckle before he said, "I would say that, except a rat can't attempt to strangle you in your sleep, nor drug you. Someone with a rat as a familiar, perhaps, but I can think of only one student who has a rat as a familiar, and Percy Weasley isn't likely to try to kill you."

"No," Lydia agreed, frowning. "No, I should think not. He might not always appreciate my attempts to teach him sensitivity, but he's not a murderous child. And anyway, what would a Gryffindor rat be doing lurking in the dungeons?"

Albus hummed, and the two sat in silence for a long moment. Lydia's stomach lurched as she thought of Sirius in Azkaban, alone, perhaps going out of his mind. She wondered what he did to occupy himself, how he spent his afternoons, what nightmares haunted him. She wondered if he ever had visitors. Were life prisoners allowed visitors? She was about to ask Albus, when he gave her a very stern look.

"Lydia, you would never want to visit Sirius."

Again, her stomach lurched.

"I wasn't thinking of doing it," she whispered. He clearly didn't believe her. "Really, Albus," she said. She glanced at her watch. Severus would expect her soon. "I thought more about someone he might share information with. I don't know who he'd trust enough for that, but it's possible, isn't it?"

Still, Albus didn't believe her, and Lydia wasn't sure she believed herself. Part of her did want to visit, to ask him why he'd done it, to face him just one more time and test her own resolve. He had to be a shadow of himself now.

Albus let her go, and Lydia went to Severus's lab, where he was in the middle of brewing something. She didn't disturb him, and he didn't look up when she entered. Instead, she set up her notes, and started scouring through what she had for errors. Severus finished the phase of whatever he was working on—she thought it might be a serum for blood clotting—washed his hands, and joined her at the table. He kissed the side of her head before sitting.

"How was Alchemy?" he asked.

"Tiring," she said. Lydia was careful to keep her eyes on her notes. Severus rubbed his hand along her neck, searching for tight spots.

"We don't have to do this now," Severus whispered. He ran his lips along her ear.

"No, we do," she said, pulling a stack of numbers closer. "I need you, and you don't have as flexible of a schedule."

Severus made a noise of annoyance, but they sat so close their knees were pressed together, and they bent over the work.

"I don't have a best guess on that, Lydia," Severus said through gritted teeth when she asked roughly how many Death Eaters there would have been at the time of the Potters' deaths.

"You must have some estimation," Lydia said. "I don't mean everyone in his service, obviously, but people with the Mark—"

"Why does it even matter?" Severus said. "He went alone to Godric's Hollow."

"Are we sure?" Lydia whispered.

"Quite."

She didn't look up, but she swallowed. Severus was watching her; she could feel it.

"Lydia," he said. His voice was almost too gentle. "Who do you think was there?"

She said nothing. She tapped her quill on the blank she'd left for his approximation and she tried not to wonder again about what Sirius's life was like in Azkaban. Did he share a cell? Did he have a window? Did he ever think of her, or was his mind too clouded from the dementors?

"Black wouldn't have been there," Severus said.

"How can you be sure?"

"The Dark Lord would never have risked anything going wrong for something he deemed so important. He trusts almost no one, and certainly no one enough to stake everything on their loyalty."

It didn't ring true. The reasoning, yes, but the way Severus said it, something told her there was more he wasn't saying. She wanted to press, but she was so exhausted, and so afraid of learning something even worse than everything she already knew.

"How many people do you know for certain?" Lydia asked.

Severus hesitated. She thought he might be grappling with how much to tell her—not wanting to end up dead, possibly, or to put her in danger—or perhaps he was counting those he knew of for certain. After a long pause, he said, "Perhaps twenty." Again, he paused, and then he said, "I knew of more than most. Many are dead now, and at his height, I would say there might have been…fifty, at most with the Mark. By the time of Halloween? Perhaps…thirty? Forty?"

Lydia shivered, but she wrote thirty and forty both down, determined to see through calculations for either figure to give herself a reasonable range of deviation. Again, she wondered about Sirius. How many of those people had he personally known? How many had he discussed the Order with? How many had he told about her? Had he personally given the Dark Lord reports on Lydia?

Severus gave her a few data points that he could give, and they made a schedule of more spell measurements they needed to take. Lydia groaned, sitting back in her chair.

"What?"

"The Fidelius Charm," Lydia whispered. "It's not exactly common practice, and you'd need to take special measurements."

"It wasn't done on the night," Severus said slowly.

Lydia explained that, like wards, any kind of charm that had a lasting impact on the borders of a place was a thing that left a lasting level of latent energy, almost steady from the time it was set for at least a year if it's not removed. Even if it is removed, it leaves quite a trace.

"And my understanding is that a Fidelius Charm is not routinely removed," she said, scribbling a few assumptions in the corner of the sheet. "They can carry on through generations of Secret-Keepers. So, for example, anyone Sirius told the location of the house would have been able to find the house and would have become the new Secret-Keepers if he'd died."

"But anyone can find the house," Severus said. "They have a plaque."

Lydia rubbed her temples.

"All the more reason to find out the measurements of the spell," Lydia said. "The force of the Killing Curse must have been strong enough to shatter the latent energy of the spell, although for a spell as encompassing as the Fidelius that doesn't seem…enough." She frowned. "There's got to have been something else that happened."

"The mysterious way Harry Potter, child of one, destroyed the most powerful Dark wizard in history, yes," Severus sneered.

She didn't bother rolling her eyes. In effect, that was what they were looking for. What she needed was somewhere they could practice a Fidelius Charm and take regular measurements of the latent energy for at least as long as the Charm was up in Godric's Hollow. Somewhere with regular spell energy to interact with it, because the Potters didn't stop using magic while in hiding.

"I think I'll ask Albus if he's got any ideas," Lydia said. "It's not like anyone we know needs a Fidelius Charm."

"Who do we know, apart from our colleagues and your wolf?" Severus said.

"The Malfoys," Lydia said with a laugh. "I wonder what Lucius would say if I put a charm on the Manor so no one could find it."

"Actually," Severus said softly. "I…. You've given me a thought. I need to ask Narcissa, but it is possible she may have some options for us."

Lydia found that surprising and curious, but she agreed.

When Severus went to take care of a few meetings with students, Lydia went to shower. She was tempted not to bother with dinner at all, as tired as she was. She rubbed her face after starting the water, and she breathed the steam in deeply. It was hard to get her sessions with Albus out of her head. They brought back all her fears, all her concerns, all her weaknesses. Sometimes they were fears she'd forgotten, so far faded in the back of her mind they almost weren't real, like they belonged to someone else. Sometimes they were so close to the front of her mind, she wondered that they weren't part of her daily world, waiting around the corner to grab her at any minute. Especially Sirius.

Again, Lydia wondered about his life in Azkaban. She shampooed her hair, and she thought of how he used to kiss up the back of her neck and along the base of her scalp. It had seemed so tender and pleasant. Had he known then what he would do? Was he already passing information about her? How could a man be so callous that he could make love to someone, be so sweet and caring, and then turn around and destroy that person's whole world?

Everyone insisted that he loved her, everyone from Albus to Remus, and even Severus. It was almost big of Severus to admit it, so it must be true, and yet Lydia couldn't understand how it was possible that he could love her and do this to her. And she wanted to ask him. She, for the first time, wanted to go to Azkaban and tell her what he'd done, how he'd destroyed everything she loved, maybe even tell him about her nightmares. She just wanted to look him in the eye and see him react. She wanted to know whether any of it was true. Perhaps with Dementors around, he wouldn't be so good of a liar.

She knew it wasn't a good idea, and even imagining how it would go was nearly impossible. Just thinking of that island fortress in the Black Sea made her shower seem colder. She turned the heat of the water up, but her skin felt no difference. Lydia closed her eyes and took deep, steadying breaths.

None of her nightmares were real, she reminded herself. Sirius was locked away, and she was safe, and whoever was doing this to her—whatever exactly they were doing—they weren't Sirius. She had Severus and Albus, and everything was going to be fine. Lydia didn't fully believe it, but she wanted to. She was so tired of the sleeping potions, of the fears, of not knowing.

When she came out of the shower and was marking her essays, Severus returned, grumbling. She didn't ask what about. She assumed it was about the meetings. He made tea and poured her a cup without asking if she'd like one, and Lydia let it cool beside her as she worked. The fourth year essays were spectacular, she thought, leaving a note of encouragement on the one that wasn't quite where it should be.

"How much longer on those?" Severus asked from the sofa.

"I've still got the third year essays and the sixth year problem sets," Lydia said, setting aside the stack she'd just marked. "But these ones are done."

"I can do the third year ones," Severus said. "What are they studying?"

Lydia hesitated. She always appreciated his willingness to help her, but there were things in her field that he just didn't have the training in.

"You know it's April."

"Obviously," he said.

She showed him the title on Angelina's essay: Three-Point Inversions in Predictive Arithmancy and Examples of Its Uses.

"Ah," he said, sitting beside her at the table. "I see. Do you have a key for the problem sets?"

She hummed, pulling out Penelope's copy. She was always a quick scan for a possible key. When Lydia marked the top with an encouraging word, she passed it to Severus and said, "Go ahead and use this one."

"Miss Clearwater," Severus said with an approving nod. "She's a very conscientious student."

Lydia couldn't argue, so she let him mark the problem sets as she dug into the essays. They worked in companionable silence, falling into familiar rhythms. Their knees brushed routinely. The crinkling and rustling of parchment and the scratching of quills were the only punctuations on the silence.

By the end of the stack, Severus had made another cup of tea for each of them and pressed his hands on her shoulders, again looking for knots. Lydia set down her quill and leaned back into his hands. She took an experimental of her tea and was pleased to find it just the right temperature. Her session with Albus felt a world away, and she was glad. She tried not to think of doing it all again the next day, but instead to think of how pleasant it was to just spend a moment in the moment for a change.

"You look peaceful," Severus whispered.

"I feel it," she said, unable to stop herself from smiling. "I don't remember the last time I felt this good."

"I'm glad," he said. He kissed the top of her head.

She suddenly felt suspicious, and she said, "You didn't…put something in the tea, did you?"

He snorted, said that he hadn't, and she sighed.

"I've been having such a good evening, I forgot I was supposed to be smelling everything," she admitted. "It's like…for once all the battles are far away from me. I miss that. I…don't remember how long it's been since I was…"

"Happy?" Severus said.

She hummed, trying to ignore the stinging in her eyes. It was such a simple thing, but one less pile to grade, a couple of cups of tea, and a simple neck massage, and Lydia felt like something fundamental had been fulfilled.

A/N: So Lydia explores more nightmares and she and Albus are both quite stumped, she and Severus try to come up with new avenues for their research puzzles, and she is beginning to feel very curious about Sirius and wishes she had some proper answers.

I have officially written the first Lockhart scene and I feel like I need to shower. Or bathe. Or remove a few layers of my skin with acid.

Review Prompt: If you could change ONE THING about the story as I've written it to this point, what would you pick?

-C