By Fire, From Ash

by genegonewilder

Young adult Severus is finding it difficult to adjust to life post-war, in part due to the fact that the rumors about his Death Eater status seem to have spread far and wide, but also because his own self-loathing outweighs anything anyone could throw at him. With his new teaching position at Hogwarts, he hopes to just move on, but a woman stands as a blazing reminder of his past.

7. Line of Fire

"Your love was always yours to give, or start another war
But you're always wounded perfectly for what you're living for
Your eyes have wept a thousand tears, you've never needed mine
The crime is never what you steal, but what you leave behind"

B.R.M.C. - Fire Walker

_—***—_

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Chapter 7 – Line of Fire

He stared down at the red and gold bird, his breath mixing into the air, one sigh after another, as he stood stock still between lake and forest.

Great. Just great. Wonderful, even.

He lifted his black eyes, feeling dull and suddenly exhausted, towards the castle, following the long winding trek—then back at the bird. He gently nudged her with the toe of his boot. She didn't move.

The air angrily billowed out of him in one long swirling white stream. The only reason he wasn't currently panicking was the fact that he could clearly see her chest rise and fall, so he knew she was at the very least perfectly alive—just perhaps with more alcohol than should be in one so small.

Freya wasn't exactly as small as this, though, and even as he was trying to work out what the conversion rate of alcohol to body mass in shapeshifters could possibly be, the much more realistic probability rose in his mind. Like him, she had felt the full effect of her drinks hit her after doing much more heart-racing activity than they had been doing on their slow walk out to this point, and it had all caught up to her a lot stronger than it had him. He snorted softly. See her try to make fun of him for only having two cups after this.

The thought of 'after,' however, particularly having to engage with her fully sober, not shrouded in the odd fantastical energy of nighttime, but perhaps in broad daylight, was not a very comforting thought. Perhaps he could just stand out here in the snow the whole rest of the night, drawing out the time he had before he would have to catch up with reality. Perhaps till a nice springtime thaw.

Currently reality seemed to be playing some absurd cruel game, because he had just partaken in a drunken snog with a woman whom was bonded friends with the man that employed him, and was already not very happy with him at the moment. And now the woman was in the shape of a particularly striking looking swan-sized bird, which was possibly the most sobering cold bucket of water.

His eyes were stuck in a wide unfocused stare as the gravity of the situation settled into his mind, not sure which of these equally weighty parts he was having the most difficulty adjusting to. As he absently worried his lower lip in his thinking, realizing with a tiny jolt that it tasted most unfamiliarly and causing him to swiftly wipe his mouth, he thought there might be a distinct contender for first place. He self-consciously gave his whole face a thorough rub as well, finding that his overly warm palms matched his cheeks under the thin outer layer of cold.

He let out another sigh and looked back down. He was going to have to cart her back to the castle here at some point, he was just mustering up the willpower to do so. The feeling that he was participating in some sort of muck-up night ('Steal around in the middle of the night with the headmaster's prized bird!') was giving him much trepidation, though. It shouldn't be so bad once he was through the entrance hall and up the stairs; there were plenty of hidden passageways, and the castle should be mostly deserted by this hour. The other glaring problem, then, was that he would have to actually touch her.

It isn't weird, he told himself, kneeling down with an uncomfortable grimace. Just... doing what's necessary. He still couldn't get the mental image of some sort of hunter collecting the animal he had just killed out of his head though, and the fact that it had been 'kissed' (while drunk) not 'killed,' was not exactly comforting. Almost to soothe his own conscious as much as to test the waters of this interaction, he changed his mind at the last minute of scooping her up with both arms, and instead flipped one hand over to gently smooth down her back.

And then he was gripping his opposite hand because it had just received a very sharp reminder that this was most definitely not a pet, despite the fact that he would absolutely be arguing with her later that whatever claims she made of having the same mind in both forms, he had never seen her try to bite anyone in her human one.

"Fine, carry your own self then!" he hissed angrily, but the bird only stirred with a soft coo, her head where it had reached out to nip at him going limp once more.

Aggrieved, shaking off his one hand which was at least not bleeding, he fumbled for his wand in the other and aimed it at her; but as he had suspected from the beginning, of course the levitation spell did not work. Irritated past the point of caring any longer, he wrapped his hands into his cloak and unceremoniously bundled the whole troublesome phoenix up into a half-swaddled lumpy heap. With no more painful protests, it was like this that he carried her all the way back up to the castle, burdened by his own personal sun against the cold.

At the top of a secluded staircase to the second floor, he had to finally come to a halt in the middle of a silent hallway of classrooms, standing just outside the reach of a beam of faint moonlight from a nearby window. There was a problem of not knowing if her office door would be openable without her set of keys, which he assumed were currently trapped in the limbo plane of whatever enchantment was on her clothing. Leaving her under the archway of the door didn't seem like a very splendid idea, and taking her straight to Dumbledore's office, while it had its merits, was possibly the least enticing idea yet; not only because of the threat of the headmaster himself, but because it was not quite as late as he had assumed, and there were plenty more opportunities to be caught if he went on for several more floors.

"Severus? What are you doing?"

Or, he could simply be caught outright, and be saved the trouble of figuring out what to do.

He slowly turned a fraction towards the other end of the hallway, where Professor McGonagall was coming towards him from the main stairway, fully garbed for the day as if she had still been attending to something this late.

"What's that you've got there?" she said when he didn't answer her first inquiry, scrutinizing the awkward bundle in his arms as she came closer.

He opened his mouth to reply, but his brain seemed preoccupied with trying to dissolve the guilty look of surprise off his face before he could think of something. He supposed there was only one viable option. "Ah... I was dealing with this," he said, and turned fully as he let the folds of black cloak fall away and held the phoenix out with reproach- and notably away from his body. "But perhaps you would be more—"

"Good heavens! Just what have you done to her?"

His mouth remained open as he blinked, his face falling to an indignant scowl. "I—didn't do anything—I just found her like this, and I was—"

"Found her where? Have you been outside the castle?"

He followed McGonagall's sharp eyes to his boots, spotted with slushy snow mostly melted into droplets and making his soles squeak on the polished marble floor.

"I was—simply trying to return her to—"

"Unbelievable! Don't know what on earth you were thinking, just—Give her here at once!"

His tongue scraped against his teeth with unspoken excuses that were evidently pointless. "Glad to. I wasn't out looking for the hassle."

McGonagall shot him her sharpest glare as the phoenix was handed off, and he had the distinct feeling, not for the first time, that she didn't much think of him as more than a student. But as she fumbled to take the bird into her own hands, they both were startled by a flapping of wings, as the phoenix shifted right back into Severus's arms, making him have to catch her as she wedged herself against him. He stood frozen, eyes slowly looking back up to take in a much more fed-up McGonagall.

"I said, give her here!"

"I—am—trying—" He all but tossed the bird underhanded, but the flapping was so disruptive, in a scramble of hands, neither of them caught her this time. He had a brief moment of déjà vu as she fell to the ground, only in reverse, as this time, with a snap of flame that cut through the hall, Freya stumbled out to catch herself on her own two human feet.

Or, mostly so, as the woman wobbled around at such a precarious teeter, McGonagall grabbed her by the elbow in a tight grip. She drew Freya in, and with a sharp sniff that made Severus bite down on his tongue in realization of what would come from this, she held the phoenix woman steady at arm's length.

"'Lo, Minerva," Freya said with the air of a mouse that had just been caught by a particularly astute cat.

"Have you been drinking?"

Freya shook her head and then blinked in confusion, rather disorientated by her own hasty motion after being nearly dropped to the ground.

A penetrating look was turned on him now. "And you, Severus?"

He shook his head with much more steadiness, but was apparently just as unconvincing with his tongue so glued to the roof of his mouth. He imagined his title of 'Britain's greatest liar' slipping down several rungs after tonight. If only McGonagall had been trying to kill him, perhaps he could have summoned a better display than looking as guilty as if he had still been a student, out drinking underage.

"Positively unimaginable! You are professors!" She rounded on Freya specifically, who was already hanging her head, looking either thoroughly shamed or still dizzy. "Just what do you think you're doing—getting yourself drunk? With him?" Severus drew himself back, his face going hard in defense, but he didn't dare interrupt. "And what do you suppose the headmaster will have to say?" Both of them dropped their jaws at this, but it was Freya's question to answer.

"What does Albus have to do with it? I didn't-" She looked in horror from McGonagall to him, making him dart his eyes away, and back. "We didn't do anything—wrong! Teachers drink all the time."

"You," McGonagall pointed a finger barbed with responsibility at her, "are more than a teacher. And you should very well know better than this."

Freya seemed to diminish under this hefty weight, her shoulders slowly going slack. She had gone red in embarrassment, and he felt his own sense of security that they hadn't done anything worthy of this treatment falter at the look on her face.

McGonagall gave a great huff at their awkward silence. "Oh, for goodness' sake—get to bed, the both of you!" It was as close as "Get back to your dormitories!" as he could imagine from her, but he didn't have a mind to raise offense at the moment.

McGonagall stood like an angry cat between the two of them as they had to dance around her to opposite sides to the right paths towards their respective quarters, and neither of them dared so much as glance at each other again.

His head hit the pillow with more force than just from weariness, as the sound of bedsheets being savagely yanked around made an unsatisfyingly soft fluffy noise in the dark of his room.

How was it that he kept getting blamed for things that were her fault in the first place? Though at that moment he felt more inclined to rally together with her to have a relieving round of mocking the deputy headmistress for this indignity to both of them. At least this time Freya had been included in the category of 'too old to outright punish, but apparently too young to deserve the respect of fully functioning, fully employed just as the rest, adult professors of this school.' In fact, he could not remember ever before seeing Freya receive a scolding like that. Was it really so bad if they were out drinking together as friends? ('Friends' was suddenly sounding a great deal more manageable in comparison to whatever McGonagall had been interpreting—or whatever else could be interpreted after tonight. Just friends.)

As his mind lingered on the image of Freya's expression from several floors above, shame-faced and head hanging, he wondered, more than what she would have to say in private about McGonagall's outlandish reactions, what she could have been thinking in that particular moment. The image shifted to a different angle of Freya's face, straight on and much more close, with a similar but vastly different flush of color to her cheeks.

The last of his irritation subsided with a quiet release of breath as he lay on his side, staring into the darkness. The thumb of his hand tucked under the pillow at his chin came up to trace his lower lip. If he sucked his lip in, he could still pick up the taste, with just the tiniest hint of firewhisky.

He turned McGonagall's words that had been meant for Freya onto himself. Perhaps he should have been the one to know better. Because, as he lay there getting hardly any sleep that night, he felt more guilty, in such a twisted way, than he could possibly begin to sort out.

This feeling didn't just persist the next day, but mutated and grew into a multi-headed dragon, complete with poisonous fangs, and some sort of breath that was not fire because he had come to associate it closely with what he was trying so hard not to think of.

Severus swallowed again, for perhaps the eighth time, as he stood at the top of the landing, staring down at the bronze eyes of the griffin door knocker to the headmaster's office, with all the feeling that he could have been stepping into the ministry for a trial. His stomach hadn't unknotted since the knock had come at his office door that morning before he had even fully woken up.

At first, as he had leapt out of bed feeling completely disorientated on little sleep, he had thought it would have undoubtedly been Freya, and this had caused considerable alarm to his muddled mind. Then, that it would have been McGonagall, coming to have her own dedicated session of reprimanding on him. But, when he had finally opened the door, it had been merely a single solitary letter, looking crumpled after bashing its enchanted self into the wood so many times while he had stood there caught up in his sleepy worries, and bearing the seal of Dumbledore—which had sent his panic into a state where he had been seriously considering taking an unannounced early holiday to Siberia.

His hand raised to open the second door he had stood too long in front of that morning, but it hesitated before touching the knocker. There was only a very slim chance McGonagall hadn't told the headmaster everything from last night. The only hope he had at this point was, oddly enough, if Freya had gotten a chance to do what he usually held her in contempt for, and had told the headmaster her own version of events, with considerably more defensiveness. That is, if she still was defensive, and hadn't had the night to sober up and change her mind... And, indeed, if her mind even needed changing, and hadn't been against him since the moment she had shifted back in the hallway... Or, from the moment he had grabbed her without warning...

As he stared at his hand over the knocker, with the desire to take in the vast landscape of Siberia swiftly rising to the point that he was mentally checking his bank account, he thought frantically that this really wasn't the reason he had always assumed Dumbledore would be sending him to Azkaban. But if he had to go out now, at least if a dementor sucked the soul out of him, perhaps he would stop needlessly angsting so much about whatever some woman thought of him.

"Come in, Severus."

He nearly jumped out of his skin as the disembodied voice echoed around the small landing, looking around for its source, and for where the headmaster had been able to see him from. Hopefully he hadn't just watched him stood there the whole time attempting unsuccessfully to take back full control of his face and mind for far too long.

Taking one last breath to clear his thoughts, imagining it was ice cold night air and he was plunging his heart into the frigid lake to wrest control of it, he pulled the door open and slipped inside at last.

"You wanted to see me, headmaster?"

Dumbledore inclined his head to look through his spectacles at him as he came to stand in the center of the room. He remembered a time when Freya had denied his assumption that the man was perhaps like a father to her; say whatever she like, he felt like he was being inspected by one.

"Yes..." Dumbledore paused for a moment to let his hard stare linger, before seeming to relax just slightly. "Thank you for coming so early in the morning, Severus. I had thought we might get an immediate start to what I called you in here to discuss; it being, most opportunely, the very start of the week."

He didn't feel very assured that the opportune timing was just a matter of the day, but the headmaster went on.

"It would appear that your learning period with Freya has gone well, yes?" Severus had to forcibly keep his eyebrows from raising to his hairline, and mentally kicked his thoughts of last night far into the weeds of his brain as he tried to remain neutral and listen. "And, I presume, the weeks' worth of detentions with Mr. Wells have gone just as well?"

"Of course, headmaster," he said casually, happy to have something completely normal to discuss. "The boy has been accepting the gravity of his actions at the quidditch match."

"Good to hear. I am glad that things worked out so neatly then, before Freya had to take her leave."

Having been concentrating on staring just to the side of the headmaster's face so hard that he nearly missed what he said at first, Severus only now took in the headmaster's blue eyes as his attention snapped into place. His head slowly turned questioningly to one side. "Her... leave?"

Dumbledore stared at him with such a calm unmoving gaze, Severus finally had to feign looking away in mild thought to escape it. His wizened voice spoke up again. "Yes. She will most unfortunately be absent for much of the month. However, we have an esteemed guest visiting to cover her class till the start of the holidays."

When he had heard her first say she had plans during Christmas, he hadn't been thinking she would have meant the whole month. And if she was actually getting a substitute this time instead of working on a sleep deprived schedule of classes and absences from meals, she must really be leaving, not just on nightly missions. What on earth could she be doing—spending Christmas on top of a mountain? And, more importantly, did that mean last night had been like a sendoff?

He didn't exactly have much he could comment about out loud, and, eventually, after he gave a vague nod of acknowledgement at this information while dodging the silent stare being leveled at him, Dumbledore went on.

"So then... Back to my reason for calling you in here," he said slowly, steepling his hands over his desk and making Severus's stomach flip over.

Just because the only mention of Freya so far had been innocuous didn't mean he was free yet—in fact, he thought, she could very well be the one taking an early holiday to Siberia due to embarrassment—right after telling the headmaster about last night. He cut through this thought just as quickly as it had manifested, forcing his mind to settle back to its blank slate.

"I realize that perhaps I have been a bit... hands-off during your introduction to the year so far. But after last month, I think it is apparent that either you will show up in my office of your own accord, or else end up here under most unfortunate circumstances if things were to continue... That is why, starting this week, I would like for us to have scheduled meetings. Every Sunday—any time of the day will do, I suppose—to go over exactly how things are faring."

The low light of the wintery morning shown through the windows of the high tower in such a way that the blue eyes fixed to him looked more intimidating than the calm face seemed to profess. Severus kept his own expression steady as he took in this information, feeling a growing sense of foreboding as the pieces of this statement clicked into place in time with the chiming of many delicate metal instruments strewn throughout the office.

When he had at last been released, following more details of his new instructions, and made his way passed the stone gargoyle out into the hallway, he finally let his mind race freely.

Freya was gone, which meant that she could no longer watch over him. Last time the headmaster and his pet had tried this, things hadn't gone so well. This time, then, Dumbledore was lowering himself to the task of keeping his own eye directly on things.

It didn't sit well with him—it certainly didn't agree much with his already anxious stomach—but it must be the truth of the matter. A weary sigh escaped him as he meandered his way towards the main stairs, more focused on his thoughts than making it down to breakfast. It hardly seemed like a worthy cause for upset at this point; whether or not she was a spy. He was already so conflicted with everything else.

An anomaly. That's what he had decided upon while lying in bed. Just a fluke of events; like a warm day in winter, or a snowstorm in late spring. He had almost been able to convince himself he had merely slipped and fallen lips first, and the whole thing had been an accident. It helped to quell some of his guilt, and made major improvements to one particular thorn—that which felt as if, absurdly, he had betrayed something. There was nothing for him to betray, however, and he couldn't stomach pulling at the rest of that thread of thought. Not anytime soon, at least.

That left him with only one course of action, and that was to grimace as if in pain every time he pictured the events of last night and block them out. Slughorn's party had been bad enough for giving him sporadic bouts of squeezing his eyes shut against the physical embarrassment of his actions, particularly those that happened in front of Freya; this was just different in that it wasn't anger that he was feeling, but something much more complex.

With his thoughts too much of a mess for him to want to leave the solitude of the lonely hall just yet, he had slowed to a standstill around the shadowed corner just before the main platform that would take him down, in front of a painting of some sort of battle taking place on dragonback. It was perhaps not the most advisable place to stand for privacy, as someone nearly ran right into him rounding the corner.

"Oh—sorry—"

Quite entirely forgetting his reflex to control his face, it went straight into a look of shock that was being mirrored by Freya's before him. Her silently bobbing jaw finally clamped up just as his brows were beginning to come back down in a knot, and, with a much higher pitched apology, she backed straight up, glancing wildly to the sides before disappearing right back the way she had come from. He stared open-mouthed at the now once more empty spot of hallway.

So much for last night having been her send-off. She was, apparently, very much still physically present.

As his astonishment wore off, his hand suddenly darted to his face so fast he practically slapped it, fully wiping down his cheeks and mouth and wishing she hadn't left him with yet another image of her blushing face that he didn't know what to do with burned into his mind.

Thankfully, at least, this was the last sighting of so much as a single auburn hair of her for the rest of the day, and by the end of it, he finally let himself settle into the fact that she was hopefully now really gone to whatever snowy adventure awaited.

Less positively, he now had endless unimpeded time to wonder just how much she regretted that night; and just how much she must hate his guts for daring to touch her; and what sort of revenge she was plotting for having done it while she was impaired. He still felt like he had dodged an entire second war after escaping from Dumbledore's office without so much as a veiled dropping of a hint, or a not-so-veiled threat. In any case, he needed to find something to occupy himself with besides standing around at random places in the dungeon, staring off into space and making the Slytherins start giving him questioning looks. They were so far not enjoying the extra time their Head of House had to spend while he was avoiding the libraries and prone to seemingly most unpredictable mood swings.

As Monday came, he found himself wondering if he shouldn't go back to skipping meals in the Great Hall for the umpteenth time that year, because the substitute for Freya turned out to be none other than an assigned ministry official, looking rather pained to be wasting his two weeks before holiday going over a scroll of instructions about as long as the staff table itself. Apparently Freya had been very thorough with her lesson plans. Amidst the combination that was this man dropping questions like he might be a plant to sniff around Hogwarts with particular interest in the very man (acquitted man, assuredly) who was now his neighbor at the table; McGonagall shooting dirty looks at him; and Dumbledore, sitting on her side and looking as if oblivious to the happenings around him, despite being fully well responsible for all of them as far as Severus was concerned, he had finished up his meal without the stomach for more than half a plate that day.

By Tuesday he found a worthy distraction, while discretely smuggling some dinner down to his office, in the form of one other who was skipping out on the above mealtime gathering.

Without causing much more of a fuss than a slowly raised eyebrow at Wells' appearance of a fellow food thief, he settled them both into his office, with a conjured table in front of the usual fireplace sitting area, so Wells could eat in peace, while he risked the crumbs on his own desk.

After finishing his carefully sliced dinner rolls, and after Wells had finally stopped trying to make excuses for his lonesome eating arrangements, swearing up and down that he hadn't snuck into the kitchens or bothered any of the elves, who he seemed to somehow know the exact location of despite his refuting, they had finally settled into a quiet that was broken only by the fireplace providing the only light in the small room. He didn't imagine a student would very much enjoy having dinner with their professor, and he did indeed look more like he was being confined despite the fact that he had willingly followed Severus in at the offer, but the glum way Wells was poking at his pilfered pumpkin cakes looked to have a bit of a difference source. Perhaps wherever it was that his unfocused glare was looking to.

Taking a sip from his goblet and clearing his throat, Severus decided to speak up.

"Might I ask... why it is that you're not at dinner with your friends?"

If he was looking for conversation, Wells apparently was not in any mood, as his only response was to shrug without even looking up from his plate. Severus continued to eye him with scrutiny.

"I see... Perhaps your friends are good enough for you to copy an essay on Everlasting Elixirs from, but not to share a meal with?"

This finally got Wells to look up, but it was not with any pleasure. He seemed to consider defending himself for a moment, and then the light of argument left his face. "What are you going to do, give me more detentions? Sir?"

This was in line with the snippy attitude the boy had taken with him ever since he had gotten a much unaccustomed reprimanding while they had been in the presence of the deputy headmistress after the quidditch match. He supposed it was his own fault for being so soft on him up till then, but it was still aggravating.

"No," Severus said with considerable effort to keep his indignation under wraps, "I daresay your difficulties completing your assignments yourself would only worsen if you continue to have less time for them."

"Maybe if you had just defended me in the first place then I would have been able to do it myself," Wells said with a sudden burst of anger, having seemingly found the fight left in him.

Severus held his eyes closed for a second to restrain himself from rising to a yelling match over the already pathetic dining experience.

"I cannot exactly do anything," he said with leveled contempt, "if you go attacking other students in front of the whole entire school. Including the headmaster himself." He turned his glower onto Wells, who didn't seem to have a defense for this, and continued. "They heard what you said all the way to the stands, you know."

That sealed the final bit of whatever protests he had left in him, and the boy turned back in his seat to face his pumpkin cakes, picking one apart without eating it. It was a moment before he found anything else to say.

"Why couldn't I have detention with Professor Fawkes again at least?" he said in a mumbling voice, keeping his eyes on his plate. "McGonagall made me do cleaning—and lines. All Professor Fawkes ever made me do was water her plants."

"I would go out on a limb," Severus said with dry sarcasm, "and assume that is why you had McGonagall instead." He noted that he himself wasn't included in Wells' list of preferred detention-givers. "Professor Fawkes is taking her holiday early, by the way. So don't be expecting any more leniency from her till after break."

"What—why? Where's she gone so early?"

"Perhaps skiing? I haven't a clue."

Wells was looking more perplexed even than he had when Dumbledore conveyed this news; it was certainly more interest than a student should have for a teacher's absence. Severus narrowed his eyes curiously.

"Was there something you were wanting to speak with her about?" Wells looked around the floor thoughtfully for a moment before shrugging most unhelpfully. Severus persisted with more irritation. "Anything you might need, you can obviously come to me as your Head of House first and-"

"No, thank you."

He drew in a steadying breath as if about to sigh, but let it out smoothly at the last second. It wasn't worth getting worked up over. Wells would come around eventually once he realized his teacher was actually there to help him, it was just that there were obvious rules in place still that needed to be followed. If he was too immature to see that right now, well, so be it.

It was a shame that the boy didn't show signs of having much of anyone to talk to now, though, what with his apparent favorite teacher gone. Severus hoped beyond what he already knew to be true that the boy was at least still trying to maintain contact with his family, so that he could still have some connection there—no matter what news would eventually transpire.

Sitting in his office, eating in the dungeon gloom, just the two of them, had him feeling a kind of somber nostalgia for his own weak familial contact. With the end of the year drawing near, and the dismal year it had been for him, he considered for the briefest of moments escaping from the stressful environment the school had become and taking a real honest attempt at a holiday. It could only be an attempt, however, considering Wells probably had him beat in number of letters exchanged to mothers, and it might end up being an even more taxing experience if he thought too hard about it, but it was an idea, nonetheless. For the time being, he tucked it away in the back of his head for further consideration.

The time he had to put in a notice asking to take off, however, was steadily dwindling away.

The 9th of December came and so did his second Sunday meeting with Dumbledore, where not a single mention of Freya came up to his great surprise and further disquiet. He conveyed that things with Wells had been improving, and the boy was even cheering up as time out of detention went on. Dumbledore had nothing further to contribute this session, and Severus took the opportunity to leave the office as soon as he could, now associating it with so many uncomfortable conversations.

Apart from the headmaster, things were mostly returning to normal. As normal as could be without a particular woman to pester him at all times she was around, or set up camp in his thoughts when she wasn't- now it was just the latter.

Another lasting difference was that he felt oddly cold at times, as if even with a lit fireplace and thick blankets, he just could not absorb enough warmth. The thought had crossed his mind at one point that perhaps there was some additional phoenix magic that had not been recorded in any books—some sort of cursed 'phoenix's kiss' that had taken hold of him. Well, it sounded appropriate to every other fantastical thing that could be found in books on magical beings, but he didn't exactly believe this absurd fleeting thought. It was just an amalgamation of all the things on his mind melded into one, so that when he was shivering in bed at night or wandering the especially wintery dungeon halls, he could blame the fact his mind kept recalling exceptionally warm thoughts on a magical reason instead of it being his own fault.

And it certainly had nothing to do with the fact that he now had no one to talk to.

His somewhat neutral processing of the information of Freya's departure had been slowly souring as the days went on, feeling more and more as if she could have at least said a goodbye—spy, or pet, or otherwise—it was just polite. He reckoned that it might be just inopportune timing given their last interaction, and her thoroughly embarrassed beyond words display when he had briefly run into her, but still; he wanted something more. A postcard from a lodge covered in more decorations than even the castle was piling up perhaps. Afterall, that was what 'friends' did, didn't they?

The very brilliant idea of the age-old tradition of communication via the exchange of papers, perhaps by some sort of large bird, that was easily accessible if one had a simple quill and ink, had rather been escaping him—mostly due to the fact that this would require the will to do so and it was much easier to wallow than to write. Especially if he had to be the one to do it first. But it did cross his mind.

There wouldn't have been anything to write about, however, as what he wanted couldn't be sent nor received by a letter. He just wished for the seat next to him to not be so resolutely empty no matter how many times he turned his head to look.

At least, the seat in the library, anyway, as he could do with the one beside him at the staff table being empty rather than occupied as it currently was. He had returned to eating meals in the Great Hall, as nothing could pull him from his thoughts much these days anyway, not even the prim ministry man that now always filled in the seat to his left.

He mostly only cast sidelong glances of distaste and kept his chatter towards the deputy headmistress and headmaster, but on the current morning, as Severus took his place at the table, the usual rude stare was followed by turning in his seat with a question.

"Severus, was it?" the man asked with displeasure, as if he was being forced to lower himself in some degree by speaking to him.

Severus busied himself with taking particular care to align the sleeves of his robes out of the way of his knife and fork, only answering with a raise of his brows in acknowledgement and silently praying he could just get through this meal without being interrogated.

"Right," the man said, taking this as enough of an opening, "Minerva was telling me the other day that you happen to be close with Miss Fawkes, yes?"

Again he made no comment, but his eyes slid over to McGonagall who was looking particularly terse over her morning toast. He could just imagine the note of disapproval her voice must have contained as she relayed this information to the substitute, who went on.

"Well, I've been having a bit of trouble accessing her office. One of the students said that she keeps—erm—things that would be useful for class, and, well, I was wondering if you happen to know if she left a key, or perhaps—"

"Sorry," Severus cut in, making the other man go quiet. "Seeing as the only closeness we share is in seating arrangements, I haven't a clue."

"Ah..." The man ran his eyes skeptically over him as Severus already turned back to his plate to begin filling it. "A shame. I would have liked to see what sorts of creatures she keeps. I'm in the Department of Magical Forestry Cultivation myself—wand woods, you know—plenty of nasty little things lurking around magical woods, you wouldn't believe—"

Fascinating, he thought to himself, holding back from rolling his eyes as he completely tuned out the rest of what the man had to say and cut into his breakfast muffin. He was more focused on the fact that someone from the ministry was trying to dig into even the secrets of 'Dumbledore's niece' not two seats away from the man, and that he himself had now covered twice for the woman. With Wells it had just been typical keeping a student out of teachers' affairs, but with this situation he felt as if he were repaying a debt; and as if he had discovered a certain zeal to do so. Not even he had been invited to explore too closely the secrets of Freya's office, and he certainly wasn't going to let some ministry official go snooping either. He might have to set up some kind of watch on the door later...

The Daily Prophet was delivered and snatched up by Severus, more to have something to occupy himself with that would hopefully deter the man more than looking busy over eggs. The man did thankfully go silent as the newsprint was unrolled and straightened out, but it was with such an odd smile on his face that Severus found himself scrutinizing it rather than the paper.

When at last he finally did shift his eyes down to read the headline, the ministry man spoke up once more, but it was not to continue his forced casual ramblings about bowtruckles and wood rot. His voice dropped low from its former hauteur, into a nasty murmur meant only for the staff table, and for one particular individual's ears.

"Ah... Most unfortunate business, isn't it? I heard over the weekend already from a connection..."

Severus could just make out the man's hand on the edge of the table as he leaned in, but while his eyes were wide enough to take in the details around him, they were glued on a fixed track across the words before him. Whatever reaction the ministry official was trying to observe in him was the least of his concern as his head snapped up, his eyes racing across the Slytherin table.

He stood up at once. Let the man think whatever he wanted about him; his past was well behind, and he was now a Head of House first and foremost.

Darting swiftly over, his eyes already casting about for every other paper being unrolled across the hall, the one in particular he was narrowing in on was already being torn from the hands of the fifth-year boy beside his target by a swift flick of his wand, landing in his hand to be shoved with a sharp crinkle into his pocket.

"Mr. Wells. Follow me."

After a hurried pace down to the dungeons, he found himself once again in his office during mealtime with Wells. This time there was no little table in front of his seat by the fire, however, and Severus didn't join him. He stood staring down for a prolonged moment as he watched the knowledge of what was happening grip the boy's face. When he didn't panic, but instead turned to a stony resignation, Severus finally handed over the paper, without a word, and turned on his heel to pace around the room.

Any sympathy he was feeling was washed over with rage, and he clenched his jaw knowing the ministry official just above could have easily prevented causing such a scene if he had just spoken up. But of course, a scene was what he wanted, and there was no care for anyone else who would be affected. Perhaps he even knew the man's son was in the room and had written him off as the same cut as his father. Even more enraging: had Dumbledore himself known?

There was a sharp shaky drawn in breath behind him and he ceased his anxious footsteps. He didn't turn around immediately, but when he recognized the sounds as almost verging on happiness, he did chance a curious peek over his shoulder. Wells was still swiping his sleeve over his face, though, and he kept his attention silent for now, waiting for the boy to speak up first.

"He's—he's not dead," he said with a voice that betrayed his age. "Azkaban—probably for... for, well, a long time—but... he's not dead."

Severus could only stare at his relieved face, his expression accentuating somehow both his boyish youth and the dark circles under his eyes. It was such a far cry from what he was expecting his reaction to be, and he hadn't been sure how to respond to even his expectations, that now he was simply at a loss. The quavering smile in the face of such news struck such a chord in him that he could only quietly turn away again in confusion.

Wells seemed to understand his teacher's reaction, because after a moment he timidly spoke up again.

"I... I used to see him dead, you know. In class, Miss Fawkes brought out a boggart, even though we told her we'd all learned that already ages ago from our last teacher—the one who died from pixies, you know? But she said... she said as we got older, it was important to go back to what we were afraid of; because it would change when we learned more scary stuff. We had to keep growing our defenses as our fears grow..." Wells must have lifted his head, because his voice suddenly came in clearer to Severus's half-turned ear. "I think she just made it up, really, because she probably didn't know we had already learned it. But... but she was really nice when it happened—you know—when my dad... when his dead body fell out, and the whole class was..." There was a sound of gulping down air. "I'm just—I'm really glad he's not dead. And he'll get out eventually, I know it..."

Severus sincerely wished he could bottle just an ounce of the optimism he was hearing, as he was sorely lacking at the moment. He stared in a grim haze at a wall of potions before him, abandoning hope that he could say anything remotely helpful in this situation. His eyes cast over the labels of every jar as if searching for one that might spell out the name of a particular brand of helpfulness, the only kind he could think of at the moment: Freya. But she was nowhere to be found, and he needed to get a grip on more than just his wrist that was being held tight behind his back. Before he could come up with something worth saying, however, Wells spoke up again.

"Sir?"

Severus steeled himself and turned with a readiness for compassion that he did not possess.

"Do you know that you're in this article, too?"

He felt his face go smooth and slack; and then numb.

"What?" He rushed forward and took the out held paper, the second page where Wells had turned it to coming into focus with too many words for his eyes to grab all at once, though they tried. He turned away in a swish of robes from the boy's curious expression, and narrowed his search for his own name.

"...in fact, Aiden Plewick, also arrested in the same group as Tobias Wells, was a mere nineteen years of age according to records available to the public. It isn't unusual for Death Eaters to fall into such an age range, though. Many go Dark nowadays at an alarmingly young age, no doubt due to their vulnerable minds being more easily corruptible. It has even been speculated that some had dropped out of schooling at the famous Hogwarts to pursue such nefarious goals, as multiple persons currently either in Azkaban or at large had come straight from the thought-to-be very esteemed castle. Though it could even be the school itself encouraging these ideas, as at current the staff contains none other than one such youthful Death Eater, Severus Snape, who has been hired to teach Potions, The Prophet has been told, and whose name was also brought up in the trial."

Acquitted! At my own trial—which was not public record! He realized the muscles in his jaw were putting up a painful protest to how tightly they were clenched, and he clicked his teeth as he adjusted to biting hard into his lip instead.

They made it sound as if Dumbledore had gotten a signed permission slip from The Dark Lord himself to hire his precious little nephew or something—no mention, even as he kept reading, that he had been tried and found innocent by the ministry themselves. He couldn't even begin to fathom the age of whatever wizard had written the exceptional suggestion that anyone under the age of perhaps forty-five was a bumbling infant too helpless to think for themselves. Though, of course, he had been wrong about his own maturity when he had thought himself secure enough to throw himself over—

The paper was starting to rip as his fingers clenched it too tightly in his fists for it to stretch, and he finally had to throw it from his grip onto his desk, letting his eyelids close forcefully as if he could scrub his eyes clean of what he just read, and hopefully his brain as well.

"Err... Sir?"

He drew in such a long slow breath, that his chest finally could no longer expand, and remained held in place until he could collect himself. Letting it out quietly, he turned on his heel, looking completely serene and placid, and feeling as if he could burn a hole through any paper unfortunate enough to be waved in front of his face.

"Mr. Wells," he said in reply, with such an eerie forced calm that the boy looked suddenly frightened. "I have to go take care of some things before my first class. Feel free to use this office till you've had enough time to collect yourself. And please, remember to lock the door."

But even as he left, taking the dungeon steps up two at a time, once he was faced with the decision of where to even go from there, he came up short. He already knew all the staff including Dumbledore were still at breakfast, a quick peek through the open doors as he stealthily strode passed confirmed this, and he certainly wasn't going back in there. He could stalk the hall hoping for the headmaster to leave before it would be time for him to go to his class, but as he chewed his tongue in irritation, he had every inclination that counting on Dumbledore to be reliable in an instance such as this was like hoping for a Christmas miracle.

Then there was the predicament that, Dumbledore or no, his classes would be starting up for the day—and soon. How many students were likely to have read to the second page of the Daily Prophet, though? He guessed just one—because that was all it would take, and word of mouth would do the rest. It was going to be an extremely arduous day of repeating the same convictions to a bunch of gossipy little kids all day. And that wasn't even mentioning their parents, who would inevitably be reading the paper at a much higher rate.

It was everything he had feared from the beginning of the school year, but which had always remained at such a far distance from reality that he had finally let those worries go. Well, now it seemed as if they had all very much arrived; coming in the same carriage as even more headaches of which he hadn't dreamed.

As the day wore on, he perhaps shouldn't have been so quick to pre-emptively judge it—the day, as it turned out, was the least of his worries. It was the night, with no classes or other distractions, that was giving him a much more difficult time.

Try as he might to stay holed up in his office, thoroughly drained after indeed hours of repeating over and over that he had been acquitted; that it was none of the business of teenagers who couldn't even produce an adequate potion; that the Prophet was a load of rubbish that had gone downhill since the previous editor was killed during the war—and, no, he hadn't had a hand in killing him, thank-you-very-much; he still then had to deal with knocks on his office door from the most maddening of the bunch: his own House students. The Slytherins were mostly taking this rumor that their teacher was a confirmed (acquitted) practitioner of the Dark Arts in a very different stride.

Wells was apparently, much to Severus's complete disbelief, handling his father's arrest very well. At least, showing up to his office with a group of his close friends, looking with all the gleaming-eyed determination like he was ready for a fight wasn't something he would have dreamed the fifth-year boy was capable of—or stupid enough for. When he had opened the door, he had felt like he was about to be jumped by the very Youth Division of the Death Eaters that the Daily Prophet had so ineptly described. They didn't seem as happy when he all but slammed the door in their face with a sharp word to go do their homework and perhaps pick up a book on Azkaban, because four underage boys were certainly not breaking anyone out of it in this century. Unfortunately there wasn't anything he could recommend to help with their thick heads that had come up with the idea of bringing this to a teacher. He had already told them a dozen times by now that they weren't getting any 'special lessons' out of him.

After such a day, he just wanted to sit completely still at his desk with nothing more than the crackle of the fire and the soothing sound of silence. He had abandoned talking to Dumbledore, as he wasn't in any mood to hear a bunch of admonishments smugly underlined in righteousness, and besides, the headmaster had sent him no enchanted note nor any other message at all that now might be a great time for a meeting. So he wasn't going to be the one to run to him for help.

He sat there for a long while, chewing on his lip and staring at a blank piece of parchment, not sure if he was setting up to write home, write a request for an early holiday, or write an inquiry into a one-way ticket to Siberia—or write to someone who perhaps was already there for all he knew of the woman's whereabouts.

It was then that the little brass instrument on his desk that he had recently procured—after the day of his first meeting of the month with the headmaster had left him, too, wanting a way to see who was at his door at all times, which had been coming in handy as of late—began to chime and smoke. He barely glanced up, not even wanting to see which Slytherin student it was this time probably coming to ask for an autograph of The Dark Lord or something. But the little figure that was swirling into shape looked familiar in a way much distinct from a student. Its long hair seemed to swish too much for the smoke to hold the form correctly until it had come to a stop, where he watched the figure turn a quarter and the tiny smoky hand raise. The corresponding knock on his door gave him a start regardless.

He didn't get up, and after a long beat of silence, he thought he could see the sigh even on the tiny smoke figure. She knocked again. His legs finally spurred into motion, but only to come to a standstill at the door, staring at the handle. He was just taking a steadying breath, as he quickly tried to sort out what to even think of this and why he was having such trepidation, when a voice came from the other side of the door.

"Severus, I can see your shadow over the door crack, let me in."

Well, that settled it for him—he definitely wasn't letting her in now. Glaring at the door, imagining where Freya's face was on the other side, he spoke in the same slightly lowered voice, strong enough to get through the wood, but not enough to carry down the hall that she was stood in.

"Been having too much fun on holiday?" he said with only slightly concealed bitterness. "Needing a break from all the excitement?"

The sigh was audible now, and he could just imagine her head tilting back in that way that caused her hair to flow in liquid motion along with the movement.

"Yes, I am just having the time of my life—will you please let me in? I just want to talk."

Despite her frustration at their current speaking arrangements, he could still plainly hear the whine of concern in her voice, grating on his ears and making his lip curl in disgust.

"No. I don't think I will," he said with spiteful enjoyment that he could for once physically keep her out and there was nothing that she could do about it. His tone dropped as he continued, however, "There's nothing to talk about."

"Really? The Prophet just got you mixed up with a different Severus Snape, did they? I'm sure the students are totally buying that."

"The students can't even read a simple list of instructions, what does their opinion of a single ridiculous article matter?"

There was a pause during which he took in the minute details of the woodgrain in front of him, not enjoying being without a face to judge reactions from, but glad to at least dodge what he was dreading were golden eyes full of concern. Sure enough, her next words were a good margin softer.

"Severus... I know things might be—weird—err—between... Well, I just wanted to make sure you're alright, is—"

His wand practically smacked into the door as he cast the spell to block sound coming through so fast, cutting off the rest. Even with the sudden closed off silence, he felt the need to physically distance himself from the door, stomping angrily back to his desk and retaking his seat. Watching the smoke figure through his fingers as he rubbed his forehead, leaning heavily on one arm of his chair, he saw the visible confusion and then further attempts to knock. The door silently rattled slightly, and then much more vigorously as he watched the smoke figure beat uselessly harder. He nearly even laughed despite his foul mood when she turned around and flailed her frustration into the hallway. And then she stood still, and he watched, gripped with a creeping desolation, as she appeared to accept this conclusion, and slowly turned to disappear down the hall as an unraveling wisp of smoke.

By the end of the following week, after each new day had battered down his mood more thoroughly than the last, his memory of this encounter had taken a dramatically darker turn in interpretation. His agitated brain was warring between a prickly incredulousness that she would again take up this swooping savior routine with him, when it was her own side who was causing the upset in the first place—what with the Prophet's extravagant stretching of truths, the ministry official and his slimy sneering, and Dumbledore himself, who should have known better and warned of this event—and an unfounded, unsettling feeling in his gut caused by his wish that she had done something more than walk away. It was his own fault for shutting the door so tightly, he knew, but it had been because he didn't want to face up to someone who shared the knowledge of another truth of blame—that all of this was his fault, when all was said and done. He could raise his voice to the students who tried to pin some great evil on him, mentally marking them all off as stupid as he did, but it just began to feel as if he was yelling at his own idiotic teenage self. He was the original one who had thought himself so smug and clever, so above it all that he wouldn't get caught up in something dangerous, and if he did, he would be perfectly capable of getting himself out on his own. He was out now, and he was on his own, but only the wrong one of those things was his own doing.

As it turned out, students chattering about exciting new gossip had been only the lesser of the results of the news article.

The Slytherins he had shunned had apparently taken his hints that he would be reporting them to the headmaster if they continued (a last-ditch effort he had sunk to while he was too fed up to deal with possibly being incriminated along with them in their stupidity) exceptionally hard, as they no longer looked eager to corner him after class, but had turned just as nasty and brooding as some of the other students. For, apart from those that had been raised in households with questionable wizarding morals, there were plenty more students who had been raised in the opposite—and they were equally unhappy with the idea of one of their teachers being a Death Eater. Plenty of them had faced hardships in their family from the war, and now it seemed like he was a direct outlet for their wounded glares. The worst by far was that it seemed there were indeed rumors that had yet to be spread from students that had been in attendance at the same time as him, and apparently it was such delicious retribution towards one some now thought to be so rotten, that it had become too hilarious not to laugh behind their hands while whispering in class.

His office even proved to be a useless hiding place when letters from parents showed up addressed to him specifically, and to the headmaster himself, though he only learned of this from another letter with Dumbledore's seal, as he had been either spared the annoyance of a visit, or discarded as unimportant enough for one while the headmaster was dealing with things behind the scenes.

But while the head of the school was absent from sight, the rest of the staff was plainly around when he dared venture out of the dungeons—notable by their sharp distrustful glares they were apparently recycling from the beginning of the year. McGonagall he had expected, but it was Flitwick-whom he had hoped would have forgiven him after his student had been apologized to by Wells, and who had been the only teacher that he respected that had shown him any courtesy—eyeing him with skepticism and a small tut across the entrance hall in the middle of the week that had delivered a considerable blow. Even bumbling Professor Powers made a gasp of shock when they crossed paths unexpectedly, and hurried away without a word, leaving him feeling equally dejected—and insulted to be treated like this by such a person.

Nearly four months, down the drain. Not even his supposed 'friend' was around now. And he was too bitter and stubbornly dug into his own double-edged anger at everything around and himself to even consider reaching out. The only letter he was writing now was one to his mum to ask permission to drop in, and a resolute declaration that he was without a doubt now taking the holiday away from Hogwarts the second that term ended.

It had been Friday when he had written both of these, and Saturday when he had gotten one back from his mum agreeing to the visit, and one back from Dumbledore.

He frowned at the second letter, stowing the first in a bottom drawer of his desk without a second glance. There was still half a week of classes left, and a good ten days before Christmas itself; he was sure this was enough time to take off for a holiday where the school would be empty anyway. Sparing any details, though, the letter only requested that their usual Sunday meeting be at the earliest possible convenience tomorrow. This foreboding message did nothing good when it settled like a final stone into his already pained stomach. He went to bed that night with the covers pulled fully up to his ears, the fire lit, and still somehow shivering with his roiling thoughts.

As he stood outside the headmaster's office for the third time that month, he felt convinced for once that things were not as bad as he had been imagining. Obviously, this was just a meeting finally about the particularly eventful week, and wasn't anything to do with his request for holiday leave. Part of him still pessimistically held that he was only telling himself this because he couldn't take much more before he would just snap and take off full tilt into the woods, but he relaxed this nerve, and even managed to announce his presence with a prompt knock, not even standing outside on the landing for more than half a minute.

"Come in."

Severus took his usual place, standing in the middle of the office before the desk.

The two men took a second to evaluate each other, each taking in with their own tepid expression the signs of weariness on the other's face. It was Dumbledore who blinked first, with a twitch of his mouth that could have been almost mistaken for a quick smile.

"I take it," Dumbledore said in his steady voice, "that you have had a similar week as I have."

Severus didn't much think that anyone could have had a week such like the one he had, with such an acute coming together of events in such a disastrous way. It was certainly rich to hear Dumbledore try and act as if he had any idea. His face twitched in a similar way, though his felt even more off the mark from a smile and more like a dog giving a warning before a bite.

The headmaster took a deep breath and nodded, accepting this less than encouraging response.

"I see. Well... First things first; how is Mr. Wells doing? The boy, of course, though I dare say his father could do with a bit of a welfare check about now."

With his tongue pressed between his teeth, he could have almost exploded into a rant about how the boy was completely beyond him, acting like a complete child that would not see reason, and was probably going to wind himself up in this very office himself sooner or later—and Severus would not be left standing there taking the blame for this one after the boy had talked back to him in front of the whole Potion's class the other day. He almost broke his silence, just to have a chance to finally let out his pent-up fury that had been boiling away all week—almost—but this was still Dumbledore, and he would rather chew his tongue off than confide in him.

"He's... struggling with the news," he said with some effort to keep the temper from his voice, "but I believe he will settle down eventually after the much-needed holiday. He confirmed with me that he is at least going home for it to spend time with his mother."

"I see," Dumbledore said again, and flattened a hand over his beard as he nodded again, frowning in thought down at his desk. "That is good to hear. I'm glad he has some family."

"Yes," he said with a slight punctual note in nod to the similarity to his own holiday request, "I agree."

There was a lapse of silence in which his hard questioning gaze went unmet, and he looked off to the side in exasperation, staring out the windows. It was barely light out now in the deepening winter mornings, and a small snow squall had refreshed overnight what had melted from the beginning of the month. A thick blanket of clouds matched the thin blanket of white, and threatened even more snow perhaps later that day. At the moment, the scenery just looked bleak and empty. His eyes strayed back to more enticing colors, like the gold of the empty perch behind the headmaster's desk—and then swiftly back to the headmaster, who was now looking at him at last.

"Severus..."

He had to stop his eyes from forcefully squeezing shut as he recognized this tone of voice immediately. He didn't want to deal with this, not now. Could you not just let me at least have Christmas, you pompous old man?

"Forgive me, I would not normally trespass like this into someone's personal affairs, but... speaking of mothers..."

Severus squinted with distrust, not liking where this was going or how exactly it was going there.

"In your request that you sent me—to take off for the holiday—you mention going home for Christmas, yes? And might I be mistaken in thinking that you mean... to your childhood home with your own mother? Is that right?"

His eyes remained narrowed as he tried to sort out this odd line of questioning, and he didn't answer right away.

This wasn't exactly correct, at least, not in the details, but he certainly wasn't about to explain his home life to Dumbledore. It was making his shoulders feel tense just broaching the personal subject at all, and he suddenly recalled a phoenix biting his hand for touching its back—he felt much like he could relate at the moment.

"Yes, that's right," he said, his eyes sliding away to the windows again.

The sound of the headmaster's slow steady intake of breath before his next reply almost made Severus almost lose his temper.

"I see... Then, I am afraid, that I cannot honor your request."

His head snapped back to attention, incredulous. "What?" Because of that?

Dumbledore leaned forward on his desk over his netted hands, peering over his spectacles with an air of weary disappointment as he spoke, "Severus, if you had not lied just now, then perhaps I could have been swayed. But I find myself rather at a loss."

He gaped at him, quite forgetting to play nice and polite as his shoulders raised in defense and his hands clenched at his sides. "Are you—" He didn't even know what to say. He had never imagined something so outlandish as being held to the exact letter of his familial relations in order to go on holiday.

"I am sorry," the headmaster went on with a stern note to his voice that seemed to underline that he would not be changing his mind no matter how sorry he actually was, "but I do have it on good authority—quite good—that you and your mother haven't been on friendly terms in years. So if you are unwilling to state your true whereabouts—"

"Hang on," he interrupted, feeling like he might be going mad now. Dumbledore was graciously patient while Severus stood in silent shock gazing at the floor. And then his mouth snapped shut.

'Good authority,' was it? Gathering information that he most definitely shouldn't have on him—all in order to deny him from leaving the castle? Which he now highly doubted that he would have ever been allowed to do—obviously. This was just an excuse to catch him in a lie, and even if he ran downstairs and shoved his mother's letter in Dumbledore's face, breeching his own shred of privacy, it wouldn't matter. There was only one person who the man trusted to get him information on his 'accused' Death Eater teacher so that they could both keep him thoroughly penned in to the right side of the line. His eyes flicked back up into those obnoxiously calm blue ones.

"And who told you... this private information?"

The eyes stayed on his, but Dumbledore lowered his chin a fraction before he said, "I imagine that you know that it could only have been one person." There was a sudden sadness in his eyes, as if he regretted having to deliver this truth, but the sentiment was not received by its intended.

He was sure he had never mentioned his mother to Freya. Unless the woman could read minds, which he couldn't rule out at this point, because he highly doubted that he knew much of anything about her true self. Maybe in a passing comment he had said something in a certain tone of voice about family, or during one of the many hours they had sat in the library pouring over their classwork, but there was also another answer. She had been completely absent from the school for weeks at a time. She could have been anywhere, doing any manner of assignment under the guise of a holiday...

"Am I right to assume," he said, struggling to keep his voice even, but wanting to hear it for himself what the truth would be, "that even if I told you where I was headed... I wouldn't be permitted?"

Dumbledore held his gaze for a moment before answering, appearing to contemplate his readiness to hear what he had to say.

"No, Severus. I rather think that it would be better for you to remain here for the time being."

So that was it then.

Not the innocent mistake that he had put in his notice too late, or even that he was lying about his plans. He was never getting out of here in the first place. And the answer to why was written on the face of the man before him, etched in every mistrusting line of his frown, which only seemed to be growing deeper as Severus failed to hide his own expression from his face. What did it matter, though? He could play nice for months and apparently it amounted to nothing except further indignity. And this, trampling on such a delicate topic such as this, was not something he could put up with. The whole school hating him, everyone thinking he was the walking embodiment of evil, that he had spawned the Dark Arts himself at the tender age of eleven—whatever. They were just imbeciles; he could grit his teeth and get through it. But the thought that this whole time, the whole entire time, he wouldn't have been allowed out of bounds even if he had asked—because he hadn't realized what he was signing up for—that Dumbledore had agreed this was where he needed to be, not in Azkaban—because this was his prison. Right where Dumbledore could watch over his every move. Him and his bloody lying pet.

"Severus." Dumbledore was apparently reading the atmosphere of wordless fury emanating off his employee perfectly well now that he was making no efforts to hide it. The headmaster closed his eyes with a sigh that seemed to tax his elderly frame. "If you are upset by my decision, I would ask that you take the time to think it through with a clear mind." He raised those piercing blue eyes once more with a summoned strength shining within. "Otherwise, you should at the very least... remember what I have told you in the past."

His teeth came down on the tip of his tongue too tight, and he almost laughed over the sharp pain of it before he spoke. He wasn't going to repeat the words, though, because at that moment he had made up his mind, and he didn't altogether want that decision known.

With his mind clear, except for those simple words remembered in his head repeating, he lowered his gaze to the floor in contemplation of his actions. His posture recoiled, and he straightened up at once. He thought about all this man had done for him to keep him out of trouble; all the opportunities he had afforded. He even forced himself to swallow, looking anxious.

If you should feel the need to leave, for any reason... don't come back.

Severus let his gaze go clouded, even pained, with a flicker of anger still to be found if one were to look closely at his eyes. And then he lifted his head, with a reluctant nod, and said in his best harmlessly begrudging voice, "Yes, headmaster. I remember."

He left the office with a cold but not biting promise to at least present himself for the Christmas feast.

And then he went back down the several flights of stairs, passed McGonagall and her sour expression, passed the early rising students and their wide-eyed stares, back into the dungeons, through his office—and packed his bags at once.

There had been a shift—not a great one, but a noticeable margin of error—while he was collecting his little pile of things from around his bedchamber and office. Primarily in that, as he was trying to figure out how to put away the smoke-dispensing visitor detector without dumping ash all over his clothes in his suitcase, he had been unsure which things he even really needed; or, in fact, wanted. Which had led to him wondering which things would be alright to leave behind; and then if he left them behind, what would happen to them; and then, finally, that perhaps there was a chance he could only pack up what would fit, leave the rest, and maybe... just maybe... come back for the rest. Because, after all, wouldn't it be silly for Dumbledore's supposed spoken law to apply to such a ridiculous misunderstanding? Surely the man wasn't as completely rigid as he made out to be in front of him? He was a soft, squashy-hearted sap that stood behind podiums opining about muggles and morals. If he took off now and got in his holiday without the due permission, it would be bad; but then he could return as if nothing had happened, and nothing would have—and surely that would be alright? Surely the man wasn't as unyielding to chuck him from his chosen career just for visiting his mum on Christmas, right?

Of course, this had just been his stance on Sunday, with his feet growing cold while the hours after the meeting were still fresh and he had free time to hole up in his room and overthink. By the time he had gotten through the half-week of classes left of the term, with a rowdy barely contained bunch of students that were even more viciously ready for the holiday than him, he was no longer under any impression that he was going to remain at this cursed unwelcoming castle for even one more night.

And so it was that, in the middle of the night, casting so many glances over his shoulders that he might as well have not been looking where he was going at all, Severus stole down the castle grounds, trudging through the snow, and set off in the direction of the main gates—filled with a furious abandon that gave him half a mind to stop by and visit his old friends while he was out, if he fancied the fun little excursion to ferret them out of where they must be hiding. Perhaps he'd pick up a cake.

He kept expecting Dumbledore, in a spark of unpredictable knowledge, to descend upon him without warning and stop him. Or else tell him to get a move on. It was with nothing but bitterness that he remembered the old wizard's face, but his resentment was overfilled beyond the brim, and there was plenty to spill elsewhere. Onto himself, for one; for trusting the man for so long. All his schemes, and he had never been more than a disposable pawn in all of them. It was twisted in a way, that he must despise him so much, but still allowed him to teach here and gave him such an insurmountable job to do. He could lie better than any in the face of death itself, but sit him in front of a bunch of teenagers that couldn't comprehend basic self-preservation and subtlety, and his brain just rotted into an angry mush. It wasn't worth the effort. He belonged elsewhere, as he had told Dumbledore before.

But of course, he was an untrustworthy corrupted villain in all of their eyes; a man already marked by what he had chosen early on.

His left elbow gave an involuntary twitch at the thought, and he shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of robes underneath his cloak. The little miniature suitcase in his pocket, which he had shrunk down to size so as not to be caught in the hall with its telltale bulk by any misfortunate encounter, felt like an exceptionally heavy stone caught between his fingers. He gripped it tight, testing the weight appreciably as it grounded his unsteady form.

Out in the dead of the wintry night, with the soles of his shoes spelled silent on the snow, so that the only sounds were the ringing of the flagpoles on the quidditch pitch and the rush of a bracing breeze through the dry dormant branches of the forest beyond, he felt entirely different somehow. It couldn't just be that he was shivering despite not feeling all that cold, because he did the same in the still quiet of his bedchamber; nor could it be that he was all that tired after having left without getting any sleep, because he had been sleeping mostly fine as of late—perhaps even better than normal. It was almost as if with Freya gone, he had blessedly forgotten the sound of phoenix song, and was now getting solid dreamless sleep for hours the past few weeks. This extra sleep had never really made him feel any less tired in his bones, but it at least never had him waking up in panic-stricken guilt and grief. He could just simply sleep.

He bit his lip, and another soft sound was added to the barren grounds as he sighed through his nose. He had been trying so hard to avoid thinking about her.

In times such as after a particularly rough class, when he was filled with a simmering rage, he could conjure up the strength to blast his anger in her direction, blaming her for every imaginable crime of hers that had undoubtedly put him in this situation.

But like this, with his nerves on high alert, and his heart beating as he listened intently to hear if he was about to be attacked from behind for the crime of taking a holiday, he just felt an empty hopeless mess. It was no use even arguing in her favor at this point, as he had already told himself a hundred times. She was the closest person to Dumbledore there was, and if she hadn't heard of how their meeting had gone, hadn't been immediately ordered to go check on him or at the very least keep an eye on him, then she wasn't coming. He was well and truly being let go. The truth was in every vast meter of the calm chilly air, so undisturbed around him.

His footsteps stopped just shy of the closed main gates, sparing the last few feet of fresh snow, which had just begun to gain a dusting of flakes from above as the clouds finally seemed to be breaking. He had been prepared for this obstacle, and already had his wand gripped in his right hand in his pocket to unlock it.

He drew one last breath of freezing air, feeling it fill his lungs with a welcome ache that went well with his poisonous mood. He hoped he really wasn't welcome back after this, because he never wanted to look into those blue eyes, so full of judgement and disdain, ever again.

"Going for a walk?"

His heart jerked in his chest, and his vision was suddenly obstructed as his breath blew out of him in a white cloud of condensation.

"Mind if I join you?"

In the unusual atmosphere of the night, with his outer layer so cold he felt numb and ungrounded, and teetering where he was on the edge of a very sharp invisible line, he almost felt as if he was being transported back four months. He could have been in the library, standing in front of a different locked gate, being pestered with the very same voice that now came from behind his back, just as it had then.

This time, however, he was standing at it already knowing the kind of person who was behind him. That despite her faux chipper voice, even with the obvious heart taken out of it as it now sounded, she wasn't there to smother him in helpfulness. She never had been.

"What... do you want?" he hissed through gritted teeth.

There was a longer pause than was usual for her, and when he heard her voice, it seemed apparent that this was causing her some difficulty. It only reminded him of how her voice had first sounded, before he had attacked her in the dungeon hall, before pushing her away to the point that she was always sarcastic and joking with him. He had placed her perfectly where she needed to be, held away from him, and even when he had broken that gap, it hadn't really done anything. It always had been just a fluke, after all.

"I... I just came to make sure you aren't doing anything stupid," she said, with her weakest attempt yet at sounding normal. "That's all."

"What's stupid about taking a holiday?" he said, still not turning around but flicking his gaze to the corners as if he could still bounce his glare off the nearby wall and hit her with it from this angle. "I hear you're very fond of them yourself."

There was a pause just as lengthy as before, and he was starting to grow more agitated every second he had to wait for her just to hear more flimsy chatter.

"I'm... sorry that I couldn't be here, Severus... I really am. I just couldn't."

"What a well-thought-out excuse," he said with a bitterly derisive snort. "It took you a whole month you come up with that, did it?"

"I'm telling the truth—"

"Are you?" he shot back over his shoulder, nearly turning his head around. He could just make out the blurry edge of a dark form against the white snowy background, but he angled back an inch to block it out with his hair. He didn't want to look at her just yet anyway. It would be easier if he didn't.

"Severus," she sighed in response, and it sounded as if she was more tired than he had heard her before. Apparently, her 'holiday' hadn't been going so well. "Please... just... don't do this."

"Don't do what-exactly what you've been doing? Just going off unannounced at your fancy?"

"I did announce—… Well, I mean, I told... Albus..."

"Funny," he remarked with a cold glare into the snow, as if trying to rival its temperature, "I did as well. But I'm sure you already know what sort of response I received."

It sounded like she was trying to suppress her sigh this time, but the huff of air was still plenty audible in the stark quiet.

"Yes, I do. And I'm here to... beg you—I'm serious—please don't go."

Something in her voice, not quite whining with worry for him, but sounding like she was trying to genuinely warn him of some great evil that was perhaps lurking just outside the gates, finally made him curious enough about just what on earth the woman's face looked like in that moment. He couldn't discern just from her voice any longer, he needed to see it for himself. Plus, he wanted to see her expression when he gave his reply.

"What are you going to do, stop me?"

But as he turned confidently around, his smug and hostile smirk fell quickly off his face before he even had a chance to gather her reaction. Her expression did indeed look shocked, though, and he could clearly see her puff up in defense of his gaze, darting her eyes away. She looked every bit as timid as she would have if he had approached her, only he hadn't. He was stood completely still, merely gazing in his own astonishment, taking in every detail as he followed her self-conscious hand as it tugged at her hood. He had never seen her with it up before, but then, it wasn't really the focus of her changed appearance. His eyes lingered on the hair that she was trying to cover up by tucking it far into the back of the hood beneath her robes, remembering a time when she had briefly cast a spell to make it black. Now, though, he had no illusion that this was of her own doing. In the reflected light from the snow all around, he could just make out, if he focused on her fringe, that it wasn't the flat impenetrable black that it had been before, looking so fake and unlike her, but a dark and dreary looking brown, looking even more ashen than the brown of her robes. Yet it somehow still matched her, because as his focus shifted to her eyes, they were circled in a grey of their own, looking almost sunken under the shadow of her hood she was hiding in.

Apparently he had been staring too openly for too long, because her eyes, which he now realized held no spark of gold in them, came back up to his with much distress. He watched her look down for a second longer to collect herself, then come back up with a steeled determination in her eyes, holding his gaze steady as if daring him to say something. But the truth was still plain in the haunted look on her face, no matter how brave-faced she tried to act.

"You're... dying."

Her eyes cast a much more darkly foreboding warning than he had ever seen in them before.

"Not quite yet," she shot back defiantly. "I've got plenty left in me to stop you if I have to."

The surprise wore off and his face settled back into a shrewd look of confusion as he tried to figure out how this new piece fit into the puzzle he had thought was already complete. He was thoroughly and utterly sick of trying to play this game, though, and the answer to everything was right here in front of him.

"Well... before you go turning into a pile of ash or embarrassing yourself," he said with growing aggression, "perhaps you wouldn't mind answering a few questions?"

She shook her head, but it was only out of apparent disbelief at his inquiry. She looked ready to snap her fingers and wrestle him back into the castle if she had to, if not just because she still appeared plenty uncomfortable being seen as she was, but she shrugged her shoulders at last.

"Sure. Why not?"

He thought for a moment about where to even start, then decided at the beginning, where he had just been reminded of.

"That day I went to the west wing of the library to access the restricted section... why were you there?"

She blinked. "What?" Her frown deepened, but he wasn't going to help her along until she started giving answers. She quietly sighed, her eyes roaming upwards in thought. "I... think I was just hanging about. Madam Pince doesn't like me anywhere near there; I was just enjoying it while I could before term started. Why?"

His gaze stayed fixed to hers, unmoving, and she finally caught on, looking more and more like she didn't want to see what was in his eyes.

"You still don't trust me," she said, and despite it not being a question, she sounded unable to believe it. "After everything, you still think..."

It was a testament to how much he did indeed not believe a word from her, because the expression on her face just then would have nearly caused a reaction. He'd never actually seen her cry unless it was for someone else, but this seemed as close as he would ever witness. For a fleeting second, he almost wanted to believe her, and then he saw on her face something that he imagined perfectly depicted an experience he had had very recently after not being trusted; and he watched her expression turn to a tired sour acceptance.

"Are you going to call me a pet again, then?"

"Perhaps," he said, relieved she had spoken up again, because it rekindled his purpose. "That depends on how you answer my next question—and tell me the truth." His feet replanted so he was facing her head on, with no room for her to escape even an inch of his vision. "I don't want to hear anything else. Just the truth... Did you approach me on his orders?"

She looked up at him with such a hard expression he thought at first that she was about to shake her head and call him an idiot, but she only got as far as the shake, tugging her hood back in place as it briefly slipped.

"No, I didn't."

But she would no longer meet his eyes, and as he watched the tiny twitch of her brows, his face was pulled into a knowing grimace. It caught her attention, and she finally looked up, with a more earnest plea.

"I didn't!"

He let every bit of venom come out in his face and voice as he ripped the page out of her own book and threw it back in her face:

"Liar."

He had been wrong about his original assessment that her eyes were flat black, because with them now opened wide, he saw the remaining dull gold left in them as she took on the expression of one punched in the gut. She apparently remembered and recognized where he was pulling the word and its inclination from, because her cheeks nearly threatened a slight shade of pink under the pallor. Much apart from giving in to further embarrassment, though, he thought that he had rather touched the wrong nerve.

"I am not, you bloody prick—how dare you—just... just say that..." She did drop her gaze then, and her expression became an unreadable knot of turmoil that he would not look away from, wanting every last detail to be known.

"I'm not a pet," she asserted, spitting the word as if sick of hearing it, "I don't follow orders like that. I can..." A shadow of defeat crossed her angry face, and it made her tired features look even more grim. When she spoke again, it was barely a whisper, but each word was like a hard stone thrown into the crisp cold night. "I can think for myself, you know."

He turned the words over in his mind, but they didn't tumble into place until she had dragged her gaze, looking like she very much did not wish to, back up to his eyes. His lungs filled with the crystalizing air with a sharp intake—and he understood what he had been getting wrong this whole time.

"You approached me yourself," he said just as quietly. She gave a tiny nod, her eyes blinking away and back again. "But... with the same goal. To spy on me. You were simply... doing it on your own." She frowned at this, not looking at him, but he wasn't in the mood to hear any technicalities while he felt as if he were swaying on locked legs. She was quick to jump on him before he could start in on her, though.

"You make him sound so evil," she said with a laugh so weak it was just a sad puff of condensation. "He was never trying to—to spy on you—or whatever you thought." He narrowed his eyes in strict opposition to this view, but let her go on, because her eyes, still downcast, looked by the guilt plain on her face to have more to say. "It was just... me. I just wanted to... to keep an eye on you, and—yes—I did talk to him about it, because he's my friend, so of course I would—"

"Of course you would tell him my personal business—a man who hates me and wants me locked up—"

"He doesn't hate you! And a lot of your business is his business, considering you work here around students."

He snorted. "And I suppose you think he's being gracious by keeping me locked up here, do you?" He remembered why he was harboring such acutely livid thoughts in the first place, and continued with his accusations before she could even respond. "And by the way, where is it exactly that you weaseled out the information about my mother from?"

She blinked at him, her mouth still open from where he had cut her off the first time, looking thrown off.

"W-what...?"

"Don't lie, not now."

"I am not. What do you mean about your mum?"

"Stop it. He admitted himself that it was you."

"I... I seriously don't know what you're talking—"

"Shut up!" he snapped, unable to take any more of this. He didn't care anymore; for all he could sort out she could have been hiding it because what she had done to get the information had been especially bad, or perhaps just some hidden way that she didn't want to share with him. She could be peeking into his dreams while he slept for all he knew.

"Severus... I'm telling you the truth. Why would I lie now?"

His only response was to scowl almost lazily back at her pleading face.

"Would you just listen?" she said, stomping her foot into the snow. She didn't need to fight for the room to talk, though, as it was perfectly clear with his held silence. She still seemed to hesitate, biting her lip. "Look... You want the truth? I really wish you would stop hating him, because he doesn't hate you. He didn't... keep you locked up in here, like you say..."

He didn't think she could have possibly thrown him yet another shock, but as he listened with his quickening heartbeat to her voice that seemed held steady only with how pained she was to speak, he felt even the anger slip from his face in surprise.

"If you want to know why you're here, and not involved in the Order... it's because of me. It's just me. So you can stop blaming him."

Of all the truths he had wanted to pull from her, this was not one which he had ever wanted to hear. Because it meant that there was not one single person there who thought him worthy of any trust, and it wasn't because she was following any orders.

"Well," he said, and then swallowed down the tightness in his throat, giving his voice room to grow to a hard low steel, "if it's just you then... that's good to know. Because I'm sure that I can be walking out of here in ten seconds."

Her eyes snapped up to his in sudden panic—and then darted back down again as she realized his hand was already in his pocket, clutching his wand.

"Severus, please don't do this. I don't want to fight you."

His face pulled into a cold unhappy smile. "Is that the truth?" She winced, but held his gaze, still silently begging with him. "This should be quick then."

What little frustration had remained in her slowly faded out as he watched her shoulders seem to slacken. He wasn't under any impression that she was giving up, though, as he watched her hand slip into her own pocket and her face go stony.

"If you're going to fight me," he said with a mounting buzz in his veins, "why don't you actually try."

Her hand stopped just short of her pocket, and she slowly removed it. An anguished smile stretched across her face.

"Oh... I don't think you want me to do that, Severus. I don't play fair."

He narrowed his eyes before whipping out his wand, keeping it pointed at the ground for now but showing his threat loud and clear.

"Then neither will I."

Her eyes stayed fixed to his wand for a moment as she bit her lip, and then she seemed to concede. Her hands came up to lower her hood as if preparing herself, and then her right hand lowered in an unrelaxed way back to her side. He watched her thumb smooth over her fingertips, as if she was merely fondly remembering the touch of something and not readying her own attack. He had a strong feeling that she wouldn't be attacking, however. If he had learned anything from their mock duel, she was just going to defend no matter what he threw at her. It almost made him want to laugh to remember the calm playfulness that had been in her eyes then, so full of sparkling amber. Had her eyes been growing dull even then, as he now realized her hair must have been? He recalled that night that her eyes had looked as dark as her drunken laughter, and her hair had not seemed to glow from within against the backdrop of snow, similar, but much darker to now. Perhaps she had just wanted to do something spontaneous before she had to go and return to ash, then. It didn't mean anything.

And he couldn't be thinking about that right now. Whoever that woman had been that had whispered and laughed so sweetly with him, she wasn't here tonight. There was only an enemy before him, looking back with eyes so sad and full of concern that it made his wand hand itch.

"I'm... I'm so sorry for this," she said, and he felt his pulse quicken because it sounded like she was apologizing for what she was about to do, and he suddenly wondered if she wasn't going to be as defensive as he had thought. His eyes stayed locked to hers, searching with a fervor that almost made him step forward to get a better look at what was just beyond his reach. "And Severus... please just remember that... I am truly sorry for lying."

He flinched away from where he had been leaning forward, feeling his lip curl up in a sneer. He gave his hand a sharp twist, ready to raise it.

"You will be."

He wasn't going to make the same mistake as he first had when he had turned his wand on her. This wasn't a moment of incorrectly assumed attack; her hand was fully visible this time, her fingers pressed tight against her thumb. Nor was it a duel with a countdown; but he still waited to see her hand come up in mirror of his own all the same. It was one final courtesy, just to give her a chance—because he was not holding back this time.

In the split second as his wand slashed the line so roughly through the air that it was not quite even from one side to the other, the little clip of noise from her snapped fingers echoed a single clear crisp note.

And he saw that he had, in fact, been so easily fooled once again.

He wished her snap had sparked a great blaze, or perhaps an invisible barrier like the one he had seen her cast before. He wished she had somehow struck his mind blank and rendered his spell useless. He wished anything had happened—anything at all. But, after all, he had wanted her job to begin with because she had never seemed as capable of him in defending against the Dark.

He watched in rapid motion, before his wand had even been lowered an inch, as the blood was slashed out of her, from one shoulder to just above the other—right across her throat. And then in a horrible slowness, after the first golden drops hit the snow and she stumbled, the hair that had been spread out behind her back fell as slow soft feathers, light as the snow itself.

And he was backing up so fast that he nearly tripped, his shoulder blade colliding painfully with the wrought iron gate. He startled himself at the clanging noise, raised his wand to open it, and was through and gone from the scene in a whirl of frost.

---

_—***—_

"And maybe I'm too blind to see, the line was always crossed in me
And maybe I'm too far to reach, but what's inside of you is the same as me
When the soul dies, it burns like the page
We pass through the gates
We pass through the gates"

B.R.M.C. - Fire Walker