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.

8. Blackthorn

—(Author's Note At End of Chapter)—

"You twist the knife, and I'll take the bullet
You start the fire, and the world burns down for you
Isn't it right, or is it your pride
Isn't it cruel to be so kind
But it's all an act of love and it leaves you blind"

B.R.M.C. - The Knife

_—***—_

---

Chapter 8 – Blackthorn

The dry brush of the forest snapped beneath his boots, but made no sound. There hadn't been a storm in some time, and the end-of-July air could have used with a washing out. It was thick, and so was the undergrowth, but he wasn't allowed to leave traces of his path, so he could only shoulder through in annoyance on his way.

At least his walk wasn't made worse by being drunk, though Slughorn had certainly filled his goblet enough times. It had been a hassle having to come up with a new excuse to distract him while he tapped it into harmless grape juice with his wand each time. But even though he was plenty sober, he still felt in a fog. As usual, the times when he could be alone felt like a dull aggravating buzz, just waiting for the next thing to come along that he had to react to—or lie for—or fake.

The small clearing in front of the cliff face came into view sooner than he would have hoped, and he dragged his feet the rest of the way until he was standing at the edge of the trees, under a large overgrown cedar. His black eyes were fixed to the odd-looking jumble of rocks in the center, the rough granite just visible in the darkness with the moon shining on it. However, he didn't want to go in quite yet.

It wasn't until clouds had come and gathered the whole clearing into an even gloomier scene that he finally strode forward, placing his left hand on the topmost rock of the awkward pile, and relaxing the enchantment that had concealed the ugly looking mansion which he now entered.

It wasn't a place of extravagance, though perhaps at some point in history it had been; now it's many rooms only served as a place for those who had either gotten themselves seen doing something beyond excuse, or those who hadn't ever bothered to hide themselves in the first place. Or, more simply, as was his case, those who didn't want to go home, but needed some place to sleep.

As he stalked past the open archway of the sitting room, a particular someone who was too paranoid and nosy—and too loud in her activities, as she wasn't here to sleep- for her own good caught his eye and came darting out at once. His eyes closed as he kept walking, giving himself an extra moment to collect himself before he would have to turn and entertain her.

"Back from your little job? Did you have fun?" came the jeering voice.

"Yes, Bellatrix? What is it?"

She skirted around and in front of him, stopping his path. She had on that frighteningly wicked grin of hers, and if she was in a good mood, that meant nothing good could have happened while he was gone.

"He stopped by today. You just missed him, in fact."

So that was it. Only Bellatrix Lestrange could have been delighted by a visit from the person whom she didn't even need to name. He peered at her curiously, wanting to press for more, but not so fast.

"Careful," he said casually, "you'll make your husband jealous again."

She let out a low laugh as if perfectly pleased to do so. Then her expression took a turn. She seemed to be struggling to spit out something particularly repugnant.

"Actually, he was here for a reason," she said, suddenly serious and glaring up at him. "He told me to pass on to you..."

He raised a brow, but he could already guess what it was, and it gave him just the smallest bit of dark pleasure at how much he knew it would pain her to say it. She rolled her eyes and her head followed with them as if her pile of long dark hair was suddenly too heavy for her neck, bending at an odd angle.

"He said to thank you," she enunciated with much distaste, "for always bringing him such good information. And that he'd be wanting to meet with you after tonight."

His maliciously smug grin cracked a fraction at the second part of the delivered message.

"What did you tell him, Severus? What was it?"

But his mind had just gone quite blank, and there was only a ringing sound between his ears. He hadn't told him anything—lately. But he had told him something many months ago, something that he had been working so hard to undo, and had begged him—pleaded with him—not to follow through on.

So then, of course, he had acted on a night that his hopeless servant was busy carrying out other orders.

—

Severus stood under the large cedar tree in the rough circle of snow-free ground its branches provided, shivering hard as he stared out at the pile of rocks.

The cold was only at partial fault for his body's shaking, and he made no move to pull his cloak tighter around himself. He was stood stock still, gazing with flat expressionless eyes as he waited.

It would have to be done carefully; he couldn't go barging in unannounced, not after he had been gone so long without a word. It was what plenty of others had done, of course, but that excuse would never work on who he assumed, by mental checklist from who hadn't appeared in the papers under a boastful headline of capture yet, would be waiting inside—if, indeed, anyone at all was inside. He had been waiting for someone to come out for quite some time already.

Although, even with the spare time, he hadn't dared let his mind wander off any further than the little circle of black forest floor beneath him, penned in by the bright white snow. He couldn't let himself think further ahead than just this for now. Survival. For he was almost certain that he had just sealed his fate more thoroughly than if he had just denounced Dumbledore outright to his face.

By the time a woman appeared as if from out of the cliff face itself, with long messy black hair and the black hood of a traveling cloak pulled up, he had lost all track of time. He only knew that it was still dark and morning had yet to break; and that he felt colder in his bones than even the numb tips of his fingers.

It was a tense reunion, and he hoped the frosty look to his skin had helped cover up how out of practice his face was at performing just right, but eventually, with an ironic graciousness from the universe that flew in the face of why he was visiting here in the first place, he was let in. His legs carried him unsteadily to the room he had sporadically occupied before, on the ground floor with its tall skinny windows and thick velvet curtains. They were a much-needed assistant to block out the sun that would be rising soon, as he was assuredly going to sleep until noon, as he promptly fell like a statue onto the dusty bed the second after he had locked and spelled the door.

But, of course, sleep was a sweet relief—one that wasn't afforded to people such as him.

He tried to close his eyes for a time, but what his mind conjured up into the blankness was too much. He found himself lying flat on his back, staring up at the paneled ceiling instead, as if he could see every expansive bit of sky beyond it. He didn't want to release his thoughts; had been enjoying the blank closed-off feeling; but he finally could not let it go on any longer.

She really hadn't played fair. She hadn't even played a hand. He was sure her snap of fingers hadn't meant a thing other than to distract him, luring him in to his own defeat. There was no counter-curse for what he had done himself. There were only the consequences of his own actions, blowing up in his face for daring to have ever raised his wand to her.

But, terrifying as these were, he was currently safe in his hidey-hole, and the fear of Albus Dumbledore's enraged face was nothing compared to the memory of the face that was burned clearly into his mind.

She hadn't been surprised, nor upset, nor angry—only a calm, sad smile had been visible on her tired face. She had surely done it on purpose, knowing that she was goading him into attacking at full strength. He could see no other interpretation. She was clearly mad for doing it—but why? If it was to accomplish keeping him there once and for all, then she had only achieved making him run even faster. So what had been her goal then? Just to terrify him out of his wits that Dumbledore was probably marking him for dead now? She didn't at all seem like she was trying to kill him, though—just the opposite, in fact, as now she—

No, he couldn't think that. He couldn't believe that she would die from just that one attack. She was a phoenix, comprised of so much healing magic that it quite literally leaked from her eyes, and besides, she had Dumbledore there. If anyone could figure out how to heal her, it was him. Surely, she would be safe there. Surely...

The image of her blood spraying out flicked itself back into his mind like a blinding flash, making him flinch and his heart contract. He had injured a phoenix—and not just injured, but perhaps mortally wounded... His thoughts lurched back, along with a queasy turn of his stomach, to the book by Kiaran James. He had never recorded that phoenix blood was golden in its sheen. Or perhaps his mind had just been in such a state, combined with the dark of night, that he had merely imagined it. Or, his mind had already been affected by a certain curse after injuring such a creature. Being, he corrected himself, picturing something less gruesome for a second. The memory of her peevish grin at being called less than human seemed an image too bright and tame for him at the moment.

Beyond all that, his brain did seem addled to the degree of coming up rather empty regarding everything she had said to him before their farce of a duel. It didn't seem to matter much if she was a liar, or if she wouldn't have ever trusted him to help with the Order, or even if she thought that he was evil incarnate—she didn't deserve to die; even the immaterial death of a phoenix. He hadn't wanted to hurt her like that, or at all. In fact, he had trusted her to be plenty strong enough to fight him...

But he had hurt her. And there was no undoing that, even if he told himself his intentions hadn't been that dark.

As he lay there getting no rest, not even in his body as it was so taut with anxious tension, he tried to bundle up all his thoughts of her into a neat package, tie a large stone to them, and throw them off some mental cliff. This imagery didn't help very much, though. They couldn't go very far from his own head. But he had to at least try. He shouldn't be thinking about her in any way, good or bad, after what he had done. He had made his choice, poor as it was, and followed through with the action. It was his own fault for it being a bad one.

But he only continued like a desperate fool down his path of bad choices, as he couldn't help but think of her. He would have settled for any other thought at that point, even ones that made him feel the heavy weight of guilt, compressing on his disquieted heart as if his ribs thought it a foreign entity.

He probably... should have just stopped to listen to her... and he probably should have written her that letter...

The true goal of her actions seemed to slowly bubble up as a natural conclusion to him. She hadn't ever needed to attack; hadn't even really needed to lift a single finger. All she had to do was stand there, perfect as she was, and he would screw everything up for himself all on his own. Just what he was good at. Without doing anything, she had delivered the precise blow to exactly where he was weakest: his own guilty conscious at his thoughtless actions.

The chipped and cracking paint on the ceiling overhead disappeared as he closed his eyes with all the feeling that he was shutting off the world for more than sleep, which he knew wasn't going to come. No, there was something else for him to think of, instead of her, and instead of sleep, that would go along suitably with the ache in his chest. He remembered the last time he had purposefully replayed the tune in his head- but that wasn't the memory he was trying to recall in perfect detail, and he pushed it aside, honing in with all his mind on one distinct beautiful, and terrible, sound, as his torso constricted in pain until he was curled up in a ball.

By the time he had finally gotten out of bed—not woken up, which he had done hours ago, off and on continuously, but actually dragged himself into a begrudging standing position and shuffled himself around his temporary room—he discovered with a peek through the velvet curtains that it was well past noon.

It would have felt like August all over again, except that it was far too cold, and back then he had stuck to either uninhabited places, or places where no one would have known him.

Now, as he exited his room, he saw faces that he remembered and some he didn't, in total counting three other people lurking quietly around the mansion, looking like caged animals whose tamer had long since gone. It wasn't everyone he knew was missing, but they were definitely all faces that he had seen most recently in wanted line-ups under headlines of misdeeds. Their greetings to him were only a notable lack-there-of, but he hadn't exactly been well-liked outside of his circle of classmates even during high times, and currently he welcomed the hostile atmosphere and dangerous glares as a sharpening familiarity. The woman who had invited him in had been friendly enough—for her, which amounted to little faith in the story he had told about his whereabouts, and open disgust that he wasn't kissing the ground for forgiveness- and they seemed to trust her judgement. She seemed to still be out, though, as Severus made his way around like an old ghost returning to its haunt, trying to find a bite to eat in the kitchen on a stomach that wasn't up to the task.

Afterward, he lasted alone in his room for all of five minutes, feeling like hours, before he was pacing around in circles so fast and wide that he had to clear a fainting couch against one wall to give himself room. He wasn't quite at the level of taking the furniture up on its so-named activity, but he was making eyes at the unsightly wallpaper and the hard wall behind it, wondering if banging his head against it would perhaps be more cathartic than any spell for the troubled mind.

Coming into place at the direct center of the open space of the room, with just the light glowing out from the sides of the curtained windows, he finally came to a standstill. After a few failed attempts, he finally managed to concentrate enough to force himself to take a long steady breath, and then another.

He had stood here before, in this exact same way, at other times during the war. Times when he had needed to center himself, feeling the open space of the long Victorian-styled bedroom against his back as if it were a threat, putting himself on display for imagined lurking dangers in every corner. It was how he stood in Dumbledore's office, as well; making himself uncomfortable to keep his back perfectly straight, and his body still and listening.

It did help, quite a bit in fact, to put himself back together as the statue that he so often had needed to be.

If he simply stayed like this, unmoving, unwavering, he could pretend he was still that person, and he wouldn't have to think about anything at all. Just his clear, calm, quiet empty mind, and the surrounding building that mirrored it...

A door banging open far down the hall caused a sudden commotion of people talking in loud voices all at once-more and different banging-some other noise that could only be made by magic—and he was holding his eyes shut tight, the air leaving him in a compressed angry stream, reminded why he hated it here so much.

He was just contemplating if he should dare go and check or if he should start booking it out the window in case it was a raid of Aurors, but he was mostly sure that the people here had not been caught yet solely because they were resolute in keeping a low profile. It did sound most unfortunately like the familiar sounds of someone being captured, however, and he was just wondering if he should bother going to try and play devil's advocate to avoid a troublesome death, when what could only be the captive's voice made its way more clearly down the hall and through his thick wooden door.

He froze in midstride, not even close enough to have raised his hand to the handle yet.

He must surely be cracking up, perhaps gone so mental that he was no longer even aware how far his mind was, because he was almost sure that-

"Unhand me you great spidery twat!"

In complete spite of himself, his eyes promptly fell shut and he heaved a deep and heavy sigh.

Well, at least there was no room for mishearing there, because if he was going to be imagining her voice, he probably would have chosen something else for her to say. He yanked the door open in a panic and hurried out at once.

"Give that back, it's mine!"

It took a moment to comprehend the scene as it slowly came more into view the closer that he stalked towards the sitting room entrance. But once he got the full picture, there was nowhere else for his eyes to go other than the only bright point of life in the whole room.

It was, inexplicably, but still undoubtedly, Freya.

But not the Freya he had seen the previous night. Nor a Freya he had seen for some time, actually. Because her fringe where she had cut it after Slughorn's party was missing. And the hair itself was no longer the dull dark brown, but its usual appropriate vibrant auburn. Even her eyes, wide and angrier than a trapped cat as she tried uselessly to free her hands from her restraints, were a bright gold. In the cold light shining in through the window, they even looked the dangerous flashing yellow he was familiar with from what felt like long ago.

But when those eyes flicked to him as he stepped into the door frame, they only stayed a fraction of a second, seeming to find him not as interesting as her current quarry, despite leaving him feeling like he had been struck by amber lightning. For, as his eyes dropped, he saw that clear across the front of her robes, just below the neck, was a long cut in the fabric—and below it, there was nothing but smooth skin.

"I'm telling you, that's mine, give it back!"

His eyes finally tore away from her to where she was looking, at Bellatrix, who was holding Freya's little black planner and trying without success to pry it open with her bony fingers. She looked up as he came in.

"Ah, Severus. Come to have a look?" Bellatrix nodded her head at the other woman with a mischievous grin.

He opened his mouth to reply, but Freya had just snapped her head towards him with such sudden interest that he was rendered mute, glancing back at her in fright at the unreadable look at her face. Before he could even begin to come up with some sort of cover story, she had already spoiled his first option of feigning ignorance.

"Sev?"

His eyebrows came down automatically in a disapproving knot, but this was really not the time to be getting worked up over what she called him—as now Bellatrix and the other two Death Eaters in the room were staring from her to him—and he to them and to her—the yet unknown phoenix of Albus Dumbledore, caught in their midst and so far acting about as clever as a homegrown carrot.

"You two know each other?" Bellatrix asked in surprise.

He finally managed to force out some words, praying that his natural propensity for lying was still just as naturally good.

"From the school," he concluded as vaguely as possible.

"Really?" Bellatrix turned back to Freya with renewed interest, like she had just discovered that the necklace she had found in the trash was a priceless heirloom. "She works for Dumbledore, then?"

Freya looked just as surprised in return, though hers was innocent where the other woman's expression was clearly not.

"Oh, do you know Albus?" she said, as if this was all just a big misunderstanding. "Me too!"

Everyone in the room seemed to go very still, gaping at her, and then Bellatrix turned back to him.

"This one's already a bit cracked, isn't she?"

At a complete loss for words now, his mind quite gave up trying to play any angle off of this, and just joined in the staring, letting Bellatrix talk for him.

"We found her, wandering around in the woods, no wand, looking like this," she gestured to what was arguably a similarly shabby appearance to their surroundings, but with more of what looked like dirt and debris from the forest on the hem of her robes. Bellatrix narrowed her eyes. "I knew she didn't seem like a muggle... So, what's she doing here then?"

This question was directed at him without a second glance at Freya, who was just a captive to them and looked put out by not being addressed. His brain had collected enough threads of an idea to finally piece together a story, though, and he cut her off before she could speak.

"That makes sense," he said with slow confident casualness, eyeing Freya as well, who didn't seem to think this made sense at all. "I believe I understand what happened... I had her under the Imperius Curse to tell me anytime Dumbledore made a move out of the castle. I must have forgotten to," he let his eyes linger over hers, hoping she was getting the message to play along, "shut her off... when I left."

Bellatrix, in all her skeptical nature, looked unconvinced. "And how do you suppose she found you?"

"People have been known to do incredible things under the curse," he said easily, peering at Freya as if she were no more than an interesting irregularity. But she seemed to not have been paying a speck of attention to any of his performance, because she was looking between them with even more confusion.

"I'm not under any curse," she said defiantly, making him bite his tongue as all the Death Eater's heads snapped towards her. "I've never even seen you before."

They looked back to him, and he gave a second's wry smile. "I may have also had to adjust her memories. On several different occasions."

Thankfully this seemed to be a good enough cover, though he did not at all like the smile that it brought to Bellatrix's face.

"So," she said, pulling out her wand and making his back stiffen, because he realized what was coming, "she's just a puppet then, is she?"

"I am not a puppet!" she said with all the force she had once denied being a pet to him. He sincerely wished she was, so he could shut her up and make her realize what was happening. But there wasn't a moment of hesitation to even do more than turn to look at her just as the spell hit.

"Crucio!"

He flicked out his wand so fast that he was knocking the caster off her concentration before her victim's knees had even hit the floor, stepping forward between the two women in the same swift motion.

"Enough," he hissed with a scowl in Bellatrix's direction, trying to keep the spike of adrenaline in his blood under control so that the full force of his defiance wouldn't show. He lowered his wand with considerable effort, not wanting the shocked look of fury on her face at his interruption to turn into an all-out fight. "Her brains are already scrambled as is, Bellatrix. Go find something else to play with before you bring undue attention on us all. Whatever she's doing here, I will handle it myself."

All he got back in reply was a cold, enraged glower, but he knew the depths of her anger went far deeper than this surface level annoyance. He turned around to Freya, who was still on the floor. Holding back the urge to immediately help her up, with his face still partially in view of watchful eyes, he instead had to settle for swiping at her wrist and dragging her to her feet, though he tried to at least be gentle about it, avoiding where the ropes were tightly coiled around the skin. He couldn't handle looking her in the face right now, though, and immediately turned away, feeling her shake beneath his grip. Bellatrix was still peering at him with interest, but he gave her a friendly kind of sneer, and she returned it looking malevolently mollified.

"M-my book..."

He had barely taken a step forward when he was stopped in his tracks at the quiet voice to his side. He froze for a second, then turned back, looking around. Bellatrix made a sharp scoff.

"Can't even get it open," she said with a sour note, evidently not happy at having so much fun ruined for her. She looked even more surprised when, with a flick of his wand, Severus ripped it from her hand and caught it in his.

"Go on then!" she shouted down the hall at them as he led the way quickly towards his room. "Have fun with your little puppet girlfriend, Severus!"

The poor door took all his rage as he slammed it shut, and he cast his spells for secrecy with a bit too much snap to his wand movements.

He turned sharply on his heel.

"What. Are. You. Doing?"

Freya blinked at him, her eyes wide and innocent. She didn't answer, only looked down at her hands just in time to see the ropes disappear as he jabbed his wand at them and then pocketed it. With them free, they both seemed to be staring at the shakiness of her fingers, and his temper dropped considerably as he regretted not immediately seeing to her status first. When she looked up again, he felt his pulse show no signs that it would be lowering any time soon.

"Err... Finding you?"

"Excellent work," he enunciated.

She seemed to be growing less and less pleased with this situation, and he gritted his teeth that now was when she started looking defensive to her surroundings. He wasn't even sure why he was so frustrated, but he was holding onto it like a lifeline that beat a steady drum in his head, keeping his mind clear from what his eyes were trying to discern as he looked her over with increasing disquiet. She was eyeing him too, but in particular what was in his other hand.

"Give that back," she said suddenly.

He looked down at the little black planner, smoothing his thumb over the leather. He had never touched it before, and it looked even smaller in his hand than in hers, but still a decent size for journaling. He looked back up.

"How about you give me a direct answer first."

She took one more inquisitive look at his face before asking with trepidation, "You... are Sev—Severus? Right?"

He blinked back, pausing. "Did they Confund you? Or cast anything else on you?"

"You mean besides torturing me?" she said indignantly, a haunted shadow passing her eyes for a moment that he recognized all too well in those that had felt the Cruciatus Curse before. "No," she said with dark sarcasm, "that's all, thankfully."

The slowly dawning realization was threatening to roll into his mind like a tidal wave, and he felt like he was still waiting on the far shore for the crash.

"No one can hear us in here," he said, pointing to the door behind without taking his eyes off her, still searching her face in panic. "You could set the whole room ablaze with phoenix fire and they wouldn't be able to detect anything. It's completely safe."

She raised her brows exceptionally high at this, looking between him and the door without much assurance.

"So... So you can stop pretending now," he prompted further, "that you don't know who I am."

He watched with slowly crashing horror as her eyebrows crinkled inward.

"Err... Sorry, but I don't know you."

His shoulders fell as the breath from his lungs was expelled.

"But—you are Sev, right? That's you," she pointed inexplicably from the book to him, and apparently somehow took his look of utter defeat as confirmation. "Well then! I'm here to bring you back."

He blinked listlessly. "Bring me... back?"

"Yes! Well" —she went from confident to deeply confused in a snap— "I'm not exactly sure where... 'back'... is..." Her eyes wandered away to the rest of the room before finding their way back with renewed purpose. "I hadn't read very far into the instructions—if you'd just give me my bloody diary back I could explain it to you."

Her hand reached out to him, palm up, but he was distracted by the simple mistake in her wording, the only thing he would let his brain focus on as it was less harsh than anything else currently swarming around in it.

"This isn't... a diary," he said, wondering if she really hadn't been Confunded. He cautiously held it out, having to dance around her jerking hesitation as she refused to let him get close enough to hand it off, and then finally remembering to just hold still and let her snatch it back. She acted just like the Freya he had first met...

"Um, no," she said indignantly, as if he were the one in the room acting strange. He watched her thumb press over the button latch as he had seen her do a hundred times, and it came undone as easily as always—as it hadn't for Bellatrix. She folded back just the front cover, holding it open and presenting it to him. "It's a diary, see? And this is what I'm doing here."

His feet dragged forward as if his shoes had been turned to lead, not able to keep his mouth from falling open as he read. For he didn't even need to take another step to read what was on the left side, but he did, as if drawn in by the horror of it.

In what looked like golden ink, written in large spikey letters, were the words: "Find Sev, Bring Him Back."

His eyes followed the dragging line from the end of this note, down to the quill tip that had written it; a single small and sad-looking phoenix feather, tipped in dried liquid gold that had seeped into the seam of the book. And to the right of that, starting at the top of the very first page in much plainer black ink:

"1980-1981

This diary is property of Freya Fawkes.
If you are reading this, you are probably Freya Fawkes.
If you are reading this and you just woke up in a pile of ash, you are most definitely Freya Fawkes—and I'm sure you are very confused without your memories!
Here is a quick list of things to keep you alive:

1. Please draw your attention to the left side here for critically important notices. Your life may currently be in danger, or the life of someone you care about.

2. Find Albus. He has your memories, and will explain everything. (Don't be difficult, just take them.)

3. You won't get your magic back for about a week—so be careful of dying again! (Additionally, please guard this book with your life! You might not care right now, but
you will shortly, I promise!)

4. If you find you are not currently in danger and have a moment, might I suggest starting with your reading of this book? Start at the most recent back entries, in case
something important is going on!

5. Your name is Fawkes, by the way! Albus picked it, it's quite nice, isn't it? It's the name of some old nutter wizard who liked exploding things. Also, you should know that
most wizards are not fireproof.

6. Please take good care of this diary. (Oops, I added this above as well because I know I'm always a bit reluctant to give a shite about reading these lists very far when I
just wake up. But this particular year was very important! Please take care of this book!)"

He reread it thrice but the shock still didn't wear off. His eyes did find something more compelling to stare at, however, sliding back over to the left and feeling the gold lettering there burn into his eyes with its frantic, sharply etched lines, in what he knew, but didn't want to know, was not ink.

"See?" she said again, giving him a start as he realized how close she was. His gaze slowly found hers and was held in place as if by the same magic that was sealing the latch of the book. "I told you it's a diary. And you're Sev—Severus, was it? Well, I've found you, and now I need to bring you back." She snapped the book shut and held out her hand as if about to lead him down a merry little path for an adventurous stroll. Her smile faded as he didn't move, and she retracted. "Err... Actually, I haven't the slightest clue where I am, so maybe I should hold off on that for now."

His mind was blank, filled with only a roiling foam as the tidal wave seemed to be endlessly crashing in his head- but the most important thing was now clearly out in the open. There was no more puzzle to sort out here. There was nothing for him to fight against. There was only the cold unyielding written truth.

"You... died?"

She raised her brows and then lowered her gaze to the front of her robes, which she was apparently very aware of being torn in the front, and made his heart give such a sharp jerk his whole torso constricted.

"Um... Yeah, mate, pretty sure I did," she said, casually as if confirming she had accidentally fallen asleep in class. "Woke up sitting in a pile of ash—the whole ordeal." She frowned down at her diary. "Looks like it was one of those quick but painful types of death, too, huh?"

A shudder passed through him.

It didn't matter that she was standing right before him, looking against all the dreary surroundings like the last burning bit of life left in a desolate world, right as rain, yet sunny as ever—because he had really truly done it. He had actually killed her. And, despite everything he wanted to smother this thought with about it just having been a phoenix death, a more horrible reality was burning up his attempts: it hadn't been meaningless, for he hadn't just killed the woman, he had dashed her very memories to bits. The only thing he had been able to still hold onto as precious—all gone.

"And you," he started, and then swallowed, unsure why he was bothering to dare ask, but perhaps needing to torture himself with another cold splash of reality, "you don't... remember me?"

Freya, having been peering through the front pages of the book with a frown on her face, now glanced up at him.

"Of course not," she said casually, unaware of the twitch that crossed his face or the twinge in his chest, "you're a wizard, right? And you... know what I am?" She peered at him curiously, and he remembered after a moment to nod in reaction. "Right," she went on, seeming put off by this, but uninterested enough to continue, "well, we're not meant to remember, are we? Long as we live—we'd go mad with all we see. Dying hundreds of times, feeling others die... It's the trade-off we make for living. Resurrect and wipe the slate clean. We'd hold grudges too, you know, for decades—can't have that. Whole countries would end up getting burnt down if we get mixed up in something; or else we'd get attached and meddle too much in other beings' affairs..."

She squinted back down at the diary with reproach. "Looks like I might have been doing a bit of the latter."

He could have almost laughed at that, if he wasn't so stricken.

She went on, walking around aimlessly in a small circle as she carelessly flipped through the pages.

"Hm... This is quite a bit of cheating I've been doing, eh? 'Phoenix neutrality' my feathered arse," she muttered with a roll of her eyes. "Albus is one thing, but," she flipped to the very back of the book and then forward a few blank pages to one with writing on it, reading aloud in an unaffected tone, "'I wish I'd been able to see him again—but I can't like this. It just isn't right. Maybe I'm being stupid. Albus is being stupid, too, though. I wish they'd just talk. He said I shouldn't do anything—blah blah blah... I miss him so much—eugh—bloody hell, who thinks like this? And just look at all of this!" She fanned through the whole book, which seemed to be hiding a multitude of extra folded in pieces of paper, and too many pages for the size of it as if it were enchanted in some way. "Who writes this much—and about wizards? Has nobody ever told me to shut up and get to the point?" She finally turned around and looked at him as if for confirmation that it was indeed ridiculous, but he was quite in another world.

"Could you," he struggled to keep his voice calm, but his question was tumbling out with a bit too much haste, "could you—go back—to where you were just reading from...?"

He watched as her eyes slowly narrowed and the familiar way that her expression closed off as it always had when he'd gone too far with his questions, appearing as closed off as how she now shut the book.

"No," she said with sudden shrewd reservation. "I don't even want to read this; this isn't how it's meant to be." His head hung slightly as his gaze drifted down to the floor. He could just see her boots taking small steps around before she spoke up again, "Is this date correct? Is it really 1981 right now? That means I've been dead for... well, no wait, I've been alive, haven't I? I just... don't remember anything after the first time... How old would that put me at then..."

His mind dredged up the memory, unbidden, and he almost cracked a bitter smile.

"Phoenix years," he said weakly.

He looked up at the sound of a soft derisive snort. She was peering at him in disbelieving amusement, but smoothed over her expression as she was caught.

"Sorry," she said, not able to keep the laughter out of her voice, "just sounds a bit silly, doesn't it?"

As he stared, his head came down in what could have been mistaken for a nod in response, but what was more of an automatic action of his chin as his torso crumpled in on itself in taut anguish. He definitely could not handle getting to hear her laughter again, when she didn't even know—couldn't know, as he was too much of a coward to tell her right now—what he had done. He turned and slowly dragged himself over to the couch against the wall, finally taking a heavy seat.

He really had done it again, hadn't he? Outdone himself, in fact. There had been one person in the whole world left who had tried to reach out to him; who had come to his door while she was busy slowly dying, just out of concern for him; who had been like the last still-burning spark of life left, still stubbornly capable of causing him to feel something despite everything—and he had shut the door on her.

His head fell into his hands as he leaned on his knees, pressing on his eyeballs as he tried to recall exactly what she had said in the snow-covered darkness, comparing it to the words he had just heard read aloud. He couldn't piece much together, the full picture was still lost on him, but if he shoved aside the hard pillars of what he had previously thought were truths, the sentiment to be found there could only be described in one way: that of care. Care for his well-being, which he had always snubbed, hating that someone would seek to disrupt his steady flow of unending self-loathing. Well, now she was certainly nothing but a waterfall adding to that raging current.

"You alright?"

He lifted his head just enough to stare down at his palms, but he couldn't bear to look at her just yet. At least she sounded appropriately detached, or he would have folded like a card. He heard her boots tap across the creaking wood flooring, taking a few steps toward him.

"Err... You know Albus too, right?"

He did meet her eyes at that, only to give her a thoroughly disparaging look, but not explaining further when she only looked confused.

"Right," she said slowly, "well, he's not always the friendly sort. And you know me as well?"

His expression took an even more morose turn and she grimaced.

"Ah... Well, I'm not very friendly, either, I suppose." She sighed, and then attempted a haphazard smile his way, apparently determined to make small talk against the atmosphere of her predicament. "Did you say I was with you and Albus at... at the school?"

He gave up any hope of shaking her off, knowing, despite everything, that this was Freya he was dealing with, and she would just keep talking... as she always had...

"Dumbledore... is the headmaster of Hogwarts school," he said, nodding slowly, as if he himself were remembering this fact through a fog. He was startled out of his gloom by the sudden explosion of excitement before him as Freya practically darted forward.

"No bloody way! You're not lying? Headmaster?" He watched in sheer disbelief as she laughed and clapped. "But—that's amazing! Aw, I always knew he'd be great—that's really fantastic!" Her gaze came back onto him, wide golden eyes sparkling with glee at this news. "Is he—you know—good at it?"

Completely dumbstruck, feeling like he was sinking into a suffocating quicksand at the same time that someone was throwing him a very elaborate Christmas party, he nodded, not even sure what her question had been. She spun around again in an excited swish of robes, not seeming to care how weak his confirmation was.

"Brilliant!" She swiftly reigned herself back in to stand in front of him once more, still eager for more precious information. "And I work for him did you say? How does that work out exactly?"

"You're... undercover... at least to students. Only the other teachers know."

"I see..." She looked pensive for a moment, and he thought he could see a particular displeasure at this news, most likely having to do with her negative thoughts towards wizards; even more negative than the Freya he was familiar with had been. This appeared to be a Freya who was still only friendly with Dumbledore. "And—you're a teacher?" He nodded once. "And... so, Albus must trust you then... and I trusted you to know, too..."

He suddenly felt as if his stomach had sunk several feet, fully through the floor itself.

"Hm... Say, do you know—ah, well..." She gave him a searching look to which he could only blink in response. "You probably don't, but have you ever heard of a man named Gellert Grindelwald? Might have been known for... perhaps... murdering a girl?"

Of all the things she could have said to slap the forming dark grey clouds from his brain, this was certainly a strong act. His eyebrows raised so high it seemed to forcibly wake him up, and he didn't bother lowering them until he had sorted out how to broach this news.

"Try... several... thousand murders."

It was her turn to look thunderstruck, the slow truth of his very serious tone settling in behind her eyes.

"What...? What do you mean?" she asked, with sudden quiet reverence.

"Gellert Grindelwald," he said, his mind picking up the pace as it did what it was so good at and collected the passage from a book he had once read, "one of the most dangerous dark wizards of all time. He's responsible for several... thousand deaths, and attributed to many more, all across Europe from the early 1900s to 1945."

She blinked several times, her gaze traveling far off to the side, until she was fully turning around with it and promptly sat down next to him on the couch.

"Oh."

"Dumbledore defeated him," he said with final assurance to end off the tale for her, taking in her shocked face as she stared out over the room, "in 1945." Which meant, he noted, that her thoughts currently were from a time long before all this. It seemed indeed that she was dragging her mind away from a place that long ago, as her head sluggishly turned towards him.

"Albus did? Wait—so Grindelwald is dead then?"

He frowned, shaking his head. "Prison. In Austria."

"Oh," she frowned too, but it was with a much darker note as the windows behind failed to cast any of their weak light on her furrowed brow. "He didn't kill him? After all that? Good lord, Albus—how soft are you?"

He suddenly was very glad he hadn't told her yet what he himself had done, as this was turning out not be a Freya that he was very familiar with after all.

"How did you know him?" he asked, quickly trying to divert the subject, but she only looked wary and dodged his gaze, shrugging.

"Err... I just... did."

At least she still wasn't very good at lying; that much hadn't changed.

"I..." Her eyes were on her knees, and she seemed to be puzzling through her thoughts. "I asked him... to kill me once. Can't believe he... probably was just some sicko that would have liked it..."

"You... sorry—you asked him to—kill you?" He was blinking rapidly, trying to keep pace with her, but she was not making it easy. He felt like a bystander to her wild private thoughts, and realized he probably was in this situation; the openness of talking to a stranger in a strange situation.

"Well, yeah. Albus," she gave a great sigh, looking up, "really was always soft, I suppose. He wouldn't have done it. I was supposed to be getting close to my first Burning Day—passed due, really, I was nearly two—decades, that is—and I was just..." Her hair fell in a silky sheet as she tilted her head down, blocking his view of her eyes. "Nervous... I suppose. I just wanted it to be over with, quick and painless. Because I knew it was going to be awful. Dying. So slowly, like I had heard it happens." She paused for a long moment, and he almost thought she had finished speaking, but as he didn't have anything he could possibly say, it dragged on long enough for her to continue. "It really was. It took ages. It's the last thing I remember..."

He stared at her in open shock, and she finally turned towards him, raising her brows and straightening her posture as she noticed the concern on his face.

"Oh, but I got better—obviously. Feels brilliant being alive again! Not the being tortured as soon as I woke up bit, though... and I wish I had my magic back..."

It was hard for him to grasp the concept of a Freya that was afraid to die. He had always thought her very cavalier about the whole thing. But as he thought back to the last time it had been brought up, trying to picture what her face had been like, he remembered his own words instead. It had been him that had put out the idea that dying didn't mean that much to her. She had only dodged right over what he'd said really. Well, he was certainly eating those words now, as he found it actually meant a great deal to himself if she died. He had been half right, though; because despite it apparently being difficult for her, from the way she brushed it off now, it really didn't seem to mean much beyond that.

He noticed she was peering at him with a curious expression, almost smirking.

"You wouldn't get it, would you?" she asked with a much more subdued tone. "Never had to die slowly like that, over and over again."

He took a deep breath, keeping his eyes on her face. "Actually... I have. Just once... and it was you who saved me."

This threw her off. "I did? The hell'd I do that for?"

He blinked, drawing a blank. "I... actually have no idea."

He had never been too curious before why she had saved him in particular, or why she had showed up there on that night—apart from rudely telling her off for doing so. It was just something he always considered as some magical annoyance, beyond the trouble of wondering about because it was her that had done it; just some magical creature doing what they did. There had definitely been plenty of times where he had wondered why he still had to remain alive after what he had done, but that was more of a question to the universe than about her.

His eyes dropped down to the little black diary that rested in her lap. She followed his line of sight, and then met his eyes with an unhappy pout. She held her glare in place for a stern moment in which he could practically see the curiosity begin to glisten in her eyes, close as they were, before she heaved a great sigh and stood back up again, cracking the diary open once more.

"When was it?" she said in weary annoyance.

"The 31st of July—but it was late at night. You wouldn't have written it down till the next day."

She flipped through the pages and then paused. "Hmm... You're wrong about that one... 31st of July, just before midnight..."

His heartbeat suddenly jumped up from where it had been swirling around the drain somewhere in his gut, watching her flowing hair as she slowly stepped away, her back to him as she read. He could just barely recall his memory of that hair brushing the ground at his side as he lay flat on his back... But she stopped abruptly, turning around.

"Who... in the hell is 'Voldemort'?"

Several moments of explanation later, he was sitting quite still, grimacing down at the wood flooring, quite glad for his enchantments against sound traveling from the room.

"TWO? Bloody—TWO of them? Two of the darkest wizards—of all time—in just one century? Are you joking me—can you lot not stop killing each other for one—bleeding—decade?"

"Sorry," he mumbled to the floorboards, bearing the brunt of the entire wizarding population and the general humankind's greatest faults on his stiff shoulders.

She blew out a long puff of air, letting her pop of anger deflate and turning back to the diary, still shaking her head and muttering, "Wizards," in a way which he found distinctly non-friendly towards the bright future of intra-being alliances—but he was no expert.

It took a long time for her to finish reading, and when at first he thought she had, she merely turned the page while peering his way—and then went right back to reading even more. The time it was taking only gave his mind more room to come up with everything that could be contained—and it was looking like quite a lot was contained, in fact—in Freya Fawkes diary about the night of the fall of the Dark Lord; the night that she had appear in a particular wood, to save a particular Death Eater, who had been plenty ready for death at the time.

In all honesty, he probably should not have been so eager to encourage her to find out about this date. It could only hold the truth of what she really thought of him—whether irredeemable monster, or a pathetic and pitiable man. It was a bit better, at least, than having to tell her what else he had done, and a far cry better than having to utter it himself. Perhaps it could prepare her for it, and it wouldn't be as surprising if she knew he was already like this...

When she finally finished at last, he saw her dogear the page she had been reading before closing up the book, as she turned back towards him, looking at him as if she had just noticed a brand-new stranger in the room. He held his breath, but she only took in a deep steadying one of her own, blinking the expression from her face and coming back to the sofa to calmly retake her seat.

"Hm..."

That's it? he thought, 'Hm'?

"That was... very interesting," she said in a thoughtful tone, not even looking at him and his considerable disappointment, but out at the rest of the room.

"Care to share with the class?" he asked, his sardonic nature coming back out. But with one penetrating look from her as she turned her head, he no longer felt as carefree to be making such requests.

She didn't answer out loud at all, but as their eyes stayed locked on each other, he made desperate attempts to search for the truth behind her enigmatic expression. Until he determined that whatever it was in her mind, whatever was written in her diary, he didn't want to know. He didn't deserve to know, anyway, as his gaze shifted down to her neck and the still open horizontal slit at the top of her robes. His head snapped away. But his newfound propensity for spontaneous ill-advised ideas got the better of him once more, and he turned back, taking a second to study her mood first before he spoke.

"I could mend that for you," he said, directing a curt nod to her robes and making her look down at the damage. "I think—that your robes are probably enchanted—you transform in them, so it's likely. I can't mend already magically enhanced fabrics perfectly, but, seeing as you haven't any magic at all—I—" Her eyes came slowly back up to him, her eyebrows steadily raising with considerable surprise at how much he was suddenly talking. He blinked, trying to pick up the thread of what he was going on about and finishing quite lamely with, "I could... fix it."

You can't fix everything, though, can you? He felt his gaze soften just a bit.

"Um," she suddenly looked quite like the Freya he was used to, with all of her sheepishness, "could you... do it from other there?" She winced apologetically as she leaned more towards her end of the couch, but he wasn't at all surprised by this, nor offended. He was already taking out his wand and angling himself towards her. A brief second passed where he remembered vividly the last time he had raised his wand to her, and that he had thought he had already promised himself never to again—but he shook it off. This was just the one pathetically small thing he could do. With a careful wave, and as she held very still, looking extremely uncomfortable about this whole ordeal, he quickly sent a stitch of thread looping through and tugging the fabric together. It wasn't very pretty—and after looking down to inspect it, she gave him a rather withering look—but she smoothed her hand over the makeshift mending appreciatively all the same, mumbling her thanks.

It wasn't exactly a turn back in time, to before he had caused the tear in the first place, but at least sewing magic was real and applicable, whereas there was nothing of this world to undo the past, no matter how much he wished.

"Err... Sev, right?"

His face twitched before he could help it, and he opened his mouth to correct her. But it wasn't as if it really mattered at this point what she called him, and it wasn't really fair considering she could understand even less about it now. He finally closed his lips and conceded with an irritable nod to have the nickname brought back into his life after making him wince for so many years.

Freya now seemed torn by his reaction, though. "Err... Sev... Severus... Does anyone ever call you Rus? Sevvy?"

"Just—get on with it," he prompted, holding his eyes closed.

"Alright, sorry," she said as she suppressed a soft laugh. It was ridiculous that she could be so relaxed, and it only made him painfully aware that she had just always been like this; not just because she had been warming up to him to get information, but because she was seemingly just... overly friendly by default. "I was just wondering," she continued in the same casual voice, tucking her hair behind her ear as she leaned towards him, "do you know how I got this?"

His heart dropped—as did his eyes, fixed to where she was pointing at the stitchwork he had just made—and then his heart began to beat wildly. He blinked to stop the blur that was threatening to fully overtake his tunneled vision, and quickly looked away. Her eyes were still on him though; he could just see her face from the corner of his eye and through a part in the black hair hanging at his cheek.

"I assume it's how I died," she went on, sounding more and more unsure after his reaction, "but there's nothing written about some psycho murdering me—so does that mean everything's alright then?"

He held tight the muscles of his chest, not letting his lungs take in any more air as his mind raced. She was going to find out eventually, she had to. He couldn't lie to her, not about this. He had already let it go on for far too long. It had been like a sweet reprieve from everything he had done—only to come crashing in around him, tenfold, after learning what he had.

Freya was still attempting to break his silence, continuing on, "Because... I've been thinking... I know I was supposed to come find you and bring you back, but... I was picturing you being in some danger or something. But you seem to have that lot out there sorted. You don't look like you're in danger here, so much as... maybe not like the rest?"

His face pulled into a grimace. He felt very much at home here, right where he belonged, in among the soulless types. He wished she would just figure it out herself, so he wouldn't have to say it out loud... She would surely see the guilt, plain as day on his face, and know; if he just lifted his head and turned towards her...

"But..." He watched her eyes thoroughly look him over, narrowing as she lingered on his weary expression when, finally, he showed his face. "But... could it have been perhaps that I meant... 'bring back'... as in... another way...?"

He couldn't tell if she was leaning more towards 'in handcuffs' or 'in a body bag,' but either way, it was looking like her earlier seemingly envisioned merry stroll home was being swept off the table.

How many years had he spent on training himself to perfectly control his face? Certainly so many that he had moved on to doing the same for his mind. And in that current moment, it was all he could do to force himself not to hide any single scrap of what he was feeling, letting his guilt show as transparently as he could, practically begging her to be the one to say it so he didn't have to.

But no words escaped her lips just then, only parting to suck in a breath before she leapt up, backing several feet away.

Any apology he could have uttered died in his throat, as he wouldn't let himself say something so pointless when it changed nothing, but still he felt his chest tight to bursting with the urge to find anything at all to say.

"I'm..."

"You?" she interjected, raising a finger at him that his eyes locked onto as if it were a wand marking him for death. "You—killed me?"

He was still struggling with the lump in his throat, but he tried to at least respond, in whatever would come out.

"I'm—I didn't... mean to..."

She drew herself up straight, her shoulders raising as she stared down at him, incredulous. "Didn't—mean to—? Oh, we'll see about that," she shot back, and his heart jerked in alarm. She seemed to be steadying her breathing, composing herself, and he suddenly found his voice very quickly.

"You—You don't have your magic," he said, standing up as if he could do something physically to stop what was happening, or perhaps prepare himself to leap from the window.

Her eyes stared back at him with a hardness he had seen there before, but now with a much more intimidating, much more full-of-life face.

"I have everything a phoenix needs."

The age worn paper bearing Kiaran James's paragraph of notes flashed into his mind.

"Don't!" He rushed forward before he knew what he was doing, raising his hands as if he could somehow calm the air from allowing her to sing into it. "Please—don't—I didn't mean to, I swear I didn't."

She narrowed her eyes, but held her silence. He went on in a rush, grasping at the only fleeting opportunity he had.

"I didn't mean to—it was an accident—we were fighting," he squeezed his eyes shut for a second, remembering just how stupid and pointless his reasoning was, "and you... you were already dying. I'm willing to bet that... you didn't even have your magic then, did you?" She didn't answer or change her expression, but he continued, trying to make it make sense to himself as much as to her. "You tricked me into attacking you—I have no clue why—just to upset me? You were trying to stop me from leaving, and I wouldn't listen, and I..."

He took a stuttering breath, unable to look into her eyes, instead staring at every neat little stitch he had put in the slash across her robes. So pointless, so stupid.

"I... killed you."

After a long moment during which he only heard the sound of his own heart beating uncomfortably in his chest, feeling like it might be trying to escape being contained in such a worthless person, the stitching his stare was glued to shifted before his eyes, replaced by a wary golden gaze as Freya stepped forward.

He didn't realize he had more left in him to freeze, but he stood so still, trapped under her searching look, that his lungs eventually had to wrest back control from his panicking brain.

She came right up to him, almost in a way he had seen her do before, not in a snowy wood, but in a library, and much more slowly. He thought for sure she was about to raise a finger pointed at his heart and make it flip over, but she only continued to peer into his eyes in a way that made him want to turn his face away.

And then she did turn her attention directly to his chest, making him flinch. Her eyes flicked back up to his face, and then over the rest of him. Finally, she scrunched up her face... and took a small step back.

"I... believe you," she said slowly, not freeing him from being pinned under her eyes, but softening just a bit. "We're not exactly the type to fight, but... we'll damn make sure that you feel it the next day. And—guess I already told you this, but—I'd much rather go out by the steady hand of someone I know if I was dying." She nodded slowly, letting out a small unhappy laugh as she went on. "Yep, it definitely sounds on brand for a cruel type of phoenix trick. We've got a bit of a flare for the dramatic."

His body seemed to come to life only to feel even more statuesque in place.

"You... must be joking," he said, his voice so low it was barely more than a breath, "you are not making fire puns after I just told you that I murdered you..." She pulled a face, waving him off with an unaffected shrug, making his jaw drop. "I—… I slashed your throat." Her comically casual face dropped into one just as unserious as she placed a hand over her stitched-up robes like they were pearls.

"Alright, well, hold off on the theatrics next time," she said in mock offense. "Simple killing curse will do it; or just about anything, we're very fragile when we're dying."

"But... But you can't—then why did you—I killed you," he said more loudly in case she hadn't yet picked up on this fact, wanting to grab her by the shoulders because she was being insane. Either that, or he was going insane. There was definitely some kind of curse of insanity somewhere in this building.

He watched her expression slowly melt its mask of humor away, to be replaced instead with one that didn't give him any more consolation. She leveled at him a sad grimace, seemingly more pained by how upset he was than this news of what he had told her. If he didn't know any better, and if he could dare to believe it, he'd have thought she looked apologetic. Almost the same as she had looked before he attacked her—and her last words jumped into his mind; her apology for what she was about to do.

He could only blink in stunned astonishment as she shook her head and sighed, stepping forward.

"No... I'm right here," she said, brightening her apprehensive smile up at him and rendering him quite mute from making any arguments. It was her that touched his shoulder then, giving him a tap on the arm as if he were the one that needed the physical pull back to reality. "Don't look so worried; no harm done, yeah?" A fleeting spark came up in his mind at her words, but was gone before he could fully discern it as he raced to get out a rebuttal before he lost his nerve.

"But—you can't just forgive something like this," he said, his voice much more gravely serious than her lackadaisical tone. "I... you just... you can't." He almost felt like he was convincing himself at this point, as his words were only getting a raised eyebrow from her.

"Look," she went on, as if patiently explaining something to a student, "dying is... just... it's a part of life. And I told you, we don't remember death for a reason. If we built up years of just being terrified of the next death, over and over, taking each one to heart, revenge, wallowing, all of that—well, that's no way to live what life we do get, is it? And by your telling of it, I went into it willingly enough, knowing that I might die."

Quite far from finding this the least bit comforting, he gazed horrified down into her pure golden eyes, holding none of the reproach that he would have expected—that had just been there moments before, he was sure of it. That was how she should be reacting. Because there was no way she could have known he would attack her with something that might kill her, surely. Just that it had been an option. One that he had, so carelessly, taken.

It hardly seemed to matter what she said, as his heart stayed firmly hardened in his chest, in denial of this joke that was being played on him.

"You... said right before it," he murmured, remembering more of her words, "that you didn't play fair. You warned me..."

Her eyebrows bounced up and she did something terrible then—as her smile split fully into a laugh, so close that he felt as if it was sending shockwaves through the feet of air between them.

"And yet you still," she said incredulously amused, "you still raised your wand to me? To a phoenix? Oh, you're not evil—just an absolute idiot." She covered her mouth and then clamped the other hand over the first at the look on his face, her eyes betraying her glee through the guilt. "Sorry, sorry," she said when she had smoothed over her smile, seemingly doing nothing to effect it, "it's really not funny; shouldn't laugh." Hearing her laugh, he almost felt some part of him return to normal, as a dark glower that he reserved mostly for reactions to this specific woman shadowed his features. She scrunched up her nose, still smiling, but trying with more success to look apologetic.

"Ah... Really, I am sorry," she said with actual sincerity, raking her fingers through her hair. He was distracted from the minor thing that she was supposedly apologizing for as her much more devastating apology echoed in his mind again, and he was forced to accept that, by combination of the look on her face then with her current expression, she really, truly was. It didn't mean that he would ever accept it, though. Her forgiveness was not a medicine that he, at all, in any inch of him, felt deserving of. She shouldn't be apologizing at all, ever, and he wanted to force her words out of the air.

Her shoulders lifted with a heavy sigh, and she at last appeared to be contemplating the situation seriously as he remained resolutely morose.

"This... This really was some old age phoenix lesson type shite—I'm not personally a fan; can't believe I did that, to be honest; I'd've just torched you—but, well, maybe I don't know myself... Ah, anyway," she gave a shake of her head as if to clear it, "it seems like I did it for a reason, yes? I doubt it was just to make you upset... More likely to stop you, like you say. I'm guessing if I knew this is where you were going, with that lot out there," she jerked her head towards the door and took a wide disparaging look around the room, "then it was to try and make you see that you're not fit to be here."

He frowned, but she turned on him with a face so set in sudden earnest determination, he remained quiet.

"That's what it's meant to do when we fight back. Normally, the type of people who would attack a phoenix in our other form, they'd need to hear phoenix song to force them to remember their humanity—to feel guilt—but if you've already got it in you... Well..." She gestured with a nod to his chest and his gaze snapped down as if about to find some giant spider there- but when he looked up, she was only grinning at him.

He couldn't take it anymore. All this allusion and pointed references, and no straight answer. If she was really going to talk about where he belonged in the world, what kind of person he was, and act as if he hadn't done anything that impressive, he had to just come out with it and ask her straight—because he was sure he already knew exactly who he was.

"You..." He had to swallow and work his jaw around as he tried to feel out the right words, but he was so desperate at this point, and had already made such a fool of himself already, he almost felt free to just blurt out anything now. "You can see my—my soul, can't you?" Her smile, that had been slowly diminishing as her brows knit curiously at his attempts to speak, fell fully from her face; but he persisted. "Could you—please—just tell me—how... how bad I've messed things up?"

By the look on her face, she was getting her own taste of feeling like the sanity in the room had fled somewhere far without her having noticed. She gave him such a concerned look up and down, he almost started to think perhaps it was just that it had been such a stupid question because the answer should be obvious. He watched her lips part to speak, but she didn't seem to trust her words.

Instead, she came forward; cautiously, as if he were a dilapidated building that might cave in if she wasn't careful. He was grateful for this at least, because he did indeed feel that whatever she had to say would have him fall to the ground, it was only a matter of which side he would lean towards.

He saw her hand start to reach up and glanced down, thinking she was about to do her trick of making his heart flip over like a trained pet, but he brought his gaze back up, wanting to look into her eyes for what she had to say.

"I... I can't tell you that," she said softly, and he felt his shoulders diminish with the disappointment—but she shook her head and went on further. "I mean, that's not something for me to say." He felt her hand come to rest on his arm and he flinched, making her hand retract and hesitate a second. This Freya couldn't know, but his left forearm that she now decisively wrapped her hand around in what was meant to be a steadying gesture, held beneath the fabric of his robes something that he didn't think would have mixed well with the type of magic that seemed to radiate from the palm of her hand straight through to his skin. Only her fingertips were touching his inner forearm, but still he felt his heart beating faster.

Her eyes were on his, though, and he couldn't look away. With her face so close and her expression so adamantly full of concern, as if willing him to heed her words—she looked up at him as if she knew exactly just who he was.

"Though I will say this," she began, and his breath caught because it was the same smooth warm voice that he was used to hearing so rarely from her, not the unaffected one she had been speaking with. "Really... don't worry about that, Severus. You're safe and sound. Alright?"

And suddenly, he remembered where he had heard her say these words before, and the others he had recognized from earlier but not had the place in his mind to pin them to.

She had said this to him afterward, on the night that he had first raised his wand to her to much less grave effect. And he had thought then that she would be running up the dungeon stairs, to Dumbledore, to have him sent straight to Azkaban—but she had only told him this very thing. And he had never been directly punished for it. Not in four months. He had just been charmingly forgiven, and she had gone right along with pestering him, following him, and cheering him up when he was locked inside his mind...

He could have almost cried. If he had been the type, he would have, but even so, he felt the pull of emotion tug at his face, and had to watch her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Her hand dropped its grip on him, but instead of being let loose from his anchor, both his arms now received a thorough patting.

"A-Alright, alright," she said awkwardly with a weak laugh. "You're fine, really, you're alright."

This was a most conflicting predicament, because while he wanted to roughly brush off this unwelcome and very open acknowledgement of his status, he was, without a doubt, not alright at all. And each time her hands touched him, and with her so close, he only felt a warmth that he suddenly couldn't stand to not reach out for more of...

"Oh! No, no, no—no." He felt her hands come up to push him off, but it was too late, as his arms had already wrapped fully around her, and there was no way for him to undo what he had done after getting a chance to experience how good it felt. The rest of her words were muffled, delivered straight into his chest, and he could somehow feel her voice as a physical force. "This is not—I don't do the hugging thing—this—just—are you sure we aren't friends or—"

"I'm sorry," he whispered in a breath that emptied his lungs and made her go quiet. He had his eyes squeezed shut, because he didn't want to see just her auburn hair from the back and let his stupid brain get it mixed up this time. He meant it only for her. The only living person he could apologize to, and deserved his full undivided remorse. "I'm so sorry."

Even though he had tried his best to hold back and not fully bother her by his display, he could still somehow feel her slowly breathing against him; in all the smaller ways they were touching, the near imperceptible rise and fall of her shoulders, and the soft sound of it close enough to reach his ear. The second in which he had been sure he should have let go of her by now passed by, but he was held back as he felt her hesitantly raise her hand. The same warmth that he was clinging to was pressed lightly to his back, and she gave him another couple of pats.

"Um... I'm really glad you're alright," she murmured into his shoulder, "but... could you... get the hell off me now?"

"Ye—Sorry—" He let go and backed up at once, his hand coming up to smooth his brow, half-hiding face. "Sorry," he said again, getting just a peek of her stunned—and bemused—face and closing his eyes as he tried to not so awkwardly turn away to hide his embarrassment. "Very... sorry..."

He heard her give a short laugh that made his brows crinkle downward, but her voice when she spoke up again wasn't unkind.

"It's... alright. Just a personal thing, I guess. I don't really even like crowds, actually—"

"I know," he said with a bit too much snappishness, making him sheepishly turn back towards her again just to show he hadn't meant it rudely. "It's—I'm sorry. But I already know."

Her eyes blinked wide at him, but she didn't seem to have anything she could say about this. He didn't know himself what to say. It was such an odd situation to be standing in; where she didn't even recognize him, or know that he had put his arms around her in quite a bit of a friendlier way not too long ago, or that she had been the one to initiate it—he thought, anyway. He still felt like he was standing on shaky ground, on so many things, and now he just felt... exhausted.

"I... haven't slept," he said almost defensively, and his heavy voice backed up his words, "in over... in a while." The few times his eyes had closed early that morning, they had merely snapped back open in blind panic, as he kept forgetting he wasn't in his comfortable Hogwarts bed and didn't fully trust his surroundings; and then he would remember what he was doing there and toss and turn all over again.

Her voice suddenly sounded alarmed. "You're not going to turn in now, are you? We still have to go back—'back' should mean to the school, right? To Albus?"

He stared at her, frozen in astonishment.

"I can't travel on my own," she continued with rising concern, "I haven't got my magic. And I don't know where we are, or where Hogwarts is. I'm guessing it's not just around the bend."

His eyes darted away, his mind racing, but he couldn't exactly say he was keeping her trapped here, or deny her any help since he was at fault for all of this. Nor could he agree to go throw himself within spell range of Albus Dumbledore at the moment.

His head felt so heavy under the weight of everything, under the entire past week, month, year... He sorely regretted not sleeping before slipping out of the castle.

"Could we," he began, trying his best not to sound like he was whining or dodging her, "perhaps just... discuss it in the morning?" He really did want to help, and to sort everything out, and make everything fixed properly again—but not all in one day.

When he peeked back at her, she was standing with her arms crossed, looking distinctly as if she had just figured out that her departure from this predicament rested upon the shoulders of someone who was getting tired before the sun had even fully gone down. It was getting darker in the room, the cracks of light peeking from behind the thick curtains growing dimmer, but he didn't think it apt to point this out to her at the moment.

"Oh—go to sleep then," she snapped, turning away. "Me, I think I'll have a walk around—"

"No," he said hastily, darting after her as she walked towards the door and making her turn around in surprise. "You can't. You... The people here are not exactly..."

She blinked at him. "What—they're going to tear me apart or something?"

He winced at the imagery, but it wasn't far off the mark. "As you've said, you don't have any magic. And in case you really weren't paying attention..."

Her head bobbed back as she seemed to remember. She really had been barely aware during that situation, it seemed. "Right... I'm cursed or something. Puppet girlfriend, was it?"

"You're—not a puppet," he said, the defense in his voice reminding him of her own hatred of the word 'pet' as much as anything he was refuting as his eyes darted away.

She sighed. "Well, brilliant. Guess it's a nap for me too, then."

He stared at her; and then out at the room behind him, with only the fainting couch, a couple sets of drawers, a wardrobe, and a large bed.

"What—here?"

She stared back up at him, her mouth hanging open. "Will you make up your mind? Look, I'm just going on the couch then."

He watched her go right over to it and sit down—and then hop back up as she had sat on the diary she had abandoned there earlier.

"Oi—can't you light a candle or something?"

He paused, and then said quietly, "What's wrong, haven't got a match?" Her glare wasn't as visible through the darkness at a distance, but he could imagine it well enough. He took out his wand and lit the oil lamp by the bed.

"Well, that's not really helpful, now, is it?"

But he was already walking towards her on the couch and nodded his head in the direction of the bed. "You're fine to take that. I'll sleep here."

Her eyes widened at him as she looked up from the diary she had already cracked open. She raised it in her hands. "Oh, I'll... just be reading, I don't need the bed."

He stared at the ugly wallpaper as he tongued the inside of his cheek. "Just take it." When she still didn't move, he let out a quiet sigh and tried again, this time looking her in the face. "You'll have to sleep eventually. It's fine. Move."

"Oh, well since you asked so nicely," she said with sweetest sarcasm.

But she did get up and cross to the far side of the room with the little light glowing in the corner, staring over her shoulder at him as he took the empty seat on the couch.

He held in another sigh as he felt the worn-down cushion, but he would be damned if he was about to be less than perfectly polite to the woman. Not counting grabbing her and practically having a meltdown on her shoulder—but he shoved this very vivid embarrassment out of his mind as he laid down. His brain couldn't handle anything else at the moment.

Trying to get comfortable, not even bothering to take his boots off and wishing he had grabbed his cloak for a blanket before committing to this sleeping arrangement, he finally settled in to get the sleep that he so desperately needed. And, hopefully, it would this time, at last, be sound.

—

He was lying flat on his back, staring up at the overhead branches of the forest with unseeing eyes, blinded from more than just pain.

So, this was where he was going to die.

His brain kept making feeble little attempts to remind me of every spell that could help in this scenario; every little bit of healing magic, a way to signal for help, or even just muggle strategies to survive life-threatening situations.

But there was no one around to help, and he wasn't sure where his wand had ended up. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, but it was empty.

And, much more importantly, he did not particularly want any help. Nor did he want to stop the blood he could feel draining out of his back, making the trees above sway, though he was distantly aware that there was no wind tonight. Unfortunate, as it might have felt good to get a breeze to cool the July air.

It did hurt incredibly, though, and he wished that he could have died more peacefully. He supposed it just wasn't in the stars for someone like him, however. This was the death he deserved.

He probably never should have been born in the first place.

The pattern on the muggle ice pack his father had tried to give him after a certain night rose to his mind, the little red cross that had been on it leading his mind further down a path towards how to properly apply pressure to an open wound and staunch the bleeding without magic—but he turned this thought down, just as he had turned bitterly away from the held-out ice pack.

He shouldn't have ever come here. Not to this forest, nor to the mansion—not on this night, or any other night. He likewise shouldn't—definitely should not, ever—have gone to Godric's Hollow.

His eyes fell closed, willing the image that was burned there to leave him alone. If he was going to die, he would allow himself one last selfish wish—that he wouldn't have to be picturing her the way he had just witnessed as he passed. He at least wanted to remember her happy.

Even though it was him that had ripped every bit, every chance, of happiness away from her.

The wound in his torso seared in pain as his lungs contracted with a dry sob. The trees suddenly looked much more blurry than before.

If he hadn't been in such a blind rage, or perhaps if he hadn't been slightly wishing for this outcome, he might have seen that the spell the unknown masked Death Eater had cast hadn't missed him, but had been purposefully aimed behind him, transfiguring a low branch into something sharp that had pierced straight through before he had ever even seen it. That's when his wand had fallen out of his hand, he now remembered, as he had clutched frantically at his chest, pulling his hand away when it felt wet. And he had heard the man Disapperate shortly after.

He didn't know what he had been thinking. He hadn't been, really. There had just been no one else around to take out his aggression. The person he had come back here asking about was gone, sending all his followers scrambling out of their nests- to other nests, back and forth- in a frantic hunt for answers as to where their Dark Marks had suddenly disappeared to, leaving behind just ugly scars on all their arms.

And the random masked man he had run into in the woods, while he was alone trying to contact someone else, had just been a target for his broken nerves to crack his wand at with automatic aggression. It helped that the man had seen the very obvious, almost glowing in the darkness, golden feather that he had pulled from his robes. In such chaos, the impulse to hide his allegiances hardly seemed rational any longer, but still, it would have been bad to be caught.

It would have been. But thankfully, he would never have to deal with that now.

This did remind him, however, that he still had something on his person.

His whole arm shook with the effort as he reached into the deepest pocket on the inside of his robes, pulling out the last resort device of communication that had been given to him months ago.

He had already attempted using it as instructed, before the Death Eater had interrupted him moments ago, but no one had come, and it didn't seem likely that they would. Albus Dumbledore no doubt had other things to attend to at the moment, such as why the Dark Lord had just seemingly vanished from this earth, and why it had taken the deaths of two of his own members to accomplish this feat. And Severus supposed he had already gotten out all he could as far as throwing himself around in a rage. He had wanted to scream his questions at Dumbledore himself, ask him what had gone wrong, maybe so foolishly raise his wand to him as well—but it didn't matter now.

He wished the scar on the inside of his forearm had gone completely. He wished he had the strength to throw the phoenix feather far away from him, too. He didn't want to go out with any allegiances. He was so sick and tired of sides, of lies, and of fighting. There was only one person that he wished he had remained loyal to, above all else; and wished that he hadn't waited so long to do it, so that it had to be in the shadows of darkness, under cover of many masks.

He wished he could have just seen her happy one more time.

As his consciousness ebbed and his vision grew so clouded that it was pointless to keep his eyes open, he finally let them close, and listened to the sounds of the still July forest, trying to remember different July evenings, underneath different trees, his heart wresting away some of the pain from just his physical wounds.

It was with such a sluggish realization when he felt the warm weight on his hand that lay on his chest, that he almost didn't react at first. But his palm was squeezed tightly, rudely dragging his mind back to the pain of reality, and he had to crack his eyes open once more.

And then, with such a sharp inhale that his eyes watered from the pain, he realized he must have already died. Because there, leaning over him, was some sort of angelic version of the woman he was trying to picture happy and alive. He wished immediately that she wasn't so obviously dead—because no living creature could glow as she did in the dark like that—though perhaps it was his fading vision, looking like the very trees in their blackness were curling into the edges of his eyes.

But he was sure of it, that it was her before him, and she had come to help him pass on.

It didn't feel very good though, to die. He was suddenly growing more and more aware of a thrum of sound, seemingly coming from inside his ears, his head, his chest. It made him gasp from the pain of it, but she leaned down closer to his face and he got a better view.

She was crying. He couldn't get his eyes to bring more than the tip of her nose into focus, but large teardrops were falling straight from her face onto his chest, and he could hear her sobbing. He wished with all his might he could do something to help her... but she was probably crying because of what he'd done. And he could do nothing about that. He was going to die guilty, weak, and foolish. Branded even in death with the path he had decided on long ago, that had taken him so far from her.

He tried to get his mouth to work, to speak. She seemed to hear him, though his moving lips weren't saying anything, and he couldn't hear himself even when he did make sound with his head so full of the rising choral music. But she leaned in expectantly, and he focused to get it out.

"I'm... sorry..."

He felt a wet droplet splash onto his cheek as she turned to look into his eyes. He was confused, because her own eyes were all wrong—but maybe that's just what happened when you died. And besides, his eyes were overflowing with tears as well, and he couldn't get a clear picture, as much as he wanted to.

"Please," he whispered again, "please don't stop... singing... It's beautiful..."

It felt like the music itself, the pain of dying, and of a love that he was so undeserving of, was both ripping him apart and putting him back together again, continually. But he didn't want it to stop, because he somehow knew that if it did, he wouldn't be able to see her again.

"Promise me..."

And then his mind seemed to swim and mix together till he could no longer tell if he was seeing or hearing, thinking or feeling- and then it didn't matter anymore, as everything merged into the same still, infinite black.

—

He woke with a start, unsure why at first, but holding quite still in the darkness as his brain tried to rush to the same wakefulness that his body had.

Blinking slowly, his eyes barely open, he thought at first he was still wrapped up in his dream—because a very similar image was before him.

His brow raised, pulling open his eyes so he could better see.

The only real light was a cold grey glow that must have been moonlight bouncing off the snow through the windows along the wall behind him.

But there was another, more ethereal glow in front of him, blocking his horizontal view of the room. The golden glow shifted a beautiful shimmering display as Freya tilted her head to the side, her cheek resting onto her arms folded beneath her head, matching his sideways gaze.

And then he jerked his head back, hitting it hard into the sturdy backboard of the couch and slapping a hand up over the sudden painful bump.

"Ouch, that had to hurt... Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."

He blinked in annoyance, mussing his fingers through his rumpled hair and shooting a very deadly looking half-awake glare at her. She set her head back up straight on her chin and smiled pleasantly back.

"What—" His voice came out thick with sleep so that he stopped his attempt and stretched his jaw instead, forcing on a yawn that he ducked his face under the blankets to cover. Blinking as he resurfaced, realizing he hadn't gone to sleep with a blanket, he changed up his original question. "What... What is this?" He looked down stupidly as if there might be something else down the length of his body besides more blanket, but he only discovered that he was tucked in quite snugly to the couch—and the bed in the distance was bare.

"You looked cold," came the quiet voice beside his head, making him look back up to see her calm face still watching him. She was just barely a foot away from his face, leaning on the couch, her lower body not visible to him, but he couldn't imagine she was much warmer if she was sitting on the bare floor. He let his head fall back to rest on his pillow—and then belatedly gave another start, looking from what was beneath his head, to her, and back again, when he realized he hadn't fallen asleep with a pillow. But she spoke again before he could inquire further. "And you..." Her eyes drifted away, and he was too drowsy to interpret her expression, especially while it was currently at the opposite angle of his view.

"What time is it?" he asked in the pause, still blinking and trying to make himself wake up fully given that he wasn't alone here. But he was quite warm, and feeling better rested than he had in longer than he could remember, making him rather reluctant to leave his cozy accommodations.

She shrugged, whispering back, "Dunno. It's been a few hours, though. I've gotten tired myself."

"Have you just... been sitting here?" He narrowed his already half-lidded eyes. "Watching me sleep?"

Her laugh was so quiet it hardly seemed to escape her lips, but yet he somehow still heard it so close with his ear to the furniture that her chest was resting against.

"Don't be full of yourself," she said, and her voice rose just enough above a whisper that the lowest note came through in a much stronger way to his ears. He thought he might still be imagining he was hearing music in his drowsy state. "I've just been... reading."

He took in a deeper breath than necessary, remembering that he had left her alone with the diary. And remembering that this wasn't quite the regular Freya that he was talking to, though she had her exact face and voice, and was looking at him quite like Freya might in the later hours of grading periods in the secluded little nook of the research library at Hogwarts. But, while she might not remember, she had been reading the very memories that had been recorded at that time, and possibly of those very things he was remembering.

"Do you," he swallowed to clear his throat, and to give his sleepy mind time to catch up with what his mouth was trying to ask before it could even come up with the words, "I mean, did you... read anything interesting?"

He watched, both of them completely silent in the darkness, as she stayed as still as him for several seconds, and then slowly turned her head to the side again to look at him from the same horizontal plane. He didn't see how it was possible that her eyes could pick up enough of the low light in the room to slow the slightest hint of color that they did, but he soaked in every tiny facet that he could see reflected, realizing he had never actually gotten a chance to openly stare at her before. Even when they were talking, she was always moving around, laughing, rolling her eyes... but now, making him wish there was a light on somewhere nearby, she was so close and relaxed, only moving to make a small adjustment to the way her cheek was pressed into her arm.

"Yes."

He blinked, unsure what she meant at first, and then slowly remembered he had asked her a question. His heart suddenly seemed to realize that he was just lying there calmly, unaware of how exposed he was and that he should be moving to perhaps sit up or something. He wasn't exposed, he was perfectly covered up in blankets, in fact, but he couldn't help the way he all of a sudden felt rather pinned in place to the couch. His openly staring eyes also caught up to the rest of his brain that realized this might be rude, and he looked away, feeling that it might be too late since he also hadn't been hiding his expression of dazed awe, either.

Also, he was talking to someone whom he had just fatally attacked 24 hours ago.

He all at once felt very awake.

"What—did you—find that was interesting?" he asked, mostly to fill the silence.

His eyes flicked back to her face at increasing intervals as she didn't answer for a while. He watched her lips slowly parting and closing, trying to say whatever it was—but eventually she just frowned, and he saw some undefinable note of change to her expression.

"Um... I read that," she started, her voice sounding almost higher, "you're rather... awful at cutting your breakfast muffins in half."

He blinked one last languid time; and then brought his brows down in a knot.

She pursed her lips over her grin. "And you butter rather aggressively, too."

His mouth pulled into a wide unamused frown. "This has... all been one big joke, hasn't it? You haven't lost your memories at all, have you?"

She laughed in a way that crinkled her cheeks up to her eyes so much that she had to turn her face as half of it was pressed too tight against her arm. "No, really—I swear that's what's written in there."

"You... are... lying," he enunciated in his sleepy monotone voice. "There is no way someone—anyone—bothered to write down my..." He didn't even bother to finish his sentence it sounded so ridiculous, instead rolling his eyes so hard that he had to bring a hand up to rub them, as they hadn't been prepared for the motion. She would be that petty to write something like that down. And... he would be as petty as to have been taking extra care as of late to cut his muffins into perfect halves; though she wouldn't know this, as she hadn't been eating meals with him in so long, and he had never done it around her.

Rolling till he was halfway on his back, mostly to give him room from her barely covered-up laughter, still with his eyes closed and rubbing his temples now, he went on, "You know... there's a war ending... there's—you're a teacher, and..." He couldn't even come up with all the things more important than how he buttered his muffins. "There are people dying all over the world," he said at last, with zero concern except to mock what her own had been when she had said this to him. Unbeknownst to her, she was now finding her own words much too funny.

"Oh, you're right," she said between giggles, "it seems I've forgotten to write down every single dying person, as I was apparently too busy taking note that you'd worn mixed-up socks on a Wednesday."

He snapped his eyes back open at her, lowering his hand. "What? Which Wednesday?"

But he only watched as she tried in vain to hold back from laughing harder, her eyebrows coming up in pity, and he was looking back to the ceiling with a dead-pan expression before she collected herself enough to answer.

"Alright," she conceded cheerfully, "I made that one up, I'm sorry."

He sighed in response, stubbornly not accepting her apology or turning back to face her. As he stared at a particularly large crack in the ceiling that led all the way down to the window itself, probably letting in quite a draft, he took stock again of his bedding. Wiggling his feet, he was glad to find his boots still on at least, though his frown still deepened. He wanted to know how she had gotten the pillow under his head, but he couldn't find the voice to argue this point at the moment. He surely would have woken up for some of this, right? Or had he done the thing where he had been on sleepy autopilot, reacting but not conscious? If that was the case, had he said anything odd? Or—

"Say, can I ask you something?"

He glanced to the side warily, his nervous thoughts only growing louder, but he nodded.

She looked unsure of herself despite having already put the question out there, chewing on her lip before she got around to following it up. "It's... something that I couldn't find written down," she said carefully. "But I was just wondering... Why were we fighting in the first place?"

He winced. Of course that hadn't been written down—she had only had time afterward to write five words.

There wasn't really anything he could find worthy to defend his actions as he sifted through instead for some simple truth that he could say that was just plainly an answer and not a judgement.

"You... lied to me, about something important," he said at last. "At least, I thought you had."

Apparently he had stripped away too much contextual meaning, because she only squinted hard at his cryptic statement.

"Well... I bet you deserved it," she said rather childishly, and he understood she was just trying to make light of the situation rather than dive back too deeply into anything upsetting. "Arsehole."

The corners of his mouth twitched in a brief deadened grin. "Yeah. Probably."

Her eyes widened at the opposite effect that her ribbing had, and she seemed to jump back into questioning to cover it up.

"What was it? That I lied about, I mean."

"You didn't trust me," he replied more quickly than before, joining her in trying to not let the silence linger. "I think you thought that I was... dangerous, or something? I'm not sure."

"Called that one correctly, then," she teased with a smirk that faltered when he didn't share in with her easy-going expression. "Well... wait, didn't trust you how?"

His gaze drifted back towards the ceiling as he tried to piece together how much he should be explaining.

"Ah... To be in... There's an organization called The Order of the—"

"I know, I know; so I've read," she said, rolling her eyes and lifting her hands still crossed over her elbows to stop him from going on. "Sounds bloody stupid; definitely talking to Albus about that when I see him." From a glance, as he was remembering the way she had first looked embarrassed about being included in the name of the group, he watched her frown deepen in confusion. "But... hang on, that part was written down. Why you're not in it, I mean."

The blankets suddenly felt uncomfortably warm as his heartbeat kicked up again. "What?"

She was peering back at him, maddeningly looking like she no longer thought this conversation was going down an avenue she wanted to persist with, but he turned back to fully look at her with an intense curiosity. She caved with a light sigh, looking away.

"Err... I'm not sure how much..." She shifted uncomfortably, and her face backed up from his, still not meeting his eye. "Um, so it says that... I asked Albus to lay off you for a bit—after that whole chaos with... Dark Lord The Second, I mean; when he went away. I guess you were meant to continue your spying thing, and you did for a bit, but it was a really awful time? Is that true? You just—lost the woman you loved, nearly died, got brought back—all in one night—and Albus asked you to, 'oh, get back out there, then; got a lot of work to do'?"

He stared in dumbstruck silence, only realizing to close his mouth when her face shifted questioningly.

"I—… I didn't love her—she was married."

Her brows shot up to her hairline and then back down in extreme concern, but he was already forcefully shutting his eyes and turning away.

"Oh," she said with much emphasis, "Yikes... Must have... just... missed that bit—you know, that was really not clear in the writing."

He busied his hands with covering his face by rubbing at his eyes as if still waking up, when really he wished at the moment that he hadn't woken up in the first place.

Trying to quickly push aside that he had honed in on the complete wrong part of this explanation, he picked up the pieces of what else she had said.

"So... you... didn't want me in because—"

"Because I thought you were soft, looks like," she finished before he could ask.

Brilliantly said, thanks. He let out a long sigh through his nose, not opening his eyes yet.

Dredging up his memories of months earlier, he tried to get his drowsy brain to fit this into order. He had first thought it was Dumbledore himself keeping him away since he had then just become a teacher, which had indeed always been odd considering what he had asked him to do the first few days after the fall.

He had woken up feeling like he'd been resurrected, both tired all over and absurdly, horribly fine, in a bed that he had later found out was in the Hog's Head Inn. A phoenix on a dresser nearby had stirred, and then the man himself, Albus Dumbledore, had appeared. After their talk, in which he certainly made quite a scene letting out his full range of emotions, he had been given the task of helping out with the ensuing chaos from the other side. Find out what he could, actually look this time instead of running around trying to start fights and breaking down his carefully crafted guise in his turmoil, and make sure nothing else big was coming. It had been the most the man had ever asked from him, on such a tumultuous night, and Severus had only begrudgingly agreed in order to get the man to shut up and leave him alone. Which was when he had said the words to him:

"If you should find, after I let you go from here, that this task is too much for you... If you will hate me, if you will resent me: that is fine. But listen to me, now, Severus... if you go, and if you hesitate to return, if you decide that your soul resides elsewhere... then do not come back."

It took him three days to return, bringing with him the news that there was in fact nothing out there to find, and the Dark Lord had well and truly fallen, his followers scattered to every corner. But he hadn't come back in much better of a state, his head still fully wrapped up in grief, as it would remain for weeks afterward. When he was offered the thing that he had been chasing after for so long, the teaching position at Hogwarts, it was almost laughably underwhelming. But he had let himself be talked into it, and then he had left to become a wretch of a recluse in the month he had before the start of term.

He blinked up at the ceiling, where a small line of pale light was peeking out from the tops of the tall curtains.

Finally, softly, into the still quiet room, he said, "That... wasn't your decision to make for me..."

When she didn't answer, he turned his head to look, wondering if she disagreed. But there was a crease between her brow and she had him fixed with a hard defensive look.

"I don't remember making it," she said simply. Her expression softened when he didn't fight back, though.

She was right, after all. He couldn't hold her to something right now, and besides, it was meaningless. He himself had moments in the past of being grateful to only be focusing on such a simple job and not having to throw himself back out here, into this snake pit. Life at the castle had been stressful in its own right, that much was clear, but, undoubtedly, there had also been...

"I think... I understand, though."

Her voice had been so quiet as she said this, he almost felt like he was back asleep, being whispered to in his dreams. He wasn't at all sure what it was that she understood. But, as he stared at the tops of her lashes, hiding her eyes as she gazed down at the threadbare pattern of the couch and picked at a loose string, he thought that he just might trust enough that, whatever she was thinking, it was only with his best interest at heart.

Her eyes suddenly flicked up to his, and he stayed still where he was, half on his shoulder, one ear into the pillow. It felt like he was repeating his earlier half-asleep staring, but then, she was doing it as well, making it feel less rude—but not nearly as calm with his nerves fully awake as they now were. She slowly parted her lips to speak, and he tried with effort to keep his eyes up solely looking back into her own golden ones.

"Did you," she said in the same just as soft voice, "hear me? While you were asleep?"

He blinked and had to look away in thought, his brows crinkling just slightly, but he couldn't remember anything that he would have heard. He had just had the same dream that he so often did, though it had taken quite a turn at the start of the schoolyear when he had learned it had been her over him saving his life. In the very deep recesses of his dreams, he still shoved this fact to the wayside, and let himself comfortingly think that he had seen someone else.

He shook his head, the minuscule rustling sound his hair made against the pillow sounding loud down in the soft blanketed corner of the quiet room as he turned his eyes back to her.

"Oh," she said with just the smallest bit of a frown. It was all he saw before she let her head slowly fall forward, turning to rest her temple on her folded arms. He waited for a long moment to see if she would go on, but he finally decided, from the slow rise and fall of her shoulders, that she was done talking. And she seemed to have chosen her place to stay for sleep.

He checked back on the large bare bed, missing one pillow and it's thick top blanket, and down at where it was over top of him, folded in two.

"What—Ah!"

It took her a couple of seconds to find where the end of the blanket was, but eventually a startled looking Freya poked her head out from where he had just unceremoniously tossed the fluffy quilted fabric fully over her.

"Your hair looks great like that," he commented, and then smirked while she was too busy running her hands over all the long flipped over strands to see him do it. She came back up with a scowl anyway.

"What's this for—we're sharing now?"

"Well, if you're going to take half my bed," he said, indicating with his eyes the several inches her arms had taken up at the edge of the couch. She looked down, measuring with her eyes to check herself, but she seemed unwilling to relinquish her post.

"Why don't you just go take the bed then if you don't like it?" she countered.

"Why don't you?" he delivered coolly back at once. Her glare soured more.

"I'm fine where I am, thanks," she said and without another word adjusted her half of the blankets around her shoulders and settled her head back into her arms to sleep.

He hadn't actually been expecting that, thinking for sure she would realize how embarrassing she was being and leave. But he wasn't willing to leave either. Apparently, they were both too stubborn to budge from their spots once they had taken root.

He stared at the top of her head for some time, taking in the way her hair was slowly cascading into place as it settled, piece by piece. He had the urge to reach out and touch it, to see if it was just as silky as he vaguely remembered, and his fingers rubbed together absently under the blanket, as if he could imagine it. The blanket felt less weighty with just the one half on him now, but he was still somehow quite warm.

After a moment's internal debate, wherein he almost decided to turn fully over to face his nose into the back of the couch for more privacy, he finally settled back onto his shoulder, moving so little as to not alert her. The way his head sank into the pillow blocked part of his view, but he could still just barely glimpse the tip of her nose, and the pool of her hair flowing over her shoulders.

He was hardly tired now, after being woken up half way through the night, but this was only part of the reason it took him so long to fall back into a deep dreamless sleep.

"Wake up, wake up!"

Severus jerked straight up in bed so fast that his forehead collided painfully with something hard ("Ow!"), and his brain spent the time he was rubbing his head to discern the enlightening fact that he was not in a bed, but a make-shift one, on a couch.

He blinked around in much confusion, his head hurting, and his eyes coming to rest on Freya, who was rubbing her own head in a similar way. Her eyes popped back up to his, frantic.

"Your thing! It's smoking!" He followed at a considerable lag to where her finger was pointing towards the door, where in fact a little brass instrument was swirling smoke in a deliberate fashion, though he couldn't make it out from across the room with his bleary eyes. Thankfully, Freya said helpfully in a hurried whisper, "I think someone's at the door!"

He blinked one last time with incredible slowness—and then was nearly tripping fully over himself, wrapped up in the blanket that slipped under his foot as it landed, and having to grab onto Freya's shoulder as she scrambled out of his way.

"Shit—Who—"

But as he darted over to the door, in the decent light that he now realized was because the sun was up behind the curtains, the smoke figure answered his question: Bellatrix.

He whipped around again, reaching for his wand in his pocket, but before he could do anything, Freya's frantic hand motions distracted him. She was pointing all around her head and he squinted in confusion before she came over and practically dragged him by the collar down to where she could reach, fixing his hair for him while he squeezed his eyes shut.

"I—Alright! Just—go sit!"

And she sat. But the couch was still a mess of bedding, and he jabbed his wand, sending everything back to the bed in a haphazard flick. He was about to turn around when he caught sight of her baring her teeth in a grimace, but she switched to a very unconvincing smile and a thumbs up at the last second.

He took a deep breath—and then pulled the door open.

"Bellatrix," he said calmly with mild surprise. "What is it?"

Her shadowed eyes looked extremely unimpressed by his lateness to open the door, and after holding her glare on him for a beat, her gaze shifted behind him into the room. He couldn't help but look as well, out of nervousness for what was there. However, Freya was sat quite still on the couch, looking almost like a doll that had been politely posed, convincingly like a person under the Imperius Curse and perhaps with a bit less brains than before.

"That," Bellatrix pointed one thin finger, "is creepy. Even for you, Severus."

His head snapped back around to refute whatever she was thinking, but with much restraint, he conceded to ignore it rather than make a fool of himself even mentioning it. He took a deep breath and held it in.

"What do you want?" he asked more directly.

"We're about to have a meeting to discuss... some things," she said cryptically, eyeing him up and down. She didn't look entirely trusting of him, and he sluggishly remembered that he had put himself in more of an awkward situation yesterday than just dragging a strange woman off to his quarters. He had some very thorough explaining to do, and it had better be airtight. "If you're not too... busy," her eyes went back to the room beyond him, "would you care to join us? It's been so long."

"I will be out in a minute then," he said, picturing the dining room and what other meetings had taken place there.

She gave him one last scrutinizing look, and then she was gone. He was careful not to slam the door after her despite his urge to.

He nearly jumped back when he turned around, as Freya was standing right behind him, suddenly no longer a doll.

"A meeting?" she asked with concern. "What does that mean?"

"It means..." He raised a hand to rub at his groggy face, closing his eyes to think, but he trailed off entirely as his train of thought split into several directions at once, all too quickly.

It couldn't mean anything good, that much was certain.

His eyes snapped open and he lowered his hand, zeroing in on Freya's anxiously waiting face.

"Can I... ask you to do something?"

Her eyes widened. "Does it involved going out there...?"

Slightly apologetic, he nodded, but she relaxed before he could even explain.

"Oh, thank goodness," she said with an inexplicable smile that only made him frown, "I thought you were going to leave me in here; I was about to put up such a fuss, you've no idea."

"Glad that could be avoided," he said with unconvinced apprehension. It was important, though, that he show rather than tell that she really was under his Imperius Curse—at least by way of her acting, which he had faith that she could pull off. "But I do have to warn you... this isn't exactly... safe. I can't guarantee that someone won't raise their wand to you again—"

"And you'll swoop in like prince and save me again, will you?"

He watched her sarcastic grinning face, quirking her eyebrow at him as if he was either stupid for treating her like precious cargo, or a supreme hypocrite given why she was here in the first place.

But at that moment, as his mind was still waking up after getting to sleep comfortably and safely with her watching over him, after everything he did, he didn't feel the least bit shy to say what deserved to be said—and mean it with every part of him.

Her smile fell as he reached out for her shoulder, but he held her in place, gripping the other as well as she looked up at him in flustered surprise, trapped under his sudden intense gaze. He let the deepness of his voice, lowered even further having just woken up, carry every bit of the sincerity of what he had to say.

"Yes, I will. I'll keep you safe. I promise."

As it turned out, thankfully there was no need for him to do any heroic dash maneuvers in front of any deadly spells during the meeting. The most life-threatening thing that happened was him being cackled at by a small collective of Death Eaters for having a thing for redheads, making him feel rather superhuman after he managed to hold back from obliterating everything in sight including himself. Aside from the faces of former friends (who looked a lot less friendly towards him now) giving him a hard time for his choice in Hogwarts staff to assign as his puppet guard, and making his faux-puppet seem to go dead in the eyes behind her placid smile and shoot him the sharpest look he had seen since Professor Powers tried to flirt with her, it turned out that he had been correct in assuming the worst if Bellatrix was calling together everyone she could find to talk.

"We have to go tell Albus," Freya said once they were safely back in the confines of his secrecy-spelled room. Even she didn't sound very convinced though, and her gaze, like his, wandered out towards the rest of the room, standing around as he was, in deep contemplation. He didn't even bother answering her as he was still trying to sort things out from every angle—and hers was the worst yet, which he had already discarded.

"We... can't just leave," he said slowly, thinking out loud, "not after just hearing this. It would be far too obvious. And besides, by her telling of it, this won't happen until a future date."

"So then...?"

"We wait," he said simply, striding over to the couch so he could sit and think. When he caught sight of Freya's face, she looked as if he had just suggested going back out to fight the room of Death Eaters with spoons.

"I'm not waiting!" she said incredulously. "Those people sound mental!"

Oh, they definitely are. "Welcome to the life of a double agent," he said unhappily. "You can't just go running around attacking large groups of insane people at will."

"But you do agree; we have to go to Albus, right?"

He did agree that this was something that normally he would have relayed to him to have dealt with by the Order, yes, but he was still tightlipped on the thought of Dumbledore. Freya seemed to see where his hang-up was, and went on.

"Oh, this is stupid," she said raising her hands and turning on her heel to pace across the wood floor. "He's not going to strike you dead on the spot—"

"He might."

"No he bloody won't! You'll just be bringing me back, right where I'm supposed to go—and where I'm supposed to be bringing you—and you'll have information that you can trade in—"

"Information that I only got by chance, as I wasn't meant to be here," he said with a numb rationale. "I would hazard a guess that he values your life over mere information."

"And I am right bloody here! Perfectly alive!"

His eyes that had gone out of focus blinked and looked up. She waited until he met her gaze to gesture wildly to her very real physical form that did indeed seem to be alive. Her robes still bore the stitching though, and her mind still did not remember him.

He didn't have it in him at the moment to argue the point, and he needed to do some careful thinking about other things besides, so he left her off with a rather dismissive note:

"We'll wait until nightfall. Then we can discuss what to do."

He watched her puff up and deflate multiple times as she tried to find a way to argue around this, but, eventually, she had to concede. Though she did look plenty cross about it, and stomped her way over to the bed rather than the space he had left on the other side of the couch. The dressings he had haphazardly spelled through the air earlier were severely off-kilter, and she straightened out the blanket before she sat down with a huff.

He couldn't exactly blame her. As long as he was trapped here, she was as well, and the only person she seemed to remember from a time before she had first died was far away, beyond her reach. Apparently Dumbledore also held some of her memories, if his reading of the first page of her diary was correct. He wasn't entirely sure what that would entail, or what would happen if she did get her memories returned, but he was sure he didn't want to be around when it happened.

It was true, though, that he couldn't stay here. There was plenty of reason for him to leave, including the precise excuse of dropping her supposedly confused memory-addled-self back off at Hogwarts for later use as a Death Eater pawn. He had to be careful not to put himself in the position to be the pawn, however. He had already turned down being a part of Bellatrix's plan, stating that his availability was limited and would draw too much attention. His lies were starting to compound into themselves, and he needed to make a decision quickly to fix them up neatly back into place.

He needed to go back.

As the afternoon wore on into evening, Freya lounged on the bed, reading her own diary with the look of someone who was just starting to learn a new language, while he busied himself going in and out of the room, making the small set-ups that would lead to his bigger decision to leave less noticeable. When he came back into the bedroom for a final time, Freya was standing in the middle of the room, not reading, but waiting.

"Well, it looks like the sun is going down," she commented pointedly, making him realize for the first time just how dark it had gotten without his noticing. His current sleep schedule had him so mixed up, and he had slept so long last night, that with the deep wintery hours there really hadn't been much sun left for him to catch. "So," she continued as he turned back from looking at the velvet curtains to find a very normal Freya-looking smile on her face, assumedly because she had seen him pack his trunk up on his last pass, "perhaps it's time for that chat, eh?"

But he had just realized something on the thread of their location effecting the time of sunset, so distant they were from Hogwarts, and he put off what he needed to say a little longer with a simpler question.

"How did you find me here?"

He watched her face go from surprised to knowing, and then, making him almost wary, she stepped right up to him within arm's reach—and began practically trying to pickpocket him.

"What—are you—I haven't got anything," he said, slapping her hands away from his robes and finally getting her to knock it off by backing up. She sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Yes, you do." And she inexplicably held out her hand, palm up.

He blinked as she wiggled her fingers, and even humored her by shoving his hands in his pockets, but there was nothing. Even she frowned now.

"Wait—where is it?"

"I told you, I—"

But a thought suddenly occurred to him. He did have something of hers.

He reached back into his pocket and pulled out his wand, holding it out flat in his hand. Her eyes widened and her brows shot up her forehead.

"No—you're joking," she breathed, darting her hand out—but he had already played this game before and swiftly held his wand out of her reach. "Let me see that!"

"You found me," he said, and he could hardly believe it, "by this?" That had to mean... she had been able to find him the whole school year because of—

"You can't have that! I can't have—there's no way I would have given anyone—"

"You didn't give it to me," he corrected her before she could start accusing him of stealing it, "you gave it to the wandmaker, Ollivander. All I did was pick it up from his shop." This didn't seem to give her any kind of consolation, still looking thoroughly appalled. But he went on, and, hesitantly, with an almost teasing voice, quoted what the wandmaker himself often said: "But... the wand does choose the wizard, after all."

He could have almost laughed at the way her expression snapped so quickly into a perfect little unamused frown, her neat brows making a tiny 'v'. She glared up at him with such a pout that he finally, slowly, lowered his wand from the air to hold out to her, hoping she wasn't hateful enough towards wizards to be snapping wands and ripping their cores out. This thought made him flinch as she reached for it, but her hand slowed, and they seemed to come to an unspoken agreement. He watched as she carefully passed her hand over the wand without taking it, touching the smooth wood and lightly brushing his palm with her fingertips in a way that made his job of holding his hand still very difficult.

And then she shot a disgusted look up at him that made him level a blank look of innocence back down. She was doing a good job at reacting exactly as she first had so far by his tally. Hopefully this version of her wouldn't really burn down a wand shop, though.

With a seething sigh, her eyes still on his wand even as he pocketed it, she stepped back. Her eyes went up and down him as they had once before, only this time he felt pleasantly neutral, knowing she had already approved him to carry his wand with its phoenix tailfeather core.

"That," she pointed at his pocket, "is the worst thing I've seen since resurrecting. And that's saying something, as the first thing I did was run into a thorn bush while some spidery woman chased me down."

He raised his brows. "Did you?"

She opened her mouth, looking regretful at having admitted to this. "Err... No," she said, straightening her posture, "I was just exaggerating."

He gave a slow nod of his chin, not taking his eyes off her. She looked about to start in defensively, but he cut her off, as a curious thought had just occurred to him.

"It's Blackthorn wood, you know," he said, looking into her eyes. He watched the way her expression cleared to a pleasant surprise, and knew what she was about to say before she said it.

"Oh, like the wine?"

The corners of his mouth threatened to turn up, but it was too painful still.

"Yes," he said, "like the wine... I've also done some research into it. Apparently, it's a hard wand wood to win the loyalty of. Almost like... a phoenix."

Her eyes narrowed with slow deliberation as her mouth flattened out to a thin line, and he did let loose a grin then.

"Well, I don't remember you winning me over to earn that," she said back coolly.

His smile fell to a sad shadow of his usually playful mischievous expression that he would hold during their banter.

No, she didn't remember. But he wished she did. And he would do everything in his power to earn back getting to be a part of her memories once more.

"I think I prefer the wine myself," she said over his thoughts, absently wrapping a long lock of hair around her finger as her eyes gazed out behind him towards the windows. "'It bares the sweetest berries after the hardest frosts'... I don't know about wands, but I do like that feeling of something hard-won, don't you?"

He watched the way the light caught her eyes in just the right way, and felt his smile return just a bit, nodding as he looked away.

"That's good," she said much more bluntly, "because after reading a bit more of that diary, I'm only feeling half-way positive about Albus not killing you when we show up."

---

_—***—_

"I'm not here to reason or deny
I've paid my debt to a world that bleeds you dry
Sometimes there's no other way, to say the things you need to say
At the greatest price, or a meaningless fight
Didn't it used to feel so right
But sometimes you need the dark to see the light"

B.R.M.C. - The Knife

---

—Author's Note—

Hello, just wanted to quickly note that the quote about Blackthorn was taken from the source nearly word-for-word at the Wizarding World website on wand woods (say that ten times fast). I know people have asked why I chose Blackthorn for Severus's wand, and this is why! I was planning out a very bittersweet, hard-won type of story, and liked the Blackthorn quote better for it. Here is the full relevant part:

"It is a curious feature of the blackthorn bush, which sports wicked thorns, that it produces its sweetest berries after the hardest frosts, and the wands made from this wood appear to need to pass through danger or hardship with their owners to become truly bonded. Given this condition, the blackthorn wand will become as loyal and faithful a servant as one could wish."

Also, as long as I'm here, I should thank you very much for reading this far! And inform you that this is about halfway into the story I've planned out, although I haven't pinned down just how many chapters it will amount to, mostly because I keep underestimating just how much I write and having to split things up. I hope it isn't too arduous of a read. I'm sorry. :')

Anyways, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy the next chapter (it's a fair bit lighter than this one!), and have a great day!