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.

9. By the Fire

"The body aches, but your soul will not fail
Light our way just to leave the past
You stand between and sheltered you
Wake from this sleep just to hear the words
You spoke to me: I'll sing to you"

B.R.M.C. - Warning Sign

_—***—_

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Chapter 9 – By the Fire

The destination was downward, but not at any usual place. Each wide stone step descended sent a reverberation into the air that seemed to echo through the cavernous corridor despite the soles of his boots being spelled silent. Not a single creature stirred, the fat marble columns resolute, and the portraits here devoid of any kind of life that would have moved within their frames. Still, he crept as quietly as possible through the empty hall.

With the creak of an ancient door on disused hinges, as what lay behind it had little need, he entered into a room full of the dust and smoke that could only be expected of this sort of location. The shadowy underground, with fire blazing and hot red brick, seemed to speak in the form of a many-limbed thing, all moving at once and creating a smooth, impactful cacophony that spoke of warnings and of temptations.

He mustn't be distracted, however, as he was on a very strict, very critical, mission; one that must not be strayed from when what was riding on this could mean a most certain unpleasant death...

Moments later, with his prize gripped tight in his hands, Severus exited the Hogwarts kitchens carrying a basket so large and heavy, the house elves that had handed it off to him had needed to team up in a pair of two, torn between wanting to heed his request and having to prepare for the Christmas Eve feast later that day. Now, looking much more cross rather than careful as he quickly returned to his office, he was tasked with having to remove the exorbitant number of bows and ribbons, tinsel and star ornaments, that had been stuck onto the wrapping paper to the effect that he wasn't even sure what pattern was on it. An hour later, he was on the move again, and back to prowling like a cat through a dog-infested junkyard.

The castle itself appeared perfectly empty, but this only put him more on edge, as anyone he was likely to run into now would be a horrifying option. The precise man in question that he was most fearing a chance encounter with, however, would most likely not be leaving his tower anytime soon.

It had been a tense sort of reunion just over a full day ago in that tower. The only solace was that, for once, he had not been standing alone in Dumbledore's office—standing alone, specifically, of course, because there had been a phoenix on its perch plenty of other times he had been there long ago. This time, she had stood right beside him. It also helped that some of the initial tension had been broken before they arrived at the office, when Dumbledore had met them at the gates and Freya had rushed forward with—in the middle of how happy she was to see him—endlessly enraptured comments about how absolutely old he looked.

"That's it then. Nothing to really be done but wait for it to happen."

It was night, and the office was only half-lit as if its owner had not been expecting guests, but even by candlelight Severus could see the little crease between Freya's brows as she rounded off her recanting, looking just as nonplussed about this plan of inaction as she had been at the woodland mansion. He had let her do most of the talking, and was trying to convince himself he wasn't hiding behind her if he was standing exactly level with her before the desk, but he still definitely felt as if he was achieving a mitigated effect of the hard stare being directed their way.

"I definitely want to be there when it does, though," Freya added with renewed gusto. "I'd love to see one of them come at me when I get my magic back."

Dumbledore didn't return her enthusiasm, and, in fact, didn't seem to be smiling at her as he had been when first he greeted her (just her, as he had been ignoring Severus entirely).

"I think," Dumbledore said slowly, "that we shall have to wait and see if we will be sending more than one of you at that time."

She blinked, and then turned to raise her brows at Severus, though he refrained from reacting except to meet her eyes with a sideways glance, trying not to draw attention to himself.

"He can't come? Oh, don't be hard on him, he's the one who picked up on all this in the first place. You know, I really think you've been getting kind of—"

"I was not referring," Dumbledore spoke up with added volume to cut off her ensuing rant, then lowered his voice as if to soften his blow, "to him."

Now it was both people standing that looked surprised, though he was still keeping his eyes lowered.

"What—me?"

Dumbledore seemed to be about to draw in a deep breath but controlled himself against it.

"Yes, Freya. I believe it would be wise to keep you out of the field... until... you have had some time to sort through your memories."

The relieving aura emanating from his left side companion abruptly ceased, and after chancing another quick glance her way, he became increasingly worried for the outcome of this reunion.

"What do those memories have to do with anything?" she said in a voice that was no longer warm and friendly.

There was an uncomfortable pause where Severus couldn't tell what was happening with his eyes now so glued to the fascinating rug below, and he was filled with the strong desire to lean back on the heels of his boots and ghost himself from the room, because this did not feel a conversation that he needed to be a hapless witness to.

"You... You named an organization after me—and you want to keep—me—out of it?" she asked in low disbelief that quickly jumped to a higher volume than he had ever heard directed at Albus Dumbledore unless in some kind of altercation. "Are you joking? I wasn't wrong, was I? You really have changed—and you just want me to remember so I can be soft like you are now! Well, you can forget that."

Severus did have to look up in reaction then, because his side was suddenly empty, and as he stared, unable to stop the scene from unfolding, Freya was already undoing a latch on one of the nearest large windows and stepping onto the sill.

"Your nose didn't age well!" she shouted over her shoulder, and with that, hopped out into the freezing night air and was gone in a pop of fire and feathers.

So... that was step two failed, then, as taking back her memories without being difficult hadn't gone quite so neatly as she had written it in her diary.

His gaze came to rest somewhere between the open window and the man who still had not looked at him a single time since his return to the castle, not sure which direction was colder, and he seriously contemplated jumping out after her. His only viable escape route snapped shut, however, and his eyes finally flicked as close as he dared near Dumbledore, onto his wand that he had just commanded the window closed with.

In the once more still air, with only the tinkling sound of his numerous silvery instruments, the headmaster finally took in a hugely deep breath—and sighed.

Severus felt like he was seeing a rare sight; that of a Dumbledore who became annoyed with his troubles rather than grinning them away with a sage-like serenity. If he had to bet, he'd have said he was about to see another rare happening, as he doubted anyone had been murdered in this office in quite some time.

Impenetrable blue eyes fixed him with a grim stare, trapping his gaze in place and making him dearly wish that Freya was right about how soft her old friend had gotten.

"It would appear," Dumbledore spoke, and his usual joking manner was a shade darker, but still held some of the ironic air, "that I have a job opening in the place of one who can travel at will into dark places while keeping a cool head."

Severus held his breath.

"And to think," Dumbledore went on, his voice growing colder still, "that all you had to do was kill the previous occupant to get it. A feat that I am sure crossed your mind plenty of times before for another position."

His mouth popped open to reply without thinking, but he quickly shut it again, his lips retreating between his teeth. The icy stare seemed to take pity and free him, moving to instead gaze out the window that his phoenix had just flown from. The age in his lined face stood out as his expression changed to perhaps match the distance that she already traveled, far away and with nothing but cold in between.

"Let us hope that will be the only position I need to replace," Dumbledore said quietly, as if merely speaking to his empty office. If Severus didn't know any better, and if he dared speak or move, he might inquire as to if he should just leave him be, but the headmaster spoke up again before he could, still directing his thoughts aloud to the window.

"Do you know that the teaching position of Defense Against the Dark Arts is cursed?" Without waiting for a reply, and without Severus having a moment to react regardless, except to internally feel victorious in a long-assumed debate, he went on, "I did give her fair warning, of course. But she merely said... 'I don't think I've had the pleasure of dying by curse before. It sounds quite interesting. Hopefully it comes up with a new way to kill me each year, so you can have a good story for me each time I wake up. But if I go out because a student tripped me down the stairs, just make up something more fantastic please.'"

The softened smile on his face that had shown up as he spoke, demonstrating a fondness that transcended a lifetime, slowly faded out, and once more the blue eyes were back on him with a stare like sudden death.

"Did you tell her, Severus? The full tale of exactly how you killed her?"

Once more, his mouth fell open to speak, but he could not. Even if he had managed to so much as squeak, Dumbledore was shocking him mute once more by standing from his chair, as he never had before, and coming to stand right before him.

"Yes, I did," he finally managed, as if compelled beyond his will.

"And did you," Dumbledore continued, his voice picking up in strength so that at such close proximity it seemed a powerful spell in and of itself, "look her in the eye when you told her, or were you staring at the floor as you are now?"

His eyes jerked up, though he regretted it very much. It was a testament to how foolish the Death Eaters were that they would sneer this man's name where he could not—or more accurately did not care enough to—reach them. None would dare have ever uttered the name 'Albus Dumbledore' without hesitation to their voice in his presence, no more than the title of their own Lord himself. For as much as they wished to repel the truth, the pair were quite on another level from any ordinary wizard.

But then, he liked to think that he was especially competent in at least a few ways as well, and even as the memory of that night and the spell he had cast was summoned to the forefront of his mind, he thought hard only of another picture: that of a smiling face filled with a laughter that was like music. The sharp sting to his chest seemed to pin him upright into place like a moth to a board, and he held his gaze steady, though perhaps with the same deadened haze of one such unlucky insect.

"I told her... directly. Every detail."

Dumbledore inclined his chin, staring down his crooked nose and through his spectacles at him.

"Well then... finally... would I be wrong to assume that you must have forgotten our agreement on what was to be expected if you took your leave from here?"

This he could at least answer without hesitation— "No" —but it seemed it had been useless to reply.

"Good. But I dare say that you can now erase it from your mind, Severus. Because, I must inform you, that you will no longer be allowed the mercy to easily skulk away from here. No, next time, I'm afraid, you will not be making it quite so far as the gates."

His mouth did not dare open itself even of its own volition this time, as his eyes once more found the rug.

It wasn't until the headmaster had retaken his seat behind his desk that Severus finally allowed himself to repeat the words in his head. Next time... but not this time.

"It would appear," Dumbledore said, as if answering his thoughts as he busied himself with smoothing out his long robes and beard, "that you have found a loophole in my words. Being that it was never stated what the rules were should you be brought back against your better judgement... by someone who very much wants you to be here."

Worlds apart from the threat that had just been made, Severus almost thought that the gaze now cast on him seemed from a completely different person; one who might even have a twinkle in his eyes, though it was hard to tell through the still stormy steel blue if this was from the candlelight or not. He couldn't handle the whiplash of this, nor did he yet intend to stick a toe out of line. Presently though—at the very least, outwardly—the hostility had been laid to rest. He now wondered if perhaps all of the warnings to not rely on Freya had been more to do with not wanting the two of them to get close; because it seemed that if Freya wanted him here, then Dumbledore wouldn't be able to argue as strongly against it.

"Do you realize the debt that you owe her for leading you through the dark even at the high cost of her own light?"

It took him a moment to answer, but this time it was because he was so distracted imagining how her face would have soured if she had heard this, as if she were a magical creature rather than a person, and wondered if she hated it so much because this man was so prone to throwing out flowery allegory.

At last, he nodded.

"Good then." Dumbledore suddenly brightened, folding his hands over his desk and leaning in. "I believe it's only two days now before Christmas? A time of celebrations both cultural and personal, and a time to show those we care about some much-needed cheer... and appreciation." His voice suddenly dropped seemingly without cause to a low murmur, making Severus have to strain to hear him. "Now, I would tell you exactly what sort of gift would befit Freya, but, as she's currently listening at the window, I don't particularly want to spoil the surprise for her."

Severus whipped his head around to the window just as it rattled and he could see a large red bird take off from a little alcove under the eave. He began to wonder if he had ever had a private conversation here, or if those didn't exist with Freya lurking about. He turned back to find Dumbledore looking once more like he was being forced to entertain a talking toad in his office, and thought he might be able to pinpoint the exact moment she had been sitting within his eyesight just by the looks on his face. It didn't appear that he had been saying all of that just for her sake, though, as he carried on.

"Forgive me if I'm mistaken... but you are familiar with the finer points of muggle life, are you not?"

He couldn't stop himself from allowing just a bit of a frown at this. His privacy was apparently once again on the table, and a question that he hadn't been willing to ask Freya while he had the chance alone with her still burned in his mind. His slight irritation was apparently confirmation enough for Dumbledore to continue to his point.

"As much as I am sure that Freya would love a bouquet or a box of Christmas cookies, I think it would perhaps be more appropriate of an apology to commit to a meaningful action. You see, it's been a bit of a tradition for a while now that when she awakens, she likes to watch a muggle film. I'm not sure if you're familiar—"

"I know about it," he said at once, surprising himself as well as Dumbledore, though he thought it might be more from the sound of his own voice filling the office after being quiet for so long. "She... She told me. Not the tradition, but... I'm aware of her interest in films. And that she has the means in her office, but she hasn't been able to configure things properly."

He could almost count the wrinkles that lined Dumbledore's forehead as his brows rose, and he suddenly wasn't sure if divulging how thorough his knowledge was hadn't been a misstep. The words had just spilled out as if he were reciting information from a mission with crucial attention to detail.

"Did she?" he said at last, and Severus couldn't tell if it was a note of shock or of irritation that his voice held. The old face slowly slackened until he seemed to be deflating as he breathed out, and then the blue eyes that had stabbed like spears at him lowered to his desk, looking world-weary. If he hadn't known any better, he would have said Dumbledore looked defeated in that moment. It reminded him of something Freya had said the night she had stood challenging him at the castle gates days ago; that she talked to Dumbledore about many things, including him, because he was her close friend—but it seemed she hadn't talked to him about this.

"I see," Dumbledore said at last. And then he did something that Severus had not ever seen him do while the two of them were alone—not just in reference to Freya, not to her sitting in the window (though he did check with a quick uncomfortable glance, almost to look away from what he was seeing)—but just at him. Dumbledore cast the faintest bit of a smile his way, though thin in its execution, and looking like he had perhaps just bitterly lost a game of chess.

"Perhaps, then... this old man should rather be keeping his crooked nose out of other people's business."

Severus had the deliberate urge to deflect that there was any business to be keeping out of, remembering as well that it had never been discussed whether or not McGonagall had told him about finding them both drunk together. He suddenly missed the piercing stare and the reliable rug. It was even harder to look him in the eye like this. It was, however, an opening for him to jump into another topic entirely, which he hoped would now be allowed, because he very much wanted to get away from this one.

"Headmaster, sir, if you don't mind my asking," he spoke and then paused to see if this was indeed minded. Dumbledore merely inclined his head that he could continue. "How... exactly... is it that you know about my... personal affairs?" He wasn't sure if he should be saying 'upbringing' or 'home life,' but both seemed to imply too much too close to what he regarded as top secret. He watched Dumbledore's head incline another inch in understanding.

"Ah... Severus, I would have thought that had been... painfully obvious." Indeed, it did seem he was pained to answer this. It took him a moment to continue his reply, and at first, he only cast a thoughtful glance his way. Eventually though, he turned to him directly and, with eyes that contained not a trace of animosity, only a barely hidden sadness, said, "It was, of course, Lily."

The hefty basket in his arms was proving just how overstuffed with goodies it was by the time he reached the second floor, making him wish he had thought to charm it lighter sooner than before his boots were already coming to a slow stop outside the office door.

Despite having to adjust his handling on his awkward bundle, he made no motion to knock just yet. He stood out in the deserted hallway, staring at the wood paneled door as if transfixed—but his mind was still moving plenty; far away, and in and out of times long passed.

The last time he had come to stand in this hall with something in his arms, it had been a phoenix on a night with perhaps a bit too much to drink. And afterword, he had felt that distinct stand-out twinge of betrayal, threaded up through all his other guilt and remorse, like catching his boot under a thorny vine grown from a seed he had forgotten had been planted, but had become so deeply tangled, it went beyond something that he could place a name to at the time.

Until a day ago, when he had felt it again.

So caught up in his paranoia and his turmoil over where this new woman stood in his new life, he had forgotten what had indeed been so obvious.

And he had forgotten especially on that night of drinking. He had allowed himself to let go, and even more so, to reach out.

He stood so still in the hall that he felt cast in stone, the weight straining on his arms pulling them into a stronger steel. By the time he finally moved, it was only as a ghost reaching out from its suit of armor to knock, while the inner statue stayed resolutely at its vigil.

For now, he did still have other debts that needed to be addressed.

However, when Freya opened the door almost at once, it wasn't her who wound up looking most surprised. In fact, she didn't look like his presence surprised her at all. Her whole face was already lit up in a wide smile, her eyes immediately on his despite that he was holding the most gaudy looking gift, and her exuberant voice rang out through the hall.

"Severus!"

He blinked in shock as a hole was punched straight through to his unwillingly still fleshy heart.

"You... remember me?"

But he saw at once his mistake, as her face fell to a puzzled confusion—and then to a comical display of sudden remembrance.

"Ohh, right," she said, snapping her fingers and pointing at him. "You're the bloke who killed me, yeah?"

He felt as if his chest had been minced to a nice Christmas pudding as he attempted to stretch his mouth out in an answering humorous tone.

"That... would be me."

She laughed, further rendering him dumb in the doorway, standing with his stupid basket.

"Yes, yes, it's very sad. Come in, though, come in!"

She stepped back and ushered him over the threshold, leading him in and finally calling attention to the present wrapped in so much holiday cheer it was practically shining in the low light of her office.

"That's surely not for me, is it? All of that?"

Well it isn't for the Acromantula, he thought to himself, staying at a wary pace behind her as he was unsure if he should be trusting someone with memory loss to have been caring for a room full of Dark or magically enhanced creatures. Putting his apprehension aside though as they came to a stop, he organized his face into one of polite formality more befitting of his words, and held the basket up an extra inch.

"Happy Christmas."

She looked much more perplexed that he would have gotten her a gift than shown up at her office, and he had another reminder that despite her overly friendly nature, he was still more like a stranger to her. Her apprehensive smile parted to speak, but she appeared at a loss for words for a second longer.

"Err... Not for another twelve hours at least, by my count," she said at last, turning away. "But I suppose you can just set it down... Oh."

His eyes fell to where she had been indicating, noticing the problem as well. It looked like the terrariums had been the least of her worries, as it was her desk space that was in complete disarray at the moment. They both stared down at the paper- book- and scroll-strewn mess, with even all available chairs piled up high—and then she peeked back at him with a blameless look, as if this was the work of someone else and she was as shocked to find it this way as he was—despite the fact that she had been shut in here alone. He had half a mind to wonder if she hadn't been so pleased to greet him because he had freed her from dealing with this very thing.

"Right... Hm... Maybe you should just come in here instead."

She turned around, and he was reminded that he had heard an interior door open here before, but hadn't seen it hidden behind a large shelf of ferns behind which she now disappeared. He followed after her with almost more apprehension than through the first door, not sure at all what to be expecting, as he was sure this could only be her personal chambers. This thought was strengthened as the moment the door was opened, a waft of what he now realized must be the scent of candles, so familiarly like her, both spiced and sweet, drifted out to him.

After a few short feet of shadowed passageway, however, they came into an openly inviting circular room, and he saw immediately that most of it was dedicated to a cozy sitting area. As his eyes passed from one enormously tall window on the right, up to the domed ceiling, and down to a mirrored tall window on the left next to a stone fireplace with candles on the mantel, he realized with quiet amusement that the room was shaped like a birdcage. If there hadn't been a giant potted tree in the center, matching some of the amount of enlivening greenery in the office, he might have thought she was really a self-loathing creature. Connecting this centerpiece to the curved wall was an ornate wooden room divider, and beyond the thin tree trunk and its branches (which had been decorated for Christmas with free-floating sparkling lights and glittering ornaments), he could just see the corner of a bed, and realized that this was indeed her sleeping quarters, it had just been modestly split for both privacy and company. He looked away at once, back to the more well-lit sitting area beside the fire.

"Just set it down here, don't mind the mess," Freya was saying as she strode over to the small couch facing a coffee table and a comfortable armchair. She folded her legs neatly under her and plopped down right on the floor between couch and table, clearing away, to his further surprise, even more books and papers. He finally unburdened his load carefully onto the middle of the clearing that she made, the basket giving a noticeable little thud as it landed on the wood. He took the seat facing her, in the armchair.

Only, her face was currently hidden, so large a gift that it was. She leaned hard to one side, apparently also noticing the predicament, and casting him a thoroughly bemused look.

"Is this some kind of 'sorry for killing you' present?" she asked with a single raised brow.

"If you want to think of it like that," he replied with a casual shrug, settling back into his seat. Definitely not because your 'old friend' put the fear of ancient magic beyond parallel into me. Despite her morbid question though, and despite whatever his initial reasoning for being here was, he couldn't help but feel a little bit pleased with himself at the hesitantly charmed look on her face, knowing that he could make her smile when he actually tried and it wasn't just a random event. Even though he was meant to be treating her, he allowed himself the tiny acknowledgement that it had been quite a rough December for himself as well, and he was greedily enjoying this change of pace where he could just do something right for once.

He nodded once towards the basket. "Enjoy."

She paused for a moment longer, looking between him and it, and then disappeared back behind the bulk of the package to tear off the wrappings in a noisy frenzy. He took the second his face was hidden from her view to bite back his smirk, remembering how she had once admonished him for shrewdly just vanishing the wrappings of a gift that she had given him. He liked his way better, but this had its merits when turned around.

After the paper had all been torn off, however, there was a quiet pause—and then the basket was slowly pushed aside, to reveal a very unamused scowl staring straight at him.

"Is this a joke?" she asked, in a voice that made all his confidence seep out into the soft corduroy cushions of the chair and run scurrying back into the office behind. "You got me a basket of fruit?"

He stared from her to the basket, blinking and shifting ever so slightly in his seat.

"I... wasn't sure what else you liked... It's what Slughorn got you once."

Her suspicious expression twitched in recognition, and he watched as her hands darted up to scramble through the books on the coffee table. He realized a pile of them were the same small black leather as her diary, and his eyes stopped here, transfixed. There were only five that he could count that all matched, in various states of wear, and it was one in the middle of the pile that she now pulled out and cracked open, flipping until she found a list on a long, folded note that came out freely.

"'Horace Slughorn,'" she read, as if unfamiliar with saying the name out loud, "'great conversationalist; gives good candied apples; don't let him hover behind—tried to cut my hair off once when I wasn't looking...'" Her eyes flashed up to him. "'...after asking me how much phoenix feathers fetch on the market.'"

He pursed and then slowly un-pursed his lips. "You always... seemed to like him well enough."

She let a low sigh and then replaced the list and the book, turning her attention back to the basket with distaste.

"Do you know what sort give phoenixes fruit? The kind trying to get something from them." She poked at what was the nearest apple, though it would have been hard to tell what it was if one had only seen it in its current state. "A shame, because it's quite... beautiful."

His eyes glanced over the arrangement. She bloody well think it beautiful at least, the time it had taken him.

Overtop of the deep cradle of the basket, which did indeed carry whole plump fruits in a wide variety, was a much more eye-catching display taking up the entire space beneath the tall handle: delicately carved, intricately put together—with what looked like skill bordering on artisanal as far as he was concerned—fruit in the shape of many different flowers. Apple roses, strawberry carnations, peach peonies; with bright green pears shaped and arranged to be their leaves, and many other random things he had found to do with the others.

See her try and say he couldn't cut a muffin straight in half again. He had been finely slicing up potions' ingredients more than half his life, he just only gave that sort of care to things worthy of his attention.

Such as this had been.

Apparently, however, he had forgotten a very important fact that he should have been well aware of as the passage from the book had been on his mind so often lately. It was poachers and ill sorts that tempted phoenixes with fruit. But he wasn't trying to get anything out of her, not anything like that anyway. What he wanted was far less worthy of being won with a few apples. Besides even his desire to earn her forgiveness, a part of him had wanted his reference to strike a chord in her that would make all her memories come flooding back, so that she wouldn't be just the Freya that had read about his shoddy muffin cutting in her diary, but one that would probably laugh at him for trying so hard to prove himself. But if she wasn't going to remember, he had no intention of owning up to this being his own work.

A moment passed on in silence as they both seemed to be separately brooding, but it was Freya taking in another deep breath to sigh through her nose—and then leaning into the basket with interest as she couldn't seem to help herself from the sweet aroma, eyes darting to him guiltily—that broke it. He slowly raised a single brow at her, to which she just slightly puffed up her cheeks.

"Well..." She refused to look at him, but instead was eyeing a particularly striking strawberry rose that seemed to be drawing in her hand against her will. "Well, it would... be an even bigger shame to let it go to waste... It won't last very a long, will it...?"

"It's not poisoned, I promise you," he said with dull sarcasm as if to encourage her, but only achieving a considerably more apprehensive look in response.

"That... really isn't comforting to hear before eating, is it?" she said, trying to suppress a laugh.

He frowned. "Well, it isn't. It's just from the kitchens."

She plucked the little strawberry from its place, already reaching with her other hand for another as she scooted closer to the basket. "And if it is, you can just make an antidote or something, right?" She raised her brows at him as she popped the whole strawberry into her mouth in one bite.

"Have a card with quick facts about me, as well, do you?"

She nodded silently with her mouth full and then frowned down at the basket, reaching in further and pulling out something containing a mini bouquet within it. The goblet she held up to display questioningly to him had on it a diamond pattern surrounding a crest of none other than Slytherin. The corners of his mouth crept up.

"Your favorite House."

He watched with gradually returning amusement as she enthusiastically took edible petals off the goblet's pear flowers and placed them into her mouth one by one, feeling much more sure that he had chosen the correct gift. The goblet itself still seemed to be puzzling her, though, as she paused to inspect the little green and silver crest closely. Stuffing a whole delicate thinly petaled apple flower into her mouth, she got up from her seat in a swift motion, dropping the cup of fruit off on a bedside table in the other half of the room, which was where his eyes left her, diverting instead to the fireplace. It was lit merrily with what he recognized as her own fire, and must have been left over from before, never having gone out in the first place. When she returned, she was wearing something that made his eyes widen.

Covering her mouth as she swallowed, and pointing to her neck with her other hand, she stood in the center of the room to ask, "Is this from you, as well? Oh—what the—?"

Several inches at the end of the green and silver scarf that she had just appeared wearing around her neck seemed to split from its main fabric and fall to the floor, landing in a mostly unraveled heap of thread that threatened to take the rest of the scarf down with it. Still stunned, he took out his wand and waved it so that the now useless messy scrap of scarf fully vanished, back to where he had originally conjured it from thin air, and where its magically summoned form had been trying to return after having been kept for too long... Kept, though, it had indeed been...

"Oi—what's this? You give me one thing and take something else?"

"I... That's months old," he said distractedly. His concentration strayed further from the room still, as he suddenly had an idea and flicked his wand again, to no immediate effect.

"Months old from what?" Freya asked in confusion, looking increasingly annoyed by losing more than just the physical thread of what was being discussed. But he merely stared back at her in silence, waiting with a cool grin that broadened as her frown deepened.

"You might want to open your door," he offered helpfully.

Before she could even take a step towards her office, however, a dull thud landed against the window, making them both jump. He let her go to it herself, not wanting to spoil the fun. Good thing that she had reason to have picked a window style that opened so easily. She marched back over after retrieving the much more intact and stable-looking scarf of the exact same pattern.

"How—What—" she started, sitting down on the couch before him, her hands gesturing all around with each end of the fabric clutched in her fingers so that it looked like she was trying to wrap up an invisible gift and couldn't remember how to tie a bow. "Just what do you think this is—Christmas or something? You can't just summon more gifts out of nowhere at the last minute!"

"Why not?" he mused simply. His expression fell however as his eyes traced over the scarf once it stopped moving, noticing how dull it looked, and he hastily went on. "That's... even older, actually, it might not be—" He watched her finger find a threadbare hole, poking straight through. "...You don't have to keep it, it was just an—actual scarf—not a conjuration."

"Is this yours?" she asked, raising her eyes to him with even more surprise. "Do you just get this stuff for free being a Head of House or something?"

"No... That one is from when I was a student." And it had been stuffed in the bottom of his trunk since returning here to teach, having never left the trunk, which had been similarly stuffed in the bottom of a closet even before then. He supposed he could have easily just gotten her a brand new one later from the Slytherin store room, possibly even for free, but he had known his trunk was currently open in his bedchamber. And he wasn't exactly using this one. And—apparently—she took quite good care of the things he gave her.

He watched as she checked with him for permission, looking meek for one of the few times he had seen since her resurrection, before she gingerly wrapped it around her shoulders, over her long hair, so that it bundled up around her neck.

"Um... If it's alright then, I'll keep this one. This castle's rather drafty."

He highly doubted that the cold was really bothering her, but he slowly shrugged a shoulder all the same, letting her believe that perhaps he didn't know any better.

Suddenly, her face brightened and she clapped so loudly that it echoed up to the ceiling, making him blink in surprise.

"Oh! You know what? As long as you're doing this today—I've just remembered—" And she hopped right back up, retracing her steps to her half bedroom.

He wondered if she had just remembered the past four months, or perhaps her entire life, given how excited she had gotten, and he couldn't help but openly stare after her this time as she bustled around to a large wardrobe.

"I totally forgot," she went on loudly over her shoulder, "I've just had so much to read, you've no idea. I can't believe I have to learn all this stuff before—oh, where is it—which one—?"

He watched as she took not clothes, but boxes from the wardrobe, stacking them on the floor so she could get to what she was after.

"Ah! Come here, come here," she called, turning to wave him over with a smile, which he didn't return at the idea of having to walk into unfamiliar private territory, but he did cautiously follow as directed.

He stopped just before the full view of her bed and some kind of vanity threatened to draw his eye, instead staring as if with blinders straight ahead until she had stepped up and placed something else to distract him into his hands.

He frowned at the plain-looking box, about to open it when its lid was slapped down.

"No, not yet," she warned with a pointed finger and a mischievous look before diving back through the boxes.

"What..." But he was only given more questions before he could even ask his first, as a second box, matching the other, was piled into his arms.

"Hang on, there's supposed to be..." She rifled through more loose things. "Oh, shoot, I was meant to post this... How am I supposed to keep all this straight? Just do it beforehand instead of leaving it all till now!" With a sigh she finally came back up and placed down a smaller third box, in a different color, plus an envelope—and then snatched the small box back out from under it. "Wait! No, no, this is for—" She patted at her robes, remembered she had a box in her hand, which he noted rattled just slightly at the movement, and then used her free hand to pull out a list that had been folded in her pocket, squinting at it for a moment. "Ah... Yes, that's all for now—okay!" The hectic look was wiped from her face, replaced with a chipper smile before she turned around and tossed the little box back into the wardrobe, shoving all the rest in after it, and shutting the door again with some effort.

He stood standing completely still with his two boxes and envelope in hand, feeling like he might want to start organizing his own things better after today.

As she took off for the sofa once more, with him trailing after her in a daze, she resurfaced the piece of paper from her pocket and read from it.

"'Severus Snape, potions Master, Head of Slytherin,'" she sat down a second before he did, as he set the boxes onto the table, looking up just as she held up two fingers, "'two flat rectangular boxes in deep blue, and a letter...'" He watched her eyes continue reading, but she must have been skipping some part, "And... Oh! That's your birthday?" She stuffed the paper back into her pocket, looking up at him once more. "So soon after Christmas?"

He blinked in dull confusion. "Yes...?"

"Ohh, that makes so much more sense. Couldn't for the life of me figure out why it was split up into two."

"Two...?" His eyes went back to the boxes on table. "Two presents?"

"Two piles of presents," she corrected, nodding.

He stared from her smiling face as she waited expectantly with her hands on her knees, to the boxes he had just helped carry over.

"I... You didn't have to... do that," he said, only realizing afterward that it was the very same trite reply that people often used after getting a gift; only he fully meant it. It was meant to be him that was making things up to her—and he had barely done an even half-way decent job at that so far.

"Well—don't worry, I didn't!" she said happily. "At least, I don't remember anyway. I'm excited to see what I got you, though—come on, just open it!"

He quirked a brow at this odd situation, feeling like he was in for a world of odd situations if things kept up the way they were, but he leaned forward as instructed, taking the envelope first. He suddenly wasn't sure he could handle being stared at while he read a letter from a woman who no longer existed in memory, only in inked word, and he concentrated on channeling his thoughts into a quizzical frown rather than anything else. But there was only a simple little card containing one line within.

"No wrapping paper for you! Just open it! -Happy Christmas, Freya"

He stared down at the card, perfectly able to hear her voice as it was so near exactly what she had just said, unknowingly, out loud. He set it down next to him on one arm of the chair and did as instructed, gently picking up the first box and lifting the lid once it was on his lap.

Before ever having to guess what was inside, he had immediately recognized the box shape as more than likely clothing, and he was now proven correct as the carefully folded-over tissue paper came into view. What surprised him then was the shop's card holding it into place, because the logo was familiar—a clothing store in Hogsmeade, that he had visited not even a full month ago, dragged along, lost in his thoughts, and trying not to pay attention as Freya and the shopkeeper had talked together in low voices, occasionally looking over at him. Apparently their boasting of employing only seamstresses with the best eye had been correct, because the witch must have guessed his sizes from just that. He hastily shoved the tissue paper out of the way and revealed what was beneath.

"Ooo... Clothes?" Freya said, leaning in with interest, and then pulled a face that he could see without even looking up. "Isn't that sort of... boring?"

But as he slowly reached his hand out to touch the black fabric, he didn't find it the least bit boring. He did, however, frown as he felt more than just soft material beneath his fingers... All at once, he snatched up the whole garment, pulling it out and unfolding it, feeling and inspecting with both hands.

It was a robe; a simple handsome sort, plain, but with its own unique little charms to it, such as the short stiff collar and what looked like overly long cuffed sleeves beneath the standard more open ones. And... undoubtedly, though his fingers could find no source other than the fabric itself... it was warm. Within seconds of placing his hands beneath it, the chill of the wintery castle with its drafty stone walls and ancient windows was gone and his fingers were warmed to a pleasantly mild temperature as if caressed by a soft velvet heat.

He could only continue to stare down in open surprise, until Freya finally couldn't take any more of his silence and broke out with, "Well? Put it on!"

"Wait," he said, dropping the robe back into the box at his lap—and then going back to it to carefully straighten it out so that it wouldn't crease, though he had the thought that if it was enchanted one way, it might also be enchanted in others, and might not ever allow such thing as a crease to disgrace itself.

With great care, he set the first box back onto the table, and then took up the second one, giving it a hard shake to remove the lid from the bottom and let it fall onto his lap rather than waste a second. Underneath the matching tissue paper of this one was a matching black traveling cloak, and it held the same sort of warmth when he pressed his hand to it. This time he took an extra second to notice that the fabric wasn't inky black, and he remembered—feeling like he was the one with memory loss at this point, as his mind was pulling up more memories than Freya must be going through in her diary—a time when she had changed a tie around his neck from an ill-suited unyielding blackest of blacks, to a softer charcoal black. Comparing the new robes to his current ones, he saw that the shade matched perfectly, just that these were clean and new, with no variation from wear.

He stood up at once, setting the cloak back down. With just a hint of self-consciousness, glancing at Freya's completely unabashed face as she continued to stare openly at him, he unfastened his robe and slipped out of the sleeves to just his black button-down shirt and trousers. He stared back down at her with a pointed look, curling his lip, as her eyes did a once over on him, but she was apparently so full of holiday gift-opening cheer that she was not interested in taking hints. Discarding his old robe over the back of the chair and taking up the new one, he slipped into it with some fumbling as he figured out the new fastenings at the front.

It was as if he had put back on his old robe; not new and stiff, but warm and worn. He tested out the sleeves at different heights on his hands, flexing his fingers to tuck them just under the hem and momentarily warm them up too. Letting his arms finally hang down, his gaze came back up to Freya staring even more openly at him if at all possible, with her mouth open in delighted surprise.

"Oh... It looks—that's—" She waved her hand at him in a motion that was completely meaningless to him. "You look—like you're wearing robes," she finished, her brows creasing just slightly over her grinning face, and then crumpling completely as her gaze trailed away in apparent confusion at her own words. He narrowed his eyes at her, not at all reassured that he hadn't somehow transformed into an atrocious monster. Marking her as useless, he instead crossed the room back to the other side, remembering the vanity and its decently sized mirror.

He did indeed look like he was wearing robes, as he smoothed a hand over the front and slightly fixed the collar... and then ran his hand back over his chest, still finding it odd to feel the fabric so strangely warm, but not at all unhappy with it. Much apart from however he looked, he felt earnestly... cared for. Like he had just been hugged, and the feeling was still lingering. He realized it was what he had been yearning for since after the first night of December...

"It looks good on you."

He started as Freya appeared beside him in the mirror, and he briefly looked down at her physical form before shifting back to the easier to handle reflected one.

"Thank you," he said quietly, and meant it, to his surprise. He frowned thoughtfully at the image of them, her in her brown skirted robes that must have been a back-up pair of the ones he had damaged and wearing his old Slytherin scarf loosely around her shoulders, and him... He squinted, and then peered back to his side... and down.

"You really are short."

The look she directed at him was of such absolute offense, one might have thought that he had thrown her gifts on the ground and called them trash, with a stomp for good measure.

"I'll fight you," she stated so matter-of-factly he had to suppress a laugh, making her step back to turn on him. "I don't know what you're so pleased about! I'd do it if I had my magic back." She stomped off, muttering something that sounded like "so rude" and "can't just call people short," leaving him to blink slowly back to the mirror where he now stood alone, sorely missing a time when she might have playfully slapped his arm and joked back with him. He followed back to the sitting area at half her pace, but didn't retake his seat.

"So... No luck then on getting your magic back?" he asked with casual concern, trying not to make it obvious that he was much more interested in her getting something else back at the moment. She shook her pouting face, sinking herself further down the back of the couch until she looked to be melting.

"I can't even Apparate," she said glumly. "I tried to walk down to find some food earlier, but there were people in the Hall, and so I left to come right back, yeah?" Not fully convinced that this was a perfectly normal reaction to finding other living people inhabiting a public area as she made it sound, he nodded once slowly. "And then I got lost on my way back, but I couldn't ask anyone for help because... you know... can't even remember their names. No idea who's who. Would have just been awkward." She absently pulled the scarf up over her lowered chin, fully covering her mouth as she stared out at the basket of fruit on the coffee table and mumbled through the wool, "So... it's a good thing that you got me this, actually, or I'd've probably starved... Thank you... Shame I'm going to thoroughly demolish it; it really is beautiful."

As he watched her thoughtful face from the side, with the scarf making her hair fold over itself in long loops, the green complimenting its fiery color and making her look like some sort of perfect little Christmas decoration herself (he was certain if she looked up at him that he could confirm that her eyes were on par with the glittering gold ornaments that hung on her tree, as well), he felt a strong urge to tell her that it wasn't the delicate and colorful fruit that deserved that title. But, more importantly, he thought he now understood why she had been so happy to see him at the door if this was what her past day had consisted of.

"Would you... like me to show you around?"

She looked up as if he had offered to buy her a whole orchard of fruit with house elves to prepare it into new and interesting dishes for her every single day, throwing him quite off as the bright daylight from the windows lit up her eyes, ensnaring him in place. He had been wrong; her eyes were more dazzling than any simple little ornament.

"Really? You haven't... you know, got anything better to do today?"

With utmost certainty that he couldn't possibly be doing anything more important, he shook his head.

It was a long walk up and down the same stairs several times; to her own classroom, the library and its offshoot private one for teachers, the staffroom, the Great Hall and her pointed-out seat at the staff table at its head (which made her cringe rather disconcertedly); before, finally, they were on the ground floor, and he hesitated just a bit before leading her down into the dungeons to his own office, watching her pace around it just as she had the first time, though without complaining that it looked different from Slughorn's set up.

He left her there for a moment as he popped into his bedchamber to drop off his clothes, placing his boxed up old robe onto the bed and going to hang up his new traveling cloak—before realizing, in the much different dungeon air, that there was still a scent of spice.

He halted his arms where they were holding the cloak in midair above the hook, then took a step forward to confirm. Then he freed one hand to lift the front of his new robes as well.

He smelled like a warm autumn candle shop.

Standing still in front of the coatrack, staring at nothing, his mind pulled up the memory of his mother's magazines, containing tips for household spells including to clean one's clothes.

He deliberated for a second longer... and then decided that he had better take his new traveling cloak with him, actually, since there was still light left to continue Freya's tour onto the grounds next, and stepped back out.

When he returned to his office, he found her as he had once before, though several seconds sooner in the act, as her hand was still on the locked cabinet door.

He flattened his expression at her, but she didn't seem perturbed, only tugging once on the lock.

"Would you mind popping this open for me?"

"Already back into old habits, are we?" he said, assuming she wouldn't have a clue what he meant, but was surprised when she grinned in a secretive way in response. She stepped back to let him get his key into the lock and open it for her as asked.

"You know," she said as she rummaged around, carefully picking through the various bottles and bags of ingredients, "I haven't gotten very far through that diary, I was kind of skipping around, but there was something that I was curious about... Ah—"

He watched, suddenly knowing exactly what it was that she pulled out just as the little glass vial of golden liquid came into view, and he held his breath. She held it up for inspection, tilting it this way and that before popping its cap and taking a disgusted whiff.

"Well," she said cheerily, "that's just the creepiest thing I've ever seen in my life." And she put it back in its place, shutting the cabinet with finality. "And... judging from your face, you really had no idea?"

He blinked, pulled from his shocked stare at the cabinet. "I—No. Of course not. How did you..." He narrowed his eyes, but not at why she would know it was there, as he now realized she must have been checking for it on that first night in his office, but how she had already known that he was unaware... But then, of course—she had been also checking to make sure he hadn't used it, labeled it, or otherwise sold it for all it was worth. When she had found it put away neatly, with no inclination that he was hiding it in particular from her, she would have known and noted it down accordingly.

"I guess... I was testing you a bit when you first got here," she explained, watching his face. "The way it was written made it seem like there hadn't been any signs of bizarre experiments or whatever, so I judged you as having not looked too deeply into... err, certain things."

He stared at her. But he had looked too deeply into things; he had ripped through every book on phoenix lore and potions made with tears, failed attempts to bottle song, various fabled potions that had no known sources or instructions to back up that they were even real. He had been out searching for ways of prolonging life, of cheating the grave consequences of it, just like many others around him had been at the time. But he hadn't found anything to do with the blood of a phoenix. The only way he could have researched that, would have been to hunt one down himself...

"And you haven't," she said, almost addressing his thoughts and making him have to scramble to remember what she had last said. "Right?" He gave a small shake of his head, not taking his eyes off her as she continued to stare back at him. "And... you're not going to if I leave that in there, are you?" He shook his head again, meaningfully slow this time. Her eyes flicked down and back up at him, her mouth screwing up to one side. "Hm... Well, that's good enough for me." And she shrugged, turning back to the door—but before she got halfway across the room she was spinning back around.

"Oh! And also," she fished through the deep pockets of her robes, pulling out her own keyring and shuffling through it. She removed and held out a single thick key, distantly familiar to him only in the form of a spare he had seen Madam Pince use, as he reverently took it. "Nicked that off you the first night you got here—apparently right in front of you, can't believe you missed that. Not sure if I ever told you, again, didn't read that far, but—" She shrugged with an innocent look up at him. "I thought it was weird that I still had it." She looked down at his hand, still frozen where it was outstretched as if unlocking an invisible door, until he finally moved to drop the key into his pocket, and followed her back into the dungeon hallway in stunned silence.

Out on the snowy grounds, as they made their way at a slow meandering pace, not having much of a destination other than where he pointed out certain landmarks, he felt acutely aware of the woman walking at his side, more than even during the days when he used to be most apprehensive around her. He now felt that if he happened to look away for too long, he might miss something else, and every time his mind got caught up wondering indeed what other things might have been happening right in front of him, he would snap himself out of it and refocus on the bright flame of red hair to his side, standing out so stark against the white landscape, as if noticing her for the first time.

Before he knew it, they were walking along a very familiar path towards the lake and he had to stop staring at her so much, doubling down instead on not letting his mind wander off.

A sudden stuttering clipped breath pulled his attention back, and he all but stopped in his tracks.

His mouth fell open, but he caught himself before he asked without thinking, instead letting the corners of his lips curl up and speaking with a much more purposeful taunt to his voice.

"Oh? Are you cold?"

She shot a narrowed glare at him and he stood grinning smugly, perfectly warm in his new clothes, pleased that he now knew what certain circumstances she got cold in.

"Stuff it," she said, rolling her eyes so hard that her chin tilted back. But she was shuddering immediately afterward as the cold air slipped in where the angle had separated the scarf from her neck, and she forcefully yanked it back up all the way to her frosted pink cheeks. "Ugh, I hate this," she said, her speech muffled, "it's like being sick but I can't take anything for it."

"Do phoenixes get sick?" he asked, mildly curious.

"I've seen enough sick people to bet that it's this awful."

He studied her wincing eyes and her shivering frame, watching her shove her ungloved hands deep into her pockets. He raised a brow and her scowl returned before he even ventured his first tentative step towards her, taking three back of her own.

"No. I'm fine, thanks."

He inclined his head and gave a small unconvinced nod before continuing right along.

As they kept on down the trail, he noticed her getting closer and closer to his side, but he said nothing, and didn't make any more attempts to bother her.

They lapsed into the kind of silence that made him feel the need to anxiously fill the gap, so used to her normally endless talking as he was, that it only felt natural when there was work to preoccupy her with. He held his tongue for now though, because the subject he wanted to broach was perhaps even more treacherous than the thin ice currently covering the lake, and because he was trying to just enjoy this side of her that seemed to be as at peace with being quietly at his side as she was to jabber on about every manner of personal thing to him at other times. At least that much had not changed.

The parts that had, however, felt like they surely should have been too important for him not to have noticed until now. But, apparently, he hadn't been open to appreciation then.

"So," he said with apprehension into the echoing still air, "have you... had a chance to speak with Dumbledore again?"

This won him an immediate freshly minted glare from her.

"I see..."

His footsteps stopped as hers did, coming to a gradual standstill just beside a dormant tree, overhanging the lake in a way that must have filled the waters below with leaves during fall. He watched from the corners of his eyes as she stared out over the icy water with her scowl only showing in her gaze, her mouth still covered in green and silver.

"I'm fine with the job," she said at last, her voice quiet at first, but slowly gaining traction as she kept on, "I'm fine with having to live in a castle, even though I'd prefer to be outside—not right now though, obviously," she shivered again, "I'm even fine with not going on the stupid bleeding mission or whatever. I'm just... not fine—with not... being myself." Her voice seemed to get caught in the wool on her last words, so that the frigid breeze almost carried it away over the lake.

He tried to find something he could say to this, some comforting thought that of course she was always herself no matter what, but it all sounded so utterly banal he couldn't get the words out. He thought he understood quite well what she meant, though.

"It's not even... that much..."

His attention stayed on her, but she kept her eyes cast down as she spoke, her voice even smaller than before.

"I did talk to him yesterday. Asked him about what memories he even had. It's not much." She shrugged. "Just what he's seen of me over the years. It's his memories. Not even mine..."

His gaze held on her for a moment longer before he, too, turned away towards the lake, feeling suddenly hopeless. He hadn't had much hope to begin with, though. Part of him, originally—before they had returned to the castle and he had still been in a frenzied panic as his place in the world teetered drastically—wanted to believe that they would return and Dumbledore would just simply... raise his powerful wand and command everything back to how it should be. Even if that would have included his place being much less free, if it would have set the world back onto a course that was less desolate than this, he would have been able to make do.

With the last little scrap of an idea, he asked, "And... your diaries?"

She tilted her head back and forth, scrunching up her nose under the scarf. "Apparently... you'll never believe this... but I wasn't too keen on keeping them for a really long time. I've only got a handful from the past few years, and the earliest one is mainly just me talking about useless things. I only read one page of it; bunch of rambling shite worse than this year's one."

He nodded forlornly, his eyes unfocused. There was some tiny minuscule chance that those pages held some magic within that was made for returning the memories recorded on them back into the mind they had come from—but he knew he was just clutching at straws at this point.

He knew how to alter memories—erase them, muddle them, implant false ones, break through certain magics that locked the mind, and which ones weren't capable of being broken through—but there wasn't anything to be done about what was lost; what had been burned away and left as nothing but ash. The very foundational magic of her being wasn't something he imagined would bend more easily than any other. The mind didn't work in such a way that everything would click neatly back into place like he so wanted it to, like he had hoped it would while spending the day leading her all around the castle, showing her to all the places they had sat together for hours. Even if she allowed Dumbledore to share his memories with her, even if she read every inked word that her own hand had penned, it would never be as if she herself had experienced it. The mind could only know, but not feel it etched to the body...

He frowned suddenly, remembering something she had said the same night that she must have rifled through his cabinets to find her own vial of blood in them. He still couldn't puzzle out precisely what she had meant, though, or how it would fit into the logic of this. Except, perhaps...

He entertained the wild idea that he could somehow deliver a physical reminder that would unlock something in her memory—before having to stop himself from outwardly cringing at how drastic his thoughts were getting. That wasn't how the very meticulously lawed and fundamentally natural force of magic worked—that wasn't how anything worked. He was just losing his own mind, standing in the same spot they had stood less than a month prior, knowing he had never gotten a chance to talk to her about what had happened—or apologize for kissing her so roughly—or even fully let himself think too much about it at all beyond a kind of blind buzzing feeling.

It felt like part of his own mind had been burned away to ash in the past few days, a grey slag cleared away leaving behind only the raw glimmering ore that had always been there, but had yet to be fully formed into something meaningful.

The words that she had so callously read aloud to him from the most recent entry of the diary drifted back into his mind. He was sure that she had wanted to talk to him, and he now found that he desperately wanted to listen to what she would have said, no matter what it might have been...

He had been casting a hard sideways stare at her without noticing until she looked up in mild surprise at his expression, making him blink and look away.

He was supposed to be leaving her alone, giving her a respectable distance... but perhaps he didn't need to be at quite such a distance. It was nonsensical, but he simply wanted to reach out and physically close the gap that he couldn't sort out a way to close mentally. Plus, he reasoned, she did look awfully cold and pathetic standing there as a freezing phoenix. So, he carefully shuffled his boots sideways in the snow, and stepped closer, even as she was steadily lowering her brows at him.

"Oi, I'm—I'm fine, really, I'm not cold—"

The air was cleared from the sounds of crunching snow again as he paused, inspecting her wincing expression but noting that she hadn't backed away. He almost took another step, but then thought of a better idea, and instead braced himself as he carefully spread his arm out to one side, holding up half of his thick outer cloak away from his body to form a little alcove—and waited.

She looked him up and down, thoroughly appalled, but he wasn't giving in to embarrassment at his actions so easily. The fresh air coming in was threatening to ruin the warmth from his robes, though, and he hoped she hated being cold as much as she hated the rain so that he wasn't doing this for nothing.

Eventually, with her head facing the other way as if she might just accidentally be stepping without knowing where she was going, she inched her way towards him—and then all at once bundled herself up tightly to his side, making him nearly forget that this was what he had been trying to accomplish and almost jerk away in surprise.

As he dropped his arm over her shoulders, so carefully that he was still keeping his fingers raised, he found himself very glad that her head was angled so resolutely straight down at the ground, because he wasn't sure how obvious it was that he was biting back a smirk.

He had to quickly sort out how to truly straighten his face though, as she suddenly leaned away from him, giving his robes a scrutinizing look.

"Why are you so warm?" she said with deep suspicion. "Wizards aren't—hang on—"

"It's enchanted," he said with pride for his new gift. The pleased look was wiped off his face though as hers snapped up to look at him, inches away, her mouth hanging open.

"Enchanted with phoenix magic?" she said incredulously. He nodded, holding her gaze. "I gave you—hang on... I made you this? And I didn't make one for myself?" She looked as scandalized as if he had crept through the night and stolen it from her himself, but he was still having trouble adjusting to how close she was and how bright the fading daylight still was, so that he could see every tiny detail of her face.

"Er, I suppose you did," he said, finally looking away.

She settled back in his same angle, staring out across the lake, and he could just make out from the corner of his eye that her brows still hadn't lifted.

"I'm a bloody moron," she said at last.

Remembering how it had gone over last time he had almost laughed at her, he held it in with more effort this time.

"No, really, I am," she insisted, taking his silence in the same way regardless. "I don't know how I'm meant to remember all this shite, and learn all this wand magic rubbish, and... good lord, I have—just—how many students is it? Hundreds? Hundreds of names—and essays—and all this helping people stuff—and—"

"You'll be fine."

Her eyes rolled back up to him and he didn't need to see her mouth under the scarf to tell it was a flat line—but he held his gaze steady this time, meeting her eye, because this at least was something that he confidently knew what to say to.

"You will."

"How do you know?" she asked without any faith.

"Because... I've already seen you do it." Her eyes narrowed further, but she stayed silent and he went on. "I thought you were insane when you first told me you had only been practicing wand magic for a year... but you're actually... not abysmal," he said with a slight smirk, his gaze wandering off as he remembered their demonstration duel in the classroom. "And you're quite good with your students... Better than I am." With calm sincerity, he fixed his eyes back onto hers. "You'll be fine, Freya."

She slowly blinked up at him, her stare now showing only a quiet awe. Every little facet in her eyes was as clear before him as twinkling Christmas lights, the blank canvas of snow behind her making all the subtlety shifting color in her hair and the pink tint to her cheeks pop particularly bright, and he was very grateful that her lips were covered up behind the scarf. He caught himself just before his legs swayed him even closer than he already was and promptly dropped his arm from her shoulders.

So quickly that he almost tripped over his words, he asked something that he had not even thought of in a long time.

"Would you like to go watch a movie?"

But, unfortunately, despite Freya practically dragging him back to the castle as she chattered away about the ingenuity of muggles to catch up to what had been a staple in the wizarding world for centuries, and despite the fact that the wide array of books they laid out in front of the little old muggle television in her office grew so large that they had to move back into the sitting area of her chambers to have room to splay it all out, he couldn't for the life of him manage to figure out a way to actually accomplish the one thing he had set out today with full intent to do for her.

"How is it exactly that you did this in previous years?" he finally asked, looking between the book he had propped open in one hand, and the muggle instruction manual in the other. He set them both down to rub at his temple in annoyance at being defeated by something that he used to be able to do with just a push of a button.

"No effing idea," Freya said rather unhelpfully, lazily eating more fruit from the basket and engrossed in her own book. By the title (Turning a Bumpkin Into a Princess Before the Stroke of Midnight), she had given up long ago. She did look equally perturbed as him though, and promptly tossed her book back on the table in a pile he was beginning to notice contained only ones she had deemed useless. "Do you want to go ask Albus?"

He merely glanced up, not lifting his head from where it rested against the heel of his hand, and she sighed. "Me neither. This is hopeless."

He had to agree with her there. He had been counting on her having some inkling of how to get around the standard Hogwarts enchantments as she usually did, because he had already known going in that the castle itself repelled muggle technology, making it quite useless.

Closing his book, he sighed as well, looking around for a clock and finding only the large windows showing black and mirroring the twinkling lights of the room.

"It's getting late," he noted. "Are you sure you don't want to go down for the feast?" She gave him a withering look to which he relented with a small nod—then, with a spark of mischief, thought of something else, and adopted a falsely polite voice as he further suggested, "There's going to be a Christmas party with the staff tomorrow if you'd prefer..." He had to fight back a grin as her face contorted into utmost disgust.

"I'd rather you kill me again."

He would have happily let himself be dragged off to a party if it would have counted towards his thus far, by his own count, woefully low gift score. A basket of fruit and a ratty old scarf seemed quite the pathetic attempt to repay someone for taking their life. Though, by her telling of it, she had been due to die on Christmas day, so he had done her a favor in resetting an awful schedule—which had given him a fresh wave of utter horror to hear her say, and strengthened his will to follow through on this idea. The movie may have been Dumbledore's intrusive suggestion, but he had to admit it was better than what he would have come up with, and he really didn't mind something as simple as watching a muggle film if it would mean so much to her—if he could just sort out how to make it happen.

He leaned heavily onto the arm of the cushioned chair he was sat in, staring down at the piles of books as if he could absorb their knowledge more clearly this way.

"You'd need to get out of the range of Hogwarts," he mused aloud in a low voice.

"Hogsmeade then?"

"It's still a wizarding village," he said, shaking his head. "There isn't anything set up for this." Without a way to make it happen in the magical world, you would have to then just pick yourself up and go into the muggle world; with a whole city, power grid, and muggle houses. But that—

His mouth slowly fell open and his eyes narrowed.

"What?" Freya said, immediately picking up on his change in expression as she apparently hadn't been paying any attention to the new book she had cracked open. "What is it?"

"I... Hang on," he said dismissively, moving his chin into his palm to cover his mouth as if to signal that he wouldn't be making any brilliant speeches yet. He didn't want to say anything to get her hopes up when he hadn't even sorted through the idea himself—and he really wasn't too keen on it. But it would make everything very simple... Almost.

He took one last look at her, trying to make a decision very quickly on just how far out of his way he was actually willing to go for her, but it wasn't a very fair assessment with her eyes staring wide and hopeful at him.

Shifting his gaze so that it was instead glued to the fire, and muttering so low into his knuckles that he wasn't sure he would be deciphered, he finally shared his piece.

"I... know of a muggle house..."

He didn't need to move his gaze back then, because Freya had jumped up to place herself in his line of sight, holding her arms out to him in celebration.

"Severus! Why didn't you say so sooner? Let's go then—"

"We can't," he shot over her enthusiasm with a scowl. "Leaving is exactly how I got into this—"

"Oh—who cares, it's Christmas, I'll talk to Albus about it later," she said in a rush, waving him off, and then bounced on her heels. "A muggle house! What's that like?"

He closed his eyes for a second, turning away from her as the regret of ever mentioning this started to sink in. "It's... not entirely a muggle house, but it is... It would work."

His reluctance was apparently putting a chip in her excitement, as she had ceased bouncing and was looking down at him with skepticism.

"What sort of house is it then?"

Suddenly finding the need to put his hand up to smooth the edge of his hair, only slightly covering his face, he spoke down to his chest, "It's... my house." When there was no response, he looked up to find her not following this and continued with a deep sigh, "The house that I grew up in. I own it now." He clipped off any further explanation, but he could see her working out the missing pieces as she stared upward as well.

"Ohhh... So, it was your parents' house, but... they don't live there anymore?"

He nodded, keeping his eyes on her now to see just how much she was getting from this. As if by old habit, he felt a twinge in his gut wondering if she would be chatting away all these secrets later, as it had been Dumbledore's confusion about the details of his home life sparking much of this whole mess. His tiny lie, falsely confirming that he was going to this very house to see his mother, had set Dumbledore off thinking he was lying about something much bigger, when he had only been covering up that she was living somewhere else at the moment. Which might have made his whereabouts unknown, sure, but he was still bitter at it being anyone's business. Especially not someone who only had very outdated information about his business.

"They're not even visiting for Christmas? So, I can't meet them or anything?"

Shocked from his thoughts, his eyes snapped up to her, his head slowly following as well at a lag.

"No," he said in no uncertain terms, "you cannot."

"Aw, alright... I don't ever see my parents anymore. We don't keep in touch with ours like you do."

"That certainly makes sense," he said under his breath.

Her face suddenly looked defensive, and he remembered which version of Freya he was talking to here.

"Are you making fun of me?" she demanded.

"No," he said, already taking a deep breath to stand from his chair and smoothly remove himself from this line of confrontation. "But if you're truly serious about this, then we had better go and see if it's even possible." He was going to assert that he would only agree to this if Freya actually stayed put in the tower while they asked permission to leave the castle, when he noticed the particularly devious look forming on her face.

"Or," she said, grinning darkly up at him, "we could... not tell him."

He held her gaze for a hard moment. "Or," he countered with potent sarcasm, "I could get to spend Christmas with all my internal organs intact... by not provoking your dear old friend to eviscerate me."

She blew this away with a nonchalant puff and a wave. "Evisceration? Nothing I couldn't fix, no worries." Then her eyes returned to his with a challenging glint. "Unless you're... scared."

He had half a mind to channel McGonagall's terse glare and tell her she should know better than to act like this as a teacher, but, well, she had worked as a loophole around Dumbledore once already, and he found that he still had a healthy craving to break this rule that he didn't agree with in the first place—and besides, this would be plenty harmless given he had practically been ordered to do it...

As he stared back, meeting the dancing light of excitement in her eyes, he already knew what his answer would have been no matter what.

"As you wish then."

It took some time to collect everything they would need, as there had never been something so expensive as a television set up in his home, despite being equipped with the power for one—and because he had grown increasingly apprehensive about what they would find once they got there, making him deliberate over meaningless things while Freya was starting to question if he had made the whole thing up.

Eventually though, after some hasty planning, he was being faced with only the more urgent problem of trying to disentangle Freya from his arm after Apparating them both into a darkened living room. She hadn't liked it much when he had brought them to the castle the other day, either, and he found it similar to trying to walk under an umbrella in the rain with her—or perhaps to transporting a large cat with no cage.

"Get—off—we're here," he hissed, focusing on getting his wand arm free first and foremost.

"Where exactly is 'here'? It's pitch black!"

"No, it isn't—quit—" He yanked his other arm free and used it to find her shoulder in the dark, holding her at bay while he got his bearings. Only streetlamps glowing orange through the half-open curtains gave him light to look around, but there wasn't much he needed to see. Everything was mostly as it had been left some months prior, untouched and unwanted—including some leftover photos lined up on many of the shelves of the encircling bookcases, whose movement caught his eye even in the low light and had him grabbing Freya suddenly back to him as he raised his wand.

"What—Excuse me?" she said in irritation. "Could you make up your mind?"

She tried to get out of his grip, but he stepped around her as if in an awkward dance, diverting her angle away while he turned every single little photo around in its frame, and then waved his wand again to clean up the place for good measure, realizing that it had probably been collecting dust.

Sure that this was as good as it was going to get, he let go of her with a sigh.

"Alright."

"Um," Freya spoke up into the darkness, "forgetting something?"

"...Right."

He didn't need his wand for this part, turning around and giving the switch behind him—practically hidden between two bookshelves so that he had to wedge his hand in—a flick. Good thing that it had been left so untouched, as the power still appeared to be working; though as he eyed the hanging lantern now rendered useless as what it had been put in place to cover up glowed with unnatural light, he thought he rather preferred the place in the dark. Freya, however, seemed immediately enthralled with the overhead electric light—and every single other thing to be found from floor to ceiling, gasping and turning around in a circle as her eyes bounced around eagerly.

"Wow...! It's... completely ordinary! Hang on—but this just looks like a wizard's house, doesn't it?"

Imagine that, he thought to himself as he rolled his eyes, crossing to a little end table that he could use to set down the miniature television from his pocket. As he was busying himself with returning it to normal size with his wand and setting up the rest, he could just hear her quiet footsteps padding all around the worn rug that took up the entire room.

"So, where are we exactly?" Before he could get out his full testy reply that he had already told her the town and country, she cut him off. "I know, I know, but really. Is it a whole muggle village? Can I look outside?"

"No," he snapped at once, crossing the room to follow her guardedly to where she had wandered towards the front door. She shot him a quizzical frown at the way he appeared about ready to spell the place shut, but he returned it with a stern glare. He had positioned their arrival precisely indoors for a reason—there really wasn't much to be looking at outside.

She was distracted from arguing by a long hanging tapestry on one of the only uncovered strips of wall near the entrance, stepping up to read it while he twitched with the urge to stop her, holding back only as he reasoned that it was perhaps not worth it to fight someone over scraps of information about his life.

"'Prince'?" she read aloud, and then turned back to him, her eyes wide. "Are you a prince?"

He stared at her with a deadpan expression, wondering how someone could possibly misread a family tree so poorly and if he should perhaps take back what he had said about her being fine to teach, but she merely grinned at him, looking quite pleased with her own joke.

"Does this look like where a prince would live to you?" he asked as if to ground her humor back to reality.

She gazed around, but her cursory glance back over everything was apparently missing all the dents in the furniture and the tiny kitchen through the narrow archway opposite as her eyes moved on instead to the stairs—and then straight up them, before coming back to him with a wide devilish smile.

"I dunno... I haven't seen the whole place yet."

"And," he said through his teeth, sidestepping in front of her to finally physically put his foot down on her nosiness, "you won't be. We're just here to do one thing."

"Aw, come on, I can't even get a tour? I'm curious what your room looks like."

He took in a deep breath and held it—then put on a tight, thin smile.

"You'd like a tour? Here..." With an elegantly outstretched arm, he beckoned her closer and took her shoulder in his other hand, guiding her across the room—and back to the sitting area. "This," he said with dripping sarcasm, "is a sofa. Please, have a seat." And he gently pressed her shoulders down until she was seated and glaring up at him with her eye nearly twitching.

"You're not very hospitable," she said with all the excitement sucked from her voice.

"Tea?" he asked in the same mockingly polite manner as he backed into the kitchen.

The second he turned around his face flattened, though he did step up to the sink and stare into it, momentarily considering actually making tea just for something else to do. This was turning out to be much more stressful than it was worth. He should have just broken into a neighbor's house and used their TV and home at this point.

A sudden immensely exaggerated gasp made him whip his head around in a panic, because it sounded much too pleased to be anything good.

Freya was leaning to look at him through the archway, but what she was pointing at was keeping her heels in place—more distractingly though, her face was pulled into an expression of ultimate glee.

"Just look at this wee little Sev! How darling!"

He slowly turned back to the sink, unseeing, his eyes held shut, and a sigh building up in his lungs so deeply that it felt never-ending. In hindsight, permanent sticking charms on all the photos should have been the only solution—or just burning them. Or burning the whole place down.

He stood cemented into place over the sink, staring out the little window there, imagining how long after the war would be appropriate to commit acts of extreme vandalism to muggle property, while listening to Freya rummage around through his personal life with wild abandon.

"You know, it's quite cozy in here; like a library," she commented from the other room, not having to speak much louder than normal to still be heard as it was such a small distance.

Under his breath, while rolling his eyes again, he muttered out a quiet, "Glad you think it's so great," before suddenly squinting and turning around. "What sort of libraries do you often hang out in?" That you would remember?

She looked up from her pacing around the room for what must have been her dozenth lap, hands folded innocently behind her back as if she hadn't been touching anything. She shrugged.

"Oh, I dunno. Like the one you showed me earlier; the research one? I liked that."

He watched her eyes gazing around at the books, searching her expression, but it was only blankly curious.

"Though," she continued, "this could use a bit more light, don't you think? It's a shame there's no fire... Ooo, or Christmas decorations!" She spun on her heel and faced him with a hopeful smile. "Do you think you could...?"

His mouth stretched into a reluctant grimace, but something about being asked to perform magic by someone who couldn't at the moment felt so odd that he was almost compelled to comply. Put on the spot to decorate, though, his mind was rather blank as he stepped up to stand in the archway, his wand hovering in the air for a long moment. It was Freya's encouraging eyes staring at him expectantly that gave him inspiration, and, with a few quick motions, he turned the small sitting room into the most charming version of itself he had ever seen.

Her gasp this time was much less audible and much more sincere, as she clasped her hands together underneath her chin and once more stood in the center of the room to gradually spin around with her long hair flowing and her eyes wide and gleaming, thoroughly enchanted.

He really didn't think it was befitting of all this fuss given he had just ripped off her own decorations, with floating lights aligned as if on an invisible string going along the tops of the bookcases all around the ceiling of the room, hanging down like icicles over some shelves (specifically to cover up the higher placed photos on them, which he had sneakily turned back around), and garlands of pine over some of the others (to further bury the frames). It did create quite the elevating effect of coziness to the room though; that, he could not deny. He crossed back to the adjacent wall and flicked off the light switch, so that it was not glaring so unnaturally over the otherwise magical scene.

When he looked back, however, he realized that this may have been a miscalculation.

Freya had ceased her slow circling and was standing perfectly still for once, beaming at him with what looked like all the Christmas Eve joy in the world. It really didn't seem fair for her to be hogging all of it to herself, nor was it fair that her eyes now seemed to sparkle with the lights even though they were being scrunched up slightly at the corners, nor that she should be able to make him feel like it had been worth it to breech his privacy just to see her smile like this. His hand almost darted back behind him to flick the lights on again and make sure he wasn't staring at some holiday card come to life, but she finally moved before he could, bouncing excitedly and taking another look around.

"It's beautiful!" she gushed, and then actually spun herself around in a twirl—which was perhaps not the smartest move in such a small room with so much furniture nearby, as she immediately smashed her foot into the coffee table and was reduced to half height as she bent over to squeeze at the new injury. "It's... It's so beautiful I'm crying," she said, alternating between wincing and smiling.

"That's... really..." But his words were mostly useless as he was saying them into his fingertips, trying without success to rub the grin off his face and slowly nodding as if he had just witnessed the universe coming together in precisely the right manner.

"Stop laughing!"

"I'm not," he assured her unconvincingly as his voice betrayed him. "Ah... Need to go... check on the tea—so glad you like the decorations," he said, and excused himself back to the kitchen before he earned himself a future torching by openly laughing at her.

"I think I—ow—could enjoy them better if I sat down," she called from the other room, and he heard her hopping herself over and finally taking a seat of her own volition for once on the creaky sofa.

"Excellent idea," he said, though he was keeping his voice down as he still hadn't fully reigned himself in.

He stood over the sink again, one hand propping him up on the edge of the counter and the other trying without success to smooth down his grin, when his eyes glanced up to the little window and caught sight of his own reflection. His smile, which was wider than he had seen on his own face since perhaps when the childhood photos in the other room had been taken, promptly flattened out in surprise. Frowning, his fingers slowed as if to instead check his face for malfunctioning, hearing Freya's own words echo in his head that she didn't know what he was so pleased about. It was the image of her from just a moment before that floated up in his mind in response, his eyes blurring the sink away to instead go back over every little detail of her warm smile.

When he looked back up, the corners of his mouth were again misbehaving, and he pressed his thumb and forefinger into them as if to pin them down, though it was a bit unnecessary as his expression now only looked uneasy. He pulled the little half-curtains shut, only cutting off the top of his head, and then turned away to exit the kitchen once more without any tea. Thankfully Freya seemed not to question this, only offering up a curt smile as he returned.

"Nothing broken?" he asked smoothly, glancing down with raised brows to her boots hidden behind the coffee table.

Her smile sharpened and she silently raised one foot onto the edge of the furniture to demonstrate that it was indeed still intact, making him notice for the first time that sticking out of the top of her boot was a garish gold tinsel-threaded red and green sock. His eyes narrowed just a bit, but she lowered it once more, and he busied himself with crossing to join her, reaching over the sofa to the window just behind it and closing these curtains as well. Before he sat down, he noted with a glance that she scooted more over to her side of what little space there was available on the small two-cushioned piece of furniture, and he respectfully wedged himself against the opposite arm.

"Wait—so, it's all set then?" she said suddenly piecing things together as she pointed at the contraption he had just removed from his pocket (he had already informed her these things worked by remote control, which she had deemed a muggle's poor attempt at a wand). "We just—we get to watch it now?"

He blinked at her from the sides of his eyes, still facing the television where the remote was pointed, wondering if she was about to make him get up again to truly and honestly make a cup of tea this time.

"Err... Yes."

He wouldn't have thought it possible, but the excitement that lit her face seemed to be so strong it balled her fists up and she looked ready to fight, as if movie-watching could quickly turn to fisticuffs. Then she seemed to remember herself and reigned in her posture, laying her hands flat on her lap.

"Sorry, I just—It's so weird! I don't know what to expect."

"It's... just a movie."

She squinted at him as if he had perhaps suggested that fruit was 'just a weird tree egg.'

"You know," she said with a voice that made him wary, "you talk as if you're used to all this. Just how many movies have you seen exact—"

"Alright, I'm starting."

"What! But I'm not ready—what if it's really bad and I hate it?"

He kept his eyes on the TV as the opening credits began, the fuzzy static image feeling distantly nostalgic, but still he squinted hard. How could someone be anxious about not liking something?

"You won't," he said off-handedly, "you had this one in your office, didn't you?"

At the edge of his vision, he could just see her nervously look away from him and finally direct her attention to the moving image on the screen. He had pushed the little end table earlier so that it was practically up against the larger and lower coffee table, making it less awful to have to stare at such a small display.

But, as the specific opening credits for the movie began to play, and a chorus of foreboding music slowly worked up to a fever pitch, Freya turned her head right back to him with such a deep look of apprehension that he had to pretend to just be licking his lips rather than keeping his grin in check.

"Severus... hang on... what sort of story is this?"

He lazily turned his head to her as if he had barely heard her, raising his brows. "Hm? Oh... I believe it's" —he kept his eyes on her rather than on the screen as the chorus belted out a screeching warning of dark and terrible horrors— "psychological," he finished with a placid grin as the title card clearly stated 'The Omen' in white lettering against a black background. The look she gave him made him finally hit the pause button for the first time, noting that he hadn't gotten away with this for quite as far as he had hoped. "You did tell me once that this was 'hilarious' and your 'favorite,'" he assured her in a smooth voice.

"Yeah... Right..." She squinted at the screen and then to him. "It just doesn't seem very... Christmas-y... does it?"

He appraised the screen. "Well, it has a cross... and red," he pointed out with mild interest, watching as she looked back to the ominous upside-down black cross bathed in a circle of blood red light—and then turned back to him with enough skepticism that he might have been trying to convince her Santa was real, her brows all the way scrunched down.

Fighting with effort to keep his expression clear for just this one last thing, he leaned back in his seat and asked with the most careful of concerns:

"You're not... scared... are you?"

Her expression fully transformed through several emotions at once, landing on a concealed kind of irritation that he recognized as housing a very quick and biting venom just below the surface should he wish to poke further—but he had had his fun just from that, and finally let loose his mischievous grin.

"It isn't scary, I promise," he said with sincerity, but she looked even more offended.

"You've already seen it!" she said indignantly, turning in her seat.

"No," he corrected, "I'm just familiar with... what sorts of things muggles put out as scary. And it isn't." She didn't look convinced, but she equally looked as if she was about to start asking questions about him again, and he thought it apt to finally inform her of some muggle manners to go along with her muggle movie. "Listen, you aren't really meant to be speaking during these—so could we, perhaps, just get on with it?"

With one last narrowed glare at him, she conceded by turning back in her seat, and he settled himself in as well before again pressing play. And thus, they begun the sinister tale of Damien the five-year-old Antichrist, while surrounded by twinkling Christmas lights in his mother's old sitting room.

Not ten minutes later however, he was forced to pause it once more as Freya neglected to heed his request for silence. It wasn't something she had said, though, and as he turned his head in surprise to meet her guilty eyes, she even had a hand pressed over her mouth.

"Something funny?" he asked, as she had just snorted.

She shook her head, apparently not trusting herself to remove her hand—but as her eyes went back to the screen, and the close up of the dog on it, she had to duck her head away as another soft puff of air left her nose.

"It's just," she started, finally moving her hand away from her mouth just by an inch, "it's... it's not very scary, is it?"

He grinned in full smugness, blinking at her. "Would I have lied?"

"Oh, you definitely would have," she said with her voice low in accusatory sureness, but still grinning. "But... I wasn't imagining it would be... funny. I mean—it's so serious, and then—this woman's just staring down a dog like she's just recognized it as the one that got under the fence when she was a kid; long-lost Alfie or something. And it's just... a normal dog! Not even a magical creature, just some dog. And what was that sound..." She momentarily covered her face as if embarrassed to be watching this—as she should be, he thought.

"Would you like to hear it again?" he asked, already rewinding.

"You can do that?"

But her curiosity for muggle technology was cut short as they re-watched the bizarre scene, and this time she didn't just snort but fell forward covering her face in quiet laughter. He watched with increasing amusement as she had to push all her hair back from her face upon resurfacing, and couldn't look at the screen without further snickering. He hit rewind again.

"Stop! Severus—no—I can't... that bloody dog!"

He entertained himself with his new automatic-Freya-laughter button a couple more times, before finally she was reaching over to try and apprehend his toy; unsuccessfully, as his arms were plenty long enough to hold it far out over his edge of the sofa, and she wouldn't get near enough to fully wrestle him for it, though she did beg, and he graciously took mercy on her, hitting play instead.

But the very next minute, the poor woman in the movie had her days of staring at dogs tragically cut short in a shocking scene of her death that had even him dropping his jaw—though it was to stare over at Freya in disbelief, even as she stared back at him with the same expression only far more guilty.

"And you laughed," he said with reproach. "How insensitive."

"Well—how was I supposed to know she was about to snuff it!"

It was his turn to quietly snort now, only his grin was quickly wiped away as he realized her eyes had begun to look particularly glossy and she was staring at him in horror.

"She's not—actually—dead," he hastily asserted, straightening up in his seat and angling towards her as if he could have jumped over and erased her discomfort. "It's all fake, all of it."

Her eyes shown pleadingly at his. "Even the dog?"

His gaze didn't waver from her eyes, but unfortunately not much could be done about his twisting mouth.

"No, Freya... the dog is very real."

He had to fully turn his face away then, both to cover his unrelenting grin and because she was smacking at his shoulder.

"Shut—up! You know what I meant! It's not really an evil dog—or a rare case of animal possession—or an Animagus—or something!"

"Freya," he said with difficulty at keeping his voice even, "you're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, shouldn't you tell me?" She looked to be puzzling out which dark entity could be causing the chaos depicted on screen with all of her scholarly honor on the line, when he took pity on her and offered up a reminder that, "They're just muggles, remember?"

"So then it's just a bloody dog!" she shot back. "Give it a nice dragon steak and be on your way then!"

Despite that he was trying so hard not to laugh, her own face cracked in a half-smile as her eyes searched over his expression, and he abruptly found his seriousness again as he pointed at this.

"You can't laugh. A muggle woman just died."

"You said it was fake!"

"Still... It is rather poor taste, don't you think?"

Their stare was held locked in place for a moment longer—and then she broke first, her cheeks puffing up with laughter as she turned away, causing a chain reaction of him doing much the same in the opposite direction, both unsuccessfully covering their amusement.

"You can't," she said, her voice uneven with mirth, "you can't make me laugh at this, it really is—" Her eyes met his again and her hand was forced back over her mouth, though he could still see her shoulders clearly shaking. With sudden energy, she exploded back up, gesturing wildly at the television. "It was just a bit too sudden—I can't take it seriously when it's trying to force me into it! The music is so dramatic!"

"You'll find that most films lack the subtlety to achieve true honest reactions," he said with a distasteful sneer to the screen. "They always fall back on cheap shocks instead."

There was silence in response, and he glanced back over to her, suddenly uneasy without laughter filling the room. But she was merely blinking at him in surprise, and he couldn't quite fit in an excuse to turn the movie back on in time to stop her asking.

"You're... quite knowledgeable about this stuff, huh?"

"Not really," he said, uneasily shifting deeper into his seat and diverting his eyes back to the unmoving image on the screen. "It's more of... there being an art to making a story believable; presenting it in the correct way to get the right reaction. That simply goes across all forms of..."

"Lying?"

His gaze stayed put, but he shrugged a shoulder. "Manipulation... would be more accurate... though some might not like to accept that word for their actions." Gradually, his eyes shifted back over to her, where she was still staring at him with a harmless expression.

"I'll be honest, the only thing I'm focused on not accepting right now is that the muggles expected me to be scared of some cute little kid."

He grinned. "And a dog."

"Not even a big dog, either. I don't get it."

"If only Trelawney could see this movie... her poor heart would explode."

"Who?"

He gave a brief explanation of the Divination teacher, skipping over any details about actual prophecies, as he found he was quite enjoying himself at the moment and didn't want to ruin it. Freya's look of immediate disapproval after he finished only served to further his agreeable mood.

"You actually told me this was your favorite film on the very night that she read your future and gave you an ill omen of your very own," he finished.

She frowned. "What did she say was going to happen to me?"

"I... don't remember, honestly. Something about you dying, though, undoubted—"

The coffee table he was gazing at lost its focus, and his head cocked an inch to the side. Freya slowly dropped her jaw at him, delicately placing her hand over her neck... And then had to turn her head away as she fell into a fit of laughter that he this time didn't join in on.

"That... That was just a coincidence," he said in disbelief, "she always predicts people's deaths—so of course she would get it right for—"

"Severus!" she said through her laughter. "How many warning signs did you need!"

He stared at her, dumbfounded, and then shook his head.

"At... least... one more would have been nice," he muttered uncertainly, only joining in her sudden renewed burst of laughter at this with a mitigated smile of his own. He couldn't remember ever being in such a small enclosed space with her laughing this much, and the sound seemed to fill up the whole room, making him wince as he was already feeling guilty. She had rolled away from him so that she wouldn't be laughing directly in his face, but she rolled right back when she quieted down, still grinning but now looking intrigued.

"What else did she say in this prediction of hers? I want to know if the rest of it is any good."

He shook his head with high doubts. "It was just an endless bunch of nonsense, you won't get anything out of that."

"No offense," she said, shifting so her shoulder was against the back of the sofa, eyes glinting as she smirked at him, "but I'm not going to be taking your word for it. When was this? Maybe I've written it down." Her hand patted down her robes to his surprise, having not expected her to still be carrying her diary—and then he remembered exactly which day it had been that she had received the prophecy, and talked to him about muggle films—and spent a fair amount of time with him out by the lake.

"I don't remember," he said casually, straightening up and turning his attention back to the television, hoping to distract her.

"Seriously? Aw, well, I'll get to it eventually, I guess."

He stared unblinking into the stuttering static image on the screen, now wanting to hit play on the movie again to give his own mind something to do rather than imagine what would be written there and what her reaction to this would be. If she took judgmental notes on his handling of food, what would her notes on his pathetic wine-drunk kissing be—?

"I'm starting," he said, grabbing for the remote without waiting for her permission.

Thankfully it was indeed very distracting to watch a movie with Freya, as she constantly wanted to talk about things, even though he reminded her this was a two-hour affair and it would be the New Year by the time they finished it at this pace. He was plenty of the problem himself though, as he didn't at all care for the interruptions if it meant hearing her laugh and say ridiculous things about the deservingly ridiculous muggle story. She did still have a problem with wincing every time someone was injured or horribly distressed on screen, but she assured him she wasn't actually upset, it was just an automatic response, and she was getting more used to it. To help her along with detangling the fiction from reality, he began pausing more often to point out obvious things that were fake, such as when a pole came down to supposedly skewer a man—only it was obviously a foot behind him, it was just the angle of the camera creating an illusion with the flat muggle film. And after he explained what film was, she seemed to understand. He also re-introduced her to a phrase that made her laugh just as she had before, and she became very pleased to call everything he explained from then on 'movie magic.' One thing on which they both had very impassioned arguments to make towards the screen was the fake-looking blood, though he challenged that she really shouldn't be one to talk, while she countered that not even hers was pumpkin juice orange nor candy apple red—and besides, gold was a perfectly normal color, not weird at all.

The plot did eventually turn dark enough that Freya calmed down her constant commenting, not even asking him to pause for a long while, sat back against the sofa as she was and looking—if he didn't know any better—to be just a bit tense. It was enough to make him want to tease her again about being scared, and he had been wondering for a while what her reaction would be if he were to drape an arm over her shoulders as he had earlier in the day, only with much less benevolence and many more mocking comments that he was here for her if she needed it.

Barely paying attention to the movie as he was (his eyes were mostly glancing to his side, and more effort was being expended trying to look like this wasn't what he was doing), it was him that first noticed that the vicious animalistic sounds on screen appeared to be strangely echoed from somewhere beyond just the speakers of the television. Frowning, he turned his ear to the side, angled towards the window.

"Did you hear that?"

Startled from her locked stare, she jerked her head towards him and frowned.

"Severus, you can't be serious—"

"Wait—listen," he hissed back, lowering his voice. He heard the sound distinctly coming from outside this time, as did Freya, her eyes widening as he paused the movie for silence. There was some sort of scuffling sound, like rubbish being blown across the street, and he told himself that's all it was as he fully twisted in his seat to get his arm over the back of the sofa and peel back the curtains, Freya following his movements with increasing worry, scooting over to get the same view as him.

They both squinted out into the darkness for the source of the continued noise, until he recognized the sound of a metal bin being rattled and darted his eyes to the correct location.

"It's a fox," Freya said crossly, rolling her eyes his way to glare at him.

"Well... it could have been a dog."

"And then we'd both have been goners," she agreed with much sarcasm and a dry smirk before turning back around in her seat with an especially hard flop against the back of the sofa. "Really... Can't believe you're trying to scare me..."

He eyed her irked little pout as she stared at the screen waiting for him to un-pause the movie, but he hadn't turned himself back just yet, his arm still where it was within reach of the curtain which he had already let fall shut again. Whether by not noticing or not caring, she hadn't retaken her spot as far away from him as possible, and he bargained that if he was going to do it, now would be the opportunity.

"Perhaps... if you," he started nonchalantly, smoothly inching his hand along the top of the sofa and over shoulders as he turned back around, keeping only his cool sideways gaze on her, "would just admit that you're scared... then I would be nicer about it."

He had been prepared for her to shy away, or to fully scramble herself out from under his touch, flustered or otherwise embarrassed; he was even prepared for her to actually try to fight him, in which case he would have immediately relented—but instead the look she slowly turned to him with was only one of unmistakable confusion and disgust, which was doubled as she turned further to squint at his arm specifically before snapping her eyes back to his.

His confidence withered away all at once, his arrogant grin sliding off his face so that he was now stuck staring back at her silent scowl finding he was fresh out of bold moves.

"I—know what you're really afraid of," he said, trying to regather his composure. She quirked a brow at him, unimpressed, but he was already slipping out his wand and at once the little lines of light all around the room were extinguished, plunging the room into darkness only permeated by the glow from the gloomy image on the screen. He felt her shoulders raise up in defense under his arm, and he regained some of his smirk at the wary look on her face. The only sound was the distant disturbance from the fox outside still making its meal.

But he still was not answered with any protests or defensive remarks, not even to play along with his taunting. Instead, she only continued to stare at him as if he had been speaking another language in an insulting tone. Silence, from her especially, was not something he knew how to properly handle, and he was forced to sit there with exponentially rising discomfort, wishing he could force his arm to give up and move, until, at last, she narrowed her eyes so hard in the dark that he could not even see more than her eyelashes.

"Are you... flirting with me?"

Two seconds more of still silence—and then he was swiftly sliding his arm and the whole rest of him back over to the other side of the couch, firmly against the armrest.

"No—I—" He flicked his wand rather jerkily to reignite the lights and try to erase the scene from having happened. "I was just—being friendly."

"'Friendly'? Bit... overly friendly from you."

His brows lowered as hers rose, and his momentary panic subsided somewhat into defense.

"Well," he said with poorly concealed bitterness, "we were friends."

Her expression said she didn't fully believe this, and he thought he recognized why exactly she didn't, and where she would be going with her next question by the tilt of her head, causing him to quickly turn away and cut off her opening to ask it.

He should have never touched her; never even gone near her. In hindsight, he didn't know what on earth he was thinking, nor did he want to be questioned about it. The sheer number of times in the past few days that he had felt drawn to reach out and feel the physical reminder that she was real and solid was suddenly looming over him as an embarrassing amount that he couldn't even tally. It was just because of that, though, obviously; she had almost died in a certain sense, and he simply wanted to check in that she was still perfectly warm and living. It was a small comfort that he hadn't completely ruined things, that she was still entertaining the idea of him being around, and she was still sort of Freya—even if she didn't remember him and things might never return to the way they were.

Except that he didn't exactly know what way things had been in the first place, or how he even wanted them to return to. He just knew if Freya was to eventually voice her question, he wasn't sure he could give a straight answer without lying by omission.

As he chanced a glance back in her direction, what he saw surprised him from his troubled thoughts. Her eyes were up as well, but she fully turned her head away when they caught his, and all he had left to look at was her hand resting palm up on the cushion between them, waiting expectantly for him to notice.

Perhaps he couldn't exactly put into words how things had been, or where they had been going; but perhaps... he didn't need to. Perhaps, things could just be—different—but still going in just the same direction.

Carefully, he inched his hand across the threadbare surface and slid his hand over hers—

And she wrenched her whole arm back, whipping her head around in alarm, making him freeze. Her eyes flicked between his hand and his face, aghast.

"I—Severus, the muggle wand," she said at last with her voice just as shocked as her face, pointing behind him. "If you aren't going to start the movie, I'll do it."

He stared at her dumbly, then slowly turned to look over his shoulder, where indeed the remote control was on his armrest as he had left it.

The grey buttons all seemed like static before his eyes as he wondered if there was perhaps a vacancy in whatever garbage-stinking hole beneath the earth the fox lived in that he could crawl into and permanently hide.

"I'm... tea..."

"Sorry?"

He didn't explain further, just stood onto stiff legs and walked himself right back into the kitchen, wondering if there was anything of stronger quality to fix into a cup.

As he stared into the cupboard, his eyes not finding anything both for lack of trying and because there wasn't much to find, he wished for a moment that if someone was going to forget about him then those memories could also vanish from his own mind as well, because he was rather done with being the only one left remembering things. There should just be some universal brain rot that went round and collected memories of people whose minds in return no longer think of you—or maybe he already was suffering from a different kind of brain rot. Either way, all he found in the various doors he opened was something his body thankfully knew how to make automatically without much connection from his brain.

"What are you making?"

With reluctance, holding in a sigh, he turned his blank expression towards Freya who was stood leaning against the archway to the kitchen, looking bemused with the corners of her mouth hesitantly rising. He angled the tin in his hand so that the label faced her.

"Chocolate? I was thinking something more substantial since you missed dinner..."

Setting this down on the counter, he got out two mugs from the cupboard as well, holding the second one out to her in question.

"Oh, hot cocoa? Only if it's made with water, please." Her expression muddled in reaction to his, and she added defensively, "What?"

"You may not be up to date," he said with distaste that only further soured his voice, going back to his preparations, "but you've had plenty of milk and other things in recent months."

"What? I have not," she said, half laughing as if this was absurd and he must be in need of some explanation. "I don't eat anything with—"

"Yes," he shot a sharp look over his shoulder, "you do. I've seen you eat entire pastries full of custard."

Her mouth fell open in surprise and he turned back to the mugs with a concealed snide grin, tapping his wand on each to melt the chocolate in the bottom.

"I certainly did not. I would never eat anything like that—"

"Meat as well. You seemed to rather enjoy it actually."

"Bull!"

This at least was indeed a lie, because the meat pie she had accidentally grabbed at dinner once had made her run a half of lemon over her tongue for minutes afterward, but she had complimented the flakey crust, so it was close enough. For now, he was quite in the mood to have her be the one upset about something. Stepping to the side, he put on a display of filling both mugs with cream from his wand tip while staring back at her appalled expression.

Once it was complete, he handed one hot mug out to her and said coolly, "Don't worry, it won't kill you."

She looked like she was about ready to take it just to dump it down the sink, but she did at last snatch it up and hold it cautiously under her nose for a sniff. Watching her over the rim of his own mug, he took a careful sip for himself of the thick and rich—properly made, not watery dregs—hot cocoa, letting the warmth fill him and simmer down his jittery and irritable mood.

Leaning against the wall opposite him as he leaned against the kitchen counter, she finally tried a small taste, licking her lips and frowning—and then her expression shifted to quiet surprise which, with a guilty glance over at him, she tried to hide by holding the mug over her mouth, only achieving that she now took another sip out of nervous habit and making her look even guiltier.

He swallowed down his own long drink, not taking his eyes off her, and stretched a quick tight smile her way.

"Perhaps you don't know yourself as well as you thought."

They stood in silence for some time, both emptying their cups at a leisurely pace and avoiding eye contact for the most part. It wasn't until Freya fully lowered her cup from her mouth to hold at waist height and caught his eye again that at last the lull was broken.

"This is... really nice," she said quietly down to her cup, avoiding his eyes again after getting his attention.

"Even with milk?" he taunted in a similarly low voice, the subdued bite to it stemming from his thoughts still being on what had just stupidly done on the couch, replaying excruciatingly in his head.

In the warm light cast from the living room, he watched her glance up at him with a scowl that he would have happily returned just then, only hers didn't hold its edge for long at all, and her gaze shifted back down to her hands in surrender.

"I guess... I've just never tried it."

Her face still showed a small amount of displeasure, but he was finding it more difficult to discern the source the more he searched. She took him by surprise when she lifted her gaze and jumped back on the topic he had been trying to escape.

"So... we were friends?"

He lowered his brows and merely blinked at her.

"Err... are—friends?" she tried again, wincing. When he still didn't answer—as he wasn't sure what to say other than a sour retort that he didn't feel could solidify in his mouth sweetened with chocolate and her expression so far from hostile—her eyes drifted away to the rest of the kitchen and over its odd mix of both common wizard necessities and muggle foundations. She found her voice again while staring at the cheap tiling on the floor.

"You know... to be honest, I thought you were just doing all this because Albus made you."

It took him a moment to turn this information over in his head.

"And you—just went along with it anyway?"

"Well," he watched her thumbs twiddling at the rim of her mug, "it was all... still very thoughtful." Her eyes rose to fix him with a searching stare this time. "A little... too thoughtful."

He held her gaze, feeling weary with the deep irony of this. At least it was something that he directly understood.

"No," he said in a hard but hushed tone, "I wouldn't pretend something like that. I did this because I knew it's something that you wanted from before. Because we're friends."

Her wide eyes shown in the low light, studying his face. Then she bit her lip and attempted a slow smile, her shoulders hunching in a way that made his arm remember the feeling, though he was trying to focus on her agreeable expression.

"Then... is it alright if we go finish the movie?"

Once it was all well and truly over, and both of them were sitting back on the couch with tensed limbs and nearly mirrored grimaces (Freya had her mouth hung open), he slowly turned to her with inquiry as to what her thoughts were now. She didn't look nearly as amused as earlier, only stating that "Doesn't look too good for the poor Americans, does it?" to which he dropped the bombshell that perhaps she could find out in the sequel, making her jaw drop thrice as far and his grin come back despite himself. He had been planning to release a different kind of information to her once it was over, specifically that this film had been most assuredly cursed and multiple people had suffered very real damages from the filming, but he rather found that her excitement was more entertaining than ruining her innocent fun just to scare her. Plus, he had already lied about having supposedly not seen it before, so it would have been too close to revealing this.

After listening to her animated retelling of her favorite scenes and dodging her pestering questions pertaining whether or not he would just admit that it hadn't been at all bad for a muggle-made production, things calmed down until they were simply sitting on the couch trailing the conversation beyond just the movie, and he was beginning to feel uneasy about the way she pulled her feet up to sit more comfortably on the couch as if the thought of leaving anytime soon hadn't crossed her mind. Part of him was still feeling as if he wanted to get away from her to go pound some sort of final understanding through his thick skull—and part of him was worried he was going to somehow, beyond his will, do something stupid again. Both of them were sitting with their backs to the armrests of the sofa, but he could always slip up with his words by blurting out that he knew how soft her lips were or something that was apparently on his current level of ineptitude.

As it was, when she smoothed her hands over her long skirt folded up with her legs and peeked up at him through her lashes, her leading question had his heart beating more than he thought was entirely necessary for this situation.

"Can I ask you something?"

His eyes darted around her face for some clue as to where this was going, but she was only gazing innocently back at him. He shrugged a shoulder and indicated for her to go on.

"Was I," she squinted and tilted her head around as if trying to decide on the words, before coming up with a rather bluntly stated, "was I a prat?"

His eyebrows slowly raised up his forehead before coming back down in concern, the corners of his mouth rising. She cocked her head in further question and he had to purse his lips, his eyes narrowing and traveling away towards the ceiling as if in deep contemplation, though he kept her face in the edge of his vision. Her expression dropped to a hard deadpan as he held his silence for a much longer than necessary moment.

"Not really," he finally determined with a casual air, turning back to watch her smirk in an unamused fashion. He let up just a bit. "Only about certain things. Otherwise, no, I wouldn't say you were a prat."

"What would you say I was then?" she pressed.

This time he did have to seriously think, as well as pause before delivering his more truthful answer, as he wasn't sure how she would take it.

"You were... a bit annoying at most." He kept his eyes on her, watching her chew this over.

"Same as now?" He folded in his lips to keep from grinning and then nodded once, but he needn't have worried it seemed, as she apparently had a self-awareness of just how obnoxious she was and merely looked to be after the comparison itself. "Well, that's the same then..."

This struck a slow dawning note in him and he frowned as she stared down at the sofa, too caught up in her own thoughts to notice.

"What is it exactly," he asked, gently trying to pry into whatever she was thinking, "that you're trying to figure out?"

She looked up and then almost as quickly away, her eyes traveling around the room in a slow horizontal line. Finally, she shrugged and shook her head.

"I don't know... Just... why I would ever do all this—why I would change my mind. And if it's because... I started remembering things. And—if I remember things now, will I change like that—and—I don't know."

Her eyes came to rest back on her hands, and he was glad for the moment it gave him to straighten out his face, because his brows had been tugged too tightly, and he didn't want her to think he was pitying her after such sharing of personal business. Before he could sort out at all what to say to this, and though he felt a strong desire to speak his piece, she added one last thing in a small voice, most unlike her.

"It sort of feels like... you know me better than I know myself."

"No," he said after only a heartbeat, making her look up from her lap into his eyes of calm conviction, "I don't." Her mouth stayed quiet, held in a small line, waiting for him to go on. "You... were secretive. The only thing that I really knew you liked was..." His eyes glanced over to the television where the tape had been taken out and placed on top of it. Food was another thing, and he didn't want to bring up the fruit incident again, but it did still make his face twitch that this was all he would have been able to scrounge up that she liked. Perhaps a bottle of Blackthorn wine, but he really did not want to encourage drinking around her ever again.

His gaze drifted away from the TV, but it didn't go back to her just yet, and his voice dropped even quieter. "And if you are worried about what sort of person you are, or were... I wouldn't have even been able to answer that until very recently." He saw her eyes were wide and reflecting the numerous tiny lights around the room when he looked up. "But I know now, and I can say that you're the same as you always were, and probably always will be no matter what. You're a good person, Freya."

She stared at him with such astonished distress he thought she was surely about to cry, and he was already shying away from looking too closely, wishing to avoid something so private—but her eyes stayed dry, and he began to wonder if she even could cry for something other than the pain of others. As if in determination to not leave her alone after such a sad thought, he steadied his gaze onto hers, willing her to believe his words and hoping he had properly conveyed that she was a remarkable person. After breaking their eye contact with a blink, she slowly looked away, appearing to sink back into her thoughts once more.

He no longer felt the need to rush along their time together, as they lapsed into a quiet staring contest against each other with the cushions of the sofa, remaining like that for some time, until Freya shifting in her seat caused him to look up at the soft noise and movement.

"I guess I could," she started, mumbling so low he almost wasn't sure if she wasn't accidentally giving voice to her stream of consciousness rather than attempting to speak, "talk to Albus and just—try and see what some of the memories—I mean the effect, and..." She was absentmindedly tugging at a lock of hair, but abruptly gripped it in her fist as her eyes snapped up to his with some sudden unperceivable thought. "You know—I don't really know much about you at all," she said in surprise, as if she had just noticed this after spending the whole day with him and watching him unbox presents that she herself had gotten him. His brows raised as if to denote this fact, blinking with languid disbelief, but she went on with a newfound intensity directed towards him. "What sorts of things do you like as presents?"

He stared at her, trying to catch up with the change in pace, and then frowning.

"You don't—need to get me anything more; this is already..." He tucked his forefinger inside his collar, running along the edge of it and tugging it straight at the end. He just realized it had been keeping him warm this whole time even though the house itself was probably chilly, and darted a guilty look at her—but she was preoccupied in not having gotten the answer she was after.

"Well... But..." She chewed on her lip for a second, her brows furrowed. "I suppose you do already have more coming for your birthday..."

He had almost forgotten, and held his eyes closed at the thought, wondering what other over-the-top meaningful things were left in the world to get him. He was quite happy with just robes—or nothing, as she didn't owe him anything and he was uncomfortable enough with receiving things.

She had turned away from him and was twisting her lock of hair into knots around her finger, staring off into the distance, and he thought he could just see the cogs spinning in her head, almost making his mouth pull into a wry grin despite himself.

Her initial exclamation stuck with him, and he turned he thought of her similarly not knowing much about him over in his mind. It wasn't true at all—she had an entire half of a diary about him—and probably more, in fact, as she had been at least an observer of him for longer than when they had first been properly introduced. There were, however, plenty of things she had never known... such as the very nature of the house they were currently sitting in.

The idea bounced around his brain in slow motion as he deliberated on the pros and cons.

A good outcome might be that she would be so satisfied with knowing more personal facts about him that she might not feel the need to get close by acquiring him any more presents—but it could also be further fuel to get him something even more sentimental, which was certainly a con in his books, as he didn't want anyone spending unnecessary amounts of time and money getting him things. Still... he felt as if he owed it to her, in a way.

In a final justification, he resolved that today was Freya's Christmas to get whatever he could give her, and if what she wanted was to know more about him, then he would gladly oblige. Or, at the very least, oblige, but with more reluctance and more grimaces.

"I... told you this was my mother's house, correct?"

Pulled from the depths of her thoughts, she looked round at him in startled confusion, taking a second to catch up.

"Er, no? Oh—well, you said it was your parents' house, yes."

"Right..." He glanced to the books on the shelves rather than at her, carefully deciding which paths to go down and which to avoid at all costs. "Well... more recently... it belonged to her. She handed it over to me during this past summer." He looked back to see how Freya was following with this, finding her brows were raised, but she otherwise showed only rapt interest.

"Why'd she do that?"

He smoothly dodged around a few choice things he could answer, and instead went with, "She moved back home. To live with her family... the Princes."

Freya immediately broke out into a pleasantly surprised grin. "Oh, she's the prince then?"

"Don't... say it like that."

"Alright, noted."

"But... yes. She's... the magical side of the family."

He waited, watching Freya's curious gaze until it gradually sparked in understanding and her mouth popped open.

"Oh—your dad's a muggle!" she exclaimed, pointing at him as if she had discovered this all herself. He gave a stiff half-nod, and she immediately launched further on. "Wow! What's that like? What is he like? Is he scared of dogs?"

"He's" —his mouth threatened to twist away from the mild expression he had plastered on— "definitely a muggle."

"Wow," she breathed again, as this confirmed anything new at all, gazing at him with her eyes fully shining. "That's so cool! I always thought it was amazing how you lot," she waved her hand around in a complex figure eight, which he scrutinized with no understanding, "just get born at random, or marry regardless of magic and all that. It's all rather fantastic."

It was only with considerable effort that he kept his lip from curling in disgust, though much of the reason his face threatened to pull in several directions was due to the fact that she was so out of touch with wizarding society. He supposed she didn't have a reason to be bothered with blood purity—though his brain suddenly thought of why she would be amazed by inter-magical being relations—and skipped much too quickly for him down several frightening paths of thought, each more difficult to process than the last—until he was grasping at literally anything else to say to pull him back into conversation.

"Er—would you... like some more hot cocoa?"

Once they were both sat back down on the couch and had become increasingly warm (he was glad he had thought of something to hopefully help with how cold she must be sitting in the drafty house), his attention was drawn over as she had to quickly pull her mug away from her face to cover a sudden yawn.

"Tired?" he asked with a note of playful sarcasm to his voice. "But we managed to finish the movie before the New Year."

Her long yawn ended in a little laugh. "Still must be pretty late. But I think I'm just tired from... you know." She gestured at him and he frowned, wondering if she would really be referring so nonchalantly to her death yet again, or if there was some other reason he hadn't picked up on. She confirmed his thoughts, though, as she went on. "I suppose it's just going to be like that for a bit; probably until I get my magic back, I would imagine."

"Would you... like to go rest up then?"

It was the first indication that perhaps they should be getting back, and she seemed to have noticed it as well, glancing over at him with a guilty look.

"Err, if you want to," she said, indicating with a nod that it was up to him and making him narrow his eyes.

"You're the one who's tired."

"Am not," she rebutted.

He quietly bit his lip, feeling like he had heard her say these words in the exact same way somewhere else before.

They both awkwardly darted their eyes around the room. He was busy trying to determine if staying around her alone well into the night was on par with drinking with her as far as bad choices went, when she piped up.

"We could," she nodded towards the TV, looking to him with apprehension, "watch another movie...?"

He mulled it over, watching her face, trying to determine if it was her that wanted to stay here, or he who wanted that to be what he was seeing there. She stretched a hopeful smile at him, and he had his answer sorted out for him, though it still stuck somewhere in his gut for a moment before he could nod and say his agreeance.

After a moment of heated discussion about what to watch next from the collection they had brought from her office (he had been apprehensive that she might shoot down watching his first pick, and in the end, they had brought all of them), he was backing away from the TV once more as the contraption whirred in reception to this new movie. But when he turned to take back his seat, he paused where he stood.

Freya had scooted herself over towards the middle of the couch, and when he had first turned around, her eyes had gone straight to his—and then darted all the way in the opposite direction so she was staring at a bookshelf on her other side. Without a clue what to do with this, he stayed frozen in place until he saw to his much greater astonishment her hand flip over, palm up, and lay on the couch beside her.

As if it was the only thing he could reasonably do in this situation, he immediately sat down and slapped the remote control into her hand with carefully gentle force. She whipped her head around and stared down at it in disgust—and then up at him in further disgruntlement, looking rather familiar to him—only this time he was fighting to keep his sly grin looking only sly and not entirely too pleased with himself, or like he might Apparate from the room in abrupt desolation if she so much as squinted at him.

Without a word, she reached straight over his person and smacked the remote back into place onto his armrest, giving him a tight smile as she did—and then she grabbed his hand and deliberately placed it over her own shoulders, letting go almost as quickly as if letting his arm fall where it may.

It took several strong beats of his heart before he found his body was working once more and his eyes removed themselves from where they were fixed onto the TV, looking instead to the remote, though mostly to have a bit more privacy with his face. It still took him an extra full check-up of his vocal cords to see if they were going to betray him before he finally spoke.

"You know, I don't believe this is a scary movie," he said in a voice that he hadn't meant to be so low, but seemed to have found its place by necessity of who he was speaking to being suddenly so close. She, too, took a moment to reply.

"I'm not scared," she said matter-of-factly, "I'm cold."

And at that, he adjusted his arm ever so slightly, and dared even to position himself just an inch closer to her, rationalizing that his robes could do a better job at keeping her warm this way and marveling that this is what it felt like to have extra heat to share with someone.

Midway through their movie, which he was hardly paying any attention to except to keep up with things enough to participate in conversation with her when she commented on things, her commenting gradually began to become more and more spaced out. It was a shame, because he had been quite enjoying the feeling of her shoulders bouncing with laughter, even when it was just a silent passing chuckle that he had never noticed before made such a movement through her, and the sound of her voice, so close that it felt tangible through his body, like when she had spoken to him on a different couch with his ear pressed to it and her low sleepy voice. Her tone had taken a similar downward note on her last remarks about the movie.

Now, however, there was only the canned sound from the TV, which grew even quieter as he lowered the volume, peering down to his side.

He could only really see the top of her head and a downward sliver of her face, but he couldn't imagine she had consciously put her head on his shoulder just now. Mostly due to the fact that he thought it was still a bit out of her familiarity with him, even given this, but also because he had felt her slowly falling towards him and despite that she hadn't spoken in several minutes, her mouth had definitely been moving plenty with frequent yawns.

She didn't stir as he pressed the pause button, and the room was abruptly blanketed in the closed-in padded feeling that it usually held. The golden glow from the lights was still keeping up the atmosphere of coziness though, and besides, no negative aspect could have reached anywhere near him at the moment; not through the enchantments of his cloak, nor through the warmth that radiated in him even despite his garments' magic.

It was odd to him that she could be so warm by his side even without her magic. Though, perhaps not that odd.

He knew he should have been piecing together what to do in this scenario, or panicking that Dumbledore might be penning not only a letter of resignation for him, but some other forged letter in preparation of killing him and covering up the evidence—but these were matters that seemed to be for an entirely different world. His current world only consisted of warmth both in tone of color and in feeling.

The last remaining part of him to be responsible did at least perform a regulatory check on the time—and saw that it was well past midnight. He had made it all of Christmas Eve, giving her hopefully everything he could have offered.

Almost everything. He hadn't gotten a chance to wish her a proper day-of 'merry Christmas.' A shame, really, as they had done such a good job deviously staying up till midnight.

His eyes cast back down, gazing at the slow rise and fall of her shoulders beneath his arm. His conscious was beginning to start back up, and he was feeling more and more like he should say something before she woke up and accused him of taking advantage of her drowsiness to... Well, he wasn't really doing anything, but it still felt like he was getting an awful lot more than he should be. He could only be so greedy with what had already been a very hesitant change-of-heart in her decision for closeness, one which he still did not fully understand but had been trying not to question just yet.

But still... He really did not want to wake her. And he did very much have something that he wished to tell her.

Drawing in a decisive breath, though careful not to move his body too much and disturb her, he let it out in a quiet sigh—and then held his lungs entirely still.

With cautious discretion, he gradually bowed his head down and to the side, as if his neck might creak like a loose floorboard if he went too fast. He hovered with his lips barely an inch from her hair, but his shallow quiet breathing was keeping him on a limit, his heart steadily beating out his time, so that he finally murmured before he could stop himself:

"Happy Christmas, Freya."

And he delicately placed a kiss on the top of her head—then immediately withdrew his face and bit his lip.

The sound of his own voice had been enough to trigger the anxious guilt in him, thinking he might wake her despite it having been so low. It wasn't this that had made him pull away so quickly, though; but that he had felt the warmth of her silky hair and felt like he was stealing something just by touching it. He sincerely hoped that—

"Happy Christmas, Severus."

He blinked.

The room was so silent, he thought he could hear the wind blow through the alleys, streets away. However, his suddenly hammering heartbeat was disturbing his attempts to listen that far, as he stared straight across the room, not seeing much of anything but a blur.

It was almost as if he had imagined it; as if the sound had come from his own mind, slipping into the sleepy depths of the night. Except that he had almost felt the words spoken into his shoulder from one whose lips were so close to it.

She hadn't stirred; hadn't moved an inch, he was sure. But then, he had been sure of her slumber as well, and he hadn't been so correct about that as it turned out.

As his lungs slowly began to remember how to breathe properly, he blinked several more times, feeling as if he might suddenly startle awake at any moment.

Except, he didn't; and the weight on his shoulder remained, warm and comforting.

He was glad there was no little window in front of him then; no mirror or otherwise reflective surface; and glad, too, that surely Freya could not see his face any more than he could see hers—because he could not have stopped himself from grinning if he tried.

Gently, he adjusted his arm to pull himself just slightly closer to her, silently thankful that there was no fireplace here, as she was the only fire that he wished to sit beside and he was more than happy to get the chance to return this warmth back to her.

---

_—***—_

"Like the hour you descend into another time
All the words you held inside
I don't know what has become of you
But I know what's left
All my hope you would divide

I know there's a way
I know you will stay

Today, my soul is unscathed"

B.R.M.C. - 20 Hours