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.

10. Ink

"My mama taught me better than that; don't play with angels
If my lost soul could be given back, it would be fatal"

B.R.M.C. – Mama Taught Me Better

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Chapter 10 – Ink

The new year brought with it a return to normalcy as opposed to anything particularly drastic.

Although, Severus had for the first time in quite a long time visited his relatives after having received permission to follow through with his original holiday leave request; a seemingly random feat, but one which he attributed entirely to whatever Freya had said to Dumbledore behind closed doors and would not take credit for in person. It had been an almost boringly nostalgic trip containing a ceaseless undercurrent of irritation for family members—which he had much appreciated, as it had felt comfortingly commonplace after an overly eventful year. Plus, it had given him five days' time to contemplate everything during the dull droning.

His return just before the start of the new term had certainly left the holiday feeling expediated, jostling him abruptly back into the buzzing fray that he had been running from at the beginning—but he needn't have worried himself so much. His relatives, not being big fans of the Daily Prophet, had not received the copy printed just before New Year's Eve containing a tiny correction to a previous issue and an interview with a certain retired Hogwarts Potions master, counseling that Albus Dumbledore's run of the school was not to be so carelessly defamed and that the Prophet should get its facts straight before sending them to ink. Apparently the headmaster had been rather busy himself over holiday trying to orchestrate this interview—and at quite an opportune time, as right when everyone would be stuffed with a week's worth of holiday meals, presents, and cheer, so wrapped up in their own goings-on that there just wasn't any room to be caring much at all what they had read in the paper weeks ago and might be factually contested.

There were still other ways for people to hold their suspicions though of course, such as forgoing presented evidence and listening to their gut; squinting at the teacher who had still very indisputably in their memories snappishly assigned them long essays both before and after the holiday, or side-eyeing the colleague who at staff meetings always sat in the back of the room looking to be silently cursing their beloved headmaster. Lucky, then, that there existed another besides Dumbledore who was not just looking out for their own skin with newsprint corrections, but trying to defend specifically his—though Severus would have preferred it if Freya hadn't shouted quite so loud at the snooty sixth-years who had whispered as they walked by, causing the whole hall to have turned to stare and him to have had to carefully coax her away before she could flex her more colorful language on them, having to explain to her that teachers aren't really supposed to be doing that, no matter how much she thought that they were chicken-brained for still thinking he was an evil lunatic. Or, at the very least, it wasn't advisable to do it without some filtering of words.

Apart from his own precarious social placement, Freya herself had seemed to have taken a particular turn upon his arrival back to the castle, though one which had almost achieved going in the same vein of normalcy that he had been enjoying—almost.

She had indeed welcomed him back much the same as she had on Christmas Eve, only in place of the burst of joy when uttering his name, there was a quiet, stand-offish politeness and a false smile that he had sorely wished would have stayed burned away with her memories. This time, even as his eyes had been searching hers, she had looked to have been searching back; inscrutable and piercing. Besides this difference, he hadn't been sure that she had even realized the change in herself, so indiscernible to read as it was, though she had willingly confessed to having had regular meetings with Dumbledore during the days he had been away. It seemed it was a slow-going process that had only left her feeling exhausted and confused, not the put-back-together and enlightened Freya either of them might have been imagining. She had indeed looked so dazed at times in their conversation that he had resolved not to bother her with questions on the subject and to take a 'wait and see' approach to her in general.

Despite this, she had somehow only seemed to be getting closer with him during the first week of the new term.

She was still having plenty of difficulty with names ("Appleson is the Gryffindor creep, right?"), and her habits had changed a bit, but it seemed her overall demeanor had shifted ever so slightly back a month so that the pair of them were on a much more familiar, even friendly, schedule. For the first time, he had a partner to avoid the Great Hall with—and, for nearly the first time, he wasn't avoiding it because of her. She hadn't yet been ready to face the crowds and he hadn't yet wanted to face sitting next to McGonagall (or anyone else), and so they had taken to eating meals in her quarters—with a little bit of re-working as to how they acquired said meals. Freya's magic had returned and she had leapt at the first opportunity to fetch him something, Apparating a dish up from the kitchens not once, but twice, on their first evening together. Though the 'twice' was due to the fact that she had first popped back in front of him with a great display of emptying an entire bowl of stew onto the floor, not realizing that Apparating with liquid would be a challenging task, and then having to return with a securely fastened serving lid over the tray the second time.

So it went that the biggest change was that he was spending more time than he ever previously would have imagined in Freya's cozy little sitting area in front of her fire, even more so than the dungeons or the library. He still had practical things to prepare for classes some nights, and they still visited the research library if he prompted, but she mostly invited him straight into spending time with her—while grading papers, of course, which he suspected was at least part of her intention given all the questions she had for him during these times. However, it wasn't that he was particularly opposed to this arrangement. It had actually given his stomach just the smallest bit of a pleasing flip to see her shyly look up at him and ask in a joking manner for help with her schoolwork. Nor was he particularly opposed to her helpful accommodations for him to take his meals in peace, or her being defensive for him while he was still struggling to readjust to the whole school thinking he was some walking gossip item (though he mostly put up with this because her colorful language was an amusing pay-off for embarrassing him in public). But what he could have done without returning quite so back to normal was what she had gotten into lately.

His birthday this year fell directly midweek, which meant that there was surely no time for pause to even entertain the idea of acknowledging or doing anything for it—thankfully, as he would have preferred. Most unfortunately, however, Freya was still very aware of what day it was, and she had found it particularly rejuvenating to participate in mischief centered around him, taunting him all week that she had 'big, big plans.'

These worrying plans had included specific instructions for him to wait an hour after classes before coming to visit her quarters this very evening of January 9th, and that the office doors would be unlocked so that he could let himself in rather than knock as he always did.

As he pushed open the first door, which slowly swung open as promised, Severus was greatly wishing she had just unleashed all of her terrariums and was going to make him collect everything again as a fun game rather than whatever else she could have planned. A simple rounding up of Dark creatures would have been a preferred fate than what he was fearing most—a party. Or, more directly, just any other human being that he would have to interact with in a celebratory way. He wasn't quite sure how far she had read into her diaries, but he wished he had made her sign a clause long ago that the 'no parties' rule would most certainly extend to ones thrown by her as well.

After passing through her silent office, finding all its creatures safely in their respective homes but still listening hard for any sounds through the second door, he grimaced as he pushed this open too and made his way into the now familiar chamber... where he stopped just beyond the archway.

"...Surprise."

Freya's head, which had been propped up by her elbow, jerked up from where she had been nodding off at the desk. She blinked sleepily around, stretching out an arm and stifling a yawn, until her eyes found him standing there and her expression changed to one of shock. In a fluid motion, her outstretched arm quickly switched to a grand gesture instead as she bounced to her feat.

"Surprise!" she called back, her warm voice echoing up to the ceiling in the pointedly deserted room.

He blinked at her with his mouth in a tight smile.

She had been dropping hints all day; how her hand was cramped from writing so many invitations, that she wasn't sure if she had prepared enough food for more than ten people. Now he found her sat where she always was: on her couch in front of the coffee table, its legs transfigured higher for when they used it as a writing desk, as it looked like she had been doing before succumbing to one of her recent bouts of tiredness. Very notably alone. The desk did contain a small pile of presents, but other than this and the fact that she hadn't taken down her lights from Christmas (actually, she had increased them, copying his own rendition so that this and her room candles were the only light with the windows darkened by evening) there were no signs of any such dangerously warned-of party.

Yes, apart from the fact that the armchair he usually sat in across from her was now a grand throne complete with lavish decorative gilding and party streamers, which she now bowed dramatically low in gesture to, the room was much the same as it always was.

"A party befitting of a prince with your particular tastes, your highness."

"I... hate you," he delivered with simple elegance.

"You're very welcome," she enthused with a wolfish grin, flipping her long hair as she straightened up and no longer showing a trace of drowsiness as she delighted in her moment of fruition. "The surprise is that obviously I'm not going to torture you with a social gathering."

"And what do you call what you were doing to me all day then?" he asked with a roll of his eyes, trying to look as annoyed as he should be and walking over to take his newly appointed seat. He paused before it in extreme distaste before slowly sitting, as if the over-embellishments might bite.

"Oh, that—that's just the daily routine, of course."

"Of course."

"Wait!" She sat back down and suddenly put out her hands across the table to stop him as he went to set his bag down on it. "Don't take anything out yet! This isn't work time, this is presents time."

"And will there be dinnertime somewhere on the schedule?"

She scrunched her face, thinking, and then grabbed one present in particular, sliding it over to him with a bright smile. He stared at the wrapped-up very obviously bottle-shaped package.

"I wonder if that could perhaps be a three-course meal," he said with sarcasm, already eyeing the tag that was tied around the neck spelling out his name in large flashy golden letters and wondering if she had written a note explaining that she had wrapped it just to tease him when he would already know exactly what it was.

"We'll never know unless you open it," she said, nudging the bottle and the rest of the gifts towards him encouragingly. "Come on, it's your birthday! Just enjoy it."

Holding in a sigh, he reluctantly sat forward in his seat to tuck in to a meal of gifts.

Shockingly enough, the bottle of wine was, as the label professed when he uncovered it, Blackthorn. The inside of the tag contained a quick note with an apology for having to wrap this one, because she obviously had not wanted to spoil this huge surprise for him, which he let Freya read after he was finished to sate her curiosity for her own unremembered handwriting. He carefully set the bottle to the side as if it was a caustic poison, internally vowing never to so much as have a single sip if he was planning on being anywhere near her.

The second gift made him frown, as it too was wrapped despite the third and final present definitely not following suit and this not lining up with what the tag on the wine had said. Current Freya raised her eyebrows at his reaction to the small parcel as he turned it over in his hands.

"Something the matter?"

He shrugged. "It's wrapped..."

"Should it... not be?"

He had been avoiding looking too directly at her as it was uncomfortable enough receiving presents without having to worry about his every reaction being watched as if by a hawk, but he now peered across the table. She had leaned forward when he had moved on to this gift, and he studied the way she was trying to correct this reaction, casually tucking her hair behind her ear and blinking at him innocently.

He narrowed his eyes and went back to the tiny package with piqued interest, taking his wand out at once to unwrap it. Her reaction of disappointment that he disappeared the paper rather than noisily tear into it was very familiar, but only got the tiniest bit of a smile from him as it merely served to pin down that she didn't remember their old gag—but it did seem to prove something else, which he was further moved to certainty of when he removed the carefully contained knife from its holding place within a small wooden box.

"No way!" Freya said with a gasp, her eyes wide as she leaned in. "That's... Do you know what that is? Why, it's the knife of legend; the fabled phoenix fire-forged blade, created at the peak of a volcano about to—oh, alright, it's just a knife," she concluded with a much blunter end to her excited story as his languid stare finally put too much of a damper on her fun. "You could have at least pretended to be impressed."

"Sorry," he said without sincerity, eyeing back and forth between her and the knife. She was biting her lip and still trying not to look too invested, but he had already figured her out. He didn't need to call her on this directly, though.

His attention turned back to his present, which, after inspecting a small piece of parchment containing only manufacturer's drawn instructions, he held aloft and placed his thumb on the little hidden wheel on the handle and released a latch at the bottom with his other hand. Clicking the wheel sent the knife blade flying through several quick transformations; everything from a tiny needle-point skewer, to several paring knives, to a set of chopping blades in various different metals, and, finally, to an overly large serrated knife that looked like it could have carved perhaps a small Thanksgiving dragon. He turned the wheel back to a regular silver carving knife, fit more for everyday use—perhaps on an apple—and then placed it back into its wooden box.

He got the feeling by the secretively sly look on her face that he wasn't the only one who had figured something out, wondering if he shouldn't have at some point told the kitchen elves not to repeat what he had asked for on Christmas eve and what state it bad been in when they had given it to him.

"Thank... you," he said with difficulty, not looking at her and hoping that she would repay him the courtesy of not mentioning things out loud. It was uncomfortably nice that he had earned a present from her current self as well as her previous incarnation, but he didn't want to make a fuss over it, or be fussed over.

He quickly moved on to his third and final present, glad that he recognized this one as an advanced planned plain box.

But it turned out to be the most confounding of them all, and one which might end up getting even less use than the wine.

"A book?" Freya frowned in mirror of his expression, apparently always quick to judge her own gifts.

"Not a book," he said slowly, not looking up from the inside cover he had flipped open, "it's..." He was too busy reading and re-reading the short note that was contained within to finish his sentence, but Freya seemed to pick up on things herself.

"Oh," she said with even deeper confusion, tilting her head now. "But... I take it you're not the diary keeping type?"

He glanced up at her finally, delivering his answer with a single raised eyebrow.

"Well," she said with a sigh, leaning back on the couch, "I suppose four out of five isn't a bad record. Maybe I'll find something nice for whatever holiday you lot celebrate next."

"Yes," he nodded back absently, the worry for whatever he had in store for the future not setting in as he gazed back down at the empty journal in his hands, still open to the note pressed between the cover and first page.

"Something to keep you from looking so upset every time I leave the castle. Use the one I gave you when you write." — Freya

He wondered why she had written her name after every single note if she had been planning to give them to him all at once in person herself.

More importantly, how she had ever thought that he would make use of a diary to let out his frustrations was beyond him. Her abrupt and unexplained disappearances had been annoying, but writing about them wouldn't solve the reason why.

He shut the book and ran his fingers over the embossing of a feather pressed into the soft leather cover, and then stowed the whole thing into a pocket of his robes where it fit surprisingly snug.

"So... Well—was it alright for a birthday, then?"

Freya's expression when he looked back up made whatever clever reply he had been about to come up with—which definitely would have included that he could have done without the throne—wither before he could open his mouth. Her eyes diverted away to the fire, interrupting his view of the sincerity he had seen there, and she went on.

"It's just... you did such a good job on Christmas... I'm sorry if I didn't deliver as well on the 'no party' party—celebration—affair."

"It's fine," he replied with quiet surprise at her genuine search for approval.

"'Fine' in a good way, or a bad way?"

His expression relaxed and he blinked slowly at her. "It's nice."

She looked even more unsure, peering over every inch of his face with narrowed eyes, but eventually relented as the corners of his mouth threatened to curl upwards. She smiled in a self-conscious way and for the first time since he had entered the room looked down to her own papers spread about the desk.

"Then... you just want to get to work?" He nodded once, already going for his bag. "You don't want to... go on any wild adventures? Or have any cake? Or pop into a pub and get a drink? Or—well, we have wine right here—"

"No."

Her hand froze mid-air before touching the bottle and he tried to smooth over his too-loud response with a placating look.

"Freya... this is fine."

She lowered her hand and, after a last comical pout, turned her eyes back down.

"It's really not fair," she mumbled at her papers, adjusting her position in her seat to follow his example back to work, "you get to act all princely, but I don't get to do anything exciting to treat you like a prince right back..."

Though his head was still tilted down to the desk as hers was, his eyes stayed up, watching as she deftly combed her hair back with her fingers into a more studious style that would keep it away from her face while she worked. His gaze found neutral space between them on the desk so that he could watch more covertly as each long strand disappeared until she had bundled it all up into a braid and smoothed it over her shoulder.

He so wished she wouldn't do that. It rather defeated the purpose of him putting forth all the effort to treat her to a nice holiday if it only made her want to one-up him. However much she was enjoying teasing him about his mother's maiden name, he was certainly no prince. The very reason that he had been trying to be nice to her in the first place was evidence enough of that. But the way that she had genuinely thanked him after Christmas and had since been jumping at the chance to be nice to him didn't fully portray that her teasing about his name was just that.

He momentarily remembered over two weeks back now when he had dropped her off at this very office door, well past midnight, and she smiled up at him and thanked him for a wonderful Christmas. Her cheeks hadn't rounded out in that way they did when she normally smiled wide, however, and he had been too busy staring at her eyes catching the moonlight, conveying her gratitude there instead, to have noticed much else anyway.

He didn't want her thanks, though. Those eyes only made him want to swiftly heel-turn and raise his chin, as if to snub the very golden color itself as far too rich for his tastes.

It had taken him three whole days just to convince her that he didn't want a cake, with his first attempt failing after she had not been entirely put off by the complicated recipe that he had stated was his favorite (she was determined to make it herself, so he had just picked something difficult), and the other two days had been spent convincing her he just didn't like cake at all, which she had taken about as well as if he had been trying to convince her he wasn't fond of the stars in the sky, sunlight, or breathing. After she had threatened to issue a formal summons to inspect his soul for some malfunction, he had snapped and declared his only wish was for a complete ban on all confections.

The distinct lack of cake as he glanced absently around the desk spoke that she had at least listened to this request. Still, if things were to get back to normal—and to be sure his definition of 'normal' was very skewed, for he certainly didn't mean for any forgiveness to be taking place—he needed for them to be even. If he was tallying up apples to cakes, movies to enchanted robes, accidental murder to making his life a brighter more bearable experience every time he got to see her smile... Well, he might as well stop counting, as it all seemed quite settled from his perspective.

However, so long as they found some semblance of an equilibrium, he could feel content to be upholding his New Year's resolution.

For now, he gathered his focus to finally settle into the grading that he was meant to be doing.

Most unusually for him, focus is what he was finding it hardest to regain since the tumultuous holiday, and the poorly-worded essays on the importance of different viscosities of water for potion-making were not holding his attention against all the other dozen or so thoughts swirling in his head. He had almost been more out of it lately than Freya, though not quite on her level of exhaustion, where she often kept her fingers pressed to her temples, holding up her head as she worked—as she did now. They must have made it all of twenty minutes before both of them looked to be ready to start using shortcuts rather than reading every word their students had jammed in to fill the length requirements. Freya had already demonstrated earlier in the week that she had re-learned the highlighting spell Flitwick had recommended and he had taught her, which had prompted him to have asked where she had picked that up and to which she hadn't had an answer beyond that it might have been somewhere in her fifteenth pile of notes.

When he saw that she was sitting with both hands on the sides of her perplexed face, he knew things were particularly bad—both because it looked to be an incident where he might need offer his assistance, and because he was paying much more attention to her eyes roaming over the page than his own work.

"Need any help?"

She slowly looked up at his question, her eyes blinking in deep confusion, before shaking her head in disbelief.

"I... really don't think this is something you can help with."

Now he was puzzled, and after conveying as much with a highly raised brow, she demonstrated what she meant by sitting up and raising the scroll of parchment from the desk, which fell all the way down to it even though she held it high enough that her face was hidden behind the middle.

"Ahem. '...but my uncle, who just got re-married to a hag, showed up to Christmas dinner too, which made Auntie Penny (she's the one who's part-veela) very upset, and my mum had to step in before the ham to break them both up, which was when I got to meet my second cousin, who, turns out, got bit by a werewolf only just this past summer. We went out back and played ball while dad got Uncle Eric down from the roof.'"

She dropped the scroll back to the desk, revealing her bewildered and defeated expression.

"All I asked... was how their holiday went."

He nodded very slowly, biting back his grin with effort. "And did you, perhaps, ask them to relate it to the class theme...?"

She blinked once at him with a deadly stare. "Alright, so you might be right about essay topics, but I am never taking your advice on length again." She shook out the scroll roughly to straighten it. "What is it with kids...?"

"I for one am very interested to hear if he fed his second cousin any scraps under the table." She shot him a disparaging look and he relented to a more serious comment. "First year?"

"Oh, what gave it away? The prattle or the punctuation?"

"The outlandish claims about relatives being various different beings. It happens a lot with children believing anything an adult says in jest and being too stupid to correctly identify for themselves."

"Harsh," she said with a cool grin, "coming from someone who was eleven only as many years ago."

He refrained from pointing out that his now twenty-two-year-old self was the one who had been helping her out lately, returning only a curt smile.

She leaned forward in her seat with sudden sparkling interest, abandoning the scroll off to the side. "And what were your essays like at that age, then? I'll bet your teachers were reading them with the same expression."

His lips pursed, lacking ground to defend himself from this notion as he was more than certain he had caused his teachers—especially those still working here—to give his papers plenty of looks.

"Not because my essays were idiotic," he said with mild defensiveness, "just because they were usually... longer. And I may have... questioned a few points."

She slowly raised her brows. "Do you perhaps mean 'argued a few points'?"

The corners of his lips began to curl upward. "...Perhaps."

"Little know-it-all Sev," she laughed, "now that's a funny addition to the actual picture."

At this mention, his eyes snapped downward and he reflexively reset his quill to paper, pretending to mark something off. He still was not at all happy she had seen them, but thankfully she made no more comments about his childhood photos. Less thankfully, she hadn't strayed from the topic.

"So, if you were always that controversial," she went on, making him narrow his eyes at her word choice, as it sounded to him a lot like 'unpopular' but in a nicer way, "were things different back when you were a student like the rest? You can't tell them off now, but back then would you have 'argued' their ear off if they spoke to you rudely?"

He upheld his silent glare for a moment before answering. He understood where her curiosity was stemming from; she had already commented plenty in recent days that he was far too lenient on students who disrespected him and questioned at every opportunity why he put up with it, seemingly unable to conflate his sour demeanor with how often he dragged her away from doing his reprimanding for him. He wanted to mention that he had only been letting them off easy in the hallways, within sight of other staff members, and that his class time was his domain to enact retribution, but it didn't quite seem like something he should be confessing to when he was trying to set the example of proper scholarly conduct for her. All this aside, her approach to pry open his childhood for the reasoning to his actions wasn't very welcome, mostly because it meant he had to begrudgingly recall every less-than-ideal day of it.

"Well," he said finally, "I never literally took anyone's ear off, if that answers your question."

She gave a soft amused scoff at this, nodding as if that did indeed settle things in her mind. "Right, I thought so. Things must have been very different then, otherwise I would have quite the memory somewhere of having had to glue some poor student back together," she said without concern, already redirecting back to her work.

However, his own attention stayed on her. "What do you mean you 'thought so'?"

"Oh, well, I just heard some rumor about..." Her eyes searched the room in her pause even as his widened. "...Some things—just students gossiping. But I doubt any of its true, right?"

His gut twisted in bitter realization that what had preceded the holidays had not been so neatly boxed up and shoved into the back of some vanishing closet. He mentally cursed her for bringing this up, and then himself for not thinking to immediately taboo the whole topic so that it would not have ever gotten back to her in the first place. Even though he tried to dissolve the mortifying effect of less than idyllic schoolyard memories and instead muster the grace of his age, his muttered response still came off just a touch acidic.

"What do you think?"

This perhaps was not the best response, as he had forgotten Freya's penchant to literally try to answer his dismissive rhetorical questions and now had to endure her sizing him up. Her lilted laughter at the end of her surveying did nothing to help his darkening mood.

"No way," she said with a decisive shake of her head, "couldn't be. I can't imagine anyone picking more than one fight with you and finding out quick you're not easy to mess with."

He stared back at her easy-going grin, making her look merely confident that such a thing would be no more than a playful experience for him, his expectations of ridicule thoroughly melted and leaving his mouth rather useless for words. Instead, he mentally vowed to defend to the grave whatever this image she had of him was, already working up a mild panic that there was plenty of evidence to the contrary contained within files and heads throughout the school. Sneaking out one night to completely wipe the entire castle clean, put a hex on the topic, and take out anyone who knew the truth one by one was seeming like a tempting plan of action.

"Well, at least," she continued with a thoughtful frown, "I know it didn't go so well for me when I tried it."

He guiltily put a nix on even his facetious thoughts of offing anyone, but still thought it would be a profound relief when the students who had gone to school at the same time as him finally all graduated.

"So then, were you not a Death Eater when you were in school?"

"Wh—What?" His hesitant feelings of repairing pride abruptly came to a jerking halt. Her eyes widened in innocent surprise, and he had to remind himself that she was still going through her phase of asking nonstop questions to get his jaw to close, but even so, she could do with perhaps recollecting her memories of tactfulness. "Of course I wasn't. You think they would let an underage wizard join their ranks?"

"I think they'd do that and be down at the local pound recruiting rabid dogs as well, to be honest," she said with a raised brow. "They didn't exactly seem like the choosy sort—well, apart from the..." She made a face as she reached for the words, looking away as she finished with "...other stuff" and then quickly moved on. "So then—you didn't get your Mark until after graduating?"

Still not recovered from the first surprise, this next one only added an extra crease to his brow, as he realized that her brightly curious eyes had been going—as they did now—to his left arm for the past couple minutes. So, that's what she had been interested about.

"Been reading up on the finer details of the war, have you?" he asked as his expression settled back down to a moody glower, his voice lowering to match it. She gave only a casual shrug in response.

"I might've been... I don't seem to have any memory of what one of those actually looks like, though."

Her gaze held onto his, conveying her meaning without voicing the request and waiting patiently, presumably to see if he would steer away or continue.

"And you do realize," his voice growing more serious, trying to break through her forced nonchalance, as the only way he would be entertaining this discussion is if she behaved, "that it doesn't exactly... look the same?"

"That's what makes it a fascinating bit of magic though, isn't it?"

If by 'fascinating' you mean 'grotesquely horrifying to have on my own body,' he thought.

He wasn't completely opposed to her idea enough to voice his misgivings, although he did have plenty of them, and for a hard moment he only stared at the left sleeve of his robe. To deny that he understood having a fascination for the Dark Arts would be quite the absurd joke, and it was after all her current profession, but he was sure she was interested beyond just that and it was more so this thought that gave him considerable pause. He was already carrying regrets about sharing so much of his personal life with her, and it had just been tiny tidbits. Not to mention what he had decided over New Year's...

Still. There was no real reason to deny her interest in just a look, and in some absurd way he wanted her to see. As if flippantly playing into her mellow attitude could bury down his own uneasiness.

With his fingers at the cuff of his sleeve, slowly pulling it back, he vividly remembered the night on which he had done this very motion for Dumbledore; in the room of a Hogsmeade inn, both of them staring down in mute shock at what used to be a horrible red and sometimes inky black image burned by magic into his very flesh, and his sweat had run as cold as it had on the day that he had been given it to see that only a mere shiny raised scar was left.

Both memories still made him vaguely queasy, and he kept his eyes fixed in a haze on the desk as he tugged the fabric up to his elbow, even as Freya leaned in.

"No touching," he warned as her hands had reached out, making them pause midair at his voice. Her calm eyes were much closer as she leveled her gaze with his, seemingly all business now.

"May I touch... around it? And may I see your other hand as well?"

He blinked with extreme apprehension at these requests, but relented to her sincere expression. He did sigh and set his face to look rather harassed at having to lean in more over the table, feeling like he was getting ready for an arm-wrestling match with her—and nearly did. Apparently by 'touch' she had meant to feel up his entire forearm, as her hands traced over every inch, including, strangely, his right as well. He watched with greatly mounting worry, and a healthy increase of annoyance, as it became harder to not twitch at her gentle but unrelenting touch, as she went from feeling all around the ugly scar, to squeezing both his hands in hers (earning a very deepened frown from him, though she didn't break her concentration), to even checking his pulse at his wrist and crook of his elbow. He felt like some living experiment and suddenly had great sympathy for her secrecy surrounding her own magical embodiments.

"Hm..."

It seemed her final inspection was perhaps more of a contemplative motion, as her fingertip traced as closely as he would let her get without jerking away around the scarred symbol, and he watched her eyes stay fixed in place, brows knit, as every muscle in his left side felt like it was simultaneously going taut and falling relaxed against his will, on a repeat cycle each time the light ticklish sensation went from the sensitive inner skin to the outer sides. At last his hand gave an irrepressible spasm and she snapped out of her thoughts, releasing him. He immediately clutched at his arm, feeling quite confused that for once it wasn't pain that he was massaging out of his tingling skin, and keeping his eyes diverted far to one side of the room.

"That really is..." Freya's words trailed off down the same path as her eyes followed, before snapping back to attention on him. "You know, I think—if you'll let me, that is—I could—"

"No."

She blinked, her mouth still open, as she met his suddenly impassive stare. Her lips slowly closed as she watched him yank his sleeve back down and smooth the warm fabric.

"Oh. Right—of course—I just thought that..." He tried not to outwardly grimace as he waited for her to say what he already knew. She shrugged and finished, "Maybe it could have been like an extra gift if I could do something—"

"Well, you can't."

Her mouth hung open again, and for a moment he thought his tone had been a shade too rude, knowing she wasn't exactly as fond of dealing with his tones lately, but she merely looked away and set her jaw.

"Right," she said with a nod, "I see that now. Obviously my worst gift idea yet, should have just gone with a great pair of socks."

He let the silence take hold as they both stared off in opposite directions, almost wishing that she hadn't returned to normal enough to cow to his rudeness and would fight him on it instead. But, unmistakably, she had; in the very most difficult and trying of ways, just as he had been afraid of right before lifting his sleeve, Freya was back to form to try and push her jarfuls of helpfulness onto him, and he found that he still was not keen on the taste. Part of him felt even more justified to decline her advances on this front now, after knowing just how meddlesome and coddling she had been in the past, keeping him out of the Order for inane reasons—but another more pressing part of him was busy cursing himself for being the first to shift his eyes back towards hers and not liking the sight of her quiet dismay.

Quietly drawing in a great breath, he broke the silence.

"It isn't something to be messed with," he said in a muted voice, attempting to explain without sounding condescending like he was reprimanding a student. "The effects of trying are not very... desirable." The look she gave him then made him sorry for ever thinking she might feel as if he were insulting her intelligence, showing only deep concern to be slighted in a different way.

"I wouldn't have assumed anything less," she assured him. "I never would have proposed anything that could have hurt you, Severus, I just thought... well, that you already were being hurt." She looked away and sank further back into the couch cushions, her fingers nervously going to her mouth so that the first of her next words were slightly obscured. "Looks like it would hurt, anyway... But I suppose I should have known that you're clever enough to be taking care of things on your own, of course. I just can't help myself it seems; wanting to mess with magics that shouldn't be messed with."

He returned the bleak smile she offered towards him with raised brows, suddenly distracted from the topic of his own self.

"Messing with magics such as...?" He had caught her pluralization, and now caught too her sudden look of realization, narrowing his eyes as hers darted away. His mouth pulled into a thin line. "Such as the very foundational magics that make up your entire being—?"

"Ah—hm—I seem to recall also reading that Death Eaters could communicate via those marks; would you care to elaborate on this intriguing—"

"Are you having ill-effects from remembering things?"

The comically ponderous look she had adorned froze, her hand still holding her chin, as her diversion fell apart under his stare. His piercing look gave no remorse, unwilling to let her worm away given that she was always asking invasion questions of him—plus, she was only grimacing in reluctant jest, not appearing to be offended by his cool, knowing smirk as he waited patiently, netting his hands with his elbows on the armrests of the throne, forgetting for a moment to not display himself like a lord of the room.

Her face scrunched up even more, her posture squirming back to face him head-on with her arms folded.

"I... It's just..." She suddenly sat up so far that she was leaning over the desk. "Do I look older to you? Be honest. I swear I look older than I remember, just slightly, but..."

He blinked at her panicked face—and then slowly pursed his lips tightly shut. He certainly wasn't touching that question. She didn't look any older than the day he had first seen her youthful face and had determined that they must be close in years, but he wasn't about to comment on a woman's apparent age, feeling like he had most assuredly at some point been instilled with the notion to avoid this. Even so, the pleading expression on her face—which looked more than perfectly fine—made the corners of his mouth twitch, and he eventually answered her with a question of his own.

"Do you feel older?"

Her brows creased as she thought about this change of perspective for a moment.

"No, not really... I feel more..." He watched her eyes haze over for a split second, but the look was gone before he could even assess it. "Well, what about you—do you feel older with your birthday?"

He shook his head with a quiet scoff... then his placid amusement at the silly idea faded from his face as he remembered everything from the past year and suddenly felt that he had rapidly aged by about five decades. In retrospect, the past four years gave the impression that he had been contained within a bubble, and now with it burst, he was just waking up to find that he was without, and had missed out on, something vital.

"At least," he said, jumping ship from his thoughts, "I haven't started losing my memory and going grey."

He couldn't resist a derisive grin as her hand whipped to her head, patting her hair all over—and then stared daggers at him for his more than apparent lack of concern for her fears. He didn't know what she was worried about though; it sounded more plausible to him that she was just naturally aging and that this wasn't a real negative side effect. There were much more obvious ones that she could have said, such as her tiredness and confusion, or anything else truly honest that she could be hiding and he was sure would have been worthy of genuine sympathy if his theories about what went on following her secretive meetings with Dumbledore were even remotely accurate.

Moreover, on the topic of honesty, she wasn't the only one who had been having such meetings. For just a moment he had been hoping to be about to stumble himself towards headway on a particular task.

However, it was seeming more likely that he would have to purposefully steer things that way if he truly wanted to go there, which he wasn't sure that he did. Though this was as good an opening as any if he was going to attempt to scratch that surface, and it doubled as a dodge away from being the spectacle in this conversation, as she kept trying to make him out to be.

A twinge of guilt hit his stomach as he raised his eyes to hers, but he honed the feeling into a silent apology towards her pouting face, trying to show that he had not fully left her hanging on the subject she had broached, and did have concern for her worries.

"Besides that," he spoke up in a softer tone, "how have you been feeling lately?"

Her immediate reaction to look away wasn't so surprising; he considered it plainly obvious that he wasn't merely asking how she felt about returning to her teaching responsibilities. He kept his eyes trained on hers, willing her to take his interest genuinely and give him a serious answer.

"Um," she shrugged, staring down at her knees, "I dunno... You mean apart from suddenly feeling all dutiful and concerned with this wizarding society business?" He blinked slowly at her, waiting for her evasive smile to subside as her banter went unanswered. There wasn't a time in his memory when she had willingly shared much about herself unless in radical situations, such as when she had been drunk or thinking of him as no more than a stranger, but he knew from these instances that there was plenty to be shared if she would just stop diverting her eyes as if he was pressing her on trial.

Straightening himself to lean back with more authority in his gaudy throne, he debated the drastic tactic of leveraging his birthday if she wouldn't at least give him a "Not great, thanks" soon. She seemed to pick up on the threat behind his steady stare, finally readjusting her hands in her lap and poking her tongue against her cheek before continuing.

"Well... I suppose... I feel as if I've just woken up out of a dead sleep," he watched her shoulders rise stiffly, as if she had been about to try and pass this off as a joke but the delivery had been off, and her tone shifted. "And... it's as if... there's something I'm meant to be doing. Some life-changing thing, but it was ages ago and I've already missed it, so now I've just got this... feeling like I'm missing something really important."

His next breath came in deep and steady, and he felt as if his stare was no longer just for show.

With her brows creased and her eyes out of focus, she twisted the tiny end of her braid—and then took in a sudden breath and looked back up. "Honestly I just wish I could get a good night's sleep at this point," she said with a nervous laugh, "my morning class found me snoring on my desk the other day and I almost snapped at them." She pulled a face and demonstrated with a held-out hand that she meant the magical kind.

"You snore?"

Her expression immediately dropped to a half-lidded glare, her thumb and forefinger staying pressed together before her face, to which he smiled playfully back.

"Yes, thanks so much for listening, Severus," she quipped as she straightened up in her seat, "what a true and honest friend you are."

"The pleasure is all mine," he insisted silkily.

She made a sour face at him and then busied herself with picking up her quill and flipping it between her fingers, even daring to poke at the papers she had been ignoring. It made him glance down at his own abandoned work.

Talking to her, however, was work of a different kind.

Despite her attempt to brush off her more serious reply, she had truly given him an answer; which was more, he knew, than her oldest and supposedly closest friend could say. A strange mix of guilt and pride swirled around his gut till they canceled each other out, leaving him with just the feeling of a small pit. Try as he might to convince himself it was out of his own heart-felt concern for her, the truth put a poison barb through this, spoiling the whole bushel of sentiment at once.

There was still something which he could clutch at to try and dissuade the feeling though. Unfortunately it was his own fault this time for leaving the mood on a comical note, one which he would have to undo if he even hoped to properly convey his words.

He lightly cleared his throat, keeping his eyes on his thumbs as they pressed together in his interlocked hands, only glancing up at her when necessary.

"Freya," he started, waiting to catch sight of her turning attention and letting his deepened tone register with her before continuing. "If there's anything I can do... would you... That is—if it would be beneficial..." He paused before he could further stammer himself down this road, and then picked up again when he was sure he had his words chosen more carefully. "I could... if you wanted to... share my own memories with you, perhaps—"

"No."

His eyes stayed locked down onto his hands at the edge of the desk.

"Thank you... but, no."

Her tone hadn't been nearly as harsh as his when delivering the same blow, but it had been plenty firm. It was a good thing really, as he hadn't been at all confident in actually following through with his offer. And anyway, he wasn't really meant to know the full details enough to be making decisions about his confidence levels. Unbeknownst to her, as there had assuredly been no birds of any kind listening at the eaves at the time, he had been imparted with information beyond her own brief explanations of what went on during her meetings. Thus, he knew that the finer points of sharing his own memories of their time together so that she could perhaps, with enough hope, regain things in the same arduous way she had been for the past couple of weeks, were not exactly simple. It really was good then that she had stopped his own foolish rush to aid her.

But even so, it left a sharp pierce in his chest.

"Could you..."

He glanced up at the sound of her voice and watched her mull over her words before continuing.

"Could you ask me again later? I appreciate the offer," her chin lowered slightly so that her eyes were angled up at him, shining with sincerity, "really. I do. But..."

"But it's already a lot," he finished for her, as the deep breath she had taken hadn't seemed to have brought with it an easy finish to her words.

With a tentative smile, she nodded.

He did so as well in return.

"Of course."

For the rest of the evening work period, though he finally found his focus for his work, his chest couldn't seem to dissolve the hard stone lodged within it. It wasn't as if he could freely let his mind wander off too far in front of her, and besides, his paperwork did require actual doing. So, he sat and muddled through, until things were wrapped up as much as they could be before the lengthier weekend block of time, Freya was nodding off against her palm, and he had to say goodnight at their new leaving off place at her office door.

Unfortunately for him, before he could escape, or even do much more than blink, this sentiment ended at 'good—' as his chest was given a rattling by Freya hugging him in a proper squeeze.

"Happy birthday, Severus," she said upon releasing him, looking up with a wide sleepy smile. "I hope it was a princely one... and I promise no more teasing; I'll bin the throne."

He nodded rather mechanically, torn between trying to think of something more meaningful to say back, and wanting to turn and run before he asked for a more lengthy birthday hug that he could properly enjoy. He settled for a tight smile back that was more of a twitch, and took his leave from her doorstep rather hastily.

With each step down to the dungeons his boots felt heavier, and by the time he was at his office door, he was repeating his resolution in his head like a mantra to keep from turning back.

Over the holidays, in a guest room at his relative's house, with his newly gifted clothes still smelling lightly of her perfume and his head full of thoughts of her from the past twenty-four hours, he had resolved it then and there. This was inappropriate. Not only because he was behaving far too friendly with someone in a precarious state, but because this was not how he should be acting in the first place. Without Freya around to diffuse his mood, he had been left grimacing at every embarrassing mental replay of his actions, glad the rest of his family was all sour-faced as well and hadn't noticed anything off. But he wasn't some idiot schoolboy, doomed to be strung along by fleeting fancies, making an utter fool of himself and unable to orderly deliver his words without tripping over them. He rightly knew that things needed to be precisely thought-out and properly planned.

Such as his planned decision to simply give it up.

The end goal, the future that this pathway in his mind led, was only someplace that he was not willing to go poking around with even a twenty-foot pole and every known protective magic in the world. He wasn't meant for such a future. He shouldn't be bothering her in this way with thoughts he could scarcely quantify. He had plenty of other deeply cutting guilts to getting on with. Things which he couldn't just forget. He was no prince.

So the dull ache in his chest as he drifted through his office got only scorn from him. He wasn't meant to be sulking about what he was not fit for, but instead be glad to have even that little glimmer of hope that he could at least some time in the future potentially share his memories with her. That was the only thing he was good for now; a final gift to repay what he had done and then call it even so that he could be free of this feeling. He let his bag fall from his arm onto the desk without even looking as he passed straight across and up to his bedchamber, hopeful for sleep.

However, what awaited him stopped his progress no further than the doorway.

It was an odd thing to want to give someone something—anything—even the smallest token. As if realizing the impossibility of physically giving a person the whole world and settling instead for whatever one could grasp within their limited reach, hoping beyond hope that it would hold the same worth.

It was a foolish thing, though. It lacked any structure or sense. Because, in truth, he had nothing good to give her that could ever measure up.

Candlelight was bouncing off the stone walls, the source of it coming from his dresser. He had no candles in this room though, and in fact, these were not the everyday kind.

Striding over in mute disbelief, he first stared down at what was closer to the edge of the furniture: a little card standing up to display a handwritten note, the ink dry as if it had been written and placed hours prior. Behind it though, the mini personal-sized cake looked fresh as could be.

"You don't have to tell me if you like it or you throw it out, but I thought you deserved a proper one. —Freya x"

The sigh that escaped from his chest, which felt as if leaking the last of the life out of him, was so great it nearly threatened the burning tips of the candles and had him scrambling to stop the air as if by force of will from his protectively raised hands. With more care, he lowered them back to his sides, his shoulders going slack as he watched the dancing fire settle down, and sighing once more in a long, slow, very pained way.

That's the very thing though... I don't. I don't deserve it.

This only proved the integrity of his resolution: Freya was too good a friend for him to risk disastrously messing all of that up. Not after he had come so close to doing just that. He had been down this road before, and while it had ended rather apocalyptically and he doubted those circumstances could ever align into being again, he still wasn't enthusiastic to try it with his luck. He was already pushing those bounds just by getting to call her a friend. She was more than that though, and it seemed absurd to lower her to this. And her eyes on that night of Christmas had looked so...

And he was doing it again. Even after he had resolutely decided against this. It always seemed so simple when he was away, the clarity coming to him with the ease of being miles apart, but so much more difficult to achieve here. He really wasn't meant to be anywhere near her. Though, he was. Sitting in front of a fire he shouldn't touch, a sun he shouldn't fly too close to, a flame to which he definitely should not succumb. It was a good thing she hadn't brought up that he always sat across from her when there was plenty of room on the sofa beside her.

He wished that he could have worse friends. Or at least ones that didn't make him feel so inadequate. One that didn't make things so difficult. One that could understand that he was plenty used to having his birthday lumped into Christmas and overlooked, and know not to waste the effort shining a light that was far too bright onto him, making him do such stupid things as offer up sharing his innermost thoughts and memories when he knew quite well that he would never.

He stood in the shadowy room, staring into the tiny flames on his beautiful cake for a long while, unable to do something so awful as to snuff out that which looked so perfect with a wish he should not make.

The next morning, he indulged in possibly his most unhealthy breakfast ever, and casually thanked Freya in the middle of their conversation about exam planning without ever mentioning why.

Thus the sleepy month of January continued. And eventually, with much less cake, the swing towards normalcy did hold steady. For him, a little too lockstep with how December had been, however, as his least favorite thing again came on Sundays.

His first private meeting of the new year with Dumbledore had been right when he'd returned from holiday, and he had gotten quite the earful of information. It had mostly been to do with his now-revoked travel ban, as, since Freya was still engrossed in her own business, he truly would be called upon to step up to that task, which he had been more than eager to accept. But Dumbledore had given him more than just that to think about.

"I saw an old friend of yours the other day."

Severus, having been staring at the carpet from his usual central position stood before the headmaster's ancient desk, now looked up at this slightly alarming news.

"Not one," Dumbledore continued, "that you made mention of before Christmas. This one has apparently not been seen for the past six months." His blue eyes held steady as if gauging the reaction to this before he revealed any more. "He was apprehended last week with the help of the International Department; in Bulgaria, I believe...?"

The memory of a familiar accent sounding in his mind made his head rise further in recognition. Having been following the papers much more closely lately, he remembered as well seeing the arrest be mentioned. He could do without people in Azkaban being referred to as his friends, though. "And?"

"And he happened to mention you."

This time his gaze towards the carpet held, as his tightening jaw restricted the muscles in his neck, freezing with the rest of him. He was just getting out of trouble with the papers and the populace.

"Mentioned me—?"

"And thankfully just that. Your name was thrown in with several others, but of course yours was the only one that could be vouched for." Dumbledore inclined his head. "By myself. Of course."

If he was expecting thanks, he would find himself waiting quite a while, as Severus had no current nor future plans to direct his eyes towards anything other than a bookshelf, his lips tightly closed. Dumbledore gave a quiet sigh.

"Most regrettably," he went on, his calm voice sounding more forced, "there are things in this world which I cannot predict; the future, the weather—and what reporters will or won't choose to sensationalize for their otherwise admirable work. This could be seen as a good thing, coming at an opportune time when I have already arranged the papers to correct themselves, which one might infer was me being rather thin-skinned and overplaying my hand, but I can defend myself in saying that it was not for my own reputation only to one person alone." He paused as this person in question finally raised his eyes, though still possessing a slightly mutinous expression. "Fortunately, people do not like to have their opinions swayed back and forth, and they will inevitably lose interest if anything else were to come to light. And if that does happen, I will try to give forewarning this time. Though," he lowered his chin to peer over the tops of his glasses, "it was my understanding that you would have been prepared for this inevitability."

"I was," Severus snapped.

"And yet you ran," Dumbledore countered as if accusing him of no more than having milk with his afternoon tea.

"I did not—run," he said, shocked that this was being brought up so abruptly right when he had thought the topic had been closed after not hearing a word of it last meeting. He didn't have the patience currently to be heaping any more guilt onto his plate, or playing nice. "That wasn't the reason—… I..." But a hand was held up to stop him before he could sort out his excuses, and he angrily shut his mouth.

"My point," the older wizard went on in a calming tone, "in bringing this up was not to upset you, but to make sure that you are prepared. It will once again be vital that you play your role perfectly; it may now even be beneficial for things to be this way. I did take care not mention why it was that you were cleared, after all... You are still prepared to carry things out as planned?"

His shoulders warily slackened as he accepted that this wasn't meant to be an argument, narrowing his eyes as his mind more eagerly switched over to business.

"Of course," he said with cool confidence. He was more inclined to believe that it was Dumbledore who wasn't prepared to let him off on his own to complete an errand of sorts. This thought was further supported by the clipped and brief response he gave.

"Good."

His blue eyes lingered over him for a moment, making Severus want to stubbornly hold his gaze as if to ward off the intrusion, but not wanting to instead welcome in one of a different kind. They both parted their attentions to other more interesting things in the room, going quiet in such a way that Severus had come to expect could mean that he would either be trapped in here for another fifteen minutes, or he was about to be dismissed. There was no way to tell until the headmaster had his time to silently sift through his thoughts, and so he could only wait, still, after all this time, preferring to stand rather than sit.

"...And did you, perhaps, get the chance to speak with Freya lately?"

At this, his thoughts seemed to flatten out. So, it was to be another fifteen minutes, then.

The cause for his reaction was not the threat of spending more time here, however, but of a need to now use a particularly cautious approach.

"She's fine," he answered in a dismissive voice, keeping his brows creased and his eyes focused where they had been on the clawed foot of the desk, as if still too caught up in his irritations about his own troubles to care much for this change in topic.

He felt almost as defensive as if the question had been posed about his own well-being. It was a bit too late for him to be acting as a guard to her personal information, however, considering what he had found out his previous visit here, prompted from his own voiced question.

Trying to broach the subject as a mere interest in the mechanics of this proposed return of her memories via Dumbledore's own, which he had casually slipped out that he knew of, had not gone unnoticed by the astute headmaster. Although, he had answered all the same, stating that Severus was right to be intrigued, as it had plenty to do with something which might be of particular personal interest.

Legilimency; or as Dumbledore had put it, a version of the same sort, but achieved by phoenix magic instead, and much more amicably than it was often used among wizards. As demonstrated with phoenix song, which Dumbledore had explained as if he were the only one in the room who had ever experienced it, it plays within the listener's very core—directly into their mind. He had also added off-handedly that there were other known magical creatures capable of Legilimency as well, further having made Severus kick himself for not putting this all together.

He had been somewhat glad to have never experienced this from her, as the concept of mutually sharing his mind with anyone was viscerally repulsive to him, but he had wondered why he never knew this about her. He had just been feeling most uneasy about the possible reasons, when Dumbledore had brought up that he hadn't found out Freya even had a human form until years into their knowing of each other; she had always communicated with him in this alternative way, using thoughts rather than speech. For him, it had been the opposite. Either way, then, it was obvious that she was simply secretive about herself no matter what.

Which—as he concentrated his mind on being frustrated with Dumbledore for not at the very least mentioning a second time to the staff that he wasn't a Death Eater plotting their demise so that he could return to eating his meals in peace in the Great Hall—only made him more determined to follow his assigned duty of reporting back about her state to the barest of minimums. Besides, informing Dumbledore that she was currently more open with him wasn't exactly the kind of news he wanted to be breaking when he was just starting to be trusted.

"She's just tired," he went on as if it held so little interest to him that he could only recall the boring details with some deliberation, "but she is handling it. She hasn't set anyone ablaze, at any rate."

"Thank you, Severus. I am sure if someone had been set on fire within this school, I would be hearing about it from you first and foremost."

He blinked languidly back at Dumbledore's unamused gaze, mulishly unwilling to appear apologetic for his empty words that were only meant to pad the dead air of what he was not sharing. All the previous meeting's talk of Legilimency had made his guard over his own mind extra alert, and he was forgoing his manners particularly to instead focus on keeping his thoughts blank and sterile with more easily accessible emotions.

Dumbledore broke their stare with a sigh, gazing out to the windows as if checking that they still were not being overheard by anyone who might fit nicely on the sill.

"The sleeplessness is to be expected," he said. "It will be her dreams keeping her awake through the night."

Severus frowned. "Dreams?" He was under the impression that she was sleeping more lately, not less.

"Oh yes; dreams. I had wondered how she would handle this period while keeping up with her teaching..." His wizened eyes lingered on the window as he nodded slowly, seemingly at his own thoughts, before turning back. "As I have said: she will remember. And it will be... quite disorientating."

Itching to know more, while knowing full well he had already decided not to pry, he turned this over in his mind for some time until his own eyes drifted towards the scenery through the glass. He watched the morning light where it had begun its slow creep along the floor, inching further inwards.

Before leaving the office a moment later upon dismissal, the thought occurred to him that Dumbledore had not said for whom it would be disorientating.

It did turn out that keeping a close eye on Freya had been a good idea, though he still resented being told to do so, as he was perfectly capable of becoming consumed with thinking about her all on his own and did not welcome this further reasoning.

He arrived to her office late one evening, having been busy taking care of his Head of House duties, which had piled on at the start of the new term.

Plenty of students were having trouble with his class—unfathomably to him, as he had specifically gutted his course plans to the simplest of concepts just for them (as well as to abide by restrictions set by the Ministry) —and he was now being forced to pay extra attention to those furthest behind with additional lessons after class hours. It was almost enough to give him doubts about crunching all of the standard year lessons down a grade so that the more advanced levels could actually be advanced, which had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Now his fifth-years were rabbling that they weren't going to be on schedule for exam preparation, and their entire futures would come crashing down if they didn't pass, which was somehow his fault. He was mostly tuning all of it out, knowing their Ministry-standard exams would be a cake walk compared to his classes, and that all of them appeared to be capable of passing by those regulations. That didn't mean they couldn't stand to learn a thing or two with the pressure on. Besides, should they actually pass, they would do well to be more afraid for his upper-level curriculums.

In the end, he was hurrying through Freya's office in a weary, mildly irritated blur, pausing only to knock on the second door as always (despite the fact that she left it unlocked for his visits, it was still her sleeping quarters as well, and he was determined to remember to treat it as such) before letting himself into the sitting room behind. A strong bout of déjà vu had him coming to a dead stop just inside the archway.

His pace from here slowed, quieting his steps as he cautiously approached her with an amused smirk.

"Sleeping on the job again?"

Her head snapped up from where it had been laying on black leather, her arms encircling the little book. He raised a brow as her eyes wildly looked around until they found his staring down at her—and then his smile promptly vanished.

"Severus?"

He was dropping to sit beside her at once, his bag falling from his shoulder, mirroring her motion to grab onto him where she could, ending up with her hands clutching at his arms. But before he could even give voice to his concern, it was stolen from him.

"Are you alright?" she asked breathlessly, her brows tightly knit and her bleary eyes fighting against their blinking to search his face for something which he could not fathom but had his expression snapping into an even more confused frown.

"What—me?" He glanced at his hand on her shoulder as if checking for physical evidence that indeed he was the one trying to jump to her aide, while she was the one who had jolted from her sleep in a blind panic, looking like she might have been emerging from an internal warzone by her wide terrified eyes. He had never heard her voice so brittle before, and to hear her speak his name in that way had immediately struck him. However, the situation seemed almost the opposite, with her hands gently patting at his arms and her eyes, still in a haze, darting all over him as if checking for some grievous injury. It was deeply unnerving, as if she knew better than he did that something was terribly wrong with him, and he was suddenly afraid of her finding whatever it was. "I'm fine," he said with emphasis to hopefully get her to cut it out. "Are... you alright?"

She met his gaze once more, though this time she seemed confused that he had spoken, and it wasn't until after a moment of vacant blinking that he was relieved to at last see she did appear to be coming to her senses, taking in a deep breath and looking around the room for the first time instead of just at him.

"I... Oh." Her hands dropped from his arms as she was distracted with her gradual realization, and he hesitantly slid his away as well. His attention stayed marked on her face though, as she slowly bent forward, dropping her head into her hand. "...Oh."

He wasn't at all sure what to do, as the sensible thing of perhaps asking her some stabilizing questions to see where her mind was currently at seemed a bit invasive when he wasn't yet sure what was going on. He teetered on the edge for a moment, back and forth between if this would count as butting in or if he could be of service. Ultimately, for now, he landed back to the neutral option where his instinct had originally driven him, raising his hand to again place it on her shoulder.

Before his fingers ever reached her, she jerked around with a much-changed expression, causing his hand to freeze.

"Don't touch me," she snapped. "Stop looking at me like I'm some helpless animal."

The look on his face must have been quite shocked, because she almost immediately changed before his widened eyes like the flick of a switch.

"I... Oh—" Her hands went to her mouth. "I'm—I'm so sorry—"

"It's—alright, I'm just concerned..."

Her eyes lost focus again, falling away from him. "It's my head," she said, dropping it once more, this time into both hands so that her hair spilled forward, hiding everything behind curtains of shiny red. "Just hurts..."

He watched with sharply increasing worry as she looked to be swaying where she sat. His hesitation was promptly abandoned as he set his jaw.

"Freya. Come here," he commanded with stern importance, yet still careful to keep his voice soft and low in consideration to her stated pain. She glanced up at this request, looking quite surprised as her shoulders were guided by his light touch until she was facing him as fully as he could position her, side-by-side on the couch as they were. It was good that her eyes were blinking wide at him, because it was there that he first wanted to properly inspect. She was looking plenty alert now though, focusing with full—if not a bit stunned—attention back into his close proximity stare, and he moved on to her head itself. His hand ghosted up to one side, staying an inch away from actually touching her hair, her warning, although he knew she hadn't meant it, still fresh in his mind. "Does it feel like a headache? Or something else?"

"Um..." She stared for a moment, apparently still quite dazed, before her brows crinkled in thought—and then had to drop her gaze as her fingertips attempted to massage the skin down smooth, as if just this small tightening of muscles had been enough to further her pain. "Bad headache?" she speculated, her eyes squeezed shut. "My head feels hot."

"You feel hot?" Well, that wasn't a good sign. What exactly was 'hot' to one who was functionally fireproof? He wished he had a book for this type of physiology—and not one on Care of Magical Creatures. "May I...?"

Her eyes opened briefly in startled awareness of his hand moving to feel her forehead with the back of his fingers, but she closed them once more, clearing her own hand out of the way in apparent concession.

"It's just... painful because it's hot," she mumbled, as he gently tested the temperature. His hand hovered with a gap between at first, not quite wanting to put himself in need of medical care too, before finding that the heat radiating from her skin was not at a dangerous level, and proceeding with tiny pats before at last pressing firm. As he gauged the direct heat, her words belatedly reached his preoccupied mind, making him squint. "I mean—the other way," Freya corrected herself, waving a hand as the rest of her remained still. "It's... hot because it's—whatever. That feels better, actually..."

His hand twitched in surprise as hers returned suddenly to hold it in place, and she leaned forward against it. He blinked, acknowledging that he was no longer the owner of this hand, glad he had a backup on the other arm, though it would be sad to bid this one farewell.

"Er, you don't feel any warmer than you normally are."

"Really?" Apparently soothed, her voice had dropped to a dreamlike whisper. "Hm..."

He gave a slow nod—and then realized stupidly that she couldn't see him with her eyes still closed. He was left gazing in silence at the way her eyelashes stood out against the tops of her cheeks, looking as if she could have been asleep even in her odd pose, barely a foot from him, until they gradually blinked back open.

"How do you... know how warm I 'normally' feel?"

Holding quite still, he stared back into her questioning eyes. His mouth popped open to answer, but his brain was still scrambling like a cornered rabbit a moment behind.

"I... In December—you were showing off about not being cold, and you made me feel your hand."

"Ah... Right..." She squinted hard at him and he could feel her forehead scrunch up behind his hand, causing her narrowed eyes to turn into a wince and her to press his hand down even more.

"I know a spell—for headaches," he said quickly, both in haste to ease her pain and to move away from this topic. "It isn't quite perfect, but it would be—"

"Severus," she said with a weary sigh, her eyes closing once more, "you absolute treasure. You can't use magic on me."

His mouth hung open as his brain calculated this, unable to process for a moment that he could have made such a mistake, and slowly becoming aware of why he had made it, as his eyes caught the corners of her lips curling upward at the silence from him.

"Right," he said sourly, pursing his mouth shut before he could utter any more brilliant ideas.

He used his chance of not being watched to scowl at his own idiocy, giving his head a small shake—and then quickly flattening his expression out to a smooth mask as her eyes opened, her grin still in place. He knew this was quite the improper time, and he was still very concerned for her well-being, but the way her eyes were drowsily blinking up at him was very distracting to his helpful cause. He couldn't even keep up his annoyance. A frown began to form on her features and his eyes darted away—but they were drawn back in as she pulled her head back, separating from his hand to look between it and him distastefully.

Well, how was it meant to be his fault that he lost his cool (in his hand, of course)? Between her hot skin and the warmth of the robes she had gotten him—and his own embarrassment. She should have just let him freeze in the dungeons if she wanted a mobile pack of ice for a friend.

He reclaimed his now rendered useless hand, averting his glare out to the desk in front of them. The image of Freya covering her eyes, thumb and forefinger on either of her temples, was still in his peripheral, but he refused to look back this time. He could be useful in a less direct approach.

Slipping into an interior pocket of his robes, he drew his wand and directed it towards the main grouping of lights on the mantel of the fireplace. Still wincing, she looked up as the room grew dimmer at his command, adjusted for visual comfort. He left the fire itself untouched, avoiding putting them in too much darkness.

"Better?" he asked with a sideways glance.

"Yes... thank you..."

"I don't suppose you would like to learn how to at least help yourself?" he queried curtly, meaning to pass on the spell to her.

"The only way I'm helping myself," she said in the same soft voice, as if her own speaking volume was a problem, "is if I fancy locating a guillotine at this hour. And, wouldn't you know it, I'm not sure Hogwarts has one." At his disturbed sideways look, she let out a quiet sigh. "It doesn't work like that. It's an all-or-nothing sort of thing."

He kept his skeptical glance on her for a moment. "What if... you got a papercut?"

She glanced back with a thin smile and a mirrored sarcastic look in her eye. "Spellotape. Works wonders on book binds, leaky cauldrons—and leaky phoenixes." She held up her finger and wiggled it as if it were wrapped in the clear adhesive like a bandage holding in blood, making him double check that it wasn't, as he couldn't be sure how far she was stretching the truth. His eyes followed as her hand retracted back to her forehead, massaging as her faint smile turned back into a grimace.

However much she joked, he was sure at least some of it was true, and he considered for a moment what a frustrating thing it must be to wield such healing magic but be unable to use it for herself. Such is the way of balance in the world, though he rather preferred the art of learning how to bend that balance to one's will. He let her sit in silence for a while as he gathered up his thoughts, checking and then re-checking before he spoke again, absolutely sure of himself this time.

"A potion." He waited until she had turned to look at him, her brows cautiously raised but not jumping in to tell him he was mistaken, before continuing. "Not as common for relief from headaches, but then most remedies relating to the brain are imperfect." If you didn't know what you were doing, which he frustratingly did know perfectly well in spell-form and would have been confident in demonstrating, whereas on the other hand, while he knew the effect would still be positive, with the potion he had in mind... "It would take a little bit of time, but not much. If you—"

"Severus."

He bit back the rest of his words, accidentally just a tad too hard in his peaking frustration.

"Just... relax, will you?" With an imploring look she leaned over closer to him, patting at his arm. "It's just a... headache..."

He watched with unconcealed scorn as she had to right herself and hold onto her head, looking like she might be experiencing the circular room with more of a swiftly spinning aspect to it.

"Right," he said tersely, "and besides, a potion will really only work if the person trusts enough to take it."

"What?" Her head turned from its protective pose to shoot a look of disbelief at him, before having to shut her eyes with a noise of disgruntlement. "Would you please not be an idiot while I'm in pain?"

He would have fired back with more, but he did feel bad undoing all his efforts to help out, and she was suddenly making a distracting move, besides. He watched, perplexed, as she huddled over towards him, nearly closing the already small gap, her head still lowered in one hand, while the other reached out for his that was closest to her. After at first jerking his hand away, as he had seen this same scenario play out once before and wasn't near as keen on allowing it again, he relented only when realizing she was looking to swap her hand at her forehead out for his colder one. He once again felt the strangely too-warm—but not quite so for her—smooth skin against the back of his hand as she pressed her fingers into his palm, holding it in place. As he stared, what he could see of her expression mellowed, and she let out a long quiet breath.

"You know," she said slowly, and he was surprised at how her quiet voice could sound much louder up close, with nowhere else for it to project but directly at him, "it was a really long list of people that I had to read through and remember..." He noticed for the first time that it almost seemed as if she was holding his hand lower than before, obscuring her eyes from his view on purpose. "And you're still one of the only people on it that I actually trust."

His hand was raised without his doing so, just enough so that she could show her eyes, peeking up at him with calm sincerity and so close that even in the low light he could make out the color of deep amber.

"I trust you, Sev... I'd just prefer it if you stay here and keep me company instead."

A whole-hearted blink from his statuesque stare was all he managed in return.

He had no earthly idea how to respond to this, except he now felt the need to check that her brain wasn't potentially boiling and making her say ridiculous things. Or perhaps that she had pulled him straight into whatever fantasy universe she had been dreaming of before. However, this would have to be something concocted from his own mind, as there were none of the horrors she had apparently been running from here—or so it seemed, though his current stunned silence and uncomfortable swallow might prove otherwise.

"Are... Are you sure you're alright?" he finally got out.

Her dubious grin was hampered by her attempts to not scrunch her brows too hard, but the delivered effect was the same as she softly laughed. "Yes, for the last time, I think I'll pull through. I'm not dying here, it just hurts."

His eyes lingered over hers as if he didn't quite believe her, though it was rather that he simply hadn't heard her at first. As the words caught up to him, his chin tilted up slightly in confirmation. "Right. Good."

"Yes," she agreed with a pointedly bemused look, "it's very good, this whole staying alive thing." As he snapped more to his senses with a sharp frown, she let out another laugh. "You know, for someone who fights off help like it's going to kill you, you sure are pushy about it yourself."

He bristled, about to protest, but as he didn't really have a defense and something else had just crossed his mind, he changed his words at the last second. "When have I given that impression?"

"Um... Just last week?"

His gaze drifted away in disappointment, remembering her offer about his Mark. He had thought for a second, as he often did, that she might be remembering something beyond just the surface level that she knew. She was so close at times, as if she were following some intuition that was actually her deeper knowledge—that he knew must be engraved on her brain somewhere if she was dredging up the memories from her dreams—without even realizing it. Not for the first time, he wished he could have a proper study of this quandary, where he could sit her down and ask all the probing questions that he had.

"You really wish I would remember, don't you?"

His attention alerted back to her at once, realizing she was still peering at him from under his captive hand. Looking away again, he adjusted his increasingly uncomfortable arm so that the back cushion of the sofa could take the weight of his elbow, helping out a little and buying him a second to think of how to answer her question.

"Of course," he said, careful to keep the seriousness in his tone to what would be a normal friendly level of concern. "I want you to recover."

"Right..."

He was deliberately keeping his aloof gaze averted to the desk, just noticing that the now recognizably styled diary she had been using as a pillow didn't have any loose pages sticking out of it, and the cover looked brand new.

"...And you felt my temperature just by casual happenstance. In December. When I only saw you once."

As if by conditioning from being caught in lies before, his eyes froze right where they were, pointed at the diary. He probably shouldn't have stopped breathing though if he was trying to avoid further suspicion. The way his lungs refilled as his gaze inched back over to her felt like far too much dangerous movement for one finding himself under such a spotlight.

Her eyes were waiting for him in a cool stare as he faced her, those eyes that he had been trying so hard to avoid, and he was immediately captured, ensnared as if in a golden cage. The corners of her lips tipped up in time with her brow as she spoke the single familiar word.

"Liar."

It was a real shame that he had already used up his limited capabilities of scrambling out from under her gaze, as he could now do nothing but helplessly stare back. Mercifully, she looked away first, lowering her eyes so that he could only see her lashes, and he could breathe normally again.

"I finished reading all my diaries weeks ago," she went on quietly. "I've known that we were drunkenly kissing in the woods the last time we properly spoke—er, well, before the kissing, that is—for a while now."

And just like that, breathing normally was a thing of the past yet again.

His free hand, which he had just used to cover up the coughing noise he had made as he turned away from her blunt words, now went up to subtly block off his eyes from view, copying what had been her earlier pose, with his fingers at his brow. No, please, don't be vague about it; go right ahead and retell the whole thing. He was certain that she must have forgotten that she was pressing his other hand to her forehead, because there was no chance of it still being cold enough to be of any relief—or it was just to further keep him trapped here in this conversation which he had not at all been expecting to have so soon.

His mouth vaguely formed out half the alphabet before he managed to get a single word out, "Yes, that did—happen—"

"I'm sorry."

If it had been anything else, he might have been relieved to be cut off before he could babble himself into a doomed spiral of nonsense. As it was, in the pause that followed, he would have preferred to have been forced to listen to her read aloud a very long essay on all the ways that he was an abhorrently disgusting reprobate, rather than to feel the painful ache that closed in on his chest just then.

"It's just... I read it, but I don't really... remember."

This wasn't so bad. Not nearly as bad as he had been imagining it for what was nearly two months now. Mostly because he had always envisioned it as her having enough of her memory to definitively state that she wished she didn't; that these memories weren't anything special to her and she wanted to forget it had ever happened. Not knowing left a little crack open in the door for his obviously beyond stupid heart to go clawing at with hope. It was the expression she wore on her face when he finally gave up pretending to be smoothing down his brows and lowered his hand to look at her that gave him a more devastating blow.

The irritation which he had felt grate against his nerves whenever she had looked at him with such earnest apologetic sympathy earlier in the schoolyear was nowhere to be found in him now. It was at least a small token of relief that she had finally given up trying to apply his warm hand to her aching head, though now she simply held it in her own, on her lap, down to which she shifted her gaze. For what felt like a long moment, he let her carry on absently touching her thumb to his palm, though it made his fingers twitch, as he assumed it might be the most that she would ever touch him.

In spite of everything, there was something that was most bothering him, slowly bubbling through the thick, numb feeling to the surface above all else. His hand abruptly flipped over to clutch hers, causing her to look up, startled by this and the directness with which he suddenly locked his eyes onto hers.

"It doesn't matter," he said with utmost certainty. "It wasn't that important." And it truly wasn't. Not compared to making sure she knew that he hadn't been lying about why he wanted her to recover, that it wasn't just for his selfish reasons. He simply could not let her think that he would be so low.

She blinked at him, seemingly now the one at a loss for words. "Um... It seemed—a little bit important," she mumbled, darting her eyes to the side and making him struggle to keep up his serious demeanor. "I guess I... do have quite a lot of details about it either way, though, so..." He was cast further down a peg, dropping his eyes as he lost the resolve required to keep them up, sure that he could have done without knowing that part. His self-berating imagination didn't need the help.

She let out a quiet sigh. "It's so odd..." His gaze flicked up only briefly to see that she was also looking down at their hands still loosely held together, appearing contemplative. "I remember seeing you at random times from the past few years; the war and all that, during meetings with Albus. I remember the night when he introduced you as a teacher, in the staff parlor." His eyes were losing focus on the visage before them, his full attention hanging on her voice, almost as soft and warm as her palm. He remembered the first time he had felt it, shaking hands in the dungeons, her proper introduction. "And the other things he showed me, from a long time ago... Just bits and pieces here and there, things he said were important to remember—and I do. I remember being in all those places. Living it, like I'm meant to; like normal memory. But then it's just—… nothing. The rest is just ink and words. I can't get a grip on it..."

If ever there was a time with her when he wished he could be someone else, someone who could say the exact right thing, to leave a positive impression, it was now. Above all else, in that moment, he wished that he could be someone who she actually wanted to remember. A man worthy of such an honor.

Slowly, as if his arm was moving before his mind had caught up to where he wanted it to go just yet, he let her hand slip from his as he raised it. His eyes followed upward, watching with all the concentration required of a spell, until he found that his fingers remarkably were at her hair, and she looked as surprised as he did that he was gently pushing it back.

"It's alright," he said in a voice that came out as a low murmur, "take your time."

It was a marvel in and of itself that she was not shying away from his touch, as he was sure there had been a long stretch of time in which she never would have let her precious hair be brushed aside like this, even though he was being as gentle as he could. He didn't tuck the lock behind her ear, but simply let his fingertips glide over, as his main focus lay solely in what her hair was framing rather that the silky feeling itself. Her eyes stayed on him with the same rapt attention, but where hers looked stunned, he was searching. He couldn't take the scant few seconds worth of pleasure it would be to gaze as he may have wanted, he was busy keeping perfectly alert for even the slightest sign that she might not want him quite so close nor quite so friendly.

When her surprise appeared to have worn off, her eyes blinking to the merest trace of a squint, his hand froze where it was at the side of her head. He softened the intensity of his gaze, but otherwise held his position.

"It wouldn't do you much good," he said with an air of casualness, "frying your brain in the process." He waited, his eyes inspecting back and forth between his hand and her expression, to see if this gesture would be allowed. Though her eyes remained fairly skeptical, the cautious smile that formed spoke her acceptance.

"Well," she said with a small shrug, "what's a totaled... few odd months of time to relive? Nothing too drastic. Really helps when you cut out all the boring bits."

The faintest hesitant tug pulled at the corners of his lips. "Right... and I'm sure that you've had the most boring hundred years of anyone."

"Must have. My list of things I wanted to remember from Albus was surprisingly short..."

His brows twitched just slightly at the thought of this, but he was more so preoccupied elsewhere. He had been trying not to shift his touch too much should it disrupt her sensitive head, but she so far had not reacted in pain to any of his continued delicate movements. Curiously, he dared to slip his hand beneath the hair he had been brushing back, touching the backs of his fingers to her bare temple, and pressed just the lightest amount. The reaction was instant, with her eyes closing and brows scrunching down... and then gradually back up. He watched in quiet awe, giving a breath of time before slowly massaging in a tiny circle. Her head tipped forward in one instant motion as if her neck had gone limp, and he had to fight back his grin, pleasantly entertained.

"Good?" he asked, unable to fully keep the smile out of his quiet voice.

Her only response back was to let out a short whine and lower her chin even more, her hair falling around her face but not quite hiding it from him. Feeling uniquely self-important, he nearly fully let loose his wide grin, and even held back from making any comments when she reached up to reposition his hand to the middle of her forehead. He stayed perfectly silent, watching her practically melt forward against his gently kneading hand, internally squashing down the tiny guilty part of him that felt he shouldn't be allowed this small thrill and letting himself openly stare. He could almost say that he was glad he couldn't have used magic just for this.

After a moment, adjusting her seating position slightly against the back cushion of the sofa, Freya finally spoke more than just a mumble, though her voice still came out lower and more sleepy. "Aren't you going to ask... what was on my list?"

It took him a second of frowning to piece together what she had said earlier, and another to wonder why she would ask this, as it seemed quite personal. "Did you... want me to ask?"

"No," she said with a tired sigh as she settled in more. He could just see her lashes flutter open for a second before apparently deciding to remain shut. "Not really. I was just hoping... you would keep talking." His hand slowed its circular pace against her skin as he watched her peaceful face. "Your voice is really nice."

It was strange to be so close to her, even physically connected in a small way, yet still feel he was watching from a world apart. He wondered for a moment if it happened more when she allowed him these times to not have to control his appearance as much, letting his face lull into security and him to feel like an imposter, hiding behind a curtain. Because when her eyes would open, he would undoubtedly go back to hiding the quiet wonderment he held.

He broke off his stare, glancing out towards the room. With a deep breath, preparing with more unease than he normally ever had for speaking, he spoke in a deep whisper. "Then... might I mention that I have gotten precisely zero work done for the night?" He glanced back to see her grin and silently laugh, scrunching her face up at the end in apparent acquiescence to being the guilty party here. "If I have to spend all weekend grading, I'm going to make you help with ingredient preparations."

"Oh no," she said with her wide smile not a bit deterred.

He knew she would never have been put off at the idea of helping him, of course, so it was safe to jokingly complain, though perhaps there might have been better—sweeter—things for him to whisper to her. That wasn't a role meant for him. And, as he fell promptly out of things to say, he enjoyed the short-lived moment where he could be happy to have gotten to help her, and to see her actually accept it from him. It sadly couldn't last, as he had rather thoroughly violated his own set conditions, with his gaze having slipped from its stoic boundaries down to fixate on her contented smiling lips, and hadn't left.

He failed miserably at upholding his end of this bargain for some moments more, subduing himself to the sunk-cost of it all as he used up the last of his time before her eyes would once more open, vividly and warmly remembering what she herself could not.

With a sigh that he tried to keep as noiseless as possible though it fully drained his lungs, he turned his head away and said, "One last time... I promise to stop being so 'pushy' afterward..." Freya lifted her chin, her eyes blinking open, and he glanced back to cease his massage, gliding his fingers upward to brush her hair back once more before dropping his hand with some reluctance. "Do you think you would be open to a more traditional sort of remedy?"

For what could have been the fifth time that evening he watched her scrunch her brows and then wince. He wanted to blame the headache for her abysmal pain avoidance learning, but he was starting to worry if the woman wasn't just bad with memory altogether. It definitely helped to lift up his final idea.

"Um... What?" she said, looking annoyed to have to be the one rubbing at her own head again. "What is it?"

He tilted his head forward to level his eyes at her in a pointed look. "Rest." Understanding smoothed her features as she nodded slowly, seeming to vaguely remember tale of such a thing.

"Ah... Actually, that sounds... Oh, but I haven't done any of my work either," she said with a guilty glance to the desk, biting her lip.

"And how much work do you think you could get done right now, exactly?"

"Maybe... two..." He raised a brow, to which she lowered her eyes. "...Sentences... written by one of the better students—but, I'm already falling behind, I can't put off any more work."

"Well then," he said with finality, dragging himself to his feet, "if you go to sleep now, you can wake up early." As she looked up at him with an unhappy stare, imagining, he assumed, how early it would actually be, he offered her a smirk as well as a hand. "I'll bring by coffee with breakfast if you like."

She still looked less than enthusiastic, but was preoccupied as she tried to stand. Even with the help of his hand, she went off balance immediately, and he saw the hazy look return to her eyes, fearing for a second that he might lose her to whatever was just below the surface. It seemed sitting still had been staving off the worst of it, but her headache hadn't lessened in the slightest.

"I'm fine, I can do it myself," she said in regard to his attempts to lead her across the room, even as she continued leaning on him with one hand and holding her other over her eyes. He ignored her hollow protest and continued his slow pace at her side. However, as they crossed the threshold of the more private half of the room, he realized he had made a mistake and was now the one trapped in his procession forward, despite the sight of her bed giving him considerable alarm. He restrained himself from shoving her off and darting for the exit, telling himself he was just being stupid. Besides, something he saw when he looked away as she sat down on the edge of the bed gave his mood a boost.

"Perhaps you should have this as well," he said, in a quick motion pulling out his wand to tap at the empty Slytherin mug on her bedside table, once for water and a second time for ice. The glow of the fire hardly reached here, but she just caught his movements as she was bundling herself under thick blankets and smiled, murmuring a warm thanks. He frowned as he realized she had gotten in bed rather quick. "Are you not going to—?" Her brows bounced up as he cut himself off, his expression freezing to an impassive stare at her suddenly very interesting lamp.

"I'll change when you leave," she said without hostility; but he was already turning around on his heel as if being pulled out of the room by a magnet, not even sparing a look behind.

"Hold on—"

"Goodnight."

"—I didn't mean you had to leave now."

He was just taking his first hurried step around the half wall where he would be separated and almost free when he heard the sound of blankets being abruptly thrown off.

"Severus. Come back here."

He stared straight ahead, at the archway across the room that should have been his escape had his feet not stopped moving for some odd reason. And now, with his pathway obstructed by this invisible force, he had no more choice in his options but to turn back around, though much more slowly than his previous haste.

She was sitting propped up in bed with the blankets folded over her lower half, and her expression echoing the same unrelenting sternness that her voice had held. It could have been her pain making her look so provoked, or it might have been his own imagination, but as she raised a single finger and beckoned him return to her bedside, he had the very strong sense of being strung along by some dark creature that was seconds away from devouring him.

As he retraced his steps with apprehension, she laid herself back down, looking up at him with no more than sleepy exasperation and a small sigh.

"You didn't have to run off," she said quietly, "I just wanted to say one more thing."

"Which would be...?" His eyes were glued to her cup of water as he tried not to stand there so awkwardly.

Her eyes passed over him once, before she rolled onto her side towards him and reached out. It wasn't something he need have flinched away from, though he did, until realizing that her outstretched hand hadn't been trying to make contact, but was held out, palm up and waiting. With a deeply skeptical look—which she returned with a sly smile from her pillow, doing nothing to instill confidence—he placed his hand in hers, assuming this was the only correct answer.

Which, in fact, it was. Though his startled heart, as she gently pulled him forward and pressed the back of his hand to her lips, wished it hadn't been. His face screwed up, aghast and unable to do anything about it, as she fluttered her eyes open once more, smirking up at him.

"Thank you," she whispered in her warmest voice, which he only distantly and later realized was her putting it on for effect, "for being such a prince."

His mouth immediately snapped shut and he snatched his hand back as he straightened up.

"Good—night," he said over his shoulder, already bolting for the door, even as the sound of her soft giggling reached his ears, turning into a loud yawn halfway through. It wasn't fair that both were so musical, and that he couldn't Apparate out of rooms, nor could he fully make a fool of himself by running. He had to double back to grab up his bag where it lay beside the sofa, very nearly forgetting it. All the while, the half-lidded stare of her eyes was still boring into his mind as if it was chasing him over the threshold.

As he reached the archway, his pace strangely did find reason to pause, as he had heard a fwump of cloth hit what sounded like the floor and he couldn't make sense of the noise for a moment, thinking she might have thrown off her blankets again. Then the realization whacked him in the back of the head, and he was dashing out of the room, closing the door, and setting the lock as if entombing a deadly trap.

If it hadn't been for the comforting thought that hopefully her brain was just melting, he might not have been able to get a grip on his own head, which, as he quickly made his way downstairs without looking higher than the floor, felt equally as melted. Or perhaps it was just that the lingering spot of warmth on the back of his hand had a baffling connection to the temperature of his face.

That night, while he did his work in the quiet solitude of his dungeon office, his quill kept making abrupt stops in the middle of where it marked the lines of writing as he read them. No matter how many times he dropped it to stretch and rub at the back of his hand though, the feeling didn't dissipate. It seemed it was lingering from his own memory; and that, unfortunately, he could not wipe away.

After a very irksome breakfast in which he had delivered not just coffee, but also a freshly-prepared potion with strict instructions to be used immediately for future headaches, Severus had wound up walking in on a sleeping Freya a handful more times over the next week, with the second time being the most fumbled.

He had decided not to wake her and risk setting off another terrible nightmare, instead having simply sat down to wait for her to wake up. But, after less than a minute of this, he had felt extremely awkward to be sitting with her unconscious form and gathered all his things back up, strode all the way to the doorway, only to then have felt even more awkward to be making decisions about coming and going without her ever having known, and once and for all rethinking that the risk was worth it, waking her up with a very loud clearing of his throat, and retaking his seat. No such panicked actions had been invoked, she had merely mumbled something about dragon taming being for twits and try-hards, before emitting an enormous yawn and asking if he'd like any tea while they graded.

All times following, he had gone straight to waking her up without hesitation, and no more headaches had happened on his watch. Though, he wasn't without increasing worry at the gathering dark circles under her eyes as the days passed. He had his own things to be worried with, however, and she didn't raise any troubles for him to comment on, besides.

Also, comfortable communication had all of a sudden become an issue between them. After his third meeting with Dumbledore, Freya had either caught wind of what was happening, or the two men had not been careful enough to check the windows, he never did find out which, only that she was particularly glum afterward. She was nice enough—or blunt enough—to at least make it be known that it was the planning that was taking place which was irking her, with distinct emphasis on the fact that said plans still stated only one person would be leaving the castle towards the end of January. He wasn't in any way budging over to be contrite about it, and he wasn't sure she would have been willing to listen even if he had put up a defense. He settled comfortably into the idea that her short temper about the whole thing was undoubtedly reflective of how much sleep she had been getting lately and contributing to her ever-busy schedule of seemingly re-establishing her entire life, which was the very reason of why she should not be going. Freya, meanwhile, swore up and down that she wouldn't be enacting any fiery retribution on anyone and was fully back in her right moral mind now, which she seemed to think was the only real reason Dumbledore was keeping her from the field and which Severus had his doubts about as he had seen her burn thumb-shaped holes through several pieces of paper lately.

It didn't help matters that she had very good reason herself to be angry with him. After going in and out of her room for weeks and having to learn her personal flavor of spell for locking up, he had brilliantly remembered, a punctual full month late, that a Ministry member had been attempting to break into her office while she had been gone. In his defense to and of himself, after the original newspaper story had landed back in December, he had been rather busy being a chaotic lunatic on par with what some of his students now seemed to think of him, as well as being a complete melt-brained moron the rest of the time after. He had tried to make it up to her by running a lap over both her office and her private chamber with his wand out checking for disturbances right alongside her, but even with their combined knowledge of spells, enough time had passed and the doors had been spelled by himself as well, that neither of them could find anything except that, yes, it did seem that someone had at least tried to break in. Nothing was out of place or missing though, and they had to eventually let it go, assuming that some unpleasant little man who worked in wand woods wouldn't have been able to break her spell.

By the time the day arrived that he would finally be leaving, all Freya had to send him off with was a stubborn glare and a begrudging 'Try not to get yourself killed, it doesn't feel too great' at the end of their short chat. She did give him a hasty hug as well though, which he appreciated more than he would have expected. It wasn't as if he would be gone more than—hopefully—several hours at most. It really wasn't a very momentous occasion. Certainly it was overkill for Dumbledore to have him meet him in his office right beforehand, especially as it had only made him fear that he had been about to change his mind in letting him return to the field. However, Dumbledore had merely wished him luck.

So it was that he had rushed out off the grounds, before anyone or anything could drop from the sky to stop him, with the unexpected and very welcome feeling of at long last regaining his freedom.

After which, fell ultimately flat several uneventful hours later.

It was nice, really—to be back where he was meant to be, performing a job that, while it had never ceased to leave him feeling hollow to the soul inside before, at least now was only a much-neutered version, and so much differently freeing to be trusted with apart from just visiting his harmless family—only, it was dead boring.

As Bellatrix had explained, with a circle of leftover friends around a dreary table some weeks prior— sounding perfectly sane to be sure, if sanity was measured in how disorderly it would make bats fly to hear tell of it—the general belief amongst those who had not gone quietly to Azkaban nor been so ashamed of their actions as to pretend to have been under the Imperius Curse, was that their master was still alive somewhere, possibly in dire need of their help. The obvious conclusion after falling off of that cliff of stability was that the Ministry had him—somehow, despite him being 'the great and wise Dark Lord'— and that they, his most loyal followers, should break him out. Severus hadn't been the only face at that table to look just the tiniest bit skeptical of this, and so thankfully it had been easier for him to squirm out from under the obligation of taking up this harrowing task, but the lack of support had been a different kind of snag. They were outnumbered now, the dregs of the last Death Eaters, and they needed support wherever they could find it. He had been sure, after hearing all this, that had been the reason he had been let in so easily in the first place. And, also, it's what had bought him time enough to return to the castle and wait. They needed to find more help, and they also needed something else. Bellatrix already had an exceptionally nasty note blighting beneath her own wanted poster, and looked to be wanting to add to it, as her first attempt to find information on where her precious fallen master had gone had not yielded her desired results. So it must follow that to try again at that which had already failed was the plan of action of the regrettably insane.

Nonetheless, they were now a toothless bunch. They wouldn't be allowed to currently still fortress themselves away in their little woodland mansion had Dumbledore come to any other conclusion upon hearing all of this. Plus, he had the clever spellwork of his spy to keep him well informed even from a distance, as Severus had left a little present upon leaving before Christmas. It had given them just enough information that things were coming to a head—sometime soon.

Thus, he was nearby, but not at all too near.

Having already lied his way out of the mansion once, he could not now go back on this and show up at its doorstep. Not unless he wanted to incur the suspicion of a house full of very twitchy wand hands. Outing himself and sending in a wave of Aurors to step right into that very same nest of desperate Dark practitioners wouldn't have been very ideal, either. On the other hand, it wouldn't have been good to get too wrapped up in the plan, too close, as the ending to it wouldn't be anything pleasant specifically because of said Aurors. So, he sat; awaiting the hopefully ever-nearing hour when the rat's nest would be vacated, and that small window of time would open, wherein he could alert back to the proper persons and everything could be set in motion to tip over the unsteady plans of unsteady people like no more than so many loose bricks. Or, so he intended.

So far he had seen, from out of the second-story inn window which he was staring, precisely nothing that he was looking for.

It was food—as often it was in war—that was the chink in every armor; even castles, and even wizards. They couldn't conjure any such good, prepared food to sustain them, and so it had to come from somewhere. By his calculations and quick investigating of the area surrounding the wood, there was one village nearby big enough to have its own row of fresh ingredient shops, with both a butcher and a baker. And, he had found, both had been having food go missing for quite a long time now.

Plus he had found traces of magic that could have only been from house elves in the alley round back, which was where he was now staring directly at, from what was a very cheap room with such an otherwise unlucky view. Honestly, he had no idea how most Aurors managed to stay employed when they couldn't find such obvious clues. They must all be too busy kissing Ministry official's toes or something.

Either way, it would be here that he would see evidence of a house elf about to steal food for its master who was in hiding nearby, or they wouldn't; in which case, he would have to assume they weren't eating, because they were on the move. It was a better tell than anything he could get on the mansion itself, so surrounded by anti-intrusion enchantments as it was, when he could no longer risk getting inside. He had set up things to hopefully tip him off directly anyway, but it couldn't be counted on to be exact when they could simply Apparate—he needed to be sure and cover every base.

Every base... including the ones behind his eyelids as they fell shut for longer than just a blink, pulling him teasingly into blank calm. He let them stay closed, enjoying the short break, content that he was still plenty awake enough to catch himself before he would nod off. Still though, it wouldn't do to tempt it. Rolling his neck, he got up to pace for the dozenth time around the small room.

He wasn't planning on spending the night, it was just the most opportune location to set up going in and out of, and had the view he wanted (after he had adjusted it to the left two feet, that is, hoping no muggles would wander down the less-traveled path and take notice). The small desk was where he was sitting when not on his feet, the bed getting no attention from him. He had been using his time, after the first hour of excited energy had long worn off, to get ahead of the grading he needed to do, all the while keeping the scrolls of parchment neatly tucked within his bag, ready for him to snatch up and depart at a moment's notice. But he had caught up on almost everything now, and if he did any more he wouldn't have much to keep him busy while he sat across from a certain woman, who was plenty distracting on her own.

He paced from the bed to the desk in slow procession, staring at the floor, a slight frown tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Truthfully, he was acting as no more than a glorified human bell on a door. This really wasn't anything important or special, and he knew it. It was just a simple thing that he could do to prove that he could be trusted to do it, while keeping up with his regular job as well. The other factor being, of course, that the person who normally would have been doing it was not in any place to at current. Judging by the pout she had worn as he left, which had him smirking off his gloomier expression when remembered, she would have been plenty ready—except that she would have found this even more dull than he did, and probably have fallen asleep immediately.

Thinking about her falling asleep, his face twitched as the mental image of her shifted to a shadowy sly grin with his hand held just an inch away from it, making him nervously lift his eyes to the window before going back to pacing.

He sincerely hoped that when he got back—preferably by later tonight, though if nothing happened he might have to decide whether or not to actually make use of his paid-for room or spend extra time setting up more alarm provisions—she would no longer be making such a big deal out of this. He was certain Dumbledore was still telling her everything she needed to know, as she had spoken of it with perfect accuracy when confronting him on it, so it wasn't like she was in the dark. She just needed to stay put for a bit and recover.

A slow, nagging thought of guilty realization was forming in his mind, but he shut it down with a tight creasing of his brows.

Absently, his hand went to a specific place overtop his robes.

Through the warm fabric, he could feel the rectangular shape of a small diary. He slipped his hand into the interior pocket and pulled it out, thumbing overtop the embossment on the black leather cover.

Well, on thoughts of what to do while people were away on missions, and he, currently, was away from her... but, no; he still was not the type to keep a diary. In the end, though, it was just an empty book. There was another use, one which he had always thought for months had been its purpose anyway, which he could now make a reality.

Sitting back down, he rounded up all his scholarly things back into his bag and set the book—now his intended planner—in the center of the desk space. It would do him some good to make headway on actually organizing his lesson plans, both current and future, all in one place, as at the moment they were mostly intangible in his head or written on scraps of parchment that may or may not be entirely lost by now. Organization had been one of his goals for the new year, after all.

He did follow one intended instruction to the letter; he brought out his red phoenix feather quill as he wrote, watching it more than his writing at first, so that his underlined heading was a bit closer to qualifying as crossed out. Other than this error, he kept his quill still the other times his eyes went up (to check out of the window in front of him), and made it half-way through the current quarter's plans in no time at all.

Until, however, after he was reinking his quill, he glanced back to the page to see that there was ink already seeping up from the paper where he had not yet written.

Squinting in confusion, and then cocking his head to one side in full disbelief, he didn't notice until it was too late when the fresh ink dripped from his raised and forgotten quill onto the paper in a top corner, finally breaking him out of his enraptured stare. But before he could even sort out with his hands what to do about the rapidly soaking ink blot, more ink was rising up unbidden from where it just had at the middle of the page, and he was too distracted to remedy the mark, his eyes going back over all the words now, only the top half of which were personally familiar.

Underneath his list, in much different handwriting and appearing in brassy gold ink, was the following confusing series of lines:

Is this book enchanted? Could you please stop whatever it is you're enchanted to do, as you've almost lit a stack of papers on fire.
Hold on, is that a list of potions? Severus?
HELLO? PLEASE STOP!

He let his head fall forward until he was propping it up with his fingers at his temple, elbow next to the book on the desk, still focused to the last line on the page.

It wasn't really necessary for him to sort out that this was not at all a diary, nor was it a planner, but for the life of him he couldn't find a single word to say—or rather, write—to convey his astonishment and answer all the questions he suddenly had. He gazed down in stunned silence, mouth hanging slightly open, blinking until he could manage to slowly drag his quill back to the page.

On fire, you say?

He waiting in the same pose, brows raised, until the reply came no more than a few seconds later. This time he peered even closer, seeing each little fiber of the paper as it filled with ink to form the words.

STOP! I keep closing the book, thinking it's done, and you keep making it light up again!

Puzzled, he closed his own book, inspecting the cover. He ran his fingers over the raised feather pattern—and then hissed as they were burned, shaking off his whole arm and letting the book fall shut. Startled, he flipped it back open at once, surprised to see that the fresh would-be wet ink had not stuck the pages together, and that another line had appeared.

Is this really... S?

His expression flattened out. Very good of her to realize any correspondence could be intercepted while he was on a mission; and to give him such an astounding cypher for a codename.

This is The Dark Lord. I have risen and am coming to kill you. Beware.

Oh, very good, I can feel the sarcasm from here, I know it's you. Also, I know you're handwriting. Idiot.

He pursed his lips over his smile as he read and reread her words... and then reread his own words, with special focus on his handwriting, and suddenly didn't think this was actually such a fun bit of spectacular magic after all. His spiky, cramped writing didn't look anything like her curling, elegantly combined together in places lettering, especially since he had made his last line look particularly dramatic for effect. Before he could take any more notes on this, more writing appeared.

Pretty neat gift, eh? Almost burned up my whole wardrobe, I had a bunch of stuff stacked on top of it, had no idea it was in there, but still.

Have you ever considered perhaps

His quill stopped before his next unthought-out word, but regardless, his black ink seemed to shimmer and sink in permanently without him having any way of stopping it. He frowned in dismay, trying to sort out the joke which now seemed too stupid to finish. Giving his head a little shake as if to clear his buzzing thoughts, he flicked his hair out of his eyes and finished:

writing some things down? You can be quite forgetful.

I'm considering forgetting your birthday next year.

His tongue poked at the corner of his smirk, unable to deter it, and realizing he had no need to.

He straightened his back to gaze down from a distance at the whole book itself, absently thumbing the thick stack of yet to be used pages. There were plenty to keep up an entire archive of conversations if he wanted—if they wanted. They had written to the bottom of this page, her last line coming in slightly more bunched up than the rest, but things could easily be moved around to make even more room.

And there it would stay. With the ink set, smudge-proof, and hopefully on the same enchanted paper that she used for her diaries—permanent. Not a record of just his words, or hers, or his plannings, which now seemed inconsequential. It was capturing much more than that.

As he watched, the feather on the cover burned a dull golden glow, and he opened it expectantly, flipping to the next page at the top.

Are you alright? How are things going?

Fine. No sign of spiders.

This time when he closed the book, it was with the intention of putting the first protective anti-snooping spell he could think of—and then two more for good measure—onto it. He might have to ask Freya what she used for her latches, assuming the slight possibility that she might know something different than him. Once he was finished, he opened back to the page again, just in time to see more gold lettering form.

See you soon. Please don't die. x

Though he could hear the sarcasm coming through the words on the page, he could also imagine her face showing just a tad too much truth behind it, the concern showing in her eyes as it had before he had left. He wondered if, in the future when she lost her memories again and read through this new record, she would be able to hear his tone of voice come off the page, and if her own would form in her mind the same as if she would form the words with her mouth. It wasn't exactly what he had always imagined, in his wildest dreams lately of sorting out a better situation where she remembered him every time, but it was something. Something that she had thought of all on her own, and she must have known and intended to be a written history in this way. Long before he had made things difficult.

He sat for a lengthy moment staring down at the little 'x,' entranced, so familiar with her handwriting by now, yet feeling more eager for it than ever. It was just the slightest bit bittersweet, as he compared the ink to her eyes, measuring up every flash of them as they looked up at him and finding it lacking just enough to make him homesick. Yet, he would never again have to be stuck in a predicament of not knowing what was going on back where he had left. He could just simply ask. Through a door, down several floors, across all of Britain; when he couldn't speak out loud, when he put up silencing charms, when he wanted to write her letters even though he had nothing worth wasting the time of an owl on; she was just at his fingertips, a jot of ink away.

She had well and truly done it yet again as far as gifts went. Which meant that he was falling behind yet again on repaying her. At this rate, he might as well just pack it in.

In fact, he might also have to give serious reconsideration to his whole New Year's resolution. As it was turning out, attempting to sway the future was quite the foolish endeavor. He didn't know why people bothered making resolutions.

A distant, soft popping sound dragged him away from where he was fondly running his finger along the outside edge of his new favorite book, and as his attention snapped upward, his mind turning over into a much different gear, he pocketed it protectively back into his robes.

---

_—***—_

"Words seem so blind
I've been pushed far aside
Soon my choice seems too small
Any move and I could fall

There's just no mercy in your eyes
There ain't no time to set things right
And I'm not preaching to the choir
I'm just a painful reminder
And you're a fool satisfied"

B.R.M.C. — Mercy