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CHAPTER 5

When I wake up that next morning, the first thing I realize is that I'm not alone in this bed, which is odd because I didn't go to Severus's chambers last night so I know I'm not in his bed. But someone's arm is resting around my waist, their front to my back. Keeping my body as still as possible, I turn my head just enough to see a mess of long hair covering my sleeping companion. Daphne. We must've fallen asleep last night while talking. Either that or I fell asleep and she didn't want to leave me alone when I was upset.

My breath catches in my throat when I realize how warm I am. She's soft against me, different than Severus but very reminiscent of someone else. Zoe. She reminds me of Zoe. My chest tightens. I miss her. More now than I did before. I can't believe I've allowed myself to squash this feeling for so long. Now that it's reemerging, I can't imagine what it felt like when I wasn't constantly mourning her. Zoe. My dear Zoe. A tear escapes my eye before I can suppress it, and once it breaks free, more begin to follow it with the power of a stream. I pull my knees to my chest and begin crying with the force of someone vomiting on all fours.

Zoe's dead because of me.

Daphne sits up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Charlotte?" she says, shaking me.

My body continues to convulse as I try to suppress these reopened wounds.

"Charlotte?" She mutters what I assume is a spell, then moves away from me so she can see me better. "Charlotte."

I try to look up at her, but I can't see anything. So I pull my pillow against my chest and bury my face into it. "Charlotte," she coos, running her hand through my hair. "What's happening? What's wrong?"

Without thinking I snatch her hand and pull it close to me. Then she lowers herself down beside me and holds me closely. "Charlotte," she says gently, "it's okay."

"It's not," I cry.

"Charlotte—"

"Zoe's gone."

Daphne kisses my shoulder. "I know, I'm so sorry."

I turn to face her, and she lets me rest my head against her, just beneath her head. She wraps her arms around me, rubbing my back, and places her head atop mine. I hold her tightly. "It'll be okay," she whispers. "Everything will be okay."

Part of me really, really wants to believe her, but I know that it won't be okay. At some point my luck will run out, and I'll wind up pregnant. If Harry doesn't stop Voldemort, I'll give birth and wind up dead. Nothing will ever be okay again.

I got Zoe killed. I should have convinced her to leave, to hide away until Harry defeated Voldemort once and for all, or until I escaped Voldemort once and for all. Being apart would have been difficult, but I could have lived with the idea that we would eventually be together. Now I just have to live with the fact that I'll never see her again.

"I'm sorry," I whisper to no one in particular. Maybe I'm speaking to Zoe. Maybe I'm speaking to Daphne. I don't know. I'm just speaking.

Daphne continues playing with my hair. "It's fine. You're fine. I promise."

I don't know how long we stay there like that—too long, probably—but by the time I get up, we're running incredibly late for class and rush about as fast as we can to make it. We've missed breakfast, of course, but she doesn't seem to mind. Instead she just stands by my side, quietly giving me strength to deal with this today.

Nothing could have prepared me for the random attack of sorrow this morning, but I'm grateful a friend was there to help me.

So grateful, in fact, that I ditch her after Transfiguration this morning with a pathetic apology for why I'm running off like this. She nods in understanding while I rush off to the Owlery.

Milo flies down to me as usual, but I don't intend to use him. I would prefer no one see Zoe's owl flying around. That might bring up some questions I'm unable to answer right now. At this point in my life it's just better if I don't draw any extra attention to myself. So I feed Milo a small cracker, rub the top of his head gently, and send him on his way. He seems to accept this without issue, and I then tie my little note to the foot of a Hogwarts owl. "Severus Snape, headmaster of Hogwarts," I tell it. The bird flaps its wings and takes off into the air.

I need to see him. I decided it after my breakdown with Daphne earlier. Or rather, right in the middle of the breakdown. Of all the people in this world I need to be around right now, it's him. He'll understand better than anyone else, and he won't judge me. And I just want to spend time with him right now. He makes me feel better. I don't know what it is about him—he's just…he's Severus Snape. He knows me better than anyone.

Instead of going back down to the castle and going to class like I know I should, I lower myself to the stone floor and watch the owls. Part of me idly wonders what happens after death. Are Zoe and Mrs. Stoico somewhere waiting on me to arrive? Is Helena looking down at Christopher and her other siblings? Will I ever see them again? Will I meet Helena when I die? If I die soon, will I meet Lily Potter, the woman who sacrificed everything for her child? A cold hand grips the back of my neck, and I can't stifle the shudder that quakes through me. Death probably isn't the best thing to be thinking about right now, but I can't help it. It's one of those things that looms over me and won't let me breathe well. Death haunts me.

Milo flies back down to me, and I let him nibble at my finger for a moment before I say goodbye to him and wander back down to the castle. Of course, I still don't go to class, but it's better than hiding out in the Owlery, I guess. Instead I hide out in the Slytherin Dungeon, trying to sleep for a bit longer but mostly just looking through some of Zoe's sketchbook and crying quietly. I only leave the dungeon again when lunch time rolls around, which I only do because I'm hoping to get an answer from Severus at some point today. Hopefully soon.

"Where've you been all day?" Daphne asks when I sit down with her and my other friends at lunch.

"Just…resting."

"You skipped class, Charlotte?" Jacob asks. "And to think you were once our tutor."

"Shut up," I say, a smile coming to my face. "Sometimes class is just too much to handle, I can't help that. But none of you should skip class, you hear me?"

Ella shrugs. "Sure. Some of us actually like learning, Charlotte."

Luckily the subject changes, and I no longer really have to talk to any of them about my poor choices. Not that I dislike talking to them. It's just…I don't want to think much about everything that's happening. Pretending everything's fine kind of makes me want to believe it's actually fine.

Near the end of our meal, a few owls swoop into the room, one of them I recognize to be the one I used to send Severus my note. I smile at it as it drops a thin letter on my empty plate.

"Were you expecting mail?" Astoria asks.

"No," I lie. But I have to force down the hope in my chest. I can't let them know that something's going on.

"Are you going to check it?" Julia asks.

"Not right now." I'm going to check it before my next class. Which I'm only going to because the Carrows will freak out if I don't show up for Muggle Studies. They might even tell Voldemort that something's changed, and he might suspect that I'm pregnant, which might lead to them pulling me out of Hogwarts, and that's honestly not something I can handle right now. Regardless of how I feel about some of the aspects of Hogwarts, such as the Carrows and the members of the D.A. who distrust me, it is the one place where I can feel safe and sane. Mostly due to Severus, and I fear that if they pull me away from Hogwarts, I might never get a chance to see him again.

Anticipation courses through me as I walk to Muggle Studies with Daphne. All I want to do is read what Severus wrote back to me, but I suppress it the best I can while we make our way to the classroom. Only after Daphne and I have taken our seats in the back of the room do I discreetly open the letter. My heart sinks when I read it. I can't go to his quarters until after curfew. But I guess that's better than nothing.

"Everything okay?" Daphne asks me.

I shrug. "About the same, I suppose."

Part of me suspects that Daphne knows I'm sneaking out tonight. She corralled all the second years and Astoria and Malcolm out of the common room much earlier than any of them would have otherwise gone to bed. She smirked at me while she said goodnight, and she even pulled her curtains shut almost immediately after lying down, which she hardly ever does. Usually she'll pull only half of it closed so we can continue to chat until we get too tired to deal with speaking. Not tonight though. Tonight she immediately blocked herself off. And she didn't seem angry or upset, which makes me believe that she knows I'm sneaking out. I appreciate her thoughtfulness as I cast the Disillusionment Charm around myself and my knapsack and slide out of my bed.

Most of the common room has emptied out, but there are still enough people around that someone would notice the door opening and closing for no reason. I sit on the floor next to the door and wait patiently, hoping someone else sneaked out and is about to sneak back in. Of course I have no such luck, and I have to wait until the last of the students trickle out of the common room. I waste no time slipping out of the room and into the corridor as soon as I can. No one is around, naturally, and I rush to the bathroom so that I can Apparate to Severus's chambers.

He's sitting on the sofa in the living room when I arrive, but he stands when he sees me. "Charlotte, is everything all right? I wasn't expecting you to set up a meeting this—"

I throw my arms around him and bury my face into his chest. Already my body vibrates with the effort to suppress my sobbing. I shake my head vigorously. "I'm not okay," I whisper.

He holds me closely, his hands rubbing my back soothingly. "What's happened?"

I just shake my head again and squeeze him tighter.

"You're safe," he says, as if he's afraid that's my issue right now. But it's not my safety that is my problem. It's Zoe's, of course. Well, her lack of safety that led to her death. I wasn't expecting all of this to come crashing back onto me today.

With a few deep breaths, I manage to pull myself together enough to give Severus a short explanation of what happened this morning and why I'm so upset about it. He frowns at me, his eyes sad, and simply offers me a few words of comfort and a warm hug. "I'm sorry, Charlotte," he says quietly.

"I'll be okay," I say. "I just…wanted to see you." I kind of smile up at him, my lips quivering a little bit despite my effort to stop it. "I don't know why. I was just hoping…I don't know. Being around you makes me feel better. Do you mind?"

"No." He looks away for a moment. "There is something I need to finish in my office." Something he can't do in here? He always conjures up a desk or whatever to work in here. He must notice a look on my face, because he adds, "A conversation with Professor Dumbledore."

I motion toward his office door. "Then by all means. I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you."

He kisses the top of my head. "You didn't."

I watch him leave, then take a seat on the sofa and reach into the bag I brought. Carefully positioned between two of the books I'll need for class in the morning is a small, unfinished painting. I have the sketch of it and intend to keep it, but Zoe had started an actual painting of her liberating me from Hogwarts and Severus. It's the one in which she is storming the castle to rescue me, swords and all, while Severus tries to grab me and stop me from hopping onto the hippogriff with her. I smile at it before carrying it to the wall just beside the window and hang it there with a sticking charm. Half of it is still colorless, its progress cut short when Zoe died. I smile at it.

Severus enters his quarters as I step away from the painting. "What is that?" he asks.

"Something that's important to me that I want to give to you. No need to thank me, but I even hung it up for you."

"Charlotte, I can't…I can't accept that."

"Why not?"

He comes to a stop beside me, his body heat warming my arm he's so close. "Miss Accrington made that for you."

I shrug. "I want you to have it. I don't know why. It just…it feels right somehow. I think she'd get a good laugh from it, if she knew it was hanging in the office of the horrifying Death Eater headmaster of Hogwarts."

"Charlotte—"

"Consider it a belated Christmas gift, yeah?"

He nods and presses the corner of it against the wall. "It's wonderful. She was so very talented."

"Thanks, I thought so too. We were dead-set on trying to get me away from you." I slide my arm through his. "Damn, were we way off the mark on that one." I pull him toward the bedroom and sit down on the bed. He takes a seat next to me. "There's something you should know."

"By your tone I assume it's safe to say it's not good?"

"Yeah. It's about Daphne."

I take his hand and play with it between my own. "She…she knows I'm trying to get my father out of Azkaban."

"What?" he asks, his voice annoyed.

"That's not even the worst part."

He huffs at me.

"She had demanded that I take her with me to save him."

"Absolutely not."

"That's what I said, but she put up a fight and—"

"Do not tell me that you said yes, Charlotte. Don't say that to me."

"I…didn't tell her no."

He clenches his jaw. "Charlotte, you realize that I cannot allow—"

"I know, but she was adamant."

"She is a student!"

"So am I!"

"No, you're not. Don't compare the two of you," he says. "Those are completely different circumstances, and you know it. And you cannot claim to be a student when it suits you and then explain that you're not a student when it makes things easier for you."

"I know," I say, "I know it's not fair. I shouldn't have—I shouldn't have said that. I'm not a student. And she is. But I can't stop her. She's threatened to go to McGonagall."

He stands up, pulling his hand away from mine. "Charlotte, why would you even tell her that? What made you think it was a good idea to—do you realize how dangerous this is now? We might not even be able to—"

"I know, I know," I whisper. "I get it, I shouldn't have told her, but…I don't know, Severus, I miss having friends my age to tell things to. I miss…having someone like Zoe. I told her everything, and I guess I've…gravitated toward Daphne like that."

Severus's face becomes sad, and he walks over to sit next to me. His eyes search my face continuously for a short, quiet moment. Then he says, "Do you want to be with her as you were with Zoe? Because if you want this"—he motions between the two of us—"to end, I'll understand. I won't be upset with you."

"No, no." I take his hand again and pull my legs under myself and turn my whole body to face him better. "I thought once about—but…I was just grieving. It was right after Zoe's death." I smile at him. "I enjoy being around you, I love our time together. I wouldn't trade it for anything." He gives my hand a kind squeeze, a smile threatening the corners of his mouth. Well, I might trade our time together for Zoe if there was any chance of her return. I swallow down that upsetting thought and move closer to him. "Unless…you wanted to stop this? Is that what this is about?"

He shakes his head. "No."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"So what do we do about Daphne?"

He sighs. "I'm not sure. She knows now, so we can't take that back."

"Why don't we just…let her go with us?"

"Charlotte—"

"I'm serious. She can go with us. She can help. She says she can create a corporeal Patronus. Wouldn't it be better for us if there is a third person who can create that?"

"Of course it would, but, we can't risk her life like that. Do you have any idea what would happen if she were to be killed in Azkaban? Do you want to risk her life? Do you think you could handle losing her?"

I place my forehead on the side of his shoulder. "I really don't want to lose her, Severus, but I don't want to leave my father in Azkaban. And if it comes down to it…I mean I'll do my best to keep her safe if she goes. But…I just can't fathom the idea of leaving my dad in there."

"So we'll go without telling her," he says. "And then, by the time she tells McGonagall, it'll be too late to stop us."

I look away from him. "We could, but…I mean…well, another Patronus might…even the odds a bit." Meaning there's less chance of Severus getting hurt.

"She's a student. I won't let her go."

"She's of age. She's an adult. Do you know anyone else who can create a Patronus who would be willing to go into Azkaban to rescue a Death Eater? This is dangerous, Severus."

"Which is why she cannot go."

"But it'll be safer if she goes." Safer for him. There's a better chance that he'll make it out alive. And I would give anything to ensure his safety. Even if that means risking Daphne. And I hate myself for admitting that, even if I'm only admitting it to myself and not out loud. "I want you safe, Severus. She's an adult. She's the same age you were when half your year decided to join the Order and the other half decided to join the Death Eaters. I say let her make her own decision. No one has to know."

He's silent for a few minutes, and I don't try to speak. A few different looks cross his face while he ponders whatever it is that he needs to. An intense sorrow crosses his face, then he sets his jaw and exhales, eyes closed briefly. After what feels like a small eternity, he says, "If she goes, I'll need some sort of disguise."

A smile threatens the corner of my lips. "Like…a normal human transfiguration disguise or a Polyjuice potion disguise?"

"Still Polyjuice Potion, but it can't be Gideon Collins's hair anymore. If word got around to young Christopher that is father went to Azkaban to free Rodolphus Lestrange…"

"Well, I don't think anyone should find out that any of us went into Azkaban."

"What I mean is that it'd be unwise for Gideon Collins to be around Daphne when we're in Azkaban." He almost grins at me when he says, "I need you to steal some of Draco's hair."

"So Daphne can let slip to Astoria that Draco went into Azkaban?"

"It's better than her letting slip that Collins went into Azkaban."

I shrug. He might have a point. It'd make more sense for Draco to help me spring my father from Azkaban than it would for Mr. Collins to free my father. "I mean, sure. So…will Rabastan think you're still Mr. Collins?"

"Yes. I'll need him to believe that I'm Mr. Collins pretending to be Draco."

"So are you going to write Rabastan and let him know that you'll be going as Draco?"

"Probably."

"Probably?"

"The next Hogsmeade weekend is later this month. I believe you should write Rabastan and plan to meet him in the town. The two of you can get Draco's hair then, and then we'll break into Azkaban."

The heat drains from my body, an icy hand gripping my heart. "So soon? We're…we're breaking in so soon?"

"Is that not what you wanted?"

"It is… I just can't stop…thinking about the last time I was there, you know?"

Severus smiles at me. "I won't let you get locked away in there again, Charlotte, you know that. So long as I'm alive, you'll never spend another night in that prison. You're safe."

I wrap my arms around him, almost relieved at his words. If anyone can protect me from Azkaban, it's Severus. He'll keep me safe from Azkaban. "I love you, Severus. You know that, don't you?"

He places his cheek on the top of my head. "The feeling is mutual."

"I don't think I could've made it through all of these months without you."

"Don't thank me too soon. We still have quite a few months to make it through."

"Don't say that. Can we just pretend that this terrible war won't last more than a few more weeks? Can we just pretend that Harry and his friends are close to solving this whole issue?"

"If that's what you want."

"That is very much what I want. If I don't keep some sort of hope, then what's the point?"