Bees flew through the funeral party, bothering only those who had never personally visited the little house in the Sussex Downs. Everyone had gathered in the gardens, coming to say their farewells to the couple that had lived there for decades. They were buried in the shade of a grove of trees, a place both of them had always adored. A handsome two-story house rose behind the group. Everyone was too absorbed in their conversations to notice the man who leaned in the back doorway, surveying the crowd until he spotted her.

Sev had visited a few times when Hazel was staying with her aunt and uncle. It had been a welcome refuge from his own home, and her Aunt Violet always sent him away with enough food to feed a small army. He suspected that Hazel had told her about the squalor of Cokeworth, but neither of them ever mentioned it. Her uncle was a little strange, having spent a lifetime and a half as one of the most well-respected detectives in the country, if not the world. His abilities were legendary. Both of them had always been very nice whenever Sev visited though.

"Hey," he whispered, taking a seat next to Hazel.

"Hi. Thanks for coming." She afforded him a quick glance before she looked back to the reverend who had just started to speak.

"Of course," he nodded. As they sat there, he reached for her hand, Hazel intertwining her fingers with his.

Sev hardly paid attention to the sermon. He never did - he'd been to far too many funerals, and they all said the same sort of thing. Instead he stared forward, his eyes following the bees that buzzed around the reverend as he spoke. They'd kept bees as long as they'd lived in Sussex, at least according to Hazel. It made sense. There was no way to keep bees in central London, and her aunt and uncle had loved being away from the city.

He had always noticed the bees when he came to visit. Aunt Violet always had a fresh supply of honey, and she would send him home with jars of it for his mum. There was always some new type of flower blooming in their garden. There was also usually something interesting in the fireplace. Her uncle had dabbled in potions, but found a lot of them useless for crime solving. So instead he wrote up his own recipes, blending principles of Muggle chemistry with potioneering. By the time Sev first met him, he'd nearly filled a bookshelf with notebooks and monographs on his discoveries.

Sev stayed by Hazel's side until everyone else left. Remus was one of the last to go, saying that he would have stayed longer were it not for the approaching full moon. By the time everyone was gone, the sun was starting to set. Hazel waved her wand to pack up all of the chairs that had been brought out into the garden. Everything else could wait until morning.

"Have you eaten anything all day?" Sev asked, following her inside.

"Hardly. I kind of remember breakfast," she shrugged as he conjured plates of leftovers from the kitchen. She sat on the ground, her back against the sofa. She'd grown tired of talking to everyone, tired of hearing how sorry everyone was. The sympathy was nice, but so was having a quiet house and someone who didn't badger her if she wasn't up for talking. "Thank you."

He sat down on the sofa, the two of them starting to eat in silence. "I could stay here for a few days and help you get things organized if you'd like. We don't need to be back at Hogwarts until the end of the week. Only if you'd like help, though."

"That would be nice." She managed a weak smile, the thought of going through the entire house now much less daunting. "I'm keeping the house so I don't have to go from flat to flat, but there's so much here that I'll never use… Hagrid's taking the bees back to the school. They'll be good for his garden. I think there are some fairies that have nested with them, so he's taking those too. I want to sort through Aunt Violet's books. She's got plenty on Arithmancy and Ancient Runes that I'm sure Septima and Bathsheda could use much more than I can. If they don't want them I'll send them over to Madam Pince. You're welcome to all of Uncle Sherlock's notes. I know you've been eyeing them since we were kids. He has plenty of potion ingredients stashed in his office too. Whatever you want, it's yours."

"Thank you. You do know I'm here for you, not all of your uncle's things, though…"

Hazel smiled, assuring him that she did indeed know. "Sev, you don't strike me as the kind of person who would sit through all of that and offer to help me pack half of the house up just to inherit a crate of notebooks and whatever potion ingredients we can scrounge up," she laughed. It was the first time she'd smiled in a long time. The summer had been an especially difficult one, watching her favorite aunt and uncle waste away now that the Elixir of Life had run out. She and Sev had written all summer, but it was nice finally being able to see him again. With a sigh she leaned sideways, laying her head on his knees. Not quite knowing how to react, he instinctively started to run a hand through her hair as she talked. "I'm glad they're gone. I'm glad they're not suffering anymore. The last few weeks weren't very nice for any of us."

"I'm sorry," he offered, raising his wand. The fireplace sprang to life, the room now lit by a cold flame.

"I didn't understand who they were when I was a kid. I just thought he was a detective, and Uncle John was a doctor and… Mum said they were famous, but I didn't realize until she started reading me the stories. They'd all retired decades before, so… I asked him to teach me, but there's no way anyone would ever be that observant. It was the Gift, or that's what Aunt Violet called it anyway," she narrated, staring into the flames as her vision grew cloudy. "I'd like to think I inherited some of it, but who knows?"

"I think you did," Sev said definitively. "You were always the best person I knew at spotting a liar, even before we learned Legilimency."

"They were the last ones, Sev. Some of Dad's distant cousins are still alive, but they were the last of our real close family. I was so lucky that they let me stay with them after Mum died, or I'd have been off in the middle of nowhere in Wales with Dad's great aunt," Hazel sighed. She was quiet for a moment before standing up and declaring, "I'm going to find a Sleeping Draught and get ready for bed. I'm not terribly hungry. I think I'm going to take my old room, so feel free to take their room or the guest room or whatever. I - I'll be down to say goodnight in a bit."

He watched until she had disappeared upstairs. Not very hungry himself, he vanished the plates and disapparated to grab a few things from Spinner's End. When he returned, he changed into pajamas and went to explore the house. He was flipping through a well-worn photo album when he heard footsteps on the stairs. "Hey." Hazel looked even more worn-out than she had before. He set the book down, coming over to give her a hug. When they broke apart, she lingered for a second too long, Sev taking the hint. "Would you… like me to keep you company? Until you fall asleep, I mean?"

"Actually, yeah. If you wouldn't mind." He followed her upstairs into the room she'd taken over after her mum died. Little had changed after all of the time that had passed. He lay down beside her, Hazel turning the lights out with a wave of her wand. "G'night, Sev."

"Goodnight," he answered, watching as she settled in. He watched her try in vain to fall asleep. She ended up staring at the ceiling, and then looking over at him. With a sad smile, he reached for the closest book and started to read to her by wandlight.

"Thank you. It's just too quiet here. You're welcome to the other half of the bed if you want to stay," she yawned, falling asleep almost as soon as the words left her lips.

Fresh Sussex sunlight streamed into the room, Sev not registering where he was for a moment. He blinked, but as soon as he'd fully woken up, he knew he wasn't supposed to move. Sometime in the middle of the night Hazel had wrapped her arms around him. She was still sleeping peacefully, her head on his chest as she dozed. Even though the Sleeping Draught she'd taken the night before would likely keep her asleep if he got up, he didn't dare to move. Not that he wanted to.

He closed his eyes again, enjoying the warm sunlight and the hint of lavender in the air. Sev could see why Hazel's aunt and uncle had retired here. It was a nice place to be. He lay there for a little while, until she started to stir. Thinking it would be better for both of them if they didn't have to talk about it right away, he pretended to be asleep until she got up and went downstairs to set the coffee brewing.

He met her downstairs a little while later, neither of them bringing it up. Neither of them would mention it at all until they were fully exhausted from a day of sorting out the library, combing through the study, and helping Hagrid secure all of the beehives. Both of them had showered and changed after dinner, meeting up in the living room downstairs before Sev had to ask the question that had been lurking at the back of his mind all day. "Would you, er… like me to come with you?"

"If you wouldn't mind."

Staring into her eyes, still reddened from crying at the discovery of an old family photo album, he assented. "Of course."

This time she would lay her head on his chest much earlier, Sev wrapping an arm around her instinctively. "Sev? Is this alright?"

"Yes." He added two words, barely above a whisper, but in the quiet of the night, she still managed to catch them. "It's perfect." Neither of them said anything more, but both of them fell asleep with slight smiles on their faces.

The next day was spent identifying the oddities in the attic. Some of them - like the trunk full of old clothes, disguises, and crumbling crime scene sketches - were relatively normal, at least for her family. Others - a giant taxidermied rat, a bag full of jewels and odd coins that Sev had to check for curses, five orange blossoms in a decaying frame (again checked for curses), all things saved from various cases - were a lot less ordinary. They made a pile of things to be sent to Hogwarts and distributed among the professors according to subject and another pile of things to get rid of.

By the time they dropped into bed that night they were both nearly falling asleep on their feet. There was no discussion, just the natural order of one of them following the other up the stairs and the two falling asleep together. And so it went for another day, and another, until they had reached the end of the week and Sev had to go back to Cokeworth to pack some things up for the year. He left early in the morning, promising that he would see her when they reached the castle that evening.

At Hogwarts they didn't spend all day together - after all, they had to get their separate classrooms set up and ensure everything was in order before the students arrived in a couple of days. They would sit up at night and talk in one of their empty common rooms, but they would leave at a respectable hour. Even without the students there, they wouldn't be sighted doing anything otherwise. They never discussed how close they'd gotten in Sussex, how comfortable they'd become with each other. But both of them could sense that something had changed. Things at the school would have to be different, especially with all of the international attention that would soon be focused on Hogwarts. All eyes would be on the school and the people in it.

The dungeons suddenly felt colder, especially compared to the sunshine of the little house they'd shared for nearly a week. What really bothered him, though, was the Dark Mark on his left arm, which had steadily started to turn darker. It had faded over the years after Voldemort's downfall, but the curse scar was growing clearer by the day. The first time Igor Karkaroff sought him out, he denied it. But there was no more denying what they both could clearly see. The Dark Lord was out there, and he was getting stronger.