Up in Dumbledore's office, Hazel sat numbly staring forward. "I lost both of them?" she mumbled, tears still streaking down her face as she watched Fawkes preening. "Sev… he wouldn't…"

"He did," McGonagall said with finality. She still shook with rage, but she had to maintain her composure.

The door flew in, practically bending on its hinges. "Where is she?!" Mad-Eye Moody bellowed, hardly paying attention to who was in front of him. "Girl! Where is he? Where has Snape gone?"

"I don't know," she managed as Kingsley Shacklebolt came up the stairs behind him. They were followed by Professor Slughorn. He'd heard the news already, but he left the Prefects in charge and went to see what was happening. He would soon be named the acting Head of Slytherin House, after all.

Moody raised his wand, stepping in front of where she sat. "Where is he?" he asked again.

"I don't know," Hazel insisted.

With a frown, he muttered the curse, McGonagall immediately telling him to stop. Nothing was going to stop him. Dumbledore had just been murdered. The leader of their cause was gone. Not even Cornelius Fudge himself would have been able to stop him. There was nothing but wrath in his eyes as he cursed his former protegee, the young Auror he had mentored turning into what he saw as an enemy. "Crucio!"

"Alastor, stop that at once!"

Kingsley grabbed his arm, trying to stop his old colleague. "What the-"

"I. Don't. Know." Hazel gritted her teeth, clenching the arms of the chair. A wave of pain overcame her, but she had nothing to tell him. "I don't know where he is! He didn't tell me anything! Alastor, please -"

"Enough!" McGonagall roared loud enough to distract even the hardened Auror. "I will not have you torturing my professors! Horace, go and fetch some Veritaserum. That will give us the answers we need."

Moody had an objection at the ready. "Veritaserum can be fought."

"So can the Cruciatus Curse," McGonagall countered, crossing her arms. Her word was final. As long as he was in her school, he was to obey her rules. "You were the one who taught her how to fight it."

Slughorn was back in a flash. He conjured a goblet, filling it with pumpkin juice before putting a couple of drops of the truth potion inside, mixing it well, and telling Hazel to drink. She looked between the four of them before gulping the potion down. "What do you want to know?"

"With a dose like that, you should have, hmm, I'd say two hours. Three maximum," Slughorn said to the others before stepping back. He looked on as he pocketed the tiny bottle, interested to see what would come of this.

Moody was the one to take over, leaning on the desk as he started asking questions. "Right. We'll start with a baseline. What did you do for the Ministry?"

The words rolled right off her tongue. It felt like she was floating, almost disconnected from the rest of the room. She'd used Veritaserum on plenty of people as an Auror. She and Sev had been debating about dosing each other with it back in school, just to see what would happen, but they didn't actually try it until long after. "I was an Auror. One of your favorite students. There were a couple of us who made it through training really fast, so we went with you two and the Longbottoms and fought," she said, hardly stopping for a breath. "We would hunt down Death Eaters, the worst of them. And then Barty Crouch asked for me by name and I hardly left the Wizengamot for months. He had me torture people for information." McGonagall and Slughorn shared a look of surprise, but the Aurors were focused on their captive. She was no longer their old colleague. As far as they were concerned, she was as good as an enemy. "The dementors would bring people in and we were told to get information out of them in whatever way possible. Crouch told us - he put the Unforgivable Curses on the table, and told us to use them liberally. So I did. For ages, until… until I couldn't anymore."

"Why not?" Moody asked. He already knew the answer. Crouch had told him everything about how she'd burst into his office, threatening to resign.

"Sev. It was Sev." She couldn't stop herself. "I saw them dragging him in and it was like… a spell had been broken or something. I could never see him as evil, I saw the same person I said goodbye to at the end of seventh year and the same person I… They were people, Alastor. We were torturing people when we could've just given them Veritaserum or… or anything else. They did horrible things, but so did we, and I can still hear them screaming sometimes, I can still hear him screaming -"

"Alright." Moody turned to look at McGonagall and Slughorn. "I know she knows how to fight this one too, so we're going to need to keep asking baseline questions. Both of you have had her as a student, and Headmistress, you've worked with her for ages. Feel free to chime in. Remember, something she would want to lie about."

McGonagall flinched slightly at being called "Headmistress", but she accepted it. It was the truth now. She sat down at the desk, assuming her new role. "Once you had finished your patrol of the school on the night Sirius Black broke in," she began, "where did you go?"

"The Great Hall. I kept an eye on the Ravenclaws - Filius was patrolling the Charms corridor at the time - and the Slytherins, since Sev went to check part of the grounds. He came back and that was the first time… the first time we'd held hands in ages. Well, not really, the last full moon before that we… that wasn't the question, now was it? Anyway, he was afraid, we all were, but I think he figured Sirius was going to kill him. He tried, when we were in school," she added, for Moody and Kingsley's benefit.

"Where is he now?" Moody asked, cutting off her rambling. It was so easy to keep talking and not register any of it. "Where is Snape?"

"I don't know. He has a house in Cokeworth that he inherited from his mum, but it's too obvious that he would run there. Wherever Voldemort is, that would be my bet." It was easy to answer, but she could feel a small voice in the back of her mind, a small voice telling her that she could resist the potion if she wanted to.

"Where is that?"

"I don't know. Whenever he would go to meet him - on Dumbledore's orders, mind you - he would never tell me where he went."

Moody crossed his arms, clearly unsatisfied. Slughorn took that as his cue to step in. "Perhaps this isn't a question that Mr. Moody would deem worthy of asking, but when you were a student here, I taught your class how to make Amortentia, the most powerful love potion in the world. It smells different to everyone. What did it smell like to you?"

As if he'd transported her back to the dungeon classroom so many years before, she could very nearly smell the potion they'd been toiling over. "Fresh ink, rosemary, and powdered bat wings. I didn't recognize what they were then - I, I asked you for the keys to the storeroom so I could try to narrow it down, but I only knew for sure when Sev and I were in Potage's a few days later. I didn't smell anything at first, and I thought we'd gotten it wrong, and then -"

"This is wasting time," Moody determined. "Did Snape ever tell you what he was planning?"

The voice was louder now, her own consciousness slowly starting to return. "He told me he had promised to do something terrible. He'd made an Unbreakable Vow, but he wouldn't tell me what it was. He - Dumbledore had him planning to do something, and Sev was so afraid that everyone would turn against him when he did it, this has to be it." Her voice caught in the back of her throat as Hazel tried to suppress a fresh wave of tears. She kept talking even though she could feel herself starting to cry. "He spent so long trying to convince people he was good, after all the mistakes he'd made and he was so worried that everyone would hate him and -"

"He killed Albus Dumbledore, of course we're going to hate him!" Moody bellowed, Hazel unable to keep herself from sobbing.

"Alastor!" McGonagall stood, telling him that he'd harassed her enough. "You've gotten what you need. She clearly has no idea where he is and had no idea of what he was planning. Now if you have no further pertinent questions, I must ask that you stop harassing my teachers. This poor woman has gone through enough tonight. Horace, take her down to the dungeons. Get her a Calming Draught and see her off to bed, and then come back here. I must speak with you and the other Heads of House. Kingsley, take Mr. Moody and alert the Order. I have a feeling there is much to be done tonight."

Her word was final. As Moody and Kingsley headed for the front of the school, Slughorn gently took Hazel's arm, picking her up out of her chair and steering her towards the corridor. "Minerva, I'm sorry. I didn't know Dumbledore would be…"

"Go to bed," McGonagall instructed, keeping her voice level. "You've had quite the series of shocks tonight. More than any of us, I will admit. Get some rest, and I will talk to you again in the morning."

"Come along now," Slughorn said, carefully guiding her downstairs and towards the dungeons. The halls were silent as they walked. Even the ghosts had gone into hiding. Slughorn finally broke the silence as they approached the staircase leading to the dungeons. "You know, your Amortentia lesson stuck out. I hardly remember all of the times I've taught it, but there have been a couple… It is a very curious and rare thing, but there have been a few pairs of students who were unable to smell anything at first."

"It was Sev," she said numbly. "I realized it in the storeroom. That's why you asked us to move, isn't it?"

Slughorn couldn't help but chuckle. "That it was. Every ten, maybe fifteen years or so, I get a pair that can't smell anything until I split them up. Your parents were one of them, which is why I found it especially curious." They came to a stop outside of the Slytherin common room. "I thought you would end up like the other two couples I've had that happen to. And then he went another way. Then Dumbledore told me… Well, suffice to say my amateur Amortentia predictions have not been wrong yet."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"I don't quite know," he answered honestly, fishing a vial out of his pocket. Double-checking that it was a Calming Draught, he handed it over. "Take this and be off to bed." Turning to the blank wall, he said "Baron" before guiding her inside.

Hazel went one way and he went another. Though she downed the Calming Draught, she dropped into bed and immediately started crying. Twelve hours earlier she and Sev had been getting up, kissing each other good morning and making plans for the weekend. Now Dumbledore was dead, Sev was gone, and the tide of the war had just turned against them.

The pillows still smelled like him. Ink. Rosemary. Powdered bat wings. And something that was uniquely Sev, the feeling of comfort that she'd wake up in as he held her close even in his sleep. Neither of them would be sleeping well that night, or for many weeks afterwards. As the Calming Draught started to kick in, she got up, avoiding her reflection as she went to brush her teeth and change into one of his old sweatshirts. She would fall asleep in them even when he was here, but tonight it was all she had left of him. And with a bounty on his head the moment he cast the Killing Curse, it might very well be all she had left of him for the rest of her life.

Falling back into bed, she started to cry. She knew he had to kill someone, but Dumbledore? Had they really been planning this all year? As much as she tried to repress it, part of her wondered if she had been part of this plan, part of a very long game designed to fool everyone, her included. No, she had to trust him. She did trust him. But if he could lie to the entire world, if he could play such a successful double agent, why couldn't he have lied to her and Dumbledore too? She closed her eyes, trying not to start bawling again, and fell into a restless sleep.

"I love you." Hazel sat up in bed, Sev smiling at her. "That's the one thing the Dark Lord doesn't have, the one thing he cannot fathom. The one thing we can keep from him. I love you."

"I love you too, Sev." She tried to reach out for him, but he shook his head.

"I'm not here. All of this is happening inside your head."

"Then how do I know -"

"I never said it wasn't real," he cautioned. "I don't know if this is working. I'm going to wake up and think it did, but I can't be sure."

"What are you doing?"

"Do you remember how we got so good at Legilimency and so comfortable with each other that we could just talk like this?" he smiled a bit, saying, "I'm trying it at a distance. It's exceedingly rare. I've only heard of this happening once or twice, and it never works for long. I thought it was just legend, but -"

It was her turn to interrupt. "How do I know I'm not making this up?"

"You can't know for sure," he sighed, but suddenly his eyes lit up. "I can tell you something you don't know. No, you would think you'd just made it up… Hazel, I have to go. I can feel the spell starting to fail. But I love you, and I will try to write soon. Please… trust me."

"I do. I will. I love you too, Sev."

Just as the ghostly image vanished, Hazel bolted up. She was completely alone. The only sound in the cold dungeon was the crackling of the last embers of the fire. She could've sworn he'd been sitting right there on the bed next to her, though...