Snape poured Allosia a glass of wine and passed it to her, before filling his own glass and bringing it and the bottle over to the chair opposite her. All his motions seemed deliberate, slow, and she realized he was stalling for time. He bent to place the bottle on the floor, and then leaned back in his own chair, throwing one leg over the arm. He took a sip of wine, swallowed and then ran his tongue over his lips quickly, to get the full bitterness of it. He smiled, slightly and sadly into the glass that he had perched delicately between the fingertips of both hands, and began.

"I made the mistake of telling Malfoy, Lucius, about your crush. He laughed at me at first, gave me static about hanging out with mudbloods, which I then had to remind him you weren't. After he thought about it for a day or two he was angry at me for not having, had my way with you, I believe is how he put it. By Merlin, you were only a child. The prospect of hurting you appealed to him. The prospect of me doing it, appealed to him more. I don't know how well you've known Lucius, then or now, but he likes to watch, to encourage, to entice. Blood on his own hands is one thing, but if he can get someone else to lick it off." Snape trailed off then, and Allosia suspected he was remembering something very specific.

"At any rate, he eventually let the subject drop. I managed to convince him that the time I spent with you wasn't up to me, he thought I'd done you enough of a disservice by pushing you towards Gage, and let it drop. There were a million other things he was up to at any given time. At any rate, by the beginning of 7th year we all needed to figure out what the hell we were going to do with ourselves after graduation. I'm not particularly suited to anything other than being an academic and at the time, I was appalled. The power of warping young minds obviously hadn't occurred to me. I wanted to spend time with my potions, make brilliant discoveries, write books and quite frankly be left alone by what appeared to be a world filled with beaurocrats and assholes." He paused for another sip of wine then; Allosia just continued to sit there, with her knees up, taking him and their history in.

"Of course, things were not that simple, not ever, and not then. My mother was dead, as you know, my father was diligently trying not to choose sides on anything and Lucius kept warning me I was going to waste away as some pathetic teacher somewhere," Snape looked around the room then, with both sorrow and anger. "He had already chosen then, had become a Death Eater over the summer. I had been to a party his father had thrown shortly afterwards. He bought us all prostitutes. Mine didn't understand why I didn't hurt her more first, and eventually demanded I punch her, so the madam wouldn't think she'd hid from duty. They were not allowed to heal themselves until they got home. She had to taunt me and insult me until I could and then I liked it very much."

Allosia took a big drink then, but would not look away from him. She kept telling herself, not to look away, to be as present as she could. He was looking into his glass as he continued.

"That was the beginning of Lucius badgering me. Voldemort wasn't what I thought, I had this huge potential that wasn't going to be of any use in a world filled with laws designed to protect people too stupid to live. He seized on the things that plagued me, my weakness, my intolerance for the slowness of others, my lack of any real place in the world, and my health. Imagine if it could be better. Imagine if the asthma and the coughing fits and the scarring on my lungs were gone. Imagine if I could be a Quidditch star." His voice had grown bitter now. "He knew I was worthy he said, but I'd have to prove myself, many times. To his friends, to his father, his fathers friends, and eventually to Voldemort." He drained his glass and refilled it, sighing heavily.

"And so, when we got into that stupid fight my last year, and I heard your anger, and I looked at you, this beautiful alien little creature and a dozen things clicked into place. I cared about you, which meant the path I was about to choose was going to put you at risk. I wanted you, and felt like if I went near you, after, I'd might as well be poisoning you, how could I touch you with hands that were about to live the life I did? And then I realized, this could be my first proof. I could take you, and love you, and tell Lucius I'd fucked you, show him the slightest bit of your blood on my fingers, and never talk to you again, and we'd be free of each other. It was for the best, I was sure of that." Snape stared at her for a long time, but she said nothing, merely holding the gaze, even as her eyes became rounder and sadder. "You were the first woman I was with who wasn't paid for it."

Allosia was crying silently by then, opeing her mouth to speak, but with nothing coming out.

"I couldn't have told you, I couldn't have warned you. You would have fought me, You had to go back to Gage."

"I never told him."

"Did you ever - "

"Our sixth year, as he was drifting towards Constance, yes."

Snape nodded. "Do you hate me yet?"

"I won't give you the satisfaction of hearing that. I don't hate you. I am angry, and shocked, and repulsed and I think you were a greedy and awful child. A part of me would rather you had just raped me. My god, Severus, you cried. You cried. And even that was just all about you." She sighed. "Fuck, I am so angry. I just wish I had known."

"Say what you need to say to me."

"No. I know you'll enjoy it on some level, need it on some level. The things I need to say, need to be said to a Severus that doesn't exist anymore. I will not give you the satisfaction."

The hardness in her voice grieved him and frightened him, and he didn't know what to say next, or how to say it.

"Do you know why Gage died?" he asked.

"I gave him faulty information. We both know all about that."

"No, you don't. You gave him information, a tip on a Death Eater plot, someone he could arrest, foil the whole thing. The information was weak, you remember that, right?"

"Yes. But I knew Kenia, trusted her."

"And you gave the information to Gage, which he never ever would have acted upon if it hadn't been from you, right?"

"Yes? But I don't understand."

"It was misinformation. Intentional misinformation, a trap. Information that had Gage received from anyone else he would have ignored. The info was never supposed to go through you. I'm a spy for the ministry, you know that, I play both sides. I know the Death Eaters don't trust me anymore, but still it's enough, I have some sense of what's going on, of who is with him. I was asked to do something to prove my loyalty. I tried to do it in a way that would make it obvious it was a set-up, a trap, so that no one would act on it, no one killed. I'd be hurt, of course for blundering, I've been hurt before, I miss it when it's not on schedule it seems. But because I made a mistake, you got that information. You gave it to Gage, he trusted you, he died. You didn't make a mistake and kill Gage, I did."

"Oh. Oh oh oh. No. I should have - "

"You're an auror, you were doing your job, we were all doing our jobs. I fucked up. That's all."

He ran his fingers through the front of his hair and left them their leaning his head into his palm, waiting.

"I don't know what to say to you, Severus. I don't know what to say at all. I just don't know anymore. I feel like that little girl again, who was so in awe of you. But it's not love, not at all." She finished her wine then and Severus gestured to the bottle. She nodded and then both leaned forward in their chairs so he could pour her another glass.

"When did you cut your hair?"

It was an odd topic change, but Allosia understood the question. He was asking her when she had become this Allosia. "About five years ago. Just one day, I was someone else, this," she gestured to herself, "needed to catch up."

"What has your life been like?"

"You know my work, you know what that means. I've lost two other friends, on top of Gage. I have a flat in London. I almost got married once, I scared him off though. We had a dog. He took it when he left. I sing. I drink too much coffee. I dislike mornings unless I see them come on. I am still struggling with German. I don't know what else to tell you. I've become, or I had become, very still inside."

Severus nodded, somber and amazed. "What was his name? What was he like?"

"Black hair, bright blue eyes, smart, embarasingly sensual mouth. He's a chef. I wasn't the girl he had dreamed of as a child. Eventually, he decided he couldn't live with that. I was relieved though."

"Why?"

"It seemed like someone else's life."

Severus nodded again. "It's hard to picture."

"For me too, now. It was a long time ago." She smiled whistfully. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"It's a bit awful."

"Go ahead."

"Did you kill a lot?"

"Yes."

"Did you like it?"

"For a time."

"Did he, Voldemort, did he keep his promises?"

"After a fashion."

"Be careful what you wish for?"

"Yes, exactly."

"Will you tell me about it?"

"Not tonight, not now, not yet. I'm so tired."

"Oh, gods, it's late, do you want me to go?" she asked, starting.

"No, no it's fine, just, it's a large burden. Please, stay, it's pleasant having you here, I just can't tell you those things right now."

"Alright." She paused. "May I see it?"

"The mark?" he asked already beginning to push his robe back.

She nodded. He leaned forward across the space between them and held his arm out. She stared at it for a time, and then touched it gingerly. When he made no protest, she traced it slowly, eventually looking at him to see a look of extreme concentration on his face. "I'm sorry, am I hurting you?"

"It's alright."

She continued the trace, until done, and then he drew his arm back and covered it without looking. "I've never seen one, that close, on someone who was still alive."

"There are so many people I would trade places with," he said shaking his head.

"Don't. You can't. Things have their reasons."

"Not good ones, Allosia, not good ones."