A/N: Well, this is it. The last chapter. Get out your hankies, everyone, because you're in for a wet ride. And I must give a special thank you to my very own Severa for inspiring me to finally finish my story. If you find yourselves interested in the topic of Severa and I, you can read all about our adventures in her "Rubida Luna" and about her (alas, less of me) in Normandie M's "Redemption". By the way, the random mention of Mally in this chapter is to clear up a little boo-boo I made in the last one. Enjoy it, my friends.

Chapter Eighteen

They returned to Hogwarts with Lupin, who had decided to stay on another month or so to watch the effects of the potion on his affliction. He and Sylvia could often be seen walking and talking seriously out past the archeological site, where the flowers were beginning to bud and spring was in the air.

As the Easter holidays came and went, Snape watched them carefully. Sylvia claimed that the two were merely close friends, but he often wondered how close they could be.

He did not want to ask, because he did not want it to seem that he was prying, but sometimes he couldn't help but wonder if there was still anything between them.

This sneaking suspicion was reinforced by Rosamund, whom he met again in the library late one night, reading intently in the Restricted Section, as she was wont to do. Sometimes he wondered what sort of books she read there.

"Rosamund," he said as warmly as he could; though he often felt he empathized with the girl, she still sometimes unnerved him.

"Oh, hello Severus," she said, smiling a little coldly at him. "How are you this fine evening?"

"As well as I should be," he replied; for he too knew how to be cold.

"And how are things with Sylvia?" she asked with a sneer.

"Look," he growled, teeth bared, coming closer to her. She shrank away subconsciously. "I don't know what it is you have against Sylvia, but I think you need to get over it in a hurry. You're the only one that has this sort of hatred for her."

"Perhaps that's good!" she said defensively. "Master Snape, perhaps all these people who say that she is good and wholesome and perfect, perhaps they are the ones that make it worse for her! She is not incapable of hate," Rosamund added, "nor of fear, nor of hurting someone…" She gave Snape a pointed look. "…As one of my encounters with her clearly shows. Perhaps it is I, Master Snape, who keep her from the status of goddess that the rest of you clearly try to adorn her with."

"She is not incapable of hurting someone…" Snape repeated softly. "What do you mean by that, Rosamund?"

"What I mean I do not say," she replied. "But I think you shall know soon enough. Yes, soon enough you shall know that she can hate as strongly as she can love."

***

The school year slowly slipped away, and as Snape assigned final projects and double-checked his exams, he thought about how eventful the year had been. Never before had he been so emotionally challenged. First Cassandra (he winced now, just thinking of the name), and now Sylvia. Had he only met her in August? Sometimes he felt like he had known her forever.

Finally, the year was in its last week, and after administering the Potions exam, Snape came to talk with Sylvia. He found, however, another visitor in her room—Remus Lupin. The two had been sitting in her cozy armchairs chatting uneventfully, but this didn't allay Snape's suspicions.

After Lupin quickly left, Sylvia did the best she could to explain things. "Remus is helping me think through some things," she explained soothingly to Snape, who was not soothed in the least.

"I didn't know you had to think through things. I thought you were perfect, Sylvia. I thought you always did what was honorable and right and good and beautiful," he said sarcastically, thinking upon what Rosamund had said to him a few weeks earlier.

"Even the most good and beautiful cannot share in the Forms," she replied a little quietly. "Now, shall we continue with our study?" Over the past few days they had been reading Plato's Symposium lightly, finding it hard to be serious on the matter of love.

"Right," he said, turning to his favorite diversion, philosophy, and opening his copy of the book, which he had brought with him. Sylvia did likewise, although she did not seem to be concentrating on it. "Now, Eryximachus believes that love is…Sylvia?" She was now staring out into space.

"Oh, sorry," she said absently. "I was thinking about that doctor, Mallory O'Kenly. Remember, the one we met a few weeks ago with uh…with Remus? She looked so familiar to me. And do you know what her partner Medyr said to me?"

"I have no idea," he said dryly, not particularly caring about the doctor or her partner, and wondering what exactly had brought the thoughts of the woman, whom the two had but briefly met, to Sylvia's mind.

"He said…" she looked off into the distance, picturing the scene as if it were happening again. "He said, 'I'm surprised, Ms. Oliver, that Mallory was so willing to touch you. She has never touched anyone else before. What's so special about you?' What indeed?"

Snape laughed. "I think that that should be obvious, Sylvia. You are the eldest of The Three, and immortal. There is something very special about you."

"Not all that special," she snapped, and Snape was surprised by her vehemence. "We still have the same emotions, the same feelings, as you do, you know. We just have longer to think about them and rue our mistakes…too long, too many thousands of years to think about it all and to rue our mistakes. I love you, Severus. I love you."

"Sylvia, what…?" He began to protest, but before he had time to fully think again about what Rosamund had said, and to consider it a premonition of sorts, she kissed him fiercely and began to strip him of his clothes, before working off her own. After this, he decided a protest would be vain, and in any case, not much in character with his former position on the matter.

***

He remembered, almost as if it was a dream, the feeling of a warm body pressed against his during the night, but he did not remember the feeling of her leaving. Maybe his subconscious didn't want to remember it.

When he awoke, it was to an empty bed and a hastily scrawled note on the bedside table. Looking out the window, he saw it was already late in the morning. Then again, it had been a late night.

Dearest and only Severus, This is the worst way possible for me to leave you. The old note by the pillow, the body missing from the bed—it's a tired cliché, isn't it? But sometimes I feel like I'm a tired cliché. I cannot write out an explanation for this; it would be better for me to say it to you face to face. But I don't think I can do that either. So I have left you a memory in my Pensieve. I hope you will look into it. Sevy, I'm so sorry. I did botch things up terribly. I have hurt you worse than she did, and I didn't mean to. But, I write too much. Just know that I do love you, no matter what you are inclined to think.

-Sylvia

Confused, he noticed her Pensieve sitting at the edge of her bed, and, not giving it another thought, touched his hand to the surface. Immediately he was sucked into her memory.

She was standing in her nightgown by the cabinet where she stored the Pensieve, the only light coming from a single candle. He assumed that this was last night.

She began to speak, very softly as not to wake his sleeping form, prone in the nearby bed, and she looked like she was talking to herself. "Sevy, I feel…I don't even know if you'll see this…but it's the least I can do. You don't know how I love you. And—and what just happened, that was incredible. I have never felt so…so complete in my life as I did with you just now.

"It was perfect, and as I lay there afterwards, I thought about how it had been so more alive, so more real, than anything I have ever experienced. But then another thought came creeping in, and the little voice said to me, no matter how much I did not want it to…'Andromache, what if you conceived? What would happen then? You would lose it all, and you would die. And then what would we do?'

"Don't think me selfish, Severus. Please. Voldemort will return in the next few years, mark my words, and I need to be there, with my powers, to destroy him. We were the same Three that had to destroy Slytherin, and it would be letting Artemis and Axiothea down for me to be gone, for there to be another in my place.

"I'm going away for a while, Sevy. I think it's the best thing to do. Until Voldemort comes back, I don't think…I don't think we should be tempted. Remus is going to come with me. He's always been a help to me, and I don't want to lose him.

"You have no idea how I want us to be together, Sevy. I love you so much, but I just think that we should not let our love get in the way of preventing this great evil. I hope you will understand. Please understand. And don't let the rain clouds gather in your soul—I couldn't stand for you to be gloomy. I won't stand for it. I won't let it rain on you. I've left you some more of my father's papers. I hope you enjoy them.

"I think it's time for me to go now, Severus. I love you. Don't ever forget it."

And it was over. She was gone. Yet another woman was gone from his life. The woman that fate had made for him had run away, just like everyone else he had cared about. Why shouldn't it rain on him?

***

"I noticed this morning that she was gone," Dumbledore said gently, patting Snape on the back in a desperate attempt to comfort him. "I'm sorry that it had to happen this way—this is not the Sylvia that I have known."

"She's changed," Snape said numbly, trying his best to be apathetic. "She said so herself. After…after Voldemort's evil, to which she had grown accustomed, she found herself different."

"Come, let's go for a walk outside," the Headmaster suggested.

"Professor, it's raining," Snape pointed out, gazing out the window at the downpour.

"We shouldn't let it deter us. A little water never hurt anyone," Dumbledore replied stoutly, gathering himself up, as it were, for the task.

As they walked through the wet grounds, Dumbledore added, "She really does think that she has done what's best, Severus."

"I know," Snape said tiredly. "And that's what makes me so damn angry. Does she not think that I could restrain myself from…from being with her? That the mere sight of her is going to throw me into temptation? Gods, I could spend hours just staring at her face…at her smile…I don't need what happened last night to happen every night! I just need her, with me, and that would be enough."

Snape looked up to see the headmaster looking at him curiously. "Severus, I do believe there's something quite queer going on," Dumbledore remarked, his bead dripping profusely.

"What?" he asked darkly, slightly perturbed at the thought that the Headmaster had not been giving him his utmost attention.

"Look at this—you're not wet, not wet at all. It's almost like…like the rain is falling around you, instead of upon you."

"I won't let it rain on you…" Snape murmured. "The Three have the power to control nature, don't they, Professor Dumbledore?"

"I believe they do, yes." They walked along in silence for a while, pondering this thought, and Snape found himself angry that Sylvia had had to do something like this for him—just when he wanted to hate her. No matter how much he desired to loathe her, to be hostile and furious against her, he could not completely do it. His love still stood in the way.

"I hate and I love!" Snape suddenly and bitterly said, remembering an old line out of a Muggle poem. "Perhaps you ask me why I do this. I don't know, but I feel it happening. And I am in torment…Oh, Professor, I am in torment."

"Catullus," Dumbledore replied, nodding his gray and wet head. "A most famous poem, Severus. I did not know that you knew odi et amo."

"I think I know odi et amo well," Snape answered, "I think I know it more well now than I have ever known it in my life."

***

Don't like the way it ends?? Let me know, and I'll write an epilogue to clear it up, if I get enough requests. I was just trying to end it dramatically. And there will be a sequel you know, much more action-packed than this first one. I want to thank all of my wonderfully fabulous reviewers. The old ones, you know who you are (look back a few chapters), but special thanks to the (relatively) new ones: swift-footed-e, Normandie M, Halo and Wings, and Dogbone7. You make it all worthwhile