Completion: 13/18 Chapters

—Author's Note—

Love, loss, grief, and growth.
This story is told from the perspective of Severus Snape and explores his grief for the loss of Lily Potter, deals with the psychology of shifting a deeply embedded belief system, and introduces a very slow burning rivals-to-lovers romance, all of which is meant to tell a story of personal growth and healing. Also, I don't mean for it to sound like an entirely joyless experience—I do love humor as well. Partial deviations from the canon of the Harry Potter series will be made, most notably: changes to the dates of major events, and the entire character of Fawkes the phoenix.

_—***—_

Chapter 1 - Warm Welcome

The Great Hall was uncharacteristically silent. Out in the entrance hall at least there had been the friendly crackle of braziers to greet those who passed through the main door, ghosts chatting somewhere on the upper balcony, the sound of some unseen staff member's heels clicking down the hall; but here, all was quiet. No plates had yet been magically set, and the large house banners hanging from the ceiling had no wind to rustle noise from their intricate fabric. However, what stood out most in comparison to his memory of the place was the fact that there was not a soul in sight.

Severus allowed himself a brief moment to take it all in. By this time tomorrow, the students would be arriving for the first day of the 1981 Hogwarts school-year, and he would quickly find himself up to his eyeballs in essays and tests - though this time he would be the one grading them. This thought didn't incite any feelings of some grand new adventure though, nor did he feel trepidation at the necessary workload. Instead, he merely felt... apathetic. The overcast early night sky magically reflected in the ceiling seemed to mirror his impassive gaze.

His reverie was broken as an older witch wearing a rather gaudy looking fur hat come in through the side entrance. She took one look at him and, even from his position across the hall he could see, looked stricken. Her footsteps hurried up until she was at the door behind the long staff table that she - and incidentally he, as well - was headed to. It was too far a gap for her to have held open the door for him, but then again, he would not have expected her to. Feeling steeled in his blanketed emotions, he strode forward and followed suit, breaking ground on the hitherto unfamiliar corner of the school.

It was a cozy sort of parlor room with a high ceiling, though not nearly as high as the Great Hall. Here there was a handsome decoratively carved wooden ceiling and matching wall panels in place. At current, only a fireplace and a simple candlelit chandelier were providing light, and it created the perfect atmosphere for the friendly chatter carried around the room; from people in assorted sitting chairs, to booths, to those who were standing in small circles.

The crackling of the fire was suddenly very apparent as all the merry talking died down at once, and a dozen or so heads turned towards him.

He dodged glances and persons alike, making a sharp left pivot towards three identical empty chairs pushed against the wall in one corner, and sat. Poised though it was, his posture portrayed no intent to turn and make conversation, nor give any indication that he knew there were others in the room with him at all, and soon the talking resumed in a subdued whisper.

"—couldn't be—" "—surely not—" "—saw him last year at—" "—Slughorn has even been—" "—but would Dumbledore let—"

He stared at a spot on the floor a few feet in front of him, where it seemed the door had left a permanent sweeping mark on the hardwood. It wasn't resentment or anxiousness that he held in with slightly pursed lips, but bitter smugness. How comforting it was when people were as predictable as they could possibly be. It took the weight off of him having to make small talk or feign interest; or answer any probing questions. All would be explained, he was sure, in a matter of moments. If only they had the good sense to realize this and hold their wagging tongues before they gave breath to their ill-mannered gossiping while their subject was clearly within earshot.

Just as he had anticipated, the door swung open. But what he saw was not the long silver beard and powerful stride of Albus Dumbledore pushing through the entrance, and any sense of calm he had been maintaining vanished from him in an instant.

A curtain of auburn hair billowed past as its owner swiftly strode into the room. She paused mid step to survey the grouping, then took up standing room in front of the fireplace, smoothly joining in the small talk. Severus's black eyes raked over her face as she angled to address her conversation partners. And then his own hair was flicked against the sides of his face as he snapped his eyes back down to the floor.

Idiot. Moron. Bloody hopeless brain-rotted fool. He tried to release the near-painful grip his right hand was currently inflicting on his left, but his muscles seemed too taut to allow movement just yet. He didn't need to put forth the same concentration to smooth out his facial features, as they did so automatically on his next inwardly chastising thought. She's dead.

This time when the door swung open it was exactly who he had been waiting for, but the effect of the arrival was greatly diminished. The rest of the attendees took up the correct reaction a headmaster deserved when he walked into a room full of his staff, expressing their delight and greeting him as warmly as he greeted them. From his place across the room, in the darker side of the shadows, Severus managed to raise his eyes towards the center where the splendidly enrobed wizard stood.

The headmaster made one slow semi-circle turn, twinkling blue eyes flicking from head to head around the room, before he announced to the audience, "I do believe, that this is everyone."

"It is, Albus," came the helpful reply from McGonagall, who took a seat nearest him. Everyone else busied themselves finding their own assorted seats to give him the floor to speak.

Soon there were only two people left standing, and he realized one of them was the girl who had caused him such surprise. No, not a girl, he thought, as he evaluated the witch who stood smiling cheerfully at Dumbledore's side. She was younger than the rest of the staff, surely, but then again, so was he. He had been turned down for a position here twice due to his age, and, he greatly suspected, other matters that hadn't been said aloud in his interviews. Her face didn't spark any recognition from his own years at Hogwarts, and he was sure she couldn't have been a student. Another thought occurred to him and, with a hasty glance around the room, he realized there weren't any other teachers that he didn't at least dimly recognize. His eyes went back to the unknown witch with a growing sense of hostility.

"Now, firstly, I believe I should thank you all for coming once again," Dumbledore began, and the small crowd replied with their hearty appreciation to be back. One wizard piped up, "And what a good year to be back!" to strong applause. The reason they might have been absent was no longer an issue in any of their lives. As far as they could see, anyway.

One month to the day, and, very nearly, the hour. July 31st, 1981 had been for the whole of the wizarding world one that they would surely never forget, and, if it had not been for the considerable push-back from the Ministry, one that would have been celebrated much too loudly for regulation straight through the whole first week of August. Severus had thought by now, surely, finally, people would stop their jubilant air-headed noise. News of continued attacks by Death Eaters were still appearing in the papers, and besides, much of the damage that had been done was still set in stone; be it houses blasted to rubble, or slabs of it erected in graveyards.

He did not clap along and his stare lost a little of its focus.

"Indeed, we are blessed this year to resume our teachings with long-awaited peace," Dumbledore continued in his slow respectable tone. "Though, there is still plenty to be done, much of which I'm sure will not get nearly as much celebration despite being some of the most important work yet." At least someone was speaking sense, even if it was the old wizard. "We will, of course, still need to be alert to those around us; mindful of our students who are suffering and have suffered, and careful and guiding to those who may still feel swayed towards certain paths." The arm of his half-moon spectacles nearly obscured the small glance he cast to one shadowy corner of the room, but Severus could tell when he was being looked at. He didn't react, but his eyes did slip to another pair that was much more blatantly glancing at him, looking more nervous now that she was standing in the middle of the room with nothing to do but fold her hands over the front of her cloak. Or perhaps she was sharing Dumbledore's concerns more vividly. He kept his face impassive and looked back to the orator once more.

"Thankfully," and there was a note of happiness restored to his voice now, "we have two new additions to our faculty to help us on our mission of enlightenment." He turned to fully face the young woman now, positively beaming. She attempted to return the smile, but the sudden turn of the room's attention seemed to have startled her, and the corners of her mouth flickered up and down. "The first of whom," he laid one hand on her shoulder and her smile instantly found its strength, "Miss Freya; who will be taking up the Defense Against the Dark Arts position."

Severus's jaw twitched, and he ever so mindlessly forgot to clap along again, joining in only at the end with a few uninspired taps on his palm.

He had deduced as much already, of course, but it was still an annoyance to confirm she was the person who would be filling his preferred position, especially with Dumbledore looking like he had some pre-existing familiarity with the woman. Nepotism, perhaps? Or something more outside what he would have thought Dumbledore's scruples to be? She was, he observed with a practical eye, fine looking. Now that her title had been revealed, and he was no longer under the impression her hair was anywhere close to the correct shade of auburn he had mistaken it for at first in the low light, he looked her over with more scrutiny. She looked like she wouldn't last a single exchange of spells in a wizard's duel, at least not against himself, and she held the same air of goody-ness that Dumbledore did. Her outfit was a plain long robe of dark brown, not professional school black, but casual witch's garb. Very uninteresting. Her hair that had so caught his attention at first was long enough to be at about her waist, and even taking into account the fireplace's dancing light behind her, the orange glow to it seemed almost unnatural. Her eyes... Well, he couldn't make out much from this distance, except the sudden expression of resolve and minuscule nod that passed from her to Dumbledore before he spoke next.

"Freya, as a few of you already know," his eyes swept across the room to a select few people, including, to Severus's surprise, himself, "is an old friend of mine. And we have both agreed that if she shall be teaching here, it should be done with transparency, at least among the staff — only among the staff — to ease... other aspects of life."

He was thrown by this unexpected bit of information, and the odd phrasing made his earlier conspiracies jump back into mind so that he was almost hoping it was just nepotism that was going on, as detestable as an idea it was. His eyes left Dumbledore's cryptic grinning face and searched the woman's instead for answers; most pressing being why he had been included in those who supposedly should have the slightest clue who she was, which he still did not. She was busy working out some inner conflict, eyes cast unseeing on the floor. As he watched, he saw the nerves clear away to show a more determined poise than seemed capable of her features a moment ago.

Dumbledore seemed to have been waiting for her, and he now continued in an encouraging tone. "Freya? If you would please enlighten everyone so that we can all be on the same page here?" She nodded simply, glancing to her side at her 'old friend', and then, inexplicably, to Severus himself. Their eyes met and he thought he saw something like an apology tug at her brows, her eyes gleaming with the firelight of the room, and then, impossible as it was, he knew what was about to happen a split second before it did. But it wasn't nearly enough time to prepare.

With a crack that could have been a stray spark popping from the fireplace, and a tongue of flame that was gone as quickly as it appeared, the woman was gone with it, and out burst the legendary bird Dumbledore had always kept at his side — the phoenix.

He heard, more than saw, as great wings flapped once through the air, and gasps from the surrounding staff who hadn't been privy to this information now remarked in awe.

His eyes were on his lap, short curtains of black hair falling to shield his face as his hands wrapped tightly around his elbows. But even the excited voices in the room with him couldn't keep him there, as his mind was pulled to a dark forest, lying flat on his back, bleeding into the mud, and the only sound that was ringing in his ears was his own voice begging to be left to die.

"Thank you, Albus."

Her voice was kind and warm, and it summoned him back to the present with cruel ease. He had to shut his eyes for a heartbeat, because he could not make such a noticeable disturbance as to cover his ears, but he had to do something against this assault on his senses. He could almost imagine the sound of her voice linking up to his memory of the song he had heard that night. He still couldn't lift his eyes back to the center of the room, but he was recovering himself, determined not to do this, not now, for he knew what was coming next; had been anticipating it for weeks, and fantasizing about it for years. It was all he had left in the world to desire.

With effort he straightened his back, forming his face once again into his carefully carved mask, and shoved his memories, his regrets, and his shame, deep down.

"It's wonderful to have you on staff at last, Freya. I've been saying it for years, but of course Dumbledore knows best," an elderly wizard, who he vaguely recognized as the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, was saying to the self-conscious looking witch. He must have missed the bird turning back into the woman, and whatever else had been said, while his head was in another time.

"Yes, I agree he does," Freya answered, and Dumbledore chuckled.

If her comment came off to the other staff members as conceited, as if she had been referring to the headmaster's appointment of herself, there was at least one person who knew her intended meaning. She caught his eye, casting a concerned look towards his darkened corner. Several hexes that had to do with obscuring an opponent's vision leapt into his mind just then, none of them pleasant, and some of which he purposefully picked out to be painful. His tongue pressed against his teeth and he only halfheartedly tried to keep the poison out of his returned stare. Her expression seemed to tighten and she looked away.

"Well!" Dumbledore said, finally breaking everyone out of their chatter around Hogwarts' newest D.A.D.A teacher with a clap of his hands. "I believe our dear Freya Fawkes has received enough attention — certainly for this lifetime," he turned a knowing smile to her and some secret joke seemed to pass between them. "As I said before, there are two new staff members this year, and our second one has been waiting patiently for long enough." With a sweep of his arm, Dumbledore gestured his summons to the darkened corner of the room.

He felt himself stand up and walk forward automatically. If there was any doubt in him — about the nature of his hiring, about the surrounding staff who had gone deathly quiet, about being closer to the now irritatingly familiar redhead that conjured up horrible memories — no one watching would have been able to guess, nor could have guessed, unless he let something slip of his own choosing. He was perfectly composed as he stopped in front of Dumbledore and looked up at him expectantly, feeling strangely like he had done something similar, something that this little scene made a mockery of compared to the severity of that time. His new employer smiled at him with no hint of distrust or malicious intent; or indication that he was about to make him hold out his arm for a painful new decoration.

"Severus Snape," the headmaster began, with the full force of his quiet yet commanding voice much more audible at such close proximity. "I was sad to see Horace go, but I trust he has retired in good conscious after providing his former pupil with such thorough tutelage for the job." He conveniently left out why it had needed to be so thorough, stretched out over two years' time as it was, but there would be time for bitter thoughts later. Dumbledore held out his hand.

"I welcome you as our new Slytherin Head of House and as our new Potions Master."

He clasped his hand against the wizened older man's, squeezing tightly. "Thank you, truly, Headmaster." And for the briefest slip of the mask, he let true gratitude show, only for this one singular individual.

As they let their hands fall, however, his momentary feeling of winning a prize he had long sought fell short. There was one solitary sound in the small room, coming from Dumbledore's side, where the overeager red-haired witch stood clapping in oblivious support. His black eyes dragged a harsh line across to hers and, startled by his icy expression, she ceased her noise enough to realize the situation. Her eyes blinked away from his and out to the surrounding room that he couldn't bring himself to inspect with such leisure.

Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Thank you, Severus, I think that should do for now." He smiled again, but it was not returned.

Severus swiveled fully around to make a beeline for his chair as teachers he had spent years excelling under in their classes stared at him in either complete silence, or blatant distrust. By the time he sat down, he almost missed Slughorn's imbecilic chatter. It does not matter, he told himself. You expected this, so what does it matter? He didn't have an answer, and as he caught the eye of the Muggle Studies professor staring at him with unmasked hatred from across the room, he suddenly found he really didn't care after all. Let them waste their energy hating him. He still had his job.

But the headmaster seemed to be unsatisfied. He raised his voice once more, just as a question that sounded distinctly personally offended was beginning to be voiced at him. "Please do hold whatever it is you have to say," he piped up over the man, who went silent at once upon hearing the tone in Dumbledore's voice, "until after I have finished." He let a pause hang in the air until it was apparent no one would try to interrupt him. His expression was strained but unreadable, and Severus watched with a guarded look of his own.

"I know, undoubtedly, that many of you have twice as many questions on why I would hire someone rumored of being a Death Eater." The intake of breath from around the room made a collective hiss, but the 'rumored' Death Eater in question ignored this sound with ironic familiarity as he leaned forward a fraction of an inch. "And all I have to say on the matter, is this: they are just rumors. I trust Severus Snape, and he will remain at this school in my employ, until, hopefully, he retires at his own ripe old age." He turned his pale blue eyes back on Severus, and there was no twinkle in the gravely serious expression with which he cast down on him like a final judgement. He blinked under this incomprehensible stare, but the expression seemed to vanish as if he had imagined it.

"Well now, I trust that you would all like to get on with your evenings. I bid you an early goodnight from an aging man, and I will join you tomorrow for the start of another marvelous year." And with that he cast one more look to Freya, and then swept out of the room.

A tense beat seemed to pass through the air as everyone's eyes roamed about between two points of interest. It was the phoenix who moved first, stepping towards the Care of Magical Creatures teacher and striking up a conversation about how the grounds' unicorn brood was doing that year. He didn't need to be given a multi-colored sparking wand display to signal he should take this moment to hasten out of his seat and turn towards the door. But even as his hand touched the wood, he was discourteously put back on display.

"Severus?"

He didn't want to hear such a familiar use of his name in that voice, and he hadn't a clue why the maddening woman was ruining such a perfect exit. He knew the pause in his stride had already betrayed that he had heard her, but with a lurch of his stomach that had been collecting what felt like nothing but acid for his duration in the room, he decided he didn't care. He was done for the day. He pushed through the door and was marching passed dining tables before anyone could trap him into a staring contest with people he loathed and who seemed to loathe him right back.

—

It could have been that the only living things in the castle other than himself were the dancing flames of the torches along the walls. The distant sounds of frogs and other night creatures that lived around the lake heralding their active hours came through the glass of the high windows muted and detached from the interior world. Perhaps there were other people still chatting around a fire somewhere, or a house elf pitter-patter-ing to bring those people a tray of finger foods - or perhaps not. In the strong stone walls, rooms away, he could imagine he was perfectly alone.

It was vastly freeing; being able to walk through the halls of Hogwarts with the authority of his new title. However, at present there wasn't anywhere he would rather go than down a path he had been so many times before. He strode down the sloping steps to the dungeons, letting the last of the knots in his stomach come undone and his stiff shoulders slacken. He had dropped off his personal belongings only hours before, and his modest yet luxuriantly comfortable-looking bed awaited him, already dressed.

As he passed the potions classroom his stomach no longer felt acidic but gave a triumphant little flip. Filch had ushered him down, unnecessarily, to his chambers earlier that day, and he had had to hide his almost boyish giddiness at the new prospects this hall had for him. Now, comfortably alone, he could let the corners of his mouth slide up in satisfaction. His potion's classroom. His House dormitory. His teacher's office. The whole hall was his turf, in a way it had never been before, even as a 7th year, even in a gaggle of his closest friends.

Of course, most of his school friends were either locked up, dead, or on the run by now, and by any of these fates would undoubtedly never see these halls again. People he had spent a good chunk of his life, his whole time at Hogwarts, thinking of as loathsome enemies were dead as well. In his mind's eye, both of these groupings of ghosts seemed to bunch up together, separated by some line that extended out from himself, and yet seemed too blurry to make out anymore. His smile had faded out into thoughtfulness by the time his footsteps slowly came to a stop at the end of the hall.

There was a time when he might have missed them, or feared for the safety of the living. But now as he stood staring with unseeing eyes at the door to his office, he only felt carved out and hollow. There was a far more powerful current running just underneath his lowest surface layer that held overwhelming grief the likes of which washed clean away anything he could have mustered for the others, and threatened that any misstep that brought him too close to the raging waters would be devastating.

Listlessly, he pulled his key-ring from the pocket of his robes and, after some fumbling, found the right one to hold aloft. He didn't put it in the keyhole just yet, though. His mind was racing full of dark thoughts, and, even more painful, bright vivid ones that threatened to scorch him as if he was some underground beast born of the dungeons themselves that had never seen sunlight and was too weak to face it, yet ran to it all the same.

He could run upstairs, right now, and no one would stop him. There would be no students there, certainly none belonging to the House of the tower which he had in mind, and hopefully no teachers. McGonagall was most likely still downstairs, or in her own office. Not that he needed to sneak around her like some schoolboy anyway.

He felt the small sharp metalwork of the key press into his fingers as he gripped it tight.

But what did it matter? He wouldn't find anyone up there. That was the point of his deluded comfort in these halls - they were empty. There would be no girl with auburn hair coming out of the portrait-hole, whether angry to see him, or happily laughing with a group of friends surrounding her. No careful footsteps on the marble late at night, or exasperated sighs on his behalf. Even if he brought her favorite sweets from Honeydukes. Even if he slept on the floor of the hall for a whole fortnight. Never again.

The key slipped into the lock but it felt like he was jinxed with slow-moving. He didn't even turn it, as if the tiny noise of the latch and groan of the door's hinge would be the minuscule beat of a butterfly's wings that would send him over the edge and back down into the place where he was drowning.

A different noise than metal clinking, softer and further away, came to him then. He thought he was imagining it at first, making up the sound in his mind to go along with the memories he was ensnared in. But the gentle tap-tap grew clearer until he accepted the reality and turned expectantly towards the bend in the hall to face it.

And there came that auburn hair, the wrong color, the wrong length, on the wrong face, the wrong person, and he almost reached for his wand as his taut tether was yanked even closer to the point of snapping.

"Severus?"

The look on her face betrayed how little he was masking his emotions, but he didn't care. He relished for a moment the startled confusion that crossed her features as she came fully into view of him, hoping that if he looked menacing enough, she would go away.

"Can I help you?" he asked, though it was more of a threat.

"Err... Well, no. I was actually hoping maybe I could help you—"

"I do not need," he strained the words through his teeth, "your help." He practically spat the word like it was poison.

He didn't want to listen to some doe-eyed magical creature freak of a woman stammer out pity for him. He had seen quite enough of her, both in the teacher's lounge and in his memories of her other form, to gauge what kind of person she was: meddling, intrusive, too stupid to realize she was the pitiable one in the equation for being so oblivious, and yet wanting to extend a hand to whomever she deemed weak and lesser. He had met people like her before and he hated every one of them. And none of them had stolen his preferred job out from under his nose by way of nepotism.

"Oh." She seemed to draw a blank at this, and he watched with growing aggravation at how long it took her to change direction. Tentatively, she raised a smile. "Well, if you ever are in need of some, I've got plenty to spare — jarfuls even — and I'll be just up a few floors."

"Wonderful," he said languidly with great reproach at her next-door neighbor demeanor that was especially grating on his current mood. "I believe I have all the jars of actually useful ingredients at my disposal in here." He nodded to the office door.

She squinted at the direction he had indicated, considering this. "Hmm. I wonder about that." Her murmured words seemed to have been more to herself, but the impact was done anyway.

His mouth popped open in indignation. "I think I know my own dungeons better than you do," he sneered.

But she didn't seem to catch any of the hostility, only one particular word. "Your dungeons? I highly doubt that."

"Doubt that they're mine?" he questioned, his voice rising.

She considered him carefully for a moment. "No, of course not. You are Potions Master now, after all. But I think it's a little absurd to say you know everything about them, especially to me."

If he didn't know any better, he would say she was challenging him. At the very least, whether intentional or not, she was challenging every ounce of his patience. To not only be selected over him in Defense Against the Dark Arts, but to come down here to the job he had landed and imply she knew anything more than him? He flexed his wand hand close to his pocket and he saw her eyes flick to it with attentiveness he hadn't anticipated. The placid smile on her face started to slip at the corners.

"Do you need something from me?" It was only a rephrasing of his earlier question to fill the air, but he hoped it would interrupt whatever was going through her head about his movement. Annoying witch or otherwise, Dumbledore had called her a close friend, and he was no longer hanging around dark manors full of ill-mannered individuals who would curse each other as soon as murmur a greeting. He couldn't be making any mistakes now.

"Actually," she began, seeming to latch on to an opportunity, "yes, I do." He had a second of genuine surprise that immediately seeped into dread as he realized his random question had trapped him into unwittingly offering up a favor with a simple twist of his words by someone who evidently could not take a hint to save her life.

"That wasn't an—" But his protest went unnoticed.

She had held back from him as they talked, but now she strode up to just out of arm's reach. Looking up into his face with eyes full of friendly determination, she nodded. "Right. I didn't come down here to argue about potions." She held out her hand.

He stared at it, unmoving. Was this a joke?

"Um," she cupped her other hand to her mouth as if to whisper to him. "You need to shake it so I can say the rest."

He considered perhaps just removing both her hands from her arms with a joint-separating jinx, leaving her to figure out how to undo it on her own, and turning in for the night. But judging by the earnestness with which she looked up at him, there would be no escape until he fulfilled his end of this civilized gesture. A simple handshake would do well to cover up his twitchy wand hand anyway.

"Fine." He took her hand, surprised by the abnormal warmth, and felt her shake with unnecessary vigor. But it was his gaze which was most held ensnared by hers as she finally got out what she had been waiting to say.

"You can help me make up for the rudeness of the other staff by allowing me to properly welcome you back to Hogwarts as a fellow teacher." She released him, grinning with satisfaction. "I didn't get to shake your hand earlier, so I thought I'd come down and see if I could still get one in. It's good to have you on."

His hand was left hanging in the air, feeling the heat slowly fade as he stared dumbly. Her eyes fell to look at it, and as if compelled to follow, so did his own. He stirred from his stupor and quickly retracted his arm back to his side, annoyed at himself for being so caught off guard. She raised an eyebrow and laughed, a soft but hearty sound that made his stomach lurch in the same way calling his name had. He suspected her voice, in any way that it resonated, must carry some level of phoenix magic. It wasn't a type of sound nor a type of magic that should be given breath here in the cold dungeons beneath the castle, and it further shattered the simple sorrowful peace he had been enjoying.

Her smile died away and the apologetic look he had seen her wear earlier crept back to her face, as if she was reading his thoughts. "Sorry for troubling you if you were heading in for the night. I just — It just didn't sit right with me."

There was that pity again, swooping in like some coddling matron to coo at him as if he were about to break apart at any moment. Ever the hero to the injustices of the world. It disgusted him, and the more he thought about all the times a certain phoenix had been idly perched nearby during some of his most vulnerable moments this past year, he couldn't help but feel his privacy had been grievously betrayed. He suspected that was the real reason she was here; not out of camaraderie, but crudely butting in just because she had unearned information and had taken it upon herself to act. A shame that she lacked the critical piece of knowledge that he had in previous years been tasked with finding a way to kill Dumbledore's precious phoenix, or she might be a lot less likely to want to be anywhere near him.

"Err, are you alri—"

"Fine," he interjected before he was forced to hear any more of that whining concern. "I'm fine."

"Oh," she said in dull surprise for the second time. He wasn't sure if she was purposefully playing dumb, or it was just that shocking that someone would rebuff her so thoroughly. "Well, I truly hope that is the case." Her smile this time seemed so perplexingly genuine it made his lip curl and he half turned back towards the office just to avoid it.

"Right. If that's all..." He just wanted to get through the door without opening it in any kind of accidental invitation. He suspected this worked similar to opening a door around a stray cat and she would just waltz right in if he wasn't careful. His hand hovered half-up half-down, unsure if he was in the clear to reach for the handle yet.

Almost as if in direct defiance of his intentions, she reached passed him in one simple motion. "Oh, is your lock stuck?" She noisily jiggled the key-ring, hung forgotten and waiting this whole time, until the door unlatched and swung open. "Oh. Guess not."

He stood motionless, steadying himself before the seething sigh that would only bring his bubbling irritation to the surface could slip out. If she invited herself in, he would have to just tell her simply to get the hell out of his office and never come back. And to keep her hands off his things. The joint-separation hex came back to his mind and he seriously considered if it wouldn't be worth it just to teach her a lesson and break this overly friendly atmosphere that she seemed determined to impress upon him.

She raised one innocently questioning eyebrow at his statuesque pose. "Well, goodnight. Sleep well, Severus."

"I—" He snapped at this final indignity, having heard his name used so casually one too many times, and one too many pleasantries from someone whom he knew most prominently as nothing more than a glimpse of feathers on a perch. He rounded on her just as she was turning to leave. "Just who in the hell do you think you are?"

She blinked in mild surprise compared to his enraged tone and posture. "Sorry?"

He was glad for her total airheadedness in that moment, because it meant he could continue without interruption knowing she had nothing of importance to say. "You think you can just use my name so casually, follow me, talk down to me, and then leave on your own terms?" Her mouth popped open like she might reply, but he continued. "What gives you the right to meddle with such carelessness?"

"Err... I do care. I was just concerned—"

"Well stop. I didn't ask for your concern; not here, and not on the night that I'm supposedly meant to remember you from - which I don't!"

"You don't?" This seemed to let out some of the cool air in her demeanor.

"I—" His ranting was momentarily interrupted as his eyes, still full of animosity, scanned her face. The reality simply would not match up to his blurry memory, which contained a much more bittersweet concoction that he was unwilling to replace. The fact that she was so rudely butting into even his memories only further angered him. "I do not. And even if I did, I wouldn't be glad to see you. You think just because you showed up out of nowhere that night and—"

"Showed up?" Her voice had barely risen, but the question still cut across the furor his. "You summoned me there."

"I summoned Dumbledore! And don't interrupt me!"

"I'll interrupt all I want, because it's a good thing I did show up, otherwise you'd be— well—"

"Well, aren't you just the most noble of Dumbledore's pets? Saving even the Death Eaters! Would you like an award?"

"No—"

"Well I'm not going to thank you, so you can stop cozying up."

Her straining eyes were searching his in vain. Seemingly, she hadn't been able to make sense out of anything he had said, and he silently cursed her thickheadedness. "I—… All I said was 'goodnight'. What's this about?"

"What this is about," he took a deep breath finally and flexed his balled-up hands, "is that I will not put up with being stared at all year like I am some soulless apparition that was heroically dragged in from the rain by a she-beast."

Her eyes shut momentarily as if he had slapped her. When she opened them, she was looking at the ground and her stature seemed to have diminished. "Well... Well, fine. If that's the way you want it to be then."

He caught the movement of her hands and reacted instantly, his fist already hovering over the pocket in his own robes, and in a flash, his wand was out and he had wordlessly delivered the hex he had been itching to ever since she first dared look at him as if he were lesser.

But even as the spell hit her squarely in the front of her robes, the red jet of light exploded into harmless sparks, and she was left blinking them from wincing eyes.

In the still silence that followed, he gaped. He checked again — saw both her hands stuffed into her pockets, in what was unmistakably a simple moody gesture of someone about to storm off — then looked back up into her eyes which held no more sense of warmth than the rest of the chilled dungeon air. Her hands, both perfectly intact, came up to dust off her robes.

"I—"

"Finished?" she asked in a low tone, though her eyes portrayed quite a loud message cutting through the dim light, the flicker of the torches seeming to dance in correspondence with her stare.

He hastily lowered his arm to his side for the second time in their meeting, stuffing his wand back into his pocket.

"Good." Her voice stayed quiet, but she spoke with calculated clarity. "I wouldn't want you to sprain your wrist casting useless curses on a beast so impervious to them."

Nothing in the hall made a sound except for the loud pulse of his own heartbeat in his ears. As he stared wide-eyed, her piercing gaze reminded him of the ice-cold disapproval that Dumbledore had borne down on him the first time he had met with him not as an aspiring teacher, but as a desperate traitor. And everything the man had done for him since to keep him out of trouble, all the plans that had been made, vouching for him at his trial even as the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had dementors trained on him without so much as a question asked yet. His nerves had gotten so frayed in just one month, plus six spent praying he wouldn't be found out, that he couldn't even tell someone reaching for their wand apart from stowing their hands in their pockets. And now that he was thinking of Azkaban and dementors again, his pulse seemed to quicken.

She held his gaze for a heartbeat longer and then blinked, looking away as if to break the spell that had been infused in the air. He watched her run her fingers through her hair as she drew in a deep breath and sighed.

"Don't look so worried—" She ended her sentence awkwardly, frowning and working her jaw, and he imagined his name was meant to take this gap but her tongue had twisted, holding it back. Instead, in the pause, she ducked her head and returned her hands to her pockets, with a twitch as if she remembered this was a dangerous move. "No harm done, yes? You're safe and sound." She inclined her chin and looked him over once before nodding as if to confirm this, then turned to leave.

"Goodnight."

Before he could unglue his mouth to reply, she was quickly walking away down the hall, long red hair flourishing behind her.

It was hours later when his head finally hit the pillow of his unfamiliar bed, and another hour still before his mind stopped swimming; with thoughts of dead friends, lies smoothly told, and phoenix song that made his chest ache.

_—***—_

"Your soul is able, death is all you cradle
Sleeping on the nails, there's nowhere left to fall

There is no peace here, war is never cheap, dear
Love will never meet here, it just gets sold for parts"

B.R.M.C. - Beat the Devil's Tattoo