By Fire, From Ash

by genegonewilder

Young adult Severus is finding it difficult to adjust to life post-war, in part due to the fact that the rumors about his Death Eater status seem to have spread far and wide, but also because his own self-loathing outweighs anything anyone could throw at him. With his new teaching position at Hogwarts, he hopes to just move on, but a woman stands as a blazing reminder of his past.

14. First Light

Author's Note:
perseverance... :')

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"Like a flower in the spring
You know that I'm coming back
All the moments you were mine
I don't know what has become of you
But I know what's left
All the love you held inside"

B.R.M.C. - 20 Hours

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_—***—_

Chapter 14 – First Light

It was that time of year when, born of the early rains and subtle warmth, insects and every other manner of dirt-crawling thing came to worm and wheedle their way back into the continuous fold, seeking out a purpose. Thus it would seem the same had happened with their much larger yet still ceaselessly cloying counterparts in nature, without his having taken any more notice than to the bugs.

He brushed off some small flying thing as it landed on his paper, accidentally slashing a thick line of ink with his quill through half a paragraph.

His tongue clicked loudly, and he crumpled everything up.

"First draft rubbish?"

Severus tossed the ball of ruined paper over at Freya in reply. She tried to dodge it, though he had only been playfully aiming at the journal in her lap.

"Thanks much, think I'll have a look," she said, picking up his would-be letter and unraveling it.

He was already re-writing the heading on a new scroll and didn't look up to say, "Help yourself."

It didn't contain any such juicy gossip as she might have thought. Technically, maybe, but to him it was about as heartfelt as mailing out the year's book requirements.

"'Draco'?" she read. "They named a baby 'Draco'? Did it come out spitting fire?"

"Probably," he muttered, eyes still on his paper, concentrating on remembering his words. His quill paused over the name she had said, however, and he finally disengaged himself to ask: "What are your thoughts on that part?"

She looked up from his wrinkled writing, having appeared engrossed in her studying of it.

"What—the bit about the birthday?" She made a face that didn't inspire confidence. "Sounds a bit desperate, to be honest."

He gave a resigned sigh and set his quill back to paper, skipping to his next point in the letter.

Personally, he thought loitering about the Ministry with a pocketful of gold to lubricate oneself back into good graces was the true desperate act, but he wasn't really in any position to be making judgements.

"Anything else to comment?"

"Just one thing," she replied, "I cannot believe how many of your friends have had kids already."

"This one is a bit older."

"Ah, yes. He's had plenty of life experience partaking in crimes of war to prepare him to raise a child. Lovely..."

He glanced up again, but kept his head bent low. The rush of nostalgia, like the overwhelming smell of fresh blooms in the crisp air, was near enough to make him nauseous.

They were lounging in the shade of a patch of trees by the forest, tucked into a pocket sequestered away from the sprawling open grounds that were just beginning to burst into delicate early grass. The trees themselves were still only budding, the soft and muddy earth having made the task of waterproofing the blanket they currently sat upon a necessity, but the sky was an undeniable brilliant bird's egg blue that beckoned everything out into the open air for a lungful.

It wasn't similar remembered weather of his youth that had struck him, however, but the expression of distaste for his friends that Freya now wore.

In a purposefully even tone he said, "Lucius really isn't the worst of them. He's been more focused on his family for years."

"Oh, you don't have to lie," she said with a frosty smile. "I read the notes from his trial. Can't believe they bought that Imperius Curse excuse."

"I believe it was more likely that his family bought the court, actually."

She gave him a sidelong look and then rolled her eyes up to the sky when he gave an innocent shrug.

"What exactly do you two talk about that's interesting enough to defend him? It can't just be babies and the weather."

"Oh, not much... I do appreciate the access to his family's rather historic library. And their wine cellar. He happens to be very generous when the tab for dinner comes round, as well."

"Severus! Not you too!"

He silently laughed over his paper, paying her incredulous look no mind. He rather thought her intrigue was deserving of the faux retort, considering it wasn't entirely innocent in motive.

As part of his planned reputation restoration, he had already exchanged one letter with his old friend, and Freya had been trying to sneakily involve herself at every turn from quill to owl. Giving advice on pen pal letters hadn't seemed to be what she had been expecting to be helping him with, but seeing as she had no current reason to be springing herself in front of killing curses meant for him or some such, she had honed in on it. However, she had become even more disillusioned when he had declined to so much as let her see the stamp on this first letter before the owl had snatched it away.

It wasn't as if he hadn't told her most of it eventually. His own anxiety waiting for his extended hand of reunion to be either slapped or grasped had loosened his lips, and he at least trusted her recent earnestness not to judge him too deeply by how well he maintained important amicable relations. It was just that, despite everything, he still needed to uphold some control of his privacy; a degree of separation. It had been hard enough to act himself in front of people—his self that those people knew him as, anyway—with her around during their December escapade. He didn't fancy the idea of blending things any further, no matter what proclamations she made.

Truthfully, at least on some topics, he was glad of her help; he hadn't a clue what the normal customs were to say to someone with a baby either, and did not appreciate this added stress.

"Do you want children?"

He had asked it out of the side of his mouth while rereading his words, hardly paying attention, but looked up at the silence to see Freya making a face as if he had asked if she'd want to be plucked, deboned, and fried crisp.

"Do you?" she countered.

He suddenly felt the weight of his question, far from the opening for derision he had been looking for, and blinked around.

"No... Not at this exact moment."

"Right..."

"It isn't really an... option, either way," he muttered to his paper, lowering his head so far that his hair swung forward to hide his face.

"Right," she said more definitively. "Hm."

His eyes flicked sideways. "What?"

"Nothing."

Whatever she had meant, he was distracted from thinking any more about it at the moment, staring at her past the edge of his hair.

He couldn't remember the last time he had seen the deceptively bright smile that she had near worn out the previous year, and now, with the air smelling full of promise and the sun shining down, he wondered if he had always found it as disarming, or if it was simply a trick of the light.

She caught his gaze and her grin sharpened before he could look away.

"It's just good to know," she spoke up again, "that there won't be any know-it-all little gits running around worshipping the next Dark Lord anytime soon."

The inkwell he had been using would have been set spilling all over their blanket if not for its weighted bottom, though his neat stack of scrolls didn't share the same fate. Freya flailed dramatically far to one side to evade his shove, and her own retaliation of returning his crumpled letter back into a ball and taking aim had him ducking away, only for the paper to come flying back at her face in the shape of a bat at a point of his wand.

It wasn't until the sounds of much younger laughter had interrupted their own that they had remembered their position—and their age—giving the fifth-years who had chosen very poorly which grove to sneak away into much harsher admonishments than they might have on any other occasion.

That had been their signal to pack up for the day.

"Just as well," Freya said with a sigh as she folded up their blanket, placing her things on top of it. "I can't get anything done when it's such lovely spring weather."

"It's fool's spring," he said, shaking his head. Somehow a leaf had gotten in his hair, and he threw it off while she was busy looking the other way. "It isn't even close to warm yet."

She frowned. "Well, the freezes are done, aren't they? Surely this counts as spring."

"Ah... I guess we've found the fool."

She gave a mocking little show of laughter at his wide smirk as they headed off on their way back up to the castle.

It was all for the better so far as he was concerned that she had not gotten her 'work' done. It was hard enough for him to concentrate on his own various mounting paperwork without her doing her editing of a different sort.

It had been in her lap the whole time, while his eyes had been carefully avoiding taking notice. But even the sun couldn't fully melt his creeping dread. In the shade, the air still kept its chill.

'What exactly... would you like to remember?'

'I dunno... all of it?'

If only it could be so simple.

Instead, the markings and rewritings and crossings that etched their shared journals were an entangled myriad of mad scribblings.

Like the teachers that they were, they had intuitively set out at first to draw up a plan of attack, as if it would be no more than a lesson plan. However, he would draw up a list of approved memories he was willing to share, and she would eviscerate everything—especially the gaps. 'Why be selective about it?' Well, that was easy for her to say.

When faced with the actual task, her lack of memory was starting to seem a blessing. The first thing she had questioned had been the most obvious in her mind; Slughorn's first party, at Halloween, and why it had determined such a strict rule thereafter. And, of course, that had been top of his list to keep buried in his mind alone. He found out from her insistence that she hadn't written a single word past a certain point of that night, and, while this only made his mind reel with the possible implications, he wasn't about to go throwing that luck back into the well. He rather thought she might just well be a saint for having kept that private from her pen.

But it didn't change the fact that she was asking for something that he himself had promised to deliver. He had no room to wriggle free of his own guilt that had spurred the idea in the first place.

If he had a bit more free time—alone, to collect his thoughts and organize them neatly—things might have been fine.

However, free time was not a luxury for one of the busier bees in the hive that the castle was quickly becoming, currently a low buzz before the true swarm. His responsibilities were stacking up faster than he could keep up with.

Firstly, while his solo trips to the headmaster's office usually ranged from taxing to downright unbearable, he had thought taking Freya with him to voice their opinion in unison would have been a vast improvement. Neither of them had counted on Dumbledore stopping them before they could even start their tale, asking that they skip to the part that he wasn't already fully aware of, having been at the lunch with the new Minister that day and having heard the tale of the phoenix flying round the hallways from the man himself. Every tiny tinkle of mechanisms in the office had been audible in the silence that had followed. At least the headmaster had appreciated Freya's wonderings of it supposedly being a different phoenix in town for some sightseeing. In the end, after putting floors and floors of castle between them and Dumbledore, the dumbfounded pair had agreed that at least they had gotten no worse than a list of what seemed like simple shopping chores for punishment, and the headmaster had even made a show of granting their original wish to go it together, as it would be more arms to carry things. He couldn't imagine what the consequence of telling the whole truth would have been.

As for Freya's own time, it was a matter of having not prepared whatsoever for the end of year exams that she would need to be drawing up sooner rather than later. (She had a few choice words for her past planning methods.) Thankfully he had done plenty of research in his school years on past test material and knew just where to look for the both of them, as his exams also needed planning.

He could only wish to have as much experience with speeches, however.

As Deputy Headmistress, McGonagall had been after him to start examining if any of Slytherin House's prefects were suitable enough candidates that he might write a letter of recommendation for next year's Head Boy or Girl, and also that he needed to have his speech acclaiming the current Slytherin Head Girl ready well before graduation—and—additionally—all this needed passing by the Headmaster before anything was to be finalized, letters to the proud parents needed to be signed and sent, and he should really start working on his part of the graduation ceremony. Before he could have even asked what exactly his ceremony responsibilities were, McGonagall had added that her own prefects were highly achieving in both academic and extra-curricular activities, and she had it in her mind to have two Gryffindors as Heads next year.

Naturally, he had nearly scared his own sixth-year prefects within an inch of their lives when he had confronted them about their lackluster accolades the next day, set up multiple clubs with lengthy forms giving permission for special activities of particular interest, and had written what one might call a veritable forest of words to get through for their letters of recommendation. And another more formal one for the Slytherin Head Girl he had neglected all year, thinking it at least lucky she planned to go into a career that would appreciate praise from a Potion's teacher.

None of these writings were anywhere as complex compared to what he had eventually concocted for his exams, sparing no mercy for even the younger years. Just his study plan he had handed out had set off alarms to all his students that their final semester of the year would not be a relaxing stroll through summer meadows, which only served to inundate him in after-hours requests for private tutoring from a number of his upper-level students.

Special instruction was already on his mind elsewhere as well, with Wells's mother having apparently taken his helpfulness to her son to mean she could write him for recommendations on home tutors and any other such whim, expecting prompt replies. The Slytherin Prefect in question was starting to get ahead of himself as well, having made up with his 'favorite teacher' after Severus's trip to the hospital wing, and had gotten himself re-added to the list of things needing to be watched over, stretching time for the watcher to its very limits.

Even on top of all of that, he did have more than just paperwork on his plate to keep him away from everything else.

"Care to stop by Hogsmeade this weekend?"

"Can't. Detention."

"What—still?"

Having never missed an opportunity to hand out discipline as if it were early Easter candy during his weeks of intermittent rage and angst, he was sure he had somehow amassed more detentions for students than he had both gotten himself or caused in all seven of his own years. Not having been willing to look weak by reneging, he had been forced into taking on what seemed the true punishment himself. The students were already as wound up in the weather and the looming end of the year as their teachers, making this task feel like an added arduous class to his day.

Freya, usually his go-to for detention help, was actually proving to be the opposite.

There was one final, very vital, piece of information he had been avoiding concerning his trip to the Ministry; one that amounted to Freya asking leading questions as to what kinds of punishments he thought would be appropriate for those detention-fettered students, possibly if any of them had accidentally whipped up a poison in class, how exactly he would react if one of them had tried to slip him something, if he believed, as Filch did, that there was no upper limit to deserved punishments... None of it, not even her more charmingly blatant eyelash fluttering, led his lips to twitch the truth of what he had done to the Ministry man in retaliation—or even if he had—though it did give him much cause to smirk at her building frustration wondering what he could have done while she hadn't been with him.

It would leave the moment he realized she was too busy, or unwilling, to help him out of his detention hole though.

All of this chaos of schoolwork amounted to what should have been such a whirlwind in his mind that by the time night fell, sleep would seem impossible. Which would have been an excellent opportunity for him to achieve that alone time and write in their shared journal some semblance of a workable plan to restore her memories while keeping his dignity intact.

However, in an arguably unfortunate sense, he was now sleeping so much more soundly than he had in months that he was rested enough to be fully conscious of just how little time there was in the day. The morning panic was now only due to the realization of how much he could have gotten done had he not been wasting his time sleeping, which was almost as maddening as his previous situation.

Almost...

Except that, in amongst the mayhem, there existed a radiation of such energy next to him that his real daily struggle was keeping the corner of his mouth from being too noticeably upturned at times when he had no business being so pleased. He had lately taken to covering his mouth with his hand, or else pinning his cheek between his teeth. Nobody really needed to be knowing his mood nor the reasons behind it, especially not the person at the cause. If she knew how much she lifted the weight from his shoulders, even when it was for her sake that a large chunk of it was there in the first place; if she knew how relieved he felt having escaped from the Astronomy tower with her respect and her companionship intact after revealing more to her than he had to anyone in years; if she knew how much enjoyment he got out of getting in trouble with her instead of because of her, having a secret with her, a goal they were both working towards and could put their heads together on...

Well, he didn't imagine she would even truly be able to understand, but he didn't feel he should let on either way.

On the other hand, at this current time, in his bedchambers at an hour when he normally would be dressed for sleep, he was having no such trouble with any grinning. Much more trouble was how close together their heads actually were.

"What... are you doing...?"

He blinked, staring back into the face he held between his hands.

"Physical contact...?"

Rethinking this—and every single other thought that had brought him to this decision—he lowered his hands and turned out to the rest of the room with a face as stoically gloomy as the grandfather clock against the wall, reminding him he should be sleeping.

"I did say that, yes," Freya said with some attempt to emit only positivity. Unnervingly, he could hear the barely concealed laughter in her voice, sounding like it was being covered by her hand, though he refused to look. "But I didn't mean quite what we did in the Ministry, just any will do. This is exactly what I meant, by the way."

He knew she was right, but it didn't bring him any cheer. Her suggestion that perhaps they should do a trial run before attempting anything serious, as it might accomplish both making things easier and giving them a break from their fruitless written approach, had been a good one. Though she had never said for whom it would make this improvement, he was quickly beginning to realize the answer.

"Explain..." he said in a heavy voice, eyes closed and pressing two fingers between his brows to keep his budding headache at bay, "further."

"Right." She cleared her throat, and he felt the bed move as she must have adjusted her seating arrangement.

This had been another one of her suggestions, of course, as all the bravery enhancing concoctions in the world wouldn't have been enough for him to emit the words 'let's go practice on your bed' to her. The reasoning she had delivered (while he had nearly walked into a pillar gawking at her) had been that it was easier to access memories in a calming environment where one is accustomed to letting their mind delve deep and wander, focused and uninhibited. He had been decently sure that the inside of a raging volcano would be more calming, but he had still seen where in normal circumstances her logic would potentially be sound. Her insistence that Dumbledore always liked to sit at the table in his private chambers where he drank his bedtime tea for their own exchanges of memories dampened his picturing of it a little, anyway. His dungeon accommodations were undoubtedly far less grand, and in lieu of drawing more attention to why he might be uncomfortable by insisting on squeezing a table and chairs into the quaint space, he had hastily acquiesced.

"I've been trying to tell you, it isn't like usual wizard's Legilimency, where you're trying to break in and go blundering about in a person's head," she said, already irking him by insulting his level of knowledge. "Though there are wizards who have actually used it passively, you know. I don't know why every text makes it sound like a weapon."

"Couldn't be that we've been through several iterations of Dark wizard who have used it that way, can it...?"

She shot him a look.

"Yes, well, if you're thinking about it like that, you really need to let it go," she argued. "The Legilimency I'm performing has got nothing to do with that except the most basic of principles."

"Freya," he began with patience, "I don't quite think you realize who it is that you're talking to if you feel the need to explain the creative use of otherwise unsavory magic."

Her lips puckered and she regarded him in suspicious silence. It waned on, her stony gaze cutting into him, until he finally very quietly looked away first.

"Why don't you go on," he encouraged.

She cast him one last look, just enough that she could see him roll his eyes at the smirk she finally released, and then she continued.

"Anyway, for this process of Legilimency, it's about one party," she gestured to herself, "maintaining as gentle a connection of openness as possible, just barely peeling a layer back, and the other," she pointed at him, her finger prodding for emphasis, "being able to clearly and concisely focus on a single message at a time to be interpreted by the other—like the simple stuff we did in the Ministry."

"Right..." he said, following along. "Except that your 'simple' magic often involves the advanced trick of forcibly projecting one's thoughts into another. Quite... aggressive."

"Don't say it like that!" she said, puffing up defensively. "I stop at words! If you're implying I'm in line with what your 'Dark Lord' did to drive people mad—put horrible thoughts in their head, yes, I know about it—you're miles off."

"Yes, you're more likely to use your abilities to subject me to chastisements and daily motivations."

"If anything," she went on, ignoring his own smirk now, "you'll be the one torturing me. I'm not going to be talking here but experiencing. And Legilimency is difficult for the user as well; having to flood their thoughts with someone else's, running the risk of being overwhelmed by a mind that's scrambling to get away from them if you are attacking, or else just throwing a whole jumbled mess of thought deep into their brain because they haven't nailed down their own accuracy with the spell yet. Or their subject is a lunatic."

His eyes narrowed, feeling a prickle of doubt. His own stabs taken at Legilimancy, and his early mishaps with it, were recalled by her words.

"That isn't... what I did when trying to share antidote instructions that time, was it...?"

She looked back over and studied him, bemused.

"No, Severus... You definitely didn't attack me with Legilimency or lunacy." Her gaze shifted away again as he watched, alarmed to see her shoulders give a small shudder. "And I assure you, you mentally assaulting me with potion's ingredients wouldn't have been close to the most awful bit of that..."

He had assumed as much, knowing full well he wasn't up to snuff to be performing Legilimency to the level of mastery required to project complex thoughts, much less wandlessly and while in enough pain to black him out. Their plan involved relying on her aptitude to listen, and not him to do what only decades of practice could accomplish, for a reason. That time of his poisoning had been a risky maneuver, but her own risk, jumping into a mind on fire. Which was why it was so important for him to be good at playing his part.

"Although..."

His attention snapped back up at the note in her voice, something in it prickling the back of his neck, and he caught sight of a much more devious smile forming on her lips.

"That did give me a rather insightful first window into your mind," she said, putting him on the defense on two fronts as she shifted nearer to him. "Do you know that you were showing me images of the written instructions, rather than where everything was actually placed in your office? It was a good thing you were thinking the words as well, because I have enough trouble reading your handwriting in person."

He set his jaw to keep from looking too sour. It was with purposefully composed authority that he spoke up, delivering clearly, "The mind is a mix of all of the senses, so it is not inconceivable that the way I remembered instructions was by picturing my own notes for the antidote."

"No," she agreed, grin still spreading, "but it is still funny. I could tell right from the start that you'd be an interesting and excellent person to share with."

Rather than having taken back control of his space, he had to inconspicuously lean away as she moved in closer. He had never at all learned how to take compliments from her, and definitely not when she was looking at him like this.

"That's a good point to bring up though..." she continued, raising a hand. He couldn't make sense of where it was going, as his eyes were quite suddenly mesmerized with how close hers were, drawing nearer and opened wider in the dim light from the bedside candle. "One of the senses in particular is what wizards use for Legilimency, of course—sight." Her hand was somewhere beside his head, sending a static tingle in anticipation through him. "Touch" —only his face twitched from his statuesque pose as she made contact, her fingertips, as soft as her voice, parting through his hair and to his cheek with an ease that denounced how much cover his curtain had ever truly given him— "is what I rely on. But, if you prefer, we can always do both..."

And that had been his limit for the day, making it through minimal conversation afterward and achieving not a single attempt at anything legitimate, as he had not been about to allow even a whiff of his thoughts at the time, focused or scrambled, to be inspected.

He had gone to bed that night by carefully placing his pillow directly over his head, the cool fabric refreshing his hot face, and his heart hammering as he wished he could do his head against the wall.

It was now even more difficult than before; what with their indeterminate closeness returned, his mind which couldn't let go of her thrilling expression from their Ministry adventure, the fact that all he wanted was for her to look at him like that forever—and that he wasn't even deprived of this, not really. For she had been in such high spirits lately as well that it wasn't rare to see her face light up and for her to drag him along with her, physically and, for him, in other ways. It was impossible to tell if she was simply overenthusiastic about regaining things, or he was looking too much into them out of his own clouded judgement.

It was a rare thing in his life that he thought something might truly be impossible, especially a piece of magic. But even with all of the slathered-on praise from her, all of her hyping up of his abilities and his achievements made in honing them through the most tempering of fires, he hadn't any idea how he was going to be able to follow through like this.

His only relief was that at least Freya didn't appear outwardly pushy about any of it. Even her suggestions took a turn towards focusing on relaxing and taking their time (and perhaps actually completing schoolwork). In fact, she seemed downright apologetic for all the extra work, switching up her praise to instead state what a 'difficult thing' it was, and so often that he was starting to feel looked down on, wanting to remedy this quickly with a show of composure.

His pride in being allowed to make it this far was on the line. He had no intention of giving up just yet.

"Well, if you want to try again, we can," Freya said idly to the sky.

She was taking her time ahead of him, treading carefully over the slippery leaf-littered path back from Hogsmeade, having succeeded in dragging him out at last now that Easter holidays were underway.

They had also achieved some errands for Dumbledore while they were out, picking up some bribery candies from Honeydukes after a light meal and drinks with some other teachers who hadn't left on vacation. It was questionable to him whether this had actually been enjoyable, but it did cure them of their status of being otherwise unseen amongst the other teachers, having obviously been spending far too much time alone together pouring over books.

The timing of their outing hadn't been ideal though; clouds were roiling overhead, denying any sun to match the brightly colored decorations strewn over town and castle alike, and threatening that the few enchanted eggs that had made a run for the woods might soon be losing their paint.

"But I do think we've been making headway with just light practice," she continued, "and maybe after, say... another decade of that, we'll be all set to actually try something."

"I don't remember signing up for a decade of this," he said, walking a gap behind her.

"Oh, but I do. Got that one written down, even." She threw him a grin over her shoulder. "Plus, I've signed up to torture you forever, so it's the least you could do... Actually, how long do you plan on putting yourself through that nightly song routine?"

"As you say: forever, naturally," he replied with ease.

"Don't joke about that," she said, losing her smile. "If it's you, I'm bound to take you seriously."

"You should."

The damp ground made an easy task of her heel spinning round to face him. He was envisioning her hands on her hips before they even got into place.

"Severus, you can't just—"

"Was that lightning?"

She whipped around in the direction he had inclined his head curiously—and then back at him with a thinly lined grin.

"Will you please stop that?"

"I will when you stop falling for it. Twice in one day?"

"Oh, shut it. You heard Sybill—a forecast of sunshine from her means it's going to clobber the windows in and flood the forest."

"Why don't you just take a closer look to see how dark the horizon is?" he invented on the spot, pointing a nonchalant finger upward. It worked, and she once again turned her eyes to the clouds, pondering his idea.

"What—fly up?" she said as if seriously considering it. "I suppose I could... Care to come with?"

He should have known he was having it too easy at distracting her from inquiring further into his masochism. Even two wide steps backward from her deviously raising hands and glinting grin weren't enough, as she caught the collar of his robes with ease.

"What's wrong, Severus? Not afraid of heights, surely?"

"Actually," he said with forced casualty, trying not to draw attention to his hand as it attempted to pry hers off of him, "that would be a misnomer, as a fear of heights is more accurately the fear of the loss of control—"

She had silenced him with a show of her other hand, ready to snap her fingers together.

"I'll give you two options," she said with quiet menace, "you can either grab on, or I can Apparate you fifty feet up. Either way, I do hope to find you more chatty in the clouds."

With a final laugh at his stunned face, his collar was suddenly let go and her fingers finished their pop of sound. But the phoenix that buffeted its wings at him gave almost no time before it was gracefully flying upward, and in a moment of panic and simple curiosity, he chose the first option and grabbed onto the long hanging golden tail.

The playful musical note that had been bubbling in the breeze abruptly screeched to a halt, and quite suddenly Freya had popped back into herself midair, landing unsteadily on her boots and holding the back of her head.

"I was joking, you barbarian! Oh... Quit it!"

But as aggrieved as she looked, the only thing he could do for his laughter was to wipe a smooth hand over his mouth.

"I had thought... I could have sworn that you..." He had to look away from her steadily building annoyance, her hands gripping onto her hair protectively as if it were its own entity, to collect himself. "I am sure that I've seen your old friend do something similar to better effect."

"Yes, well he's gentle!"

At that, he nearly lost his amusement, taking the accusation to heart. He was saved from sinking into his thoughts, however.

"Wait..." she said, "when did we do that in front of you?"

Their eyes met—and the same spark was transferred.

"It would have been years ago now..." he said, stepping toward her as she was to him.

But her footsteps came to a rigid halt and her shoulders slumped.

"Oh, wait... I do remember that. That first meeting—out on the cliff?" They both looked disappointed, sharing a sigh as the spell of intrigue was broken. "Albus was being his dramatic self, all in a rage, trying to strike the fear of Merlin into you... I remember now, Apparating us out in that showy way."

He thought he had been about to discover a memory that Dumbledore had perhaps been hiding from her, which would have been interesting in and of itself. But it seemed they had achieved the non-discriminatory clause of sharing the whole of their past together, which he could not adhere to.

Except...

His head quickly pulled up to ask, "Do you remember how that meeting came about?"

"...No... No—I don't!"

He had never seen her so excited to not remember something, but he had to admit he was right there with her on this front. They had months of shared experiences, but sorting through them had made him realize just how much he had been noticing about her from the start of the year. The fact that he now, after spending so much time in the sun with her, considered her hair more of a glittering liquid that accentuated her eyes beautifully; the exact way her face crinkled when she truly smiled; the endlessly confusing feeling of her laughter like song through him, and his swirling mix of thoughts about her actual song and memories of it... He was reluctant to admit just how much of his headspace had been taken up by her.

But this... He specifically had had no idea she was a woman when this had happened. A completely innocuous memory. Albeit not one that cast him in the best light... but apparently she already remembered his embarrassing display afterward. What was there to lose?

"Tonight," he said definitively. "Let's do it tonight."

"Really...?"

He nodded, leaning into her gaze and taking her hands in the gesture they had proposed as a neutral physical connection. He almost wanted to do it right then and there, if only to spare himself any more time to overthink things.

After she had explained during their previous attempt that her 'touch' could be invoked at range with the feather trick she had prepared for their Ministry trip, he had been laboriously deliberating on whether or not to take the out. But, here in the moment, this was what felt right. It was too important, and he wanted to do things properly. And quickly.

"Hang on," she said, looking up from where she had been inspecting his sudden grip on her and narrowing her eyes, "you didn't abduct me or something, did you?"

"No," he said with slight disappointment. "Nothing like that..." He looked down at their hands as well, consciously loosening his fingers. "Contrary to popular belief, I am not a barbarian."

"Could've fooled me," she said, the corners of her mouth pointing up. She slipped her hands away, leaving his hanging in the air, and turned back to the path, looking to start out again.

"And you could have fooled me that you were a real phoenix complete with all the magical capabilities..." She gave his words a sharp look over her shoulder. "Weightlessness magic in your tail? You can't even carry my weight."

"Been carrying your sorry arse around all year, haven't I?"

He just caught a flash of teeth before her head pointed once more to the path, leaving him staring at the back of her swishing hair, like a taunting bit of string before a cat.

He kept his pace at an even greater distance… and slowly drew his wand.

Whatever sense she had, it kicked in a moment too late, as she whipped herself around only in time to give him a satisfying view of her shocked face as the personal raincloud he had summoned above her head broke into a burst of droplets.

"Severus!"

Her shriek was different from her other forms, but to his ears it held the exact same nature. He would have laughed himself all the way back to the castle—if not for the impending wrath he was now faced with. The slick ground offered a treacherous path for his swift backwards scrambling as she marched after him, her expression matching the raincloud in tow, sprinkling her as she went and doing nothing to curb his amusement.

"You—!" But before she could do more than jab her finger at him, she was arrested on the spot, both of their heads going skyward. "No!"

"Would you look at that," he said, marveling and holding out his hand.

"You! You did this!" she shouted in wild protest as the first true raindrops fell through the branches overhead, the thunderclap just now having signaled them to be let loose in a torrent.

"Well, this hardly seems necessary now..." He cast a placid grin on her as he flicked his wand, vanquishing her miniature rain to no great cheer from her spattered face as she blinked through wet eyelashes at him. He hadn't seen the gold in her eyes flash quite so dangerously in some time, reminding him of the lightning overhead.

But there was something more. He knew it in her twisting mouth, looking to fight its own sourness, and the sparkle of her eyes softening what she only may have wished was truly threatening. Another peal of thunder rumbled off in the distance and she jumped, her shoulders going to her ears, and then just as quickly down in an attempt at composure. Their eyes met once more and her reluctant grin broke free before she could capture it.

"Come here!" she barked suddenly, making him jump this time. "We're going back to the castle my way, you bastard, you..."

"Actually, I'm fine to walk," he said, retracing his steps towards Hogsmeade and wondering if she would wind up backing them all the way to the pub again.

"You won't be fine when I catch you," she said with a laugh that sounded just a touch too dark.

He tried to circle himself around the path, dodging this way and that, feeling like he was preparing early for the graduation dance ceremony, but she was too light on her feet for him. All it took was for his arm to be caught, and then both sides of his collar were snatched up as she yanked his momentum forward so that he nearly tripped straight into her with a scuff of his boots through the sodden ground.

"I think I'll aim for the fireplace," she said, lifting only the required fingers free to make her magical gesture. They clicked together, loud and crisp in her wet hand.

Feeling quite fine in where his defeat had landed him, at such a short distance to her face, he held his gaze steady with hers, happily waiting to be transported to a possible fiery doom with a grin just barely bitten back.

But their stare went on for too long. Her smile faltered first, slowly sinking at the corners, and he watched in as much surprise as both their eyes widened.

The rain was still pattering through the sparse branches, dampening her hair more and more to a pretty—though less enchanted-looking—brown, and hitting her upturned face as she stared past him in abject horror.

The echo of her snap was long gone.

"Ah... Well, then," he said with cool understanding. "I have always wondered—"

His nose was suddenly at level with hers as his robes were more fiercely yanked down.

"Take—me."

"I would be happy to," he said with barely stifled delight at her predicament—and a mental kicking at the thought that had popped into his head. "I can take you wherever you like... so long as you're aware that I can only Apparate outside of the castle grounds."

"Take me that far then! Ugh!" He was released as she violently swatted at her eyes, a large drop having landed in them. "Dry me off! Dry me off so I can transfigure you into a nice piece of kindling!"

However, as he watched her bend over to try to clear her face and fix her hair, he could only seem to supply a pursing of his lips, doing the most minimal of work at hiding how concerned he was with this newfound watered-down state of hers.

As if the word had a fine taste, he delivered a satisfying, "No."

"'No'?" she repeated with a disbelieving breath of laughter, whipping her hair as she came back up from trying to rake her fingers through.

He slowly wiped his face of droplets from where it had hit him.

But the wet smack of hair, which Freya looked less than apologetic for, did nothing to budge his grin. It only served to make the corners more wicked, and the slow shake of his head to reaffirm his fiendish denial that much more gratifying, his eyes not leaving hers even as he pushed his own swiftly dampening hair back from his face. He was adamant not to lift wand nor finger to resolve this situation.

However, much apart from looking more aggrieved, he saw a Freya before him going through an odd change which he had never before seen. The anger seemed to flash away like lightning, leaving her staring blinking at him in almost the same startled self-consciousness the actual phenomenon had. To his utter confusion, her chin tilted down and her lower lip went between her teeth as if to bite the reluctant grin from her mouth. However, almost like covering up what she could see him taking in, the expression disappeared entirely with a confident and fluffy shake of her hair, and she stepped forward to calmly take another tight grip of the front of his robes while he was too distracted by the electrifying look that was suddenly in her eyes.

"I thought," she said in a voice nearly below the buzz of rain on the leaves overhead, but clear and smooth as the water itself, "that you were going to be nicer to me, Severus."

He had half a mind—and truly only just that left—to tell her she could have this and whatever other demands she wanted, actually.

It was no longer clear to him whether she was teasing him or just unaware, but he had even less room than usual as of late to be thinking about it. Much more pressing was the matter of continuing to work towards being close to her without letting anything on, and if he needed to shut down all thought and allow it to happen, then he would have to stick to that with an iron will.

"How can I...?" he started to say, his hand reaching up towards her. There was something he always envied in the way she so casually got hold of him all the time that he wished he could act out himself with as little thought. Rather than rudely taking hold of her clothes though, he startled her with a touch under her chin. "When it seems you get so much enjoyment out of me being mean?"

He thought he might have crossed a line for a moment, her face showing much more shock than he hoped his did when she put him in similar situations. In his defense, which was already gearing up, he had no idea what he was doing. It was a surprise to him that her head tipped up like pressing a button at the lightest touch, and that it put her so much closer to him, catching her in a state he hadn't imagined. A satisfying surprise, no doubt, but it wasn't as if he had a clue what to do with her now.

Her expression finally twitched first, and her hand at his collar pushed him back to free herself, pulling her hair over her shoulder and fully across her face as she turned away.

It was an odd sight for sure. Not only to see her hair so bedraggled, but to see, through the gaps in it, the crease of her smile winning out against the annoyed one between her brows. Her hand stayed with her dripping strands to conceal her, angled away from him, and he narrowed his eyes.

"…Idiot…"

"What was that?" he asked lightly, still taking his distance as a chance to intently study this happening.

"Just thinking about some idiot I used to know who sold his soul to his biggest hero; you wouldn't know him."

She shot her smirk so fast that he, while regretting having ever shared with her, didn't have time to summon up more than a tight smile of annoyed warning. The fact it resulted in a peel of laughter from her, though, was worth it. It served well to remind him that he would need to not focus on the effect the sound had on him when sharing memories, as between it and her intriguing display, his heart was drumming as much as the rain.

"Well then," she said with a suddenly cheery huff, finally fully emerging with a toss of her lost cause hair over her shoulder and giving him a once over. "You look adequately drenched. Are we walking or are we standing around?"

He was still plenty curious about what exactly she had been hiding behind her hair, but he agreeably turned to finally be on their way, waiting for her to take a place at his side before he began.

"I'm happy to let you walk with me…" he started to say, as slow as his pace despite the cold rain, unable to tear his eyes away from the upturned corner of her mouth, "but as we've got the time, I might ask… how is it exactly that you bathe without becoming… impotent?"

He had chosen his words carefully to get a rise out of her, and succeeded in earning himself a sharpened look whipped at him and a shove that merely bordered on playful.

"You had best make scarce whatever thoughts you have in that head of yours of me in the bath within the next few hours, Severus," she said in a dangerously soft voice, "or else I'll be making you permanently 'impotent.'"

He hadn't been able to decide if it had been a worse look for her that her threats were so easy to take in stride, or for him and his mental wellbeing that they only served to send his stomach pleasantly dancing to hear them delivered out of her rain-wetted lips. Either way, he had apparently held his dumbly smirking face on her for an unappreciated amount of time, because a moment later he had been sent wobbling off course again by her hand.

That time, however, he was relieved of his shove of punishment and pulled back, steadied by the same hand. Instead, he served his sentence permanently claimed within its warmth, all the way back up to the castle.

The issue of where to conduct themselves was resolved at his request, having returned to their roots and given Freya a reason to redecorate her quarters. She was as insistent that he be comfortable as a hospital employee, and in the end wound up quite liking the moodier atmosphere she had created with just a touch of opaque drapery hanging from the ceilings to match the color of the dungeon's stone, and a dividing wall of books behind the couch, which he greatly appreciated saving him having to look at her bed every time he let himself into the room to meet her.

His most recent promise was to be kept that very night, while her longstanding one would end up being delayed until deep into the later hours.

"Wait."

His momentum interrupted, the tense grip he held on her hands slackened.

"What?"

"It's just… Don't you have something to ask me first?"

He frowned at her imploringly coy look, drawing a blank.

She prompted further, "Something you asked me right here… something I told you to ask me again later about…?"

His gaze having wandered around the room, it settled on the chair across the table at her words. This activity requiring more closeness, his usual seat sat abandoned. The old armchair's visage clicked her words into place as he marveled at how far away it looked from the view of the couch.

He turned calm eyes back to her. "I believe you already stole the chance from me."

"You could still have a go," she shrugged, unable to keep a smirk from forming. "For the sake of making it official."

Seizing on the opportunity of an easier atmosphere for what was sure to be an arduous task, he retrained his grip on her hands and angled himself back towards her to look straight into her eyes.

"Freya… Would you please allow me to return what I can of your memories?"

She bit back her grin, replacing it with a feigned annoyance. "About time you offered. Thought you were waiting till I tripped down the Astronomy tower stairs to get out of it."

"Seeing as I know without a doubt that you don't take the stairs, I had no choice."

Her smile released, following his own.

"Whenever you're ready then."

"Wait for my signal."

"I know, Severus."

She might, but he was yet to be comfortable not knowing exactly when she could read him further than his face. He had learned from their trainings she had a gentle, almost imperceptible touch; that, or the only other person who had invaded his mind had set out trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible, which was at least a little likely.

He honed in on his thoughts of those previous few years, rifling through like no more than pages of his lecture plans, knowing precisely what and when he wanted.

A night that had necessitated his heaviest robe, and had made the hole in the pocket all the more noticeable by the wind which had whipped through it; in the thickest of wood, far from any hideout or safety, far enough away that he could be sure of privacy.

He had been told, not directly in so many words, but in a foreboding sense, of the Dark Lord's plannings about the prophecy he had relayed, and, after his initial pleading for another fate had failed, he had since paced sleeplessly around his room on muffled boots, waiting like a recently captured tiger in a cage for the first chance at freedom. But it had been numerous torturous days of this, and he had come no closer to a solution, busy as everything was what with the turmoil and the violence—and then the hiding and the retreating. There were still Aurors left to fight, still those who gnashed their teeth for their own righteous banner, and they were just as ready to deal harsh blows with a full band in the dead of night. And so came the time to scurry away, under layers of protection, and rest.

For some, anyway.

But what if one were to return to the scene of a recent crime—steal away, back to what was once a home, now a display of wreckage and mayhem—what would be there? He had a better guess than many, as he had seen it before. Under a cast of ghostly green light from above that remained until someone released the spell, there would be those trying to help anyone out of rubble, those procuring the scene, and those keeping watch from afar; through city streets if applicable, or the skies if need be. And if it was the sky…

The idea had come to him through multiple lines, joining together on one little chain of hope, coming together like a lightning bolt. He had known there would be no other way around going to the head, even as he was fortressed away in his castle with its many gossiping eyes—nobody else could be trusted, not even the man's own supposedly goodhearted men. People changed their tunes, they leaned this way and that, they whispered to whomever pointed a more deadly wand—people, yes… but what if it wasn't a person who could be turned, or an owl which could easily be intercepted over such a great distance? A being that reported straight to the man himself and was loyal to his very bloodline, not to mention had its own power to not be thwarted…

And so a younger Severus had come to be at the edge of a forest, lurking in the dark and shivering with much more than cold, near biting through his lip as his panicked mind had begged the people on the ground to leave whatever clues they were searching for till the morning light and clear out. And that they do so before the phoenix circling overhead followed them.

It had been a shambles of a play—he had been spotted within minutes by what he had thought at the time was only a bird; a great and glowing bird, which he had nearly lost his nerve upon seeing flying directly at him, signaling to everyone his position. He had done the only thing he could think of to call it off, praying it had enough intelligence to understand—and thrown his wand at his feet, standing there in the frozen woods, listening to the sounds of snapping twigs in the distance. The bird didn't have to know he had only to scramble after his wand and he would Disapparate on the spot or else fight his way out, it just had to know he had something to impart. And, graciously, miraculously, the bird had watched his display, done a tight circle in the air, and come to a landing on a branch high overhead, staring down at him with yellow eyes that seemed ready to shower the wrath of the heavens should he dare move. But it wasn't the people rushing toward him that he wanted, and he had to make that known.

"I need to speak with him," he had said, "him alone."

The phoenix had held his gaze, making him wait another long moment. Then, it had done the one thing he had counted on, lowering its head, beak opening... and sang. He had felt it before, a note meant to frighten enemies and send them staggering in battle. But on that night he had already been terrified beyond capacity, and had fought against the throb of fear that pulsed his heart like a snared rabbit. He had held his chin up and demanded his piece again with eyes alone.

There had been another pause, in which the bird had not looked away from him and voices could still be heard, cutting it close before he would have had no way out but magic. It had been with a movement that had made him jump that the phoenix had opened one wing, showing two feathers that glowed briefly in the gloom, and then had sent them raining down at his feet, inches from his wand. Except when he had looked there had only been the one; the other had gotten lost in the quick movement.

It had looked a curious thing, a feather sticking straight up out of the earth by its tip, emitting a light so faint he hadn't been sure that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. It had given him a worrying insight that this creature could understand him beyond what he had imagined, and he had wondered if it was also capable of betrayal. Everything was a threat those days, especially at that time… But a more pressing one was baring down on him, and with a low menacing cry to egg him on at last, he had jerked into motion, diving for his wand, and snatching up the feather—

"...What... Wait… What happened next?"

The present-day Severus's heart was beating hard after yanking himself forcefully free of the memory and their strongly maintained connection, and, as a result, Freya with him. She looked as taken in as he had been, her hands gripping his tight. Only, he was better at collecting himself. The wall that had come up to protect him served to quickly cool him down.

"You know what happened next," he replied after steadying his breath. "Your Portkey feather spat me out onto a hill in the middle of nowhere, Dumbledore showed up ready to clean my very existence off this plane, and then… we struck an agreement."

She was nodding slowly now, her eyes moving quicker than her head, perhaps remembering her own version of events.

"Right… Right, and then… that's what started it all…"

He nodded as well, his eyes falling to their hands.

For him it had been the start of even more treacherous slinking around in the dark than ever before; studying specific means of keeping himself hidden, and therefore alive; and, of course, he had always concealed somewhere on or around his person, serving as both an emergency measure as well as marking him as belonging to another flag, a specific kind of feather…

He glanced up, but Freya still seemed lost in thought. It felt like waiting for a grade on an exam. Before he realized he was doing it, he was watching his thumbs trace circles over the backs of her fingers, not knowing if it was out of nerves or trying to rouse her.

His movement ceased as he noticed her staring at him.

"You have quite the mind," she said in a voice in tune to the hum of the fire.

"I'm not entirely sure you mean that as a compliment," he replied with a tight grin. It died quickly with her following words.

"I do. You look at the world similarly to Albus, actually…" She smiled in a way that scrunched her nose. "Well—sort of. It's interesting… You're both very bright people, it just seems as if you focus on different things… Parts of your memories are clearer than others, you see."

He suddenly felt as if his view of the world was from the perspective of a crab without a shell being looked at by the eye of the sun through a magnifying glass. He wished he could get his arms to work enough to at least retreat his hands from hers.

Her sympathetic grimace seemed to show how much was on his face. Before he could divert more than his eyes and finally take back his hands, searching for a change in topic, she was speaking again.

"Severus, you're brilliant. You're… observant. You take in more of the world than most, it makes sense you'd have more to share about it as well. I told you I could tell that you'd be easy to do this with. And this is a much stronger connection than I'm sure you're used to, allowing more to be exchanged. But if it bothers you... this was just the first time. You don't…"

His eyes inched back towards her as her pause grew longer. Her hair was falling in that way it had when she lowered her chin, unable to be corrected as her hands in his seemed to be suffering the same nervous movement his had been, her thumbs moving over his fingers. The sensation only made his nerves buzz that much more for her to speak. When she did, her voice was even quieter than before.

"You don't have to share everything if you don't want to. I know you're plenty skilled in hiding your thoughts, I figure with some practice you'll get the hang of it naturally anyway. But I just wanted to tell you…" He couldn't place her smile when she peeked back at him, but whether or not it was genuine was without question. "You never had to do any of this in the first place. So... just what you can do is enough."

It would have to be.

Because his observant mind at the time had been completely taken over to memorize the sweet expression she wore when sharing such a sentiment that he found meant a great deal more than he ever could have guessed. And he knew it would not be the first time his memories would have shown her face as the clearest thing in the room, a light outshining all else.

It hadn't been her exact wording, but if what he had to give—if he himself could be enough for her—then he would do everything in his power to live up to her expectations.

Starting with harnessing all of his ego that she had stoked into a burning blaze and putting it to work delivering on his promise. That very night, he had taken her by surprise, reaffirming his grip on her hands once more and asking something he would have normally found derisively ironic: if he could share more.

They had barely gotten any sleep after she had agreed, saying she was mentally fine to carry on so long as she could sleep in. When he had finally made it to bed, feeling wholly spent in mind and body somehow, he hadn't a second before falling asleep, waking with only a dream-like memory of phoenix song. It had taken him some time, as he had awoken with a headache, but eventually he had drug himself back up several flights of stairs, let himself in quietly, and delivered another gift for Freya in the form of an entire tray of breakfast, including a whole pot of strong tea. She hadn't stirred from behind the wide bookcase then in place, and he hadn't wanted to wake her besides, but several hours later, in the library, she had thanked him for his warming spell that had kept it hot all the morning she had slept.

Thus, their sleepless nights had begun. And over the ensuing weeks, it would come to feel as if her warm hand had never left his from that day in the rain onward.

For him it was a settled matter of organization. He had sorted out everything he remembered from the start of the school year up to December into two groups: those that he was able to begrudgingly relay, and those that he was hoping that she would simply forget to ask for. There were only two in the later pile; his breakdown after Slughorn's first party, and, of course, their kiss before her December departure. If luck prevailed, he was hoping he might forget those memories as well, sealing them up for good and finally letting him rest from the tick of embarrassment they still gave.

There did technically exist a third unmentionable happening. However, it wasn't a memory that either of them had even so much as hinted at giving a spot on the table. That one, with absolution, he wouldn't hand over to her even at the grave. And it was the one he wished he could tear from his brain the most.

Over the days, he found that Freya had been correct that he might have an easier job of contorting things just so over time with their more amicable relations. It turned out that editing one's mind was an easier task when one didn't have the threat of an entire life going up in flames fraying every fiber of one's brain to the limit. However carefree he had liked to portray his abilities to certain parties, he much preferred this near playful act of mental manipulation. And, seeing as it was also an extraordinarily rare chance to test out the limits of this kind of magic, he had taken to doing what he did best and studying everything that he could about the process, even sticking a finger into the pie of experimentation.

"Severus, you're ingenious, but not imaginative. Stick to what you know," an amused Freya had told him after an attempt to convincingly turn her hair Slytherin green in his memory of the first quidditch match of the season.

In truth their meetings were sparse in frequency, having to still attend to everything else. Actual Careers Advice week came and went, however, without him losing too many fingernails over it. It turned out being in a good mood made his job an awful lot easier.

His excitement for those special nights had captured him completely. It didn't feel like he had been burning firelight into the wee hours of the morning to get his gradings and plannings done when he woke up, on his desk or half-clothed in bed. He had something to look forward to that both engaged him mentally in a subject he wished he could bathe in and now practically could, and which gave him every excuse he could ask for to be tantalizingly close to an interest of a different sort. Every meeting that they planned seemed to ravel up time like a dropped scroll winding in on itself, propelling him closer to when he could shed himself of the day, practically jog himself up to her room, unlock the door with enough haste to knock it open, waltz himself in, and take her hands before even getting himself seated. Every time that they closed their eyes, he wished that he had the nerve to voice a suggestion otherwise, as he always wanted more time huddled close, her hands in his and her eyes glowing with the same excitement. It was a joy when she interrupted getting into things to tell him about her day first; some differently exciting event that had happened in class or a passing gossip from another teacher. She would get caught up in talking and forget that they were sitting there on her little couch as they were. Which may just have been why he had started going for her hands first thing, glad that she hadn't taken notice.

But, as he well knew, he was pushing his luck.

The reality of getting her to remember their earlier months had folded in on itself in an anticlimactic fashion, leaving him with the odd moment of hollow gratification now and then. It had seemed so quintessential a thing to lose when it had happened, but now—hadn't they formed an almost stronger bond than before? The only part missing was what he had been wanting closure on from December, but his thoughts had shifted and changed so much on the subject by now that he wasn't sure where he stood. Only that his heart still jumped when she yanked him in closer; his eyes still threatened to betray his enjoyment of watching her at a glance as she made any menial thing look captivating; his face still needed checking in the mirror some mornings to make sure he was properly dour for classes rather than looking like he had had far too wild of a night; and his heart still gave him much trouble when she would lay her head on his shoulder, drooping closer to his chest, and stirring him into a panic that its noisy beating would be found out.

The last point being his current situation.

Freya had been having as poor of a time as they had anticipated in their plannings, and after their last sharing session, in which they had triumphantly pushed through the final round of memories on the list and turned their time into an all-night affair, she had greeted him this afternoon much as she had once earlier in the year: passed out lengthwise on the couch, complaining weakly of a headache.

He couldn't blame her. Days had swiftly turned into weeks, the charm of the first flowers of spring had worn off long ago as more and more had come along, and they had been going at a grueling pace.

It seemed she at least wasn't so heavily disorientated as when Dumbledore had imparted all the random scraps from decades prior. The way she described it, she was in a state as if she were confused about the way they had met; like there was a pair of old drinking buddies in her head arguing if they'd first shared a pint at a quidditch match, or a glass at a now-closed bar down on Main Street. (Personally, he was more concerned with what movies she had been remembering to make such a comparison, amused by this small insight into the flavor of her own mind.) But, as Dumbledore had alluded to him earlier in the year, with each newly shared memory and each sleep thereafter, she had begun to remember. By her admission, just the important bits, as most subtleties washed away with time for anyone. But they would be true memories, from her own perspective of things, just as she had experienced them. Sometimes this even seemed to include the glue between what the person had given her and her own time spent living, however faint. Though as far as she had shared with him, this hadn't happened often.

Beyond his worries for their personal status, it had given him a lot to think about in terms of his own private goals, ones that were mere wishful fantasy for the time being.

As he sat sunken into the couch cushions, Freya sleeping slumped against him and his hand over her shoulders, absently playing with her hair instead of the massaging motion he had been doing for her earlier headache, he found himself experiencing that hiccup of discontent from his otherwise idyllic situation. His stare in the opposite direction from her, towards the fireplace on his other side, had been long enough now to stiffen his neck.

He hadn't been sure what to expect this evening. It could have been that she had planned a few more memories of seemingly small, but not so to her unusual tastes, things for him to sift out, or she may have had some celebration ready to commemorate their success in a completed task.

Or, what he was most afraid of: she could think it not yet complete at all.

The problem was, as it always had been, the memory which he had worn through like an antique piece of jewelry under his thumb at this point, and now, when faced with the possibility of handing it off…

What if, after everything, that minuscule moment had been meaningless?

How much weight could it truly have carried? Surely not enough to last this long. His original interpretation, that it had been a one-time fluke, a mere flirtation between two tipsy lonely people in the dark, must be the truth of it. He had been shying away from the prior details, more so focused on where his hands had been, and so perhaps he was missing a tiny bit of the context. But that must be all there was to remember: context. As in, how much alcohol they had drunk.

Although...

Buried deeper into the thorny rose bush of his thoughts, there was something behind this quaint and pretty bud which he had pruned so easily as useless; something hidden in the shade of the leaves, the snap of the twig, the very soil itself that colored the petal into such a foreboding blossom…

"Severus…? When'd you get here?"

His fingers stopped, curled in her hair. Disentangling them, he joined her in making a space between them to talk, though he kept a hand over her back. It was understandable but concerning that she didn't remember him coming in with a full plate of the dinner which she had slept through.

"Just under what would have been three stacks of graded papers ago I believe," he said with a scrutinizing glance toward the table where indeed all the work he hadn't done was still sat, right next to her own stack.

She grimaced, but rather than making any hearty moves forward, even for a bite of honeyed bread, fell back against his arm, pinning it to the couch as her personal headrest.

"You know," she grumbled, "I think we could just move on to lecture-only schooling. I'm sure they'll pick it up just fine."

"I do believe you've made it abundantly clear hands-on learning is where you most shine," he said with a wry grin at his immobilized hand behind her head, only half referring to their Legilimency lessons.

"Severus, you're the only one I could be doing that with."

The corner of his mouth remained frozen upward, though its confidence was lost as he replayed her words. A glance at her raised brows and sly look didn't confirm his thoughts so much as panic them, and he quietly looked down at the cushion with pursed lips.

"I'm sure that isn't true... The Appleson boy would probably appreciate it."

His arm was shoved out from under her as she gave a pained and groaning laugh in displeasure at his off-color joke.

"Appleson," she repeated, as if the name she had misremembered for the Gryffindor prefect itself had a worm in it. "I am just so pleased to have those memories back. Thank you so much for that one, Severus."

"Anything I can do to help," he said with dripping sarcasm, disobeying her shove and taking her hand in his. He let his expression mellow at her unimpressed gaze leveled at him, knowing she was just holding in her amusement.

But an odd thing had been happening as of late.

Where he had been expecting her eyes to roll and her smirk to more genuinely form, the line of her mouth only softened, as did the look in her eye. Where normally her lips would pop open with the next retort to keep their banter going, instead her lower one was curled in between her teeth.

Her eyes flicked away even as his were widely staring to take in what he was witnessing, because it always caught him off guard. It was a shock to not be able to read her all the time now, when she had been reading his memories so often. A trade-off seemed to have happened along the way without his noticing. Even as he gave up looking on in vain, as he was carefully accustomed now to never dwell too long on the question of it face to face, he noticed that she had not taken back her hand, and he had not released it. As if watching something from a muggle movie, one he couldn't be sure wasn't in the horror genre or another, her fingers shifted and laced into his.

It had been routine at this point for him to ask her what she remembered from her dreams about their previous session. He would quiz her and help her along through what had been murkily placed there overnight. However, last night he had shared his final memory, that of their December walk by the lake after Hogsmeade. Only, he had pulled them from that snowy world at the castle gates, where they had decided to go too far, and where he would not tread again. Today, his hands hadn't come near hers in their usual form, and he had come determined not to ask a peep.

But he had slipped up. And the question was now chomping at his tongue to be released, for he desperately needed to know what had brought on this perceivable change.

"It didn't work, you know..."

He nearly startled at her voice, scattering his thoughts and darting his eyes away from their hands where they had been caught up.

"What didn't?"

"What you were trying to do," she said, keeping her eyes on him from just the corner, which he couldn't seem to accomplish as smoothly at the moment. "My mind didn't fill in the gaps you left out. I was going to let you off because I know you wanted to do it your way, but…" She shrugged, and he felt as if her light hold on his hand was inescapable. "You haven't done a full job on your promise."

It was precisely what he had feared. She had let him off easy with just a studying look the previous night before their farewell, only because she would be yanking him back in when they had more time.

"What could possibly be closer than that?" he demanded, feeling his heart rate rise. "If your mind can't piece it together from that close a memory, it isn't my fault."

He gave an honest attempt at calming himself, but the rhythm was set into his chest like a ticking alarm which could go off at any minute. He had let it wedge too deep too quickly, and there was no hope of disengaging now, not with her hand trapping him into his thoughts of what she was going to make him do. An impossible, implausible request, at great cost to his privacy, which he would simply refuse to carry out.

Earlier in the year, and even more vividly in his mind as he had recently had it brought to the forefront, he would have considered Freya one of the louder people he had met. At the very least her voice carried if not in volume, then by the sheer desire it gave the person within earshot to listen.

That was perhaps why the voice that spoke then sounded so foreign that he was at first unaware.

"I… have another idea..."

"What?" he said without hesitation, as he hadn't even been sure he had heard her right and hoped she would speak up. He had left his safety and turned his head to look at her before he had realized it.

"You could kiss me."

His head stayed pointed at her in frozen silence. There wasn't anything to see besides the sheen of her hair and the ball of her shoulder, as she hadn't made the mistake that he had in letting his face be shown.

His eyes stared into the orange static before him, puzzling out this bludger of an idea that had just crashed through the window of his mind and devastated the poor tidy thoughts into splinters.

A kiss; a physical connection. This made perfect sense. Of course. Even he had entertained the idea of it once upon a time, seemingly by pure intuition for the art of the mind. Something beyond the visual to connect to. Indeed, a logical step to… something or other… the grounding natural forces of magic connected to the…

His mouth was still practicing how to make consonant sounds when her eyes suddenly rendered his dumbstruck countenance resolute. There was a definite pinkish hue to compliment her shyness, most unlike her if she were merely making a joke. He finally relieved his neck just to try and shake free from the numb feeling that had come over him head to toe, as if he had woken up in a vivid dream which he had forced into being through the power of sheer will.

But his hand was still connected, chaining his spinning mind to reality.

"You want… me to kiss you," he stated for the record, his eyes scrolling back and forth over the lines of fabric in the couch as if going over his notes on an experiment.

She had broached the idea, which, while absurd, must mean she was alright with it, or else that the outcome was desired badly enough that she could abide by such a thing. And branching from there, she must find him tolerable to some varying degree.

Tolerable…

Somewhere in him there was a door being forced open despite a deluge of multiplying facts inside trying to render the space inaccessible.

It had taken a stretched moment before she had fully resurfaced from behind her hair to answer him, making a show of nonchalance this time by flipping it fully over her shoulder and facing him head-on.

"Yes, I do," she said, only the high pitch to her voice proving unable to be tempered. "I think it makes sense given how…" Her mouth hung open as she appeared to be grappling for something, and he noted that she wouldn't meet his eyes again. "How… How my memory process works itself. Physical contact and… all of that."

He blinked at her, as unmoving as she was restless, watching her pick at her hair on her shoulder and align it just so, only to pull the whole thing forwards.

"All of that…" he repeated, testing out the words.

"Yes," she confirmed with a curt nod. She darted her free hand to her knees, twitched the hemline of her robe over her ankles, and then held a stiff posture to await his response.

In a mad way, a corner of his mouth was having a go at tugging upwards, because he knew—he knew there was no way that she wasn't lying. He just couldn't for the life of him and his racing heart figure out why. Her poor excuse was example enough of the indefensible nature of her idea. But if it wasn't for a sensible reason, then what game was she playing at...?

"Alright."

Her eyes snapped to his, wide and golden twin alarm bells.

"A—Alright?" she squeaked back, her composure appearing to crack into dust at once as she leaned away from his sudden advancement; he had repositioned himself closer as if propelled forward.

It wasn't that simple, he knew. And this was no prank—she would never, surely.

This was a test.

Severus repeated the same motion he had been doing for weeks, though returning to the speed which he had since advanced from after so many sessions between them; slow and careful, as if trying not to frighten a stray cat. It was fitting again now, as Freya looked to be experiencing what he had once much more adequately hid. Though she glanced down in alarm, she didn't protest as both her hands were slowly taken in his.

He studied them with her. They always wound up looking so small when he was the one who first reached out, his thumb encompassing her fingers, pressing them to his upturned palm. Although his hands were thin and nimble, mostly taken care of with accurate healing applications so that the knife-work in his earlier years showed only in a few scant scars that had to be searched for in the right light to see, hers folded into themselves with a much daintier elegance that both reminded him of how her other form displayed such a different aura, and made him want to laugh when he compared it to her more abrasively truthful personality.

He knew it was a test, because it was the only variable that, when plugged into this strange equation, produced a readable result. He already knew she wouldn't push for something he had put his foot down on. It was only this specific thing which she was interested in pressing for. She was testing him to see if he was trustworthy. Which was understandable. Even with all of his attention to detail and time spent trying not to let her catch on, she must at least suspect that his intentions were not purely amicable. She had noticed it on New Year's Eve, she had read her journal… No matter his actions thus far, he could see it being so that she wouldn't believe he wasn't trying to get something more from her in the end.

And...

She had done the same before, the first time, out in the snow. Testing him with the temptation of a kiss, seeing if he would complete the action, prove that held within him there was a weakness... Well, now he would show her the opposite. He could deliver anything for her, just as stoic and serious as could be, confirming all that he had been building up for weeks in one final exercise.

As he raised his eyes, she met his, as nervous as before. It only pushed down his own reservations, making him calmer, wanting to ease her tension.

"Are—Are you sure?" she said in a breath. She swallowed and lost her nerve to look up again. "You don't have to, if… if it—"

Her jaw jumped shut as he took her chin, as he had known it would. Filled with the determination that he could not divert from this course he had set himself on, he had further closed the space between them, so close that he almost felt rude to breathe too heavily. It looked like this wouldn't be a problem for her just yet, as he thought she might have stopped breathing altogether.

"I am sure," he said, voice low and strong. "If this is what you need, then I'll do it."

She looked caught, and just as bemused about whether or not she was having a prank played on her, a fearfully lopsided grin stuck to her face.

"I don't think you're allowed to try and be princely with a past like yours," she said.

"Then it's a good thing I'm not trying to be."

She blinked at him, otherwise completely still. Then her fear seemed to sway, and her eyes, though wide, studied him intently. But she couldn't hold them steady for long; they were drawn towards his hand still at her chin, making him take it in as well. He readjusted his fingers, unsure suddenly if he was holding her correctly. He had only done it the one time, after all. When he felt her nod, he thought for a second that she was prompting him his grip was fine—then his heart clinched.

"Alright..." she said, soft as she had been before but now infinitely clearer. Her eyes shown at him with the same acute attention, making him wonder if it was merely that she was so close that he could train every sense to only her, as if she were the only thing in the universe, drawing him in to her gravity.

He nodded back.

"Alright… Then..."

The last bit of apprehension came together on her face, but it was washed away with a steadying breath.

She did as was expected, closing her eyes, and then…

He fell apart.

It had been too much a strain trying to keep his face clear while the rest of his body fought to betray him. And now this… Her perfect face, lashes just touching the tops of her pink cheeks, her hair sweeping over one brow in a way that she couldn't brush aside with her hands held still at her side over his other one—and, he noticed, her lips had parted just the smallest amount. Here she was before him, beautiful enough to take his breath without even trying, all poised within his quickly heating hands.

He had been frozen for too long, but it was his swallow that got him in the end; he could tell it was just audible this close, and his frightened eyes flicked to her neat little brows, where they had been patiently upturned and waiting, now cinching into a crease.

Before he could scramble to push himself forward all the way, her eyes had popped back open.

"Severus—"

He was an inch from her face as she blinked at him—and then quickly he set himself back a foot.

"I'm—Close your—"

"I was! You weren't—"

"I was."

"Well, then…" She nodded again, as did he, both much more forceful, before she gave him one last look and then shut him back into his privacy.

Even more frazzled, panic set in this time, a timer racing the second her eyes closed. It really wasn't an easy thing to do all on his own, so devoid of the natural motion, usually a mutual act done in unison.

He remembered her face coming towards him through the cold air like a hot knife, slow and steady… She hadn't faltered when he had given her as much to go by... and he had successfully closed that gap before...

He allowed himself to be drawn in, gently guiding the angle of her face.

He might have answered her back then with a rush of emotional force, but accuracy for her memory's sake be damned. This was his chance to not embarrass himself a second time.

He watched her brows betray her final moment of worry as his face blocked the air before her, keeping his eyes open at a peek until the very last second, enshrining every bit of her to his mind, all the details he had missed from a distance, until he had to let them close, and all he could hear was the near indiscernible hitch of her breath.

Like finding a fire in the dark, he followed the warmth of her forward.

His resolve to oppose his previous haste was tested as he painstakingly elongated the minimal space. More than anything, he wanted to be delicate—and just so, as it was with a shock that he finally met his lips to hers, unsure if their inch stumble backwards was due to hesitance or the tickle—but just as quickly, they met again, this time knowing the brevity of space and smoothing out the static of it.

And so smooth it was. After just a touch, he wanted only to suspend the time longer still. He could have endlessly marveled at the way he seemed to sink into an impossible softness, taken ever more time to brush over her lips to find the exact shape, and, if he might have been so bold, taste with his tongue what he could only just make out from lips alone.

However, even as his heart was racing hard enough for several beats to be the length of one, it was barely even that when he had reached a point of pressing in that led him only in one direction; to bounce off her in slow motion, with anguishing rapidity, dragging himself away despite his neck trying its best to stretch the time they were connected, devastated that he could discern every last bit of warmth, every tiny touch, as they were taken from his lips.

Even though it took another breath before his eyes would agree to release him from the wonderful continuation that blindness allowed, he lifted his lids to find that Freya's were still a second slower.

It was time for his mask to be replaced, yet the vision of her, glowing like a sunset through a stained-glass portrait of blissful thrall, kept his tongue caught up in silence.

For just a flash, a bolt of lightning suspended in a fragile jar, he wished for more; more than anything he could ever dare hope to eke out from a wish made with mere candles on a cake.

And then, the glass shattering, he was watching with a plummet of his stomach all the way down to the dungeons as her eyebrows were slowly knitting together and her mouth was closing into a tiny frown. All his worries about her thoughts came thundering through his chest to squeeze the air from out of it.

"Is that… Is that all?"

It was a devastating blow, as he felt he had already pushed himself to the absolute limit on what he could give. There was nowhere else for him to go, one way or the other. He was trapped here on this breathtaking ledge, only just now wondering if he could have done something to better prepare.

"You need... more?" he said with some strain.

She looked almost put out.

However, as she seemed to resolve to nudge her nose back nearer to his, staring so closely into his eyes, none of his wildest woes could cloud what came whispered from her next.

"I... I want... more."

His brain may very well have stopped with his heart, as he couldn't grasp any intelligible meaning from what he had heard at first.

It took the visual cue—and this time he could not be mistaken—of witnessing in clear view as her eyes dipped from his, without a doubt to where his open mouth was, and back up. He watched the red of her face quickly bloom deeper and her lower lip be shyly pulled in.

Though it hadn't looked quite so shy to him, having glimpsed her tongue poke out with the motion, imagining that she was tasting what he could upon his own lips, and the faintest curl to appear at the corners of her mouth, looking apprehensively apologetic at his dawning understanding...

And then he felt as if his lungs might be gradually rejuvenating only to carry him up into the atmosphere.

You… little… liar.

He could have almost choked out a laugh if his breathing wasn't already so strained that giving voice to his thoughts, however hilarious, was impossible.

Of all the reasons he had just made quick guesswork of and shot down, he had never thought to attribute her with the one that would have normally been a natural occupancy in his mind—one that he himself was afraid of being found guilty of—the simplest of tricks—deception for a personal gain.

And he was the gain. Not just tolerable, but, to some amount, a net positive.

It seemed simply impossible, and yet... the warmth of her cheek was still within his hand, radiating this daring new reality...

It was he who made the first tentative twitch of movement between them, marveling in magnetic silence, testing the truth of the image before him. He glided his thumb up from her jaw, across her cheek, to the corner of her mouth—and then slid with a wondrous ease over her lips, made all the more available as they parted in surprise.

She held completely still, locked into his eyes as he was to hers, which seemed to melt into a burning golden glow.

It was a breathless second... before, like a flash of fire bursting to life, he couldn't tell if it had been by his hand alone, darting to cradle her neck and pull her back to him, that they had come together once more. All he knew, all he needed to know just then, was that her lips against his own felt hotter than ever before.

He hadn't intended to abandon all control, but as much as he tried to keep his mouth slow, every kiss let in more and more oxygen to the fire. He could feel her breath halting as his was, pausing every time they pressed together, and near sighing as they parted—but only for so long. Even as he was straining against restraint, he only seemed to be getting closer and closer, each teasing taste making him hunger for more—until his tongue finally met hers—and then he was shot full of a powerful slowness. His attention was consumed with taking in every detail, every note, as if he could taste all the past songs that had been sung sweetly from her mouth.

If he had had a moment, he might have questioned who exactly was leading who here, but as it were, all he could feel was her match him in pace. Her lips moving over his, her tongue just as wanting, and her neck which kept escaping from his grasp so much that he retreated to what was more enjoyable anyway, sinking his fingers deep into the hair at the base of her head, entangled in holding her ever closer. It was the returning touch, her hands pressing to his chest and up around his neck with a jolting swiftness, that wrenched free the door deep within him with a final hopeful force—she wanted him just as much.

It was this thought, clung to as tightly as he did to her, that spurred him into a place he had been avoiding, this time feeling far more desperately intense than their first kiss, picturing her beautiful face lit by the firelight—and only hers—as this heat and her perfumed room and her nails grazing his neck could only ever be the same that he had grown to know in such detail he could see them with only touch…

It was only a distant, nagging realization—and then a startling jolt to his mind—that froze his lips and had him lifting his head at last.

Freya blinked up at him, contented eyes disrupted at his change in distance.

But it was he who was surprised at their position. She lowered her chin as if unsure what he was reacting to, and it only made her posture, sunken back against the couch cushion where he had apparently moved her to, all the more distinguishably different to him. Thoughts of a Freya who didn't like to be pushed around, led, nor looked down on had his mind as hesitant as she appeared, thinking he must have surely done something wrong by forcing himself over her. Normally their height was not as noticeable sitting beside each other, but now… He felt he might as well be holding a hand behind her back if he was going to be tipping her over this far.

It had just been a thought—however, at the moment his thoughts were apparently far more realizable. As his fingers crept the few inches from where he had been leaning to the small of her back, her whole body twitched, sending her nose within an inch of his.

His brows raised in the same slow motion as the corners of her lips stretched a tense and sheepish line, appearing to try to rescind the squeak she had let out.

A much more wolfish smirk spread across his own face.

But as much as he could have gotten an entire night's worth of entertainment out of watching her squirm, he had to relent to her arms around his neck pulling him back in, even if he could feel that she was doing so just to hide herself behind closed eyes, as her mouth was not nearly ready to accept his most amused one. And yet it took only a moment of his quiet laughter to catch a spark in her before he heard her give way to the same, feeling the grin upon her lips.

And then those lips parted, and he was once more consumed back into an all-encompassing velvet heat.

It was wondrous to feel each precise and tiny movement of her back as his tongue slid over hers. The power to transfer so much through the connection of touch alone was enough to make him want to throw out every book on Legilimancy. Eye contact might still be worthy of saving, but he wanted none of this cold, unfeeling business of the mind. At the moment, he could have as well done with less fabric between his pressing hand and what he craved to feel more of.

It was this tantalizing idea that led his lips from hers once more, this time not to separate, but to pull himself in ever closer. She was evidently enjoying her position well enough, and her protestations at having her mouth abandoned were easily assuaged as well, as he gently nudged her jaw aside with leading kiss after kiss, until his mouth found that softest skin, and he heard her intake of breath just above the sound of his own, hot against her neck.

His every intention to keep his passion in check scattered to the wind by this point, all he had left to distantly think on to rewrite from their first encounter was the dishonorable escapism he had performed. He wanted to erase whatever trace he had left from kissing her neck while thinking of another, as it now seemed cruelly against every invigorated beat of his heart. And erased it would be; with his attention consumed by every tender touch of lips to skin that he found could never satiate his need for more, every inch his tongue glided so easily across, every subtle change in her breathing, every small sound from her throat, every arc of her back relaxing, trapping his hand against the cushion, and then inverting as his mouth closed around and teased at her skin. He was given the most amazing gift as a reward, the sound of his own name at his ear, and another new sensation as her fingers fought at his hair. Everything had felt so fast, but the tug at the back of his neck seemed to send an even more fervent greed through his body.

It was with a grating reluctance that he finally let the motion be complete, allowing his head to be pulled back. Licking his lips and trying to control his breathing, his eyes slowly conceded to open and look at her from his vantage, having accomplished crumpling the soft cushion down with her. He was most disappointed to accept that he hadn't just been getting his hair pulled for fun.

"What?"

"Severus..." she said in a breath that left her mouth open but wordless. He had a moment to stare into the glittering look in her eyes before she was blinking it away, a hand coming up to her face.

That amount of privacy didn't seem to be enough for him, however, and he suddenly turned his own face in the opposite direction as he became aware of just how unhidden his pout was, his racing pulse, and how comfortable he had gotten over top of her.

"Um," she spoke up in a mumbled ramble to the cushion, "it's nothing, only... You can't... You can't leave a mark, you know? Because it... technically won't heal..."

His breathing steadied as she peeked back at him.

"And I," she continued even more quietly, the corners of her mouth going up, "I don't want to spend the foreseeable future in a turtleneck... It being nearly summer, and all..."

It was an audible pressure that pulsed through his body as he thought this over. His own smirk that slowly formed was not following suit with hers, however, but with the devilish idea bubbling up in his mind. Her expression seemed to say she was able to read this loud and clear, huddling herself further into the cushion and covering her neck even as he was shifting himself further over her.

"Oh...?"

His hand was slipping up to hers before he could second guess himself, and as she looked straight back into his eyes, captivated but apprehensive, he gently wedged beneath her fingers and placed her hand back at his neck instead. Then, not looking at what he was doing, as he couldn't afford to let go of her eyes for this delicate play, he followed the fabric of her robes up to the edge at her neck... and slowly slid it to the side to reveal just two inches of space—where one might decently hide something beneath normal clothes.

"Well, we wouldn't want that..."

His breath didn't break until he saw the crack of her overwhelmed grin through the wash of color in her face. It still wasn't clear that he would be safe from becoming a pile of ash, until, with a disorientating flip of his stomach and a flood of heat through him, he witnessed her slowly tilt her chin away from his hand and stay still, watching him from the corner of her eye.

It was far too much for him to handle, her being this willing to play his games. His bravado seemed to short circuit, and he quite forgot how to move. It didn't seem she was done granting him gifts, though, as he had only a second to register her lowering brows before he was reminded where her hands were located, and his head was guided down with a force only slightly stronger than gentle.

It was with relief to hide his entirely unmanageably grin that he arrived facing her neck once more, pressing himself back up for the sole purpose of enjoying being pulled back down for a second time, and biting back his amusement. He was not sure if he would ever be able to reverse this conditioning, and hoped she understood that in future, if she ever so much as straightened his collar, he would likely be tripping over himself to fall face first into her.

And, hopefully, it would be a future where, if he were to peel back the collar of her own robes, he would find a nice reminder of this night...

His mouth hovered over her neck, teasing her expectations with his breath. He held in a laugh at her fingers gripping into his hair, wondering if she had noticed him enjoying it before.

His eyes slowly blinked back open...

He gazed unseeing at all the little details of her skin in the firelight, the edge of her hair beyond her ear, the brilliant red darting away from the root...

A future...

Not touching her an inch, his lungs finally settled for the first time since they had been merely talking.

All the strain of his muscles fighting to hold her to him, or him away from her, had the strength whisked out of them like no more than smoke, so that his whole body felt weighted. With a cold wash over his back, his heart froze—and then hitched into a halting unfamiliar panic.

He pushed himself back up, staring down in newfound horror.

In an instant, he was off her and sitting up, saying stiltedly, "I—I'm sorry," before abandoning the couch altogether, like jumping out of hot coals. "I should go."

He had caught a glimpse of her bewildered face and registered her unintelligible noise of protest, but it was her voice that glued his feet to the floor after only a step.

"Wha—Go?"

His mind was racing as his heart had been doing just moments before, now feeling more like it was chugging water, and the switch in his temperature was making him nearly shake with cold. But he had to say something. It was inconceivable that she would let him out the door after that.

"I—" But he had turned back to her before he was ready, and his voice died from just one glance in the direction of her eyes before darting back away. There was no room here to be contorting himself into a properly smooth liar. It would just have to be whatever he could get out. "I... I'm sorry. I need to..."

He winced as he turned back, only to see a helplessly forlorn-looking Freya sitting square in the middle of the couch, which suddenly looked very large and crumpled. She had curled in on herself, arms going stock straight to her lap, where her legs crossed over her hands, and looking thoroughly put out and unsure.

His glance behind him then was only to check how far away the door was, determining that he could face the music long enough to not be a complete 'barbarian,' as it were.

"I'm sorry," he repeated yet again, forcing his voice to work properly this time and walking back his escape. It took a painful moment of her pouting up at him, but she did eventually stand as well—making him take a tactful half-step back from her. He watched her feet cautiously step up to point at his, but he couldn't look at her.

"...Too fast?" she asked into the silence, making his eyes finally snap up. They held her gaze for only a second, his heart beating a demand at him to go right back to that incredible feeling of 'too fast'. His internal fight against it had apparently rendered him unable to muster anything in the arena of encouragement on his face, because he watched her expression plummet even further.

"I'm—I'm so sorry I sprung this on—"

"No," he said firmly, breaking out of his wooden posture to put his hands on her arms. "Freya. You didn't do anything. I..."

But his arms went stiff once more. His legs felt oddly set apart, like he was a toy model stuck into place with a strong glue, lacking the mobility for what was needed here.

What he needed—desperately—was to leave this room.

"It... isn't... anything to do with you," he said with much struggle, his hands falling to hers, giving her a reassuring grip that doubled as his own. "It's just..."

But he couldn't get the final word out. He didn't have a repertoire of fancy wording to weasel out of this scenario, because this was never something that had come up in his life. But he knew what piece didn't fit here in this room, and he knew what he should have said.

Me.

Far from allayed, she was looking up at him with considerable doubt.

Finally, she asked, "Are you alright?"

The laugh that escaped him was more of a pained sigh, and her face followed his tone, breaking into a grimace. She seemed to understand she wouldn't get an answer, unable to work herself up to prod further despite shifting uneasily on her feet.

"I'll talk with you," he said, seizing on her hesitancy, "first thing in the morning, before breakfast."

He could just see her eyes searching his. But his back was to the firelight, and he was staring at her neck, where the edge of her robes was still a twinge out of place, and he knew there would be nothing to find in his expression.

At last, in a small voice, she relented.

"Alright... I'm holding you to that."

He nodded—with a bit too much enthusiasm at the idea that he was about to be set free. However, before he could slip his hands away, he was beckoned back. He held his breath as she stepped even closer, feeling the cold being pulled away, and was unable to turn his head from her gaze this time as she placed herself in his lowered line of sight.

His eyes focused on hers, and he felt his heart beating shut his mouth.

"Severus... You do realize morning is only a few hours away, right?"

He blinked, then turned to where she was pointing her eyes over his shoulder, at the clock on the mantel.

"Ah..."

He turned back to find her raising a single brow and holding back a hesitant grin.

"You could just... stay here," she said bashfully, making his whole face go into shock. Her own fell at once at his look, and her mouth popped open in realization. "No—not—"

"Oh—" He realized his mistake and froze as if he'd been caught holding something large, ungainly, and highly illegal.

"To talk," she clarified, her head snapping down. "Stay to talk—now—instead—"

"Right—... No."

"N—? Oh..."

They both stared at the floor, apparently too frozen in embarrassment to move even to release their hands. He couldn't tell if it was just his own that were the cause of such heat between them, but he felt that if he were to move, it would somehow leave him detached and even more on display.

A similar feeling as on the couch... Up close, with eyes closed, there existed a safeness in that small space. That, and so much more...

"I should be going," he said at once, as his mind drifted fuzzily to the possibility of staying but not to talk.

She nodded, lifting her head from her own silent reprieve, but still timid around the eyes.

It didn't make things any easier, watching her bite at her lip and blink her lashes curiously at him, nor did her seeming inability to do anything but gravitate towards him. He could have used a falsely smiling Freya right about now, not this one who looked at him with something he understood very well, and who apparently couldn't be bothered to hide it.

He wanted to escape. But only if he could do so without disappointing her.

"Then... goodnight," he whispered.

"Goodnight," she agreed.

But she seemed to lose the will to watch him go, her eyes casting down once more. Neither of them made a move.

He internally kicked himself and his stupidly pained chest in one.

As her eyes came up in question at his persistent presence, he let just a little crack in the doorway peek back open.

He watched her to see her breath catch, her lungs fill, and know that he was understood; and then he moved his hand at the same time as the rest of him, coming forward to relieve his restless villainous heart, and one last time feel that perfected beat of it, filling him up with a warmth that calmed a would-be boiling torrent.

After one more spoken goodnight, he was finally shutting the door to her room behind him, careful not to let the wood snap against the frame, as it might shatter the last remaining buzz he was preoccupied with enjoying.

He sucked in his lower lip, savoring his departing kiss a second longer... before the hallway came into focus and his back broke out in a cold and guilty flush.

With his brain building itself back into solid reality, chunk by chunk, it was all becoming too clear to bear inspecting. He had cracked the door, and in doing so, had knowingly let in something sinister...

Awash in a heavy pressure that ushered him quickly downward, his mind jumped to the attack, every footstep adding to his panic, every floor letting in a new specter; all the way down the stairs, down into the earth, down into his chambers.

Landing flat on his face in bed and sinking into the duvet didn't put him nearly low enough.

He should have just ran out. He should have dashed out the second she had suggested it—or sooner, after bringing her dinner—or further back still, the second she had laid those dangerous eyes on him in the library for the very first time, with the light shining down on her innocent little smile that had twisted his gut and now made his legs itch to run all the way back upstairs.

Hadn't he already known as far back as the Christmas holiday? He had decided it then, after New Year's with his family. And he had let that resolution slip away as easily and eagerly as his tongue had slipped back in when he had been saying goodnight, knowing it was the very last thing that he could steal.

His hand wedged under his face to press over his eyes, not finding the guilt yet sufficiently hidden, his stomach churning.

He had spent each recent week reliving the past year in vivid memory with her; analyzing, dissecting, growing more and more uneasy. So many resolutions had been made because of her, small to large... and he had rescinded every scrap of knowledge learned, one by one. Every moral, every lesson, every new insight gained, both of the woman, and of himself... not one bit of him must have absorbed that change in any meaningful way. It had all been laid bare before him. He had still snapped at her, still hid, still lied and kept secrets and mistrusted—and he was just as greedy as he always had been, even pushing past what he thought had been his harder limits.

But the one thing that he should have known above all else, that he had known for so long in his life, that he could not shake no matter how much she tried to newly ingrain it into his very body each time she gave him any tiny touch of her warmth... was that he should be alone. He was made to be alone. At the very most, he could sit quietly and bask in someone else, but he was never meant to hold on.

Surely there were times of respite to be had—but for how long? What would be the next thing she would shine too bright a light on that he wanted to stay firmly shadowed? He knew there was still so much more to wade through...

What had flashed before his eyes upstairs in view of her neck, a long and tunneled stretch of endless visions more horrifying than the last, replayed yet again, and he curled in on his midsection.

A future—but not any with such rosiness as he had felt from kissing her. It was a future comprised of him failing at every turn, of him fumbling everything with his lack of experience, of his inability to change, of him not fitting into her image, her life, her wants and needs; a future of fights and not sleeping, of long talks and forgiveness that didn't forget to leave a tired strain to one's eyes; a future in which she cared what other's eyes saw in her own, and those eyes upon them both circled in from all around, from small, to square-framed, to dark and cruel, to those wizened with age; a future of disappointment and resentment, unfulfilled fantasy and slowing creeping disillusionment...

A future she would eventually disappear from, but which her absence never would.

He wrenched himself upwards, sitting on the edge of the bed to kick off his boots and tear himself free of his cloak, throwing them all straight down to the floor so that he could achieve greater depth, burying himself into bed.

It didn't matter. None of that mattered now. It was obvious what mistake he had made, the only difficulty that needed sorting out was what to do about it.

The look in her eyes when he had found himself above her rose up like a ghost to torment him. He abused himself with the recognition that it had been trust that had let her act so meek, and that he had bludgeoned it into oblivion.

Just not quite yet. He still had a few hours to figure out how to salvage this situation before he found out just how far in the opposite direction she could go, and what it would be like to dirty the castle floors as no more than a pile of ash.

But at the moment he just felt sick to his stomach, staring at the stone of the wall swirling before him like a vortex.

What was it that she was thinking? Now, then—at any point? When had her thinking changed that it had led to this? He couldn't exactly pinpoint it, even when comparing it to what clues he had from the previous year. He had never understood in the first place why or when—or even if in truth her feelings towards him had shifted.

But he did have a very good idea what her expectations were with romance. Last year he might not have understood what possibilities followed branching from just a kiss, but now he knew her all too well; had seen her read too many novels with misty eyes. And trying to imagine himself ever fitting into a role in one of her stories only summoned up a grotesque mannequin standing in to play a surprise villain in the final act.

He was a wooden model of the prince in her vision, only painted to look like the real thing...

So how was it that she had fallen for it?

Decisively, he leapt up in bed as quickly as he had landed on it.

He hadn't far to go; just enough to reach the drawer of his bedside table and the lamp for light. Like no more than a vexing magical conundrum keeping him up, it would appear he had turned to literature. However, it was a book emblazoned with a feather that he propped up in his legs as he rested stiffly back against the headboard. Delicate care was needed when turning these pages, both to preserve what was in them, and to keep the loose-leaf notes tucked within from jostling out.

He started with the most recent missive, a short note stating that his presence was eagerly awaited after he finished preparing the next day's potions for classes.

That had been just last week, and skimming through, they had many more scribbled schedulings of the sort. Coordinating around their prospective duties had meant many late-night last-minute meetings. Beyond that, there were a great many more musings and sketchy scrawlings leaning more towards academic study on the subject of their meetings.

But what had his attention were the last few words of nearly every note from her. This was where she would sign off with enthusiasm, either true or reluctant depending on whether she was lamenting the hour and her need for sleep rather than writing messages back and forth for even longer. Her sloppier, more curly lettering, her slashes of exclamation and sharp dots; he followed the scattered trail, page by page, until he was all too quickly at the beginning. His attempt at making a planning schedule on what he thought was normal paper stared back up at him.

Her purpose may have been communication and a tool of her own remembrance, but for him, it held just as much weight. And that weight landed as a sickly hopeful feeling into the pit of his stomach even now.

In these pages, in the shroud of the night, and in her arms… those were the only places it made sense.

At this hour, it was easier to descend into a world of paper and ink, sketched out so nicely, with the space in the margins free for the mind to doodle in its own rendition. The scene of a golden droplet lighting up a page could play out, where she had been reading just the same as him, and there could exist an opening to pick up the quill, exchange all the right words. It had happened before. He had discovered Freya reading over their notes on Legilimency by dots of repetition placed thoughtful in one corner, and he had been delighted ever since by the thought of this late hour connection. No matter the time of night or his lack of dress in uniform or in composure, no matter his hopefulness free on his features yet hidden behind distance, no matter whatever thoughts were keeping her mind awake as well—they could coexist in this space of the journal, the same feeling of heat against his chest as the feather in the Ministry had given. Connected by her magic.

But there was a whole world beyond which needed to be reconciled. And though it was exciting to dream about, it couldn't be. It simply couldn't. A darker black ink was stabbing through the page in his mind's eye, poisoning the lot into obscurity.

For it was also by her magic that he kept himself at bay, a reminder so strong as to thwart even his most fantastical dreaming. Or so it had been hoped to.

With a snap, the journal was shut and set aside atop the table. He slumped painfully rigid shoulders back onto the mattress, blocking out the ceiling with his palms.

There was no way forward. Even through the dark, there was no masking his person. Made up entirely of faults and ill-fitting pieces, a rich history of mistakes—and repeats of them—there wasn't any possible way he could calculate himself fitting into the space by her side. At arm's reach, maybe, but no further. Though perhaps staying out of her reach entirely would be better in the coming days.

A fresh wave of anxiety raced through him to settle acidly in his stomach. There were a scant few hours left before he would have to drag his feet back up all those steps to give her an explanation, and he wouldn't be able to draw her any diagram in their journal for support.

Yet as he continued to lay there, his heart beating uncomfortably, his thoughts were getting sluggish, their points of meaning growing further and further apart. He dreadfully remembered a final nail, a very different ceiling overhead but conjuring a similarly crushing weight of guilt from his actions against this woman, and with that, sealed shut the coffin he wished to scurry himself and his mounting failures away into with finality. Closing his eyes felt of sweet relief, and he was beginning to think a rest might do well to sort things out. His muscles hurt from strain, as if he had been carrying seven classes worth of books over his back all year. He could wade through the sticky mess he had ensnared himself in later with a clearer head after he had relieved his eyes. Not sleep though, surely... Hadn't he never been able to sleep without her song...?

He just needed to make certain of something first before he became too weary. There was one thing very important that needed checking before he could doze off…

As he lay there, eyes closed, phoenix song played hollow in his head, his memory of it only a shadow of the real thing. Yet with his last semi-conscious move, of his tongue as he licked his lips, he imagined he could taste the familiar tune...

A scorching pain jolted him awake with a gasp.

After much floundering, remembering where all his limbs were located and connected at, Severus finally found his injury, inspecting his fingers with a bleary squint in the darkness. A faint glow was helping his eyes to adjust, and after turning his hand this way and that, he looked back down at the bed.

His body was cradling the journal he had reached out to check before passing out of consciousness. Its glowing golden feather emblazoning the cover, which his fingers moved to trace over automatically, was not hot at all, as he well knew. It was quite warm against his cold hands, but they were entirely unharmed.

The same could not be said about the rest of him.

A much stronger change in temperature gripped him, and he whipped his head around. There was a greenish pale light just beginning to make his little dungeon window look like the shine of a full moon's night.

His heart fully lodged in his throat, grainy mind stuck on a single note of static, he flipped back to the journal, wincing apologetically as he wrenched it open rather haphazardly, skimming with uncoordinated fingers to the glowing page.

Severus, are you awake?

His eyes blinked quickly against the gleaming text, showing white hot against his lids. It dissipated after he had read it and he scrambled around to find his wand, also tucked into bed with him.

Or should I ask if you've slept at all?

He stared in a wavering frozen stance, half propped up in bed, until his lungs caught up to speed.

It might actually have been a good thing that he had spent so much of his life ready to jump into a fight at any moment. He was up and pointing his wand this way and that faster than he had time to glance at the clock, and out of the office with the snap of his robes around the corner beating out the closing bang of the door.

He slowed as he got to the corridor of Freya's office, though this took some convincing of his legs, which couldn't seem to comprehend not running off his nerves—or continuing down the hall and off into the safety of distance, perhaps all the way to London. He didn't have time for fear though. He had gone over what he could on his way up, and he knew it would only be worse to delay. Whatever he had would have to be enough.

His eyes lost focus on the door before him, so that they looked around for the next nearest thing of attraction, his hand, held up but unmoving.

He was still reeling from having had only a strong shot of adrenaline for breakfast, but even his twitchy limbs couldn't make him knock.

Graciously, it opened without him moving any further, and he found himself no longer in need of keeping down his breathing after racing all the way here; his lungs were motionless.

Her eyes darted away first, but not before he had gotten a full display of them, wide and crushingly excited. Even staring at her shoes, his eyes following his hand as he lowered it uselessly, he could see her leaning her weight around on them. For him—because he had showed up. His presence was the cause of the nervously pleased little curl to either side of her mouth and her soft laughter that the early morning seemed to be holding back all other sounds to hear.

He thought he might be sick. Or have a fit and run.

"You were awake then," she said, nodding to his fresh attire.

"Yes," he got out, not looking up or even realizing his untruth.

"So... you're feeling better then—?"

"I need to discuss something," he shot out all at once.

Her brows raised, but she dropped her question and prompted towards him instead. "Of course."

There was nothing in her posture to tell him what lay beyond the weeds he was about to dive into—but it didn't matter. He was operating as intended, plowing ahead with his goal, and only once successful could rumination be allowed back in.

"I'm—I wanted to apologize for—"

But his attack was halted before he could even make it over the first hill, both of her hands held up in a wall.

"Severus, you don't need to—"

"I do," he rushed, scrambling to stay on track and get this over with. "I need you to understand..." Her eyes were upon him, wide and ready to take everything in. "Understand... how sorry I am."

She was quiet, apparently waiting for more, though she could have been searching for an answer as to why his eyes had become stuck to a point on her cheek.

"It's alright..." she said at last, "I do understand. Well, perhaps not entirely, but I can imagine."

He felt he might be sick again, as her hesitantly cheerful shrug made it clear he had entirely failed at his one goal thus far. Before he could figure a way back to square one, she spun him round down a different path entirely.

"Just to be clear though," she said, losing her volume along with her structure, "it wasn't because of... I mean, you didn't just run away because I was... I mean, of course it was a bit unexpected—but I... I wasn't... too much... was I?"

He might have teased her for babbling about something so silly if not for the fact that he himself was admiring the doorframe and trying not to let her bewitch his mind into following through with her prompted evaluation of everything that they had done that might equate to 'too much.'

As quietly as she had spoken, he gave a restrained, "No..." It was hard to talk to someone while avoiding every bit of them, as so much as the sight of their hands could conjure a tickle up the back of his neck. "No, I did not... I was not running away. And certainly not because of... that."

"Alright... That's good..."

Her voice was like the soft feeling that he had felt against his lips when her breath had been so near before, and his eyes couldn't find something interesting enough to keep away.

"And, just to be clearer," she continued as he looked up, sealing his fate away in her gaze, "I didn't think... that you were too much either."

It had been so much easier inside those thick stone walls of the dungeon. He had been safe; cold and calculated, cocooned away from anything but the silence of his mind and what it could dream up.

But his mind could never have dreamed up a thing such as this.

He could come to the conclusion, he could draw the right assumptions, he could interpret and extrapolate... He could taste it still on his tongue, feel the phantom touch of fingers that he wished to inspect for what tools of lingering poison they had imparted in him, crave the warmth tugging forward, will the air to be as lost as between their mouths...

But it simply would not sink in. That cold stone was where his mind was; the self-inflicted night. Nothing he could rattle out of his brain came close to the impossible truth: that beyond just the heat of the moment, beyond alcohol and cold winter nights, beyond paper and ink, beyond a mere fluke... he could still be wanted in the morning light.

"I'm—apologizing about—all of it," he forced out with all the shock of having ran chest-first into an invisible wall. "All of last night. I never... should have kissed you."

The situation hadn't seemed so dire just a few moments ago. He had been in the required state of movement, the goal necessitating that he go forward, no matter how much need be filled in by on-the-spot prowess.

All that prowess must have shed off in the breeze of his haste. All he had left were his convictions that he had muddily prepared—and which were now evaporating under the glare of the sun as her face withered before him, unavoidable. The gaps and cracks in his knowledge were being trickled through, flooded in, with the crashing look upon her features.

It seemed he was being looked over for conceit—but this was not a moment in his life where he had hidden away the truth. It lay gushed out between them, splattered on the poor old wood of the door, unavoidable in its garish colors. It was an angry one of which that was spotting through her cheeks.

"You... never should have kissed me...?" she said, testing the words as he stood silent. "You... What?" Her foot stamped forward and he stood at even straighter attention. "Why not?"

His mouth fell open automatically, but having completed its original task, his tongue had evidently turned heel.

"Why not?" she repeated, striking him with the cracking note in her voice.

"I... didn't..."

"Didn't what?"

All of the things that he had not known were closing in on him at once. The frenzy building in Freya's eyes was chasing them all towards him, leading the charge to stab through what he had once assured himself of; that she must not be able to cry from her own sadness. He stood trapped at the gates of knowledge staring into a mounting wave of truth.

"You didn't mean to?" she said, coming at him with sudden ferocity. "You didn't mean anything by it? You didn't think past getting to have some fun, and then you realized—?"

"No."

Her jaw snapped tightly shut at his harsh tone. He softened only his speech as he met her head on, leaning in so she could see past the red to the unflinching seriousness on his face.

"No, I did not—and would not—use you for some 'fun.'"

She regarded him yet again, and as she deliberated for some time, he had the jolting realization that he had never before seen her come away from inspecting him without conviction.

"Fine," she relented, taking a breath that did not seem to steady her, but released him from her direct wrath. "Fine, you didn't... It was just some freak accident, then. You ran out of here like that because you were as shocked as anyone, I'm sure."

He was still trying to compose himself from standing trial for such a thing when her voice dipped back low again.

"Or... you ran out because you realized you didn't want..."

"Because I didn't want to ruin our friendship," he interjected.

However, far and away, perhaps in the far away land that he had imagined this sentence as a knight riding in to save the day, far, far away from exemplifying his noble cause and rectifying this misdeed, he watched in confusion as her face crumpled even more, staring as if he had trod on her last remnants of hope.

"Is that why you came up here?" she said slowly, each word laid down as if she were discovering them one by one. "To... to save our friendship?" She actually seemed to cough out a laugh as her rapidly blinking face finally turned away from him. "You want—to be friends. You didn't want to ruin..." Her hands came up to squash over her face, covering her eyes before coming off to look up at him helplessly. "What exactly was friendly between us?"

He blinked, but it didn't seem to refresh his eyes nor his brain. She was still staring at him waiting for an answer that his mind couldn't seem to find in all its rifling. It was instead showing him images of his hand closing over hers and swinging with the stride of their steps, reminding him of the feeling of biting at his widely stretching lip, sending up from his stomach the feeling that her laughter gave him.

"We... It's natural that... women are more... so friendship with one would be—"

The pique of her brows fully extended, it was her neck that rose up next, followed by her straightening back, until she was completely drawn up and looking ready for a fight if he were to continue.

"Be what? Women are more what, Severus?"

If he could have backed himself up fast enough to reverse time he would have; to a time before he had started mentally mumbling the lame excuses that absolved his conscious and hid away his intentions from the forefront of his mind.

She scoffed at his silent waffling.

"Unbelievable... You can't be serious. Just what sort of friendships with women have you been having?"

There was a single second of time where he was still consumed wracking his brain to find a way out from under this, when the dramatic change in expression across her features flipped his pace. As her brows rose yet again, scrutinizing him with some dawning realization, his shot down, warning away from whatever very dangerous line it was which she was peeking over.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," he said with a sudden bitterly renewed assurance. "I remember very clearly who it was that originated our friendship, and I remember exactly how 'friendly' they were. And so should…"

But he had no need to drive his point home. In fact, it was precisely where his point had driven him that had him hung up. His mouth might well have been hanging open rather than frozen silent in his last words, as they hadn't just rebutted Freya's attack, but cowed her into a tight-lipped submission. But this shouldn't be. There was surely more fight in her on this subject, as he had been merely reaching for whatever weak defense he could. Now it seemed it was the very limits of his understanding that were reaching—stretching, the pinpoint he had been looking for where to place all last night going and going, further back in time, as her chin dipped lower, and her face flushed more.

Whatever his more childish defenses may deserve in way of chastisement, he felt strongly in that moment that he could make a case that women were truly incomprehensible.

"What…"

Before he could figure out if he truly wanted answers to the innumerable questions currently frying his brain, she appeared to more quickly harness her nerves into a counter.

"What about you? Yes, I do remember actually. I remember you," she pointed harshly at him, "being downright flirty with me, right after having been the literal death of me, I might add—"

"I wasn't—I was trying to make up for that—"

"Holding my hand every chance you got for months—?"

"We've— that's simply because—"

"Playing with my hair? That time you… you grabbed my ear?"

"That was an accident, I apologized—"

"And in the woods during the rain? When you were acting all…"

"I only did what you've done to me," he argued. "Except I did it all of one time."

Her face changed, and she blinked at him before looking away.

"Not... when you grabbed my chin... Before."

He drew his next heart-racing breath to match what he assumed would be a new accusation—but drew short. His brows puzzled downward.

"What?"

It was intensely disorientating to hear it all laid bare, as if making any small move would send him skidding on a sea of marbles all dropped across the hall. There was nowhere to run, only to take a stand. He had dug in his heels in desperation from the start of this onslaught, not willing to let himself be barraged without getting his say in renouncing every last thing, but he was at a loss now as he watched her stare off down the hall over her hunched shoulder. He was certain he had overstepped there as well, he couldn't lie to himself at least, but he had no idea what else it would be that she had experienced from that same interaction that apparently was cause for such bashfulness.

Her eyes turned back on him without raising, marking the cause of her emotions with contempt. He was silently pleading she wouldn't bring up anything else that was shooting through his mind.

"I do remember now thanks to you," she continued in a low voice, making him brace himself. "I do remember the start of our friendship—and then the gap—and exactly how much you changed between it."

He nearly flinched. They had been avoiding the unshareable memory of the coldest night in December, where he had last raised his wand to her, referring to it solely as 'the gap.' It wasn't something to be raised back from the dead, but lost to the blank void of the snow.

She started in toward him.

"You changed; I know you did. You thought you were going to pick up where we left off—because you wanted to."

She had him pinned into place. Even with ample room behind him in the hall, there was no way of backing up without admittance of offense, no way to tear away from her scathing eyes which held far too much than he found he could handle at the moment.

"And you have the gall," she went on, her voice painfully dropping rather than raising, knocking his shoulders down another notch, "to come up here and say that you—that you didn't mean to kiss me, that it was just some accident."

This time the statement stuck in the air with no question of its accuracy. This had indeed been his goal, though said with more details than he cared for.

Her shoulders raised with a full drawing in of breath, and he almost lost his nerve to not wince away from the bright wet sheen to her eyes.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

"Who do you think I am?"

He had had enough of this. His voice may have come out more desperately enraged than he had meant, his fists balled, but he wasn't exactly being put in the best of positions. He had known she would be upset and wanting more from such an encounter, but what could she really have expected to come from this—from him?

She had called him unimaginative before. And, staring into her eyes as they grew further as she leaned away, losing all their hardened metal and giving way to a melting sadness that seemed to sweep her whole body, slacking her shoulders, he had the sinking feeling that he had indeed not imagined deep enough.

"I thought you were someone who loved me."

His body twitched on reflex. It was as if he had been smacked across the face the way his head whipped to check the hall for any entities that could have overheard such a blasphemous utterance—or perhaps offer some much-needed bystander support; comradery over the incredulous thing that had just transpired.

His jaw was forming words that his mind hadn't caught up to yet, but there was no need. When at last his eyes managed to focus back on hers, it was to find that his reaction had already crushed whatever had been left.

"I guess I... was wrong."

If ever he were to feel sympathy for creatures preserved in jars, it would have been then. He felt suspended in a viscous fluid, unable to move his unnaturally jointed limbs. And his chest was pickling in some acidic substance.

What could he do? He couldn't move to comfort her, not now. He couldn't run, he couldn't summon up a single slick silver word, not even to break the silence that was muffled only by her quietly hitched breathing. He might as well have been an insect waiting to be eaten alive or flee at the first sign of disinterest.

"I don't understand," she said, startling him and at the same time knocking a hole through his chest at the terrible sound of her distress. "I just don't... You don't want anything to come of... of anything we do, but... you don't want to be apart. You say you want to be friends, but is that really what you mean? Because I don't—I don't believe you that you would just stop everything..."

She fixed him with the same searching gaze she had when he had refuted using her. It was so difficult now to hold her eye that he barely managed to keep his chin pointed straight.

She didn't narrow nor waver her gaze an inch as she continued.

"I don't believe you won't just end up kissing me again."

It was a second too late when he dropped his eyes to the floor. He had felt the veneer slip for half a second, the close and direct view of her and her words having flashed up the still intensely fresh memory unbidden.

He heard her make a noise, but it was indiscernible whether it was a laugh or a pained choke. Her feet seemed to almost wander backwards before replanting at the doorway. His attention was yanked back upward at her voice, sounding suddenly further than it ever had from across her coffee table.

"What is it that you want from me?"

There existed one very particular phrase that when uttered in his presence, in a classroom or his office, even in the past when students had been classmates, always instantly poked a nerve. The utter lack of depth, the willful ignorance, the lack of shame to exhibit such disinterest—and the fact that he had seen so many students let off with no more than a hand wave, as if encouraging it.

He had always appreciated Freya's curiosity. Albeit not very consciously, and never when directed at him. Her need to investigate the why's and how's had kept them entertained plenty of times during the year. It had been how he had first gotten to know her, really; in the long hours in the library.

It was an injustice then that he repaid this respect he had by his following words, whispered out in desolation as he stared into her golden eyes that ever ensnared him in every emotion that they beaconed out.

"I—… I don't know."

He stood stock still under her searchlight, caught like a prisoner, knowing escape was lost.

A new theory was forming, his mind caught on this inconsequential problem as if to distract itself: perhaps it was not so that she could not cry of her own sorrow, but that some terrible magic lay within the agonizing sight alone, rivaling her musical cry that struck one's soul, and so she hid it away under normal circumstances. That must be the case, because he felt some hardened sludge come surging through his chest, shredding at his insides at the sight of her crumpled face.

"You don't know," she repeated with a sniff, swiping at her cheeks. "You don't... know."

His muscles were suddenly telling him it was time to move now, as her tears seemed to be heating to a boil.

"Of course not," she scathed at him, "why would you have a think on what it is you're doing? Beyond figuring out a way to talk yourself out of any responsibility, that is." He was backing up, but she seemed to have satisfied scaring him off her doorstep and retreated back herself. "Well, Severus, how about right now? Why don't you heave that overstuffed head of yours—full of all the world's cleverest imaginings—back downstairs, sit your arse down—and go sort it out!"

The poor old wooden door snapped against its stone setting as it was shut forcefully, echoing down the deserted hall, where a cruel glow of morning was daring to show itself near such a scene.

The remaining occupant didn't seem to be vacating the premises any time soon.

It wasn't to purposefully go against orders though. It was only that he could not seem to move. The decorative etching in the wood, catching the light and making a little racetrack for his eyes to roam over and over was absorbing all his efforts.

It didn't feel like morning. Not just because of how poor his sleep had been, but because the strewn about pieces of everything that he had worked for months to keep buried within his person so deep that even he would not have to deal with them were not things which he wished to have daylight shown upon. This called for night, for darkness and a shadowy bed which he could crawl back into.

But, no—it was morning. A start, a beginning. Spring weather outside, and many creatures and children to enjoy it.

Some part of him snapped back to attention enough to glance both ways down the hall. Nobody seemed to be interested in a dawn breakfast on a Saturday though. At least not down such an off-path trek.

He went back to his staring.

Somehow, it felt the door before him must be splintered somewhere. It hadn't rattled its hinges or anything, but surely some small piece must have chipped.

'I thought you were someone who—'

Chipped off and fallen on the floor below, lost in the quicksand that currently must have been invisibly sucking him into place.

If he could just figure out...

There could be something to say if...

Perhaps no words were needed—though he doubted she would let him touch...

He could let her see into his thoughts—

It was an odd feeling to be too hot while thinking one might very well be frozen to the core. But he was firing straight into a wall, trapped in a closet burning through all the fuel his mind had left, and getting absolutely nowhere.

In a way, this made sense. It proved everything, really. His idea of the natural order of things was set right, and he had gotten precisely what he always thought he deserved.

The acid in his chest finally dropped into his stomach, sending him nearly hunched over. But it wasn't right for him to be upset. He had wanted this. And he would reject her again, make it as clear as needed, as many times as needed—because that was what he had decided.

It was so easy to think it from the other side of the contemptuous plank of wood. Silent, stoic, composed and pristine. Shut tight and unyielding.

He had no consideration for the passage of time as he anchored there, glaring helplessly at her door, on legs just as wooden and with a mind that might as well have been hollowed out. He eventually did hear footsteps farther off, but he didn't turn to look, and they passed quickly down the steps.

Write it in the journal; a letter; a scrawl of blood upon a stone left at her door—whatever solution he came up with, it was all just the action. The way of conveying outweighed the true importance of the message: what words would it contain. For there simply did not seem to exist any. Every which way his mind turned to start a sentence it became something else entirely by the end.

But it all amounted to the same.

Whatever way it needed to happen, he could not leave her.

A sudden metal creaking startled him nearly to death, unable to even take stock of the origin until he was startling Freya in turn, coming back out the door of her own office.

"What..." She looked him and the hall up and down as if she might be seeing some apparition, or else a rather convincing statue. "You're still..."

His throat attempted a word, but it had been unprepared for work so soon.

He recognized her change in clothes as how she prepared if they were going out on a windy day, her hair pulled back in a long, neat braid. Still, she did the same motion as always when she was nervous and trying to hide behind her hair, thumbing the loose strands at her ear and peering at him.

"Well..." she went on, as he had given up participating and taken to basking in moments of time where he was not being raked over the coals or left alone inside his head, "I suppose that saves me the trip..."

His interest piqued, he noted there was a cautiousness to her, leaning back against the door which she had closed.

She made a small clearing of her throat and continued.

"I... am sorry for slamming the door in your face."

She peeked up, as if to watch his lungs inflate at such an optimistic start.

"And for yelling. I don't want to..." She gestured vaguely, her hand not making it up past her side. "I don't want to fight. I don't want to be mad over this. I suppose I was just..."

The tightness was returning to his chest as her eyes fell lower, just her lashes visible, her words mumbling out as if reluctantly recited.

"Well, it was my fault for doing it so stupidly... You're right, it seems."

He had been wrong after all. He hadn't remembered it correctly; the face that she used to make at him with the forced smile and mismatched feeling to her eyes. Except that this time it was disjointed in an entirely different way, and he hated that she was able to pull off such a beautiful thing when it was a mere mockery of the happiness that he knew she could expel like sunlight.

"I suppose you'll know that already though," she finished. Her expression flattened out again at his distrust, and she lowered herself, unsure again. "So... I... thought that we could be friends?"

If ever there was a time for his voice to return, this had to be it.

"Severus? Is… Is that alright with you?"

His head bobbed before he realized the motion was happening, dropping his eyes the moment he stopped.

"Yes," he murmured, hoping if he said it quietly enough that she wouldn't hear the defeat.

He half expected—or maybe hoped—that she would take a step forward, look up into his eyes, and go searching for some different answer as she had done plenty of times before. But as he had learned, he had been mistaken about so many things about her. Instead she surveyed him from the same distance, as far apart as she could manage with the door at her back, and turned away with disinterest when she was finished.

"Alright," she agreed. "Well… I'm s—" But she held in the word as he shot it down with a glare, knowing what that upturn in her brows meant. She sighed and changed course. "I'm… glad it's settled then. Be seeing you."

He watched her dart off as if he had been holding her there, skirting around him as much as she could. The sound of her heeled boots couldn't clip the sound of her voice that still hung in the air for him, replaying the wavering note and her ducking face, hidden behind her hand.

In hindsight, he probably should have lied.

From the start he should have tiptoed up the steps in the hour before dawn, knocked upon her door, and kissed her where she stood. Maybe he had been overthinking it a bit, and a relationship might not have been all that bad. Maybe he could have stood in the teacher's lounge in a tight circle of merry people congratulating and clapping, gone down to breakfast, and stuffed his face full of toast.

Maybe he could have held her again. Just held her—and felt her warmth and reciprocated that safe feeling of interlocked arms and closeness of hearts.

If he hadn't been such a renowned purveyor of truth and honesty it might have worked out.

It was true though that he did not want a relationship; so then why did it feel like such a lie to let her walk away? Why did the truth seem so distorted now, when he had spent so long thinking on it?

'I don't know.'

'…sort it out!'

But how could he? How was it that he was meant to sort out that which had escaped him for so long, when he was just now figuring out simple things such as the fact that she hadn't said she would see him at breakfast, and he might have to reach across her empty seat to get his tea?

Or how about that it was just now dawning on him that he hadn't simply paused a catastrophe that he was not nearly ready for, but had more than likely put an end to any route in future as well, one which might not always be so catastrophic?

The part of him that usually sent a signal to bury these thoughts came up weak. There was nothing quite left to hide behind.

For the very thing that had shocked him the most to hear uttered aloud had shaken loose the term. Crouching like a hungry predator hidden in plain sight, darting around through his mind as just a shadow still, but growing stronger in the relentless light of day.

It had never been a question worthy of looking at too closely; not during New Year's, when he hadn't thought it an immediate threat, and so had ignored it, nor last night, when it wouldn't have made sense to even doubt it, because of course he loved her.

There was no need to think that part over. He would do anything for her, and he knew it. He could never let go now.

Only, he had decided that the only solution to loving her would have to be from afar. Because loving her was the very problem.

The thing that made her song a sawing back and forth of love and grief and calm and shame. What splintered his penitence, rendered his guilt meaningless, and cast him out over the cliff into lung crushingly cold waters. The ever-gnawing sound at the wood of his door, splinter by splinter caving into a ravenous self-loathing that fought sharp tooth and stabbing thorny nail to get in.

He was not allowed such a thing. Not to be loved, or to love. Never again.

Because this is what happened. Exactly this.

And yet... It still would have been nice to run up those steps and lied his heart out that his mistake hadn't been to kiss her, but to not have told her aloud as well, declaring it to the whole wide morning.

At the end of the hall, Freya slowed her pace, and his heart nearly leapt out his mouth to shout after her, waiting for her to stop and turn around.

Her braid disappeared around the corner, and then the sound of her boots hit the steps. The echo faded until he was left alone once more in the hall, never having made it an inch from his post, guarding the empty office and old wooden door, and replaying the last sight of her in his head as if it could stay stuck there forever, never truly out of sight.

---

_—***—_

"Never thought I'd see her go away
She learned I loved her to day
Never thought I'd see her cry
And I learned how to love her today
Never thought I'd rather die
Than try to keep her by my side

Never thought I'd leave you like the way I did
With a kiss, my love, and a wish you're gone

Now she's gone, love burns inside me"

B.R.M.C. - Love Burns