Dea turned, her dark orange robes swirling around her, and she took several steps forward, heedless of time, heedless of social protocol. "Oh, God," she said shakily. "Severus—" Before he could do anything to ward off the woman, she had wrapped her arms around him, her orange robes mingling with his fathomless black ones.
Remus turned away, unsure of where he was supposed to look. The scene before him was none of his business and spoke of feelings too intimate to be shared with near strangers. But he saw Dumbledore watching them with a peculiar intensity and so similarly watched from the corner of his eye.
Dea stepped back, feeling the stiffness of the man she embraced and the lack of any sort of reciprocation. It wasn't as though you left on good terms, Dea, she reminded herself, and her cheeks flushed a bright red. "I beg your pardon," she said, but her voice was soft and near to breaking. In a habit that had been barely formed before she had disappeared, she raised her hand to touch his face, and his hand shot up quickly, grasping her wrist.
"I think it best you not touch me, Miss Middlemarch." Severus forced the words from between his lips, still feeling the filth of Lord Voldemort clinging to his skin, still feeling the cold and reptilian hands of Lucius Malfoy. He didn't want it touching her, he didn't want any of that side to touch this—
This filthy Mudblood? His father's voice, mingled with Lucius's, suggested in a snidely cheerful tone in his brain. She's already stained, what harm is a little more muck?
Clenching his teeth he cast his eyes down and away from her, his hair falling into his face as he struggled to control himself and the conflicting feelings within. His fingers tightened marginally, making Dea cry out and jerk her wrist back.
She could not free herself from his grasp, but his robes fell away from his forearm to reveal an angry series of welts, the remainders of the burning Dark Mark that had called him only hours ago. Her breath left her in a high, whistling wheeze, and Severus looked up at her through the curtains of his dark hair. Seeing her gaze fixed on his arm, he released her, sending her stumbling back.
"Oh, God," she said, her voice choked as she scampered backwards from him, tripping over her own robes as she did so. "Oh, God, not you, please not you." When her robes hampered her so much that she was forced to simply sit on the floor, she curled her arms around her knees and buried her face, wanting to see anything but him, wanting to see anything but the stiff cold faces of her brother and sister.
"It is all right, Amadea, all things can be explained." Dumbledore spoke softly, his gaze fixed on the woman sitting near his feet.
"Can they?" Severus asked nastily, feeling very much defensive.
"Stop it," Remus said sharply, looking at Severus.
"You helped them." Her voice was muffled by her robes, but her words were clear enough. "Did you know?" She raised her head to fix two dry eyes on him, her face sickly pale. "Did you know they'd killed my parents and tried to kill me? That they'd left me in a burning house to die?" She struggled to her feet then, shaking her head. "Or how I had to do healing spell after healing spell on myself just to be able to walk out?" Unconsciously, she rubbed a hand over the split in her eyebrow. "Or maybe you told them about me, sent them after me."
He closed his eyes in a wince, disappointed that she could think such a thing, but more disappointed that he'd given her the opportunity to.
Her eyebrows drew together and she shook her head. "No. I'm sorry, I don't believe that—I don't know what to believe right now."
"I think you should come with me, Miss Middlemarch." Dumbledore gave her his traditional look over the rims of his glasses and beckoned with one steady hand. "We will go to Hogwarts where you will be able to sort things out. You cannot stay here until the Order has convened and until I have told them about you."
Remus stepped forward, ready to object, but then saw the drawn look on Severus's face. It would do no good to increase his discomfort at such a time. When Dumbledore, one steadying arm around Amadea, had gone, the house was completely silent, and the werewolf watched the Potions professor lower himself into a chair with the motions of a man much older.
"You knew." Remus's voice had lost some of its gentility, had gained a rare edge. It was obvious Snape was hurting, but he was not surprised.
"Oh yes," he said smoothly, lacing his fingers together and resting his hands on his stomach. He wanted to conjure fire, smash things, do anything to pour out the anger in him, the pure grief. It had been hard to lose her the first time when she'd walked away, harder still when he'd thought her dead, and losing her a third time called up everything in him that had driven him to the Death Eaters in the first place.
Now who's stained? he wondered.
"Yes," he continued, arching a pointed eyebrow at the werewolf. "Absolutely, Lupin, I knew it all. If you'd listen to her, I knew even before they did it."
"Bollocks," Remus returned quickly. "I don't believe that for a moment." He circled the chair Severus sat in, then sat across from him. They'd learned to tolerate each other, but only just barely. Gratitude and duty held them together, Remus's gratitude for Severus's dutiful preparation of wolfsbane.
"I knew," Severus repeated. "I've known since the moment I came to the Order, since I went to Dumbledore, that they'd done this." He stood, his robe flaring in a wide arc as he prowled the room like an underfed panther. In a voice so low Remus barely caught it, he added, "What I didn't know was that they'd failed."
~~~
She'd listened to the whole thing, and still it didn't fix everything. No words and no wands could heal everything up quite that nicely, no matter how much sense either made.
"He joined them because of me," she stated flatly. "And that's supposed to make me feel better?"
"No," Dumbledore said, watching with approval as Fawkes perched on the arm of Dea's chair. "It is only the truth. Truth rarely ever makes us feel any better, Miss Middlemarch."
"I think it's time for me to employ more of what you used to call American logic, and beg you to just tell me what I want to hear." She rubbed at her temples, wanting nothing more than to shut herself in her room and have a good, long cry.
Dumbledore's fist thumped on the large desk in front of him, making her jump. When she looked at him, his eyes were fierce, sending a shiver down her spine. "If you wish to help the Order, I will not suffer such weaknesses. You must be true, Miss Middlemarch. You must listen to the truth and bear it just as any other."
"Maybe I don't want to help!" she shot back, her eyes panicked. "I'm just a Healer without training, Professor. I'm a Healer without training, and though I'm sure you already know this, in the Muggle world, that's a criminal offense." The phoenix on her right shifted its weight from leg to leg beside her, and she put a hand on it as much to comfort herself as to comfort it.
"And I am weak. I won't be able to stand at your side if he also stands at your side. At least not right now." Things should have changed in two decades; she should have grown and other things should have lessened.
His concern for her was no less than for any other student that had crossed into his life, but with war so soon approaching, Dumbledore's patience was wearing thin. "Right now can only last a moment, Amadea. If you wish to base things on personal feelings, let us think of it this way. Lily Evans died saving her son, the boy who will eventually have to face down Voldemort himself." He rubbed his forehead, wondering how it was possible he'd gotten so old, how things had come to this, how a student of his was now an adult with tired, adult eyes. "He's no older than you were when you fell in love, Amadea, or when you died."
A denial sprung to her lips and she let it die. There was no use lying to a man who could reach into your mind without intrusion, a man who could look into your eyes and see truth shining from them or hiding behind them.
"You've gotten better at the art of the guilt trip," she said, her voice sounding faraway.
"I see no reason to let myself go," he rejoined.
"I want a few days to myself. Just to get back into the swing of things." To get used to the idea of her past and how it no longer applied.
Though he didn't understand her phraseology, Dumbledore nodded indulgently. A few days could be given, he could speak with the Order. And though Hogwarts was a big place, it wasn't possible to avoid someone if you weren't meant to.