So much could be revealed in such a short time. It had taken Dumbledore a shockingly small amount of time to tell her everything, to tell her all that had happened after her parents and siblings had been murdered. He'd taken full responsibility, saying that he'd trusted the American investigator too implicitly. And though she knew Severus had been little more than a boy at the time, she couldn't stop the hurt that came from knowing he never looked for her.
It hurt even more to know that the mark on his arm was technically because of her. If it hadn't been for her, he may have gone a different way, gone his own way. But because of her, he'd turned to them, and the whole thing was almost too much to bear.
She'd spent the majority of her missing nights hiding, going to magic-friendly places where people wouldn't know her, wouldn't care. The white streak that had been shot through her hair with the Death Eater's spell tended to attract attention, but no more than a passing glance. There were, after all, much stranger-looking witches and wizards who were on the lam, and so she blended in as well as she could.
Most of those years had been spent in solitude, darting from location to location, gleaning as much information as she could. But the girl had grown quickly into a woman, and comfort took precedence over propriety in the dark subways of New York and the crowded clubs of Miami. She'd chosen big places because they hid her well, and now and again she'd chosen men like her, runaways who desperately needed some connection, any connection to keep them going. There had been friends, there had been lovers, but there had never been any loves.
Those, she had determined upon walking bloody, scarred, and burnt out of her parents house, were a thing of the past.
She felt sixteen all over again, uncertain, confused, and most of all, helpless. Though being inside Hogwarts walls made her feel safer, it also made her feel smaller, younger. More vulnerable. There was also anger thrown into the mix and a need for avengement, no matter how she could get it. And the elephant in the room was a bundle of feelings so misplaced she couldn't categorize them. Those were the feelings that made her fall asleep at night and dream of the past, of a misused boy in black and a prowling wolf.
Because she had no room for those dreams, no room for those feelings, and because Dea could no longer abide the cloistered teachers' quarters she'd been lodged in, she tucked her wand into her sleeve and snuck out as she had so many years before.
~~~
She was foolish for wandering the grounds at night, but he wasn't going to be the one to point it out to her. Turning away from his spot at one of the myriad windows of Hogwarts, Severus headed down toward the dungeons, where there would be no windows, no distracting views of what passed outside.
Hate me if you must, he thought, slamming into his workroom with his jaw set. As long as you stay away from me.
He'd driven her away as a teenager, knowing instinctively that he must strike before stricken, and then again when she had confessed her heritage to him. It hadn't bothered him so much that her family all pretended to be Muggles—it bothered him that she'd not told him until the one moment when she knew it would most shake him.
To calm himself, he began mixing the one thing he consistently used—or rather, gave away. Slow hands exhibiting a patience few saw, Severus mixed wolfsbane potion for the man who was not only a man, the one who was not his friend but was not his enemy.
It was easy, he thought when he was done with the potion, too easy to push away the memories of those things that had been wrong before she left. The invisible girl with her invisible world, her family that no one remembered for more than seconds, the pretty, smiling face which no one could look at directly. She had done what he had wished to do, and perhaps she had been happier for it.
But she had not been his, and he had been determined that she would not be. And in the moments when he was weakest, she had given him the ultimate reason that she could not be his. Everything he came from abhorred everything she came from, and so a part of him too elemental to name still recoiled from a beautiful woman with scars both inside and out.
I could heal that, you know. Her voice, youthful and sad, floated through his mind and he grimaced as he remembered her pointing at his heart.
She had been wrong about that. It was impossible to heal what had long since died.
~~~
It was just as strange to see Hogwarts without students as it would have been to see New York without lights or Florida without beaches. The windows of the castle were, for the most part, lightless, and the grounds quiet despite the fact that dusk was only beginning to set.
"Old habits die hard." The voice, though quiet, made her jump, and her wand was aimed before she turned. Remus Lupin stood behind her, hands raised in a gesture of surrender. "I came to see if everything was all right. I feel I should have warned you about… some things." What were the words for such things, he wondered, that were too important to actually talk about?
"It actually wasn't any of your business." She'd meant it to lighten his burden, but the snapped reply escaped her before she could stop it. His expression stayed placid, however, and he regarded her with a maddening amount of patience. "I'm fine," she said. "I just need time to adjust. Time to myself." But it wasn't so unpleasant, having him walk with her. The poet's face of long ago had ripened into a somehow beautifully melancholy face, the concave cheeks leading to large, haunted eyes the color of mossy birch bark. He had grown up, Dea noted, and had survived that which his friends hadn't. She felt a pang of guilt at her dismissal and stayed in step with him despite her words.
"This isn't the place to have time to yourself, Amadea," he stated. "If you wanted that, you could have stayed gone. I hear being dead is an excellent way to garner quiet time." His lips quirked as he saw her shocked glance.
"Bite your tongue," she reprimanded, but Dea felt the light laughter that wanted to come and so indulged it. It had been too long without a laugh, she judged, and nothing else that had happened in the full day had made her feel humorous in the least. "I guess I thought you were staying at the Black house."
Remus bowed his head by way of a nod, his grey-streaked hair falling into his eyes. "Usually, yes, but there's something I need from Professor—" He cut himself off, uncertain of whether or not she knew Severus's status at the school. "Something I need from one of the professors," he amended. Though he was sure Snape had bigger things on his mind than turning Remus into nothing more than a lovable pooch, Remus wasn't eager to wait until the last minute.
"Ah. You could tell me but then you'd have to kill me." Dea nodded gravely, amused at the confusion written on his features. Perhaps she should have stayed in America.
"You'll have to meet with the Order soon," he told her as they approached the large doors of the castle. "Now that you know where headquarters are, and what some of the inner workings are."
"I'm ready," she said, surprising herself. "Maybe you're right. I've had all the time alone I can handle."
Far above them, from one of the many unlit windows of the castle, a single figure watched them pass.