Dea supposed it was her fault for telling Dumbledore she needed a few days. The man was nothing if not unfailingly generous, and so a week later she found herself still waiting for him to meet with the Order and announce her request to join.
Really, she also supposed she deserved it.
It was a joy, however, to wander the hallways of the school, to see how things had changed, and more remarkably, how some things had stayed absolutely the same. Some paintings called out to her, recognizing her immediately and seeming not in the least perturbed that she was alive. Only The Grey Lady had mentioned her demise… or lack thereof, floating along beside her and asking wavering, quiet questions about her undeath.
She saw some of the professors now and again, men and women who had taught her in her days at Hogwarts and who did not seem the least bit surprised to see her. McGonagall had passed her several times, nodding politely each time, as had Professors Flitwick and Binns. She eventually found herself standing before the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom door, her head tilted thoughtfully. The classroom was nearly starkly empty, no materials, no things left behind by a teacher preparing for classes in the fall.
She was on her tiptoes trying to peer into the small window of the door when she heard movement behind her. Without turning, she stepped away from the window and spoke. "I always thought it would be you," she said, "Who would end up teaching this class."
It was his quiet that gave him away, the smooth silence of his approach and the feel of two black eyes boring into her back.
She turned even as he spoke, her hands clenched inside the voluminous sleeves of her robes, her eyes unreadable and her mouth pinched.
Severus's own expression wasn't far different, his chin held high and his eyes coolly assessing. "Well, I'm afraid that's one thing you were wrong about. I have not yet garnered, nor am I likely to ever garner, the privilege of teaching Dark Arts."
"Defense," she corrected him quietly, brushing past him. "Defense Against the Dark Arts. Unless they've changed the curriculum since I was away."
"No," he said, crossing his arms over his chest and watching her. "That is one thing that has not changed. However, I note you've gotten much better at running away." The urge to hurt was nearly insatiable, to defend himself. She couldn't even stand to look at him directly, and it ached inside him like something rotted.
She turned then, her eyes narrowed in thought. "And I note you've grown less hesitant to hurt the few people who actually care about you," she said, shaking her head. "We clearly aren't the same people."
"We were never the people you thought we were, in any case." Looking closely, he saw the small wrinkles around her eyes, around her mouth, the lines that showed years of smiles, and it bewildered him. What had she to smile about for all those years, when she could not seem to smile now?
And who had been making her smile?
"Perhaps we weren't," Dea said, her heart moved by pity. She'd hoped with each stolen breath she took while she was gone that he'd have found someone, something to heal the rend she hadn't the talent to fix. "But we both did a damned fine job of pretending."
"Some of us pretend better than others," he retorted. "I've never been one to stand on pretense."
The tension that had been mounting since the moment she'd seen him in the Black house came to a head, and Dea laughed loudly, bitterness mixed with genuine amusement at the idiotic predicament she'd somehow ended up in. "Really, Severus? Was that why you pretended to care about me?" And seeing that he had no response to that, she arched her scarred eyebrow and went on her way.
"I wasn't pretending," Severus finally said, but he couldn't raise his voice to make himself heard.
~~~
How many tears could be cried for one person? And how many tears could one person cry?
She'd lost count some years ago, and she wasn't sure there was actually an end to the tears, only brief respites.
The small room had become a fortress rather than a prison, and Dea knew as long as she stayed precisely where she was, she was likely to be better off. She'd only just made the decision to barricade herself in for as long as it took when an owl flitted to her windowsill, hooting happily and flapping his wings in the mellow sunshine.
"Hello, darling," Dea said, standing to approach the messenger. As she untied the message from its leg, it stroked its head along her cheek, wiping away tears with soft feathers.
For a fleeting moment, Dea longed to transform into the bird she'd made herself long ago, to fly away and just never come back. But she'd given her word to Dumbledore, and her skills as an Animagus were self-taught and very crude. There hadn't been a single transformation that hadn't ended with her out cold somewhere.
So, with a sigh, she unrolled the message she'd released from the owl.
Official Order Summons. You will be escorted to Headquarters in precisely one hour to convene with the members of the Order. There is no need to reply to this summons, your presence will be expected.
There was no signature, only a small phoenix sketched quickly at the bottom.
"Dress casual, bring your own bottle," she murmured, tearing up the message and gesturing for the owl to go on its way.
Her time of waiting was over.
~~~
The man was creepy.
It was bad enough that he seemed to know and revel in his particular brand of madness, but then there was that damnable eye of his, constantly spinning and occasionally making noises that reminded a very ill Dea of a slot machine's wheels rolling to a stop.
They set out from Hogwarts walking at a pace so quick Dea had to run to keep up with the long-limbed Auror. Occasionally he would mutter something and the scenery would change, and they would be walking somewhere completely different. Other times he would take them in circles and backtracks so intricate she could barely follow what they'd done. When they finally reached Grimmauld Place, she felt as though she'd walked for hours—and it was likely she actually had. But the sun was only just setting, and the day had not yet grown chilly.
"Here y'are," he said, tugging her roughly up the steps with one last eyespin to check for people following.
The noise in the house was near to deafening. A crowd of fifteen to twenty people had crammed into the drawing room of the house, each of them debating something different. Worst of all was the portrait on the wall, the hated old woman that Dea could barely remember screeching at the top of her longs.
Her sedateness had worn off only days before, the shock of her son's death apparently having worn off, and she yelled at the gathered crowd with the fervor of a sidewalk preacher.
"You! Each and every one of you! Traitorous, murderous, filthy fiends, every last one of you! It is you who killed my son! May his death be on your head!"
The woman's voice was drilling awl-like into Dea's head and she jerked away from Mad-Eye to face the painting. "Hello, Mrs. Black," she said in a drawl completely unlike her usual tone. This woman—this horrible, long-dead woman was everything that had sent Dea to hide, everything that had driven her to invisibility and silent tears over her parents' predicament. This woman was Wizarding snobbery in its nastiest, most virulent form, and Dea had had it up to her ears with the snobbery that had spawned battles and senseless deaths, snobbery that had spawned the rejection of love and too many tears to count.
The drawn-faced woman gasped and visibly recoiled in her painting, shocked eyes fixed on Amadea. "You! Muggle-posing filth! Muggle-posing filth come to meet with the son-killers!"
"You hadn't a son, Mrs. Black," Dea reminded her coldly. "And that was a choice all your own." She'd seen the tapestry on the wall, the cruel patterns of burn marks that spoke of disowning and heartlessness. "But should you like to know who killed the last of the Black line, how about you ask some of the more beloved members of your family, hmm?"
Sirius's mother seemed to have no appropriate response to that, as she screwed up her face and began yelling precisely as she had before.
Impatient, Dea jerked together the drapes covering the painting and raised her wand. "Consuo velum proprius," she commanded, nodding as the two sides of the drapes sewed themselves up neatly. She stood with her arms over her chest and waited for a moment until she was satisfied that the drapes had closed themselves for good. Mrs. Black could be heard uttering muffled shrieks, but little else.
The sudden silence behind her forced Dea to turn around, suddenly feeling very small and very inspected. "Hey," she said, looking wide-eyed at the group around her. She saw a group of several redheads that all looked alike standing together, mouths hanging open, Lupin standing toward the back, Severus sitting in a chair in the corner, arms crossed over his chest. Dumbledore stood in the very center of the room, flanked by McGonagall and a particularly spectacular-looking black man. The people were crowded into the middling-sized room, and every one of them, excepting Severus, was watching her.
"Hey yourself," spoke a young woman standing off to the side, her blood-red hair twisted in corkscrews around a heart-shaped face. "Wicked hair," she added. Even as Dea watched the woman, a white streak threaded its way down the right side of the corkscrews. Drawing her eyes to their extreme corners to see the results of her subtle transformation, the young woman nodded approvingly before jerking her attention back to Dea. "Well, you shut up dear Auntie there, so I say three cheers and welcome to the Order."