Dumbledore watched the two through his observation glass. He turned to the sooty figure that sat across the desk from him. Snape gazed at him, level and composed, carefully ignoring the scene in the glass.

"Severus, I am concerned about Miss Llewellyn." Dumbledore's voice was thin, a frail echo of the powerful voice that had silenced the Great Hall for so many years.

Snape nodded once. "She has certainly changed. We should have expected it, Headmaster. She has cultivated...different talents than one might have hoped."

Dumbledore assented. "Indeed. As such, she presents a rather odd dilemma. You know that I had intended to ask her to serve as the female head of Gryffindor, with Mr. Potter." Snape nodded again, thinking about the other houses; Ron, interestingly, had opted to take over Hufflepuff in the absence of any other candidates, while Hermione would be leading the Ravenclaws.

"I hardly think that Professor Llewellyn is suited for Gryffindor at this point, Headmaster. I would consider her too– how should I put this– too intense for that position. Her disposition aside, I would also point out that she and Mr. Potter may not be able to resolve their differences. That could create problems within the House."

Dumbledore pondered that. "I agree, Severus. However, that still leaves us with a decision to be made. She's certainly too flashy for Hufflepuff-- the Hat got that right, even then. She has intellect and talent enough to head Ravenclaw. She could be a successful antidote to the Ravenclaw tendency to bookishness."

"At the same time, Albus, Professor Granger is highly qualified to hold that position as well, and is more traditionally tempered to suit the position."

"That's true. Severus," Dumbledore's eyes twinkled in a way that made Snape distinctly uncomfortable. "Severus, how would you feel about taking on an assistant?"

~~~~~~~~

Anne

I wandered out of my room the next morning, moving quietly to not wake him. He had partially woken in the middle of the night and I had helped him onto the sofa before climbing into my own bed. He was still curled underneath a bright Moorish blanket that I tucked up around his ears before drawing on my veils and outer robe.

I gestured to Nejat, holding my wrist out so she could alight. She needed exercise, and I needed to get away from Harry, to think clearly. I wandered out away from the buildings, toward the Quidditch pitch. The arena still stood, silent and strong and colorful against the shocking green grass. I climbed the stairs to the Gryffindor tower and loosed Nejat to hunt. She wheeled and swooped over the pitch like a tiny Seeker, searching out her own prey in the silent sky.

"I didn't expect to see you here." I could recognize Ron's voice anywhere, even without looking. He dropped onto the bench next to me. He had his old broom in one hand.

"Getting in a little practice before breakfast, eh?" He grinned impishly, and I marveled at how little the war had changed his face.

"Can't hurt." He ducked his head a little, suddenly guilty. "That's not true. I followed you out here– I saw you leaving and Apparated. I had a feeling you'd come out here." He watched me closely for my reaction.

I nodded curtly. "So? Was there something in particular that made you follow me, or are you just being social?" He winced a little at the edge in my voice. I immediately regretted my sharpness; of everyone here, Ron gave me the least reason to snap.

"We're worried about you, Hermione and I."

"Still, Ron? I would think I've proven that I can take care of myself by now."

"It's not that. Obviously you can handle yourself. Can you handle Harry, though?" His question cut through me like a slim silver blade. I gasped aloud at the sudden flare of grief and anger that exploded in me. Ron grabbed my shoulder as the field spun around me; I clung to his hand so tightly I feared I would break it. I fought to keep calm.

"Anne. Talk to me." His voice was soothing– he sounded so much like his father.

I drew a shaky breath. "What do you want to know?"

"Harry told me...how he left things with you. He talked about you a lot, the first few months. Then it was like he just...switched off. He just stopped talking about you. Until we got news from Dumbledore, we were afraid something terrible had happened to you. I know you two parted on bad terms, but you have to figure out how to get along now." He looked at me expectantly.

"I don't know if I can, Ron. I don't know if I know how to care about people anymore."

That puzzled him. "What do you mean, you don't know how to care anymore?"

I sighed. "Ron, I just spent five years manipulating and using and killing people for a living. You can't do that for so long without forgetting that they're real. I can't afford to care about people. Caring gets you killed, every time."

He shook his head in disbelief. "Anne, you're not at war anymore. We're not at war."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Slytherin?" I stared at Dumbledore in disbelief. "You want me to head Slytherin? Did I miss something, Albus, or was I not Sorted into Gryffindor once upon a time?"

He smiled gently at me. "I am well aware of your Sorting experience, Anne. If you recall, I was there at the time." He motioned me to sit before him. His face sobered.

"However. Mr. Potter has been asked to serve as the Gryffindor head. I assumed that to ask you to serve with him might be a tad presumptuous. Was I incorrect?"

I felt strangely relieved. "No, Albus. No. I hadn't thought...I suppose Hermione will serve with him?"

He chuckled. "Not a bad guess, Professor Llewellyn, but no. Professor Granger will assume the head of Ravenclaw; Professor Weasely has taken over Hufflepuff."

How odd. Four Gryffindors spread out across four different houses. The war must have claimed more people than I realized.

"But why Slytherin, Albus? Why not just let me be staff? Surely Severus isn't stepping down anytime soon?"

"No, Professor, I have no plans to retire at the moment." Damn the man. I had stopped using my ability to sense people approaching me when I returned to Hogwarts, which meant that this particular cat no longer had a bell. He gazed at me impassively.

"However, I think you will agree that your disposition is uniquely suited to our house at this time."

He was right. I could no more head Gryffindor after my work in the war than Nejat could swim. Surely, though, they didn't think I was as ruthless and grasping as the average Slytherin, did they?

Dumbledore patted my arm. "Anne. I know this decision seems odd to you, especially with your experience with Slytherin over the years. Remember, though, that Slytherin do not so much prize the Dark as they prize ambition, resourcefulness, and a certain drive to succeed. They are, if nothing else, fiercely loyal to each other, intelligent, cunning...all qualities that you share." Dumbledore glanced at Snape.

"I do believe that a conversation with Severus will change your mind."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I didn't talk to Severus that evening, not at first. I sat at the other end of the dinner table with Ron and Hermione and pretended that I would always be to Dumbledore's left. They chatted about their courses, the incoming first-years, the Quidditch team, and never noticed that I wasn't talking. I rose abruptly, gathering my robes about me, and turned to Hermione.

"I need to get some air. Will you tell Professor Snape that I'll see him after I get back?" She nodded, worried.

I stalked out of the Hall and down the corridor toward the outer gate. Hagrid hadn't been at dinner, but I needed to see him. He'd been conspicuously absent since I'd returned. I trudged through the tall grass to his hut, huddled at the edge of the Forest, and knocked on the tall door.

He filled the doorway, blocking he light from the fireplace. A huge hound lay behind him, drooling on the hearth rug.

"That's not Fang, surely?" I managed to say before he snatched me up into a massive hug. He held on to me for several minutes, sobbing, then set me down gently. I pulled away from him and curled up on his armchair, feeling as small as a child.

"It's good t' see you, Anne. I was wondering if you'd come out t' visit." He poured a cup of tea from a steaming pot. He set an assortment of candies out on a plate and set them in front of me.

I grinned at him. "How are you, Hagrid? How're the animals?"

He grinned back at me. "Nice bunch of giant spiders for the fifth years this year." I listened to him prattle on about creatures most people would be afraid of. After a long while, he stopped talking and just looked at me.

"What is it, Hagrid?"

"Well, it's just...Ron was here today. He told me about, ummm, about..." he gestured at me.

"Oh. Yeah. It takes some getting used to, I guess. I still startle myself in the mirror sometimes." I smiled ruefully, but Hagrid looked sad.

"I wish you and Harry would patch things up. I don't know what happened, but whatever it was–"

I cut him off, rising from my chair in a single motion. "You're right. You don't know what happened. And I'm tired of talking about it." I slammed out of his hut, rage seething up again.

I intended to go back to my rooms to wait for my meeting with Hermione; instead my feet found their own way to our old dormitory. I hesitated outside at the portrait. The Fat Lady hadn't changed either. She beamed at me within her frame.

"Good evening, Professor! Haven't set the password yet. Come in, you're always welcome here." The door swung open, and memories washed over me in a terrible flood.

I stepped into the room, my hands icy and trembling. I sat down in my favorite chair, nearest the hearth and snapped my finger to light a fire. The flames leaped up in the chimney, casting shifting shadows around the room. I rose and wandered around the Common Room, running my fingers over the same furniture, touching the paintings and walls. I roamed into our old room, sat down on the bed. I couldn't stop the memories of that place.

I remembered my first days here, days riddled with fear and illness. The nightmares, the self-hatred. Slowly coming to trust the people around me, making friends. Hermione and Ron's faces rose in my mind, still young and happy. Images of Harry also haunted me here; the long talks before the fire, the first tentative moments of intimacy in this very bed, waking up to his face in the morning light. Leaving.

I sucked in a sharp breath, rattled by the tears on my cheeks. The left side of my face stung and ached, as it often did in this colder country, and I could feel the wetness as sharp as blades. I backed out of the room, pressing my hands against my eyes, trying to block out the memories that threatened to overwhelm me. I didn't see him until I backed into him. He grabbed my good arm as I tried to push past him, tried to flee.

"Stop. Anne. Stop." Harry's breath was warm and tingling on my face. He pulled me closer to him, out of the bedroom.

"Anne. Please. Please talk to me." I could hear the ache in his voice, the low rumbling sorrow in the soft tones. I let him draw me down on the sofa beside him. I couldn't look at him.

"You don't have to hold onto me, Harry." I twisted my arm but couldn't writhe out of his grasp.

"I think I do. You like to run too much." His voice was steely, his eyes like green marble. "Aren't you supposed to be talking to Snape? Or are you hiding from everyone now?"

I made an irritable noise in my throat. "Not for a while yet. Why? Are you keeping tabs on me? I don't think I need you to baby-sit me, Harry." I paused to fasten my veils over the lower part of my face. Harry watched me curiously.

"Why do you still wear those?" He touched the edge of the veil carefully. I pushed his hand away automatically.

"Don't do that. I wear them because they're comfortable now. They let me go places without people looking at me."

"But don't people look at you when you're dressed like that? I mean, veils aren't exactly the fashion this year." He tried to lighten the mood, a faltering smile creeping over his face.

"It's not fashion. It's cultural, religious. People still look, but they don't stare at me like I'm some kind of freak anymore. It's not like your scar, Harry. People don't look at me and think 'There goes a war hero.' They look at me and feel sorry for me because my face is ruined. I don't need pity, from anyone." I could feel the venom dripping from my voice and knew I was perilously close to turning my anger on him. I tried to pull away again but he grabbed my other wrist, forgetting that it was the bad hand.

My left hand still throbbed with pain on many days. Some days I wanted to cut it off at the wrist to stop the pain. The cool, rainy British summer hadn't helped soothe it, so when Harry grabbed the wrist, the pain was immense. My vision blurred and swam, my stomach rolled over in a sick, loopy flip, my knees buckled underneath me. Harry barely caught me before I slid to the floor. I huddled by the sofa, cradling my hand, my breath coming in harsh panting sobs. He was almost distraught.

"Oh, God, Anne, I'm so sorry. I forgot about your hand. I didn't mean to hurt you. Do you want me to go get Madame Pomphrey?" He was near tears.

I couldn't stop the chuckles. "No, no. There's not anything she can do other than sedate me senseless."

I caught his eyes, saw that my laughter confused him. "Oh, Harry. You're the first person that's ever forgotten about my hand. You've made my day." I shook my head in affectionate amusement.

He let me laugh, waited patiently until I was more coherent. "Anne. I don't want things between us to be like this forever. I missed you so much. I still miss you, all the time." He was pleading now, his grassy eyes begging me to relent.

"You missed me. You missed me? You didn't miss me– you never even wrote me. You never sent word, you never let me know you were okay. You just left." The old familiar hurts echoed in my mind.

"I didn't know if you were alive or dead. No one could tell me where you were or what you were doing. I'm sorry. I don't believe you." I rose and leaned against the window, pressing my burning forehead to the cool glass, shaking again. I heard him rise behind me, felt his hands on my upper arms.

"I didn't mean to disappear, Anne. I couldn't write– it was too dangerous for a long time." He squeezed my arms lightly.

"I tried to find you, at the end of the first big offensive. That would have been about two years after I left. I went to your Gram's house. She said you'd gone into the Ministry, but she didn't know where you were working. Nobody knew. I looked for you every chance I got, every time I was back in Britain. I had Hermione trying to find you, Dumbledore, everyone I could think of."

"You should have asked Snape."

He stiffened behind me. "What do you mean?"

"Snape knew where I was the whole time." I turned to see his face.

"I'm pretty sure Dumbledore knew, if Snape knew, but they had to have known how critical their silence was. You're not the only person who did dangerous things in the war, you know."

"Why would Snape care? I would think he'd be more interested in keeping tabs on Malfoy and that lot." Harry was almost growling.

"He did. Malfoy turned Dark almost immediately. His father's footsteps, and all that bollucks. That was when I was still at school. Snape knew one of my professors and started out keeping track that way, writing to my professors about my progress. When I went into the training program for the Ministry position, he wrote a letter of recommendation for me and dropped a few words in the right ears."

Harry looked pensive. "I still don't understand why Snape is so interested in you. It's not like he was fond of you when we were at school..."

I was rapidly losing patience. "I don't know, Harry. Maybe he's just trying to be friendly. I don't know. At least he bothered at all." I could see the comment stung.

"Look, stop doing that. I can't change the past, no matter how much I want to. I never stopped thinking about you." I snorted derisively. His face reddened and he pushed me down into one of the chairs. I started up out of the chair, dangerously angry. His voice whipped into my ears.

 "Sit. Down. Don't talk, just sit." He turned away from me, breathing hard. I watched his broad shoulders rise and fall, his fists clench. He raked a hand through his dark hair, and I saw it for the first time.

I leaped out of the chair, as silent and swift as I had been in the war. I seized his wrist as his hand slid backwards in his hair and twisted his arm down between his shoulder blades. He yelped in surprise and, I'd bet, more than a little pain. He struggled to free his arm but I hauled down on it harder, almost immobilizing him. Gradually, I forced him to his knees in front of me. I stepped down on his ankles with one foot and flipped his hand back up over his head. He whimpered slightly as the blood rushed back into his hand, and I could feel the flesh throb with his pulse.

I stared at his hand. At the thin silver band that he still wore around one finger. The tiny engraved thistles. I knew if I took it from him and looked on the inside, it would have my name etched around the band. Our commitment ring. He was wearing it.

My eyes met his over the ring. He blinked away a few tears of pain and gazed levelly at me. I was frozen for a long minute, drowning in those moss-covered eyes. I reached into the inner pocket of my voluminous robes and drew out the thin silver chain that I always carried. The firelight danced across the slender silver ring dangling before Harry's face.

"I never took it off, Anne. Never. Not even when it was dangerous to wear it." His voice was hushed. I turned my eyes back to him.

"I had to take mine off, Harry. Muslim women just don't wear jewelry with men's names on them unless they're married. But I never was without it. When I couldn't wear it, I put it on Nejat– I knew she could always keep it safe even if I couldn't." I could feel the tears start, hot and painful.

"I told her, if anything happened to me, to make sure Snape got it. I knew he'd know something bad had happened and would get it to you somehow. I–"

Harry dragged me to my knees, covering my mouth with his lips. His kiss was different than I remembered, demanding, possessive. He devoured my lips, eagerly biting my lower lip, probing after my tongue with his own. His hands were buried deep in my hair, pinning me against his mouth. He broke off the kiss, murmuring my name over and over. He pressed his face into my hair, breathing in my scent like a dying man gasping for air.

I was overwhelmed by the raw passion, the utter familiarity in his touch. I was unused to such kisses; in Turkey, I played the part of a courtesan but no man had touched me so familiarly in the whole five years I was there. Harry's hands slipped across my back, down along the spine, and cupped my bottom firmly through my robes. I stiffened in his arms, suddenly shy. He tried to capture my lips again. I ducked my head away from him, repinning my veil. His face crumpled slightly, confused by my reticence.

"I'm sorry, Harry. I'm just.... I'm...I'm not used to this anymore. I haven't been so close to a man in years."

"I thought seduction was a part of your job, Anne." His cynical tone cut to my heart.

"Seduction was. Sex wasn't– at least, casual sex wasn't." His face was stormy and jealous.

 "Stop looking at me like that. I wasn't a prostitute, Harry. I didn't sleep with every man I saw."

"What did you do, Anne? Exactly?" He lowered himself to sit on the hearth, pulling me down beside him. I stared past him into the fire.

"I made them think I wanted them. I entertained powerful men, made them happy for a while. Mostly they just wanted intelligent conversation with a beautiful woman, sometimes someone to have a few drinks with, go to state events, keep them company. Sometimes they wanted more than just companionship."

"More." His voice was flat, emotionless.

"I never cared about them, Harry. Never about anything more than getting every bit of information I could." I sighed. "I won't lie to you. I slept with several men, most of them repeatedly."

I looked him in the eye. "It was work, Harry. It was what I had to do. I didn't enjoy it, but I did it. And that's something I can't change."

He shook his head; I could hear his thoughts as loud as if he'd spoken them into the room. Can I trust her? How do I know she isn't just putting on an act? Do I know if she ever really loved me?  

I rose in a flurry of robes. Staring down into his startled face, I let all the venom of the last few years pour out of me.

"You don't know, Harry. And you won't ever know, because nothing I could ever say could convince you now. We can't start over– I was stupid to think so." I dropped the thin chain onto his lap, pushed away from him and strode into the hallway, slamming the door behind me.