CHAPTER FOUR
Albus turned his attention away from the striking blonde in front of him and pointed his wand at the classroom door, sending a little spark spitting at it. "There, now they'll be able to get out as soon as they bother to try the door. By the sound of it, that won't be for quite some time."
He gestured for her to follow and began the trek down the hallway to his offices, talking without looking back at her. "I don't believe I have to tell you how unnecessarily cruel your last remark to my Potions master was, do I?"
Lilith felt her head dip a little and winced. How was it these schoolmaster types always seemed to know how to make one feel like a whipped dog? "He has no jurisdiction in the matter of my nephew," she said stiffly, defensively.
"On the contrary, Miss Benedict, he has more vested interest than anyone else." Dumbledore aimed a look over his shoulder at her. "I would invite you up to my office; however, I need to think on what has passed here tonight. If you'll continue down the hall and take the first right, you will find a room has been prepared for you."
"A room? How?" Her amazement steamrolled effectively over her staunch resolve; she certainly hadn't meant to stay. She'd meant to double back, get Draco, and leave.
But a room in this castle? Prepared already? The impoverished child she'd once been yearned for the simple luxury.
Dumbledore gestured to his wand. "Long-distance multi-tasking," he said. "Please go on, Miss Benedict. Should you need anything, a house elf will attend to you."
She never got the chance to object before the headmaster had disappeared, leaving her with that pervasive sense of amazement.
"Blast it," she sighed, and took the directions he'd given her.
~~~
After going through his classes with the motions of one sleepwalking, he returned to his dungeons. He worked furiously, long, thin fingers sorting bottles and labels with the ease of long practice. Severus organized, refilled, shifted, and classified the potions in his store, utilizing the labor to keep his mind occupied.
Would it always come back to the mistakes he'd made?
"Asphodel, conger blood, hellebore, wormwood," he muttered, swiftly alphabetizing the extra tins and bottles he had left, his voice loud and desperate, trying to push away his thoughts.
She'd looked so much like Lucius, so much like him, that to hear accusations from her mouth seemed almost farcical.
Suddenly weary, he laid his head down on his hands in the middle of his counter, letting the memories and thoughts storm through him.
Albus's masked disappointment and magnanimous understanding when he'd learned of Severus's alliances with the Dark Lord.
The mistrustful looks of students and members of the Order.
Dea's shock, stumbling away from him with revulsion and fear.
Draco's penetrating stare, not accusatory but still holding blame in their very blamelessness.
And Lilith Benedict's quietly derisive statement rendering him despicable no matter what his redemptive actions.
And though his eyes were dry and his voice silenced by years of long practice, inside Hogwarts' misfit professor, sobs echoed cavernously.
~~~
"And then we were in there for Merlin knows how long with the door unlocked!" Ginny exclaimed, thumping her fist on the table of the Great Hall.
Hermione raised an eyebrow and, with a sigh, turned her attention from the textbook she was reading. "Ginny, really, I find it hard to believe that the headmaster and a professor would lock two students up in a room." But even as she spoke the words, Malfoy walked by alone, as he had been ever since his return, and shot Ginny a glare. Though the glare itself wouldn't have been unusual, the intensity had Hermione wondering—after all, it wasn't as though he'd ever taken the time to single anyone but Harry out before.
"Believe me now?" Ginny asked, a self-satisfied smile on her face.
"This place has gone absolutely batty," Hermione said, her voice a bit awed. "Unbelievable." But as she opened her mouth to opine further on the topic, she saw her friend's eyes focus elsewhere, on the back of her retreating enemy, and she pressed her lips together tightly.
Curiosity had its place elsewhere, and so for once, Hermione curbed her questions.
~~~
Evening wore on into night,
and in separate parts of the Hogwarts castle, many different thoughts swarmed.
In guest chambers on the ground floor, the denied child of a Malfoy marveled at the luxury of a warm fire, a soft bed, and the aid of house elves with every beck and call. As she laid down to sleep, truly comfortable for the first time in her 32 years, she wondered not for the first time, if she was doing right by the young man who was her nephew only technically.
In the headmaster's office, through labyrinthine twists and turns, the headmaster had a discussion with his Potions Master on what was to be done about Lilith Benedict. In a show of trust for his staff and as a test of his employee's emotions, the headmaster shrugged the matter off and left it up to his Potions Master.
In a private room in Slytherin house, an orphaned young man thought of his mother and wondered when, if at all, things would return to normal. Completely ignorant of his new—and only—relative upstairs, the young man turned his mind to the day's events and sneered at the thought of his redheaded nemesis, letting the easy rhythm of lifelong combativeness lull him into sleep.
In her room in Gryffindor tower, the young man's nemesis lay with her firefall of hair spread over her pillow, her eyes fixed wide and intent above her as she tried to fathom what it would be like to be without family in a world as big as theirs was.
~~~
He couldn't even begin to surmise what in Merlin's name she was doing.
The idiot wench was standing on the tips of her toes outside the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, staring through the window of the door. Her small, tapered fingertips rested lightly on the door as she leaned on it as though trying to hear what was going on, and two bright spots of color burned in her pale cheeks.
Unable to resist and unable to quell the flood of annoyance rising up in him, Severus rapped her knuckles with his wand, making her gasp and jump back, hands clasped together.
"What do you think you're doing?" they asked simultaneously, one all indignant outrage and the other calm disdain.
"I hardly feel the need to answer that, Miss Benedict, as my reasoning is justifiable and rational, though it's no doubt of mine those concepts are far lost on a woman such as yourself." He wondered fleetingly where her own wand was, or if she was perhaps a Squib, and with that thought his mind skipped to Amadea, so many miles away.
He could definitely use a woman's ear right now.
"I understand justification and rationale," Lilith spat, rubbing her fingers and trying to keep her eyes from jerking back to the classroom door. "If that's what you call ambushing and abusing a woman." Truthfully, she felt guilty. Technically, she'd been spying on the classroom, watching her nephew, all bright blond hair and sullen glares. Was that was Lucius had made him into?
She'd only met her half-brother once, when her mother had brought her to the Malfoy mansion, demanding reparations for the wrongs done her. Lucius had been a teenager then, and Lilith herself barely an adolescent.
He had stood by his father's side, his eyes assessing her flatly, the sneer on his mouth both suggestive and subversive. It was not, by any means, a brotherly look he'd been giving her, and to this day it still sent chills down her spine.
Lilith supposed she should be grateful the boy was even alive, with a snake like that for a father.
"If you're done daydreaming, Miss Benedict, perhaps you'd like to step into my office," Severus said through grated teeth. He'd been trying to get her attention for several seconds. "Thought I'm sure it pains you to be associated with a Death Eater, it doesn't strike me you would like to waltz in there and announce your presence to an already confused young man."
As brave as she'd been so far, that particular act was out of her reach. But she had actions that could be taken immediately. Her manners, ever-present and often cloying, forced her to lower her voice and divert her eyes as she responded. "No, I don't believe that will be necessary. There were several things I'd like to address with you."
He merely gaped at her for a moment, his black eyes unreadable even in the bright hallway of the school. She'd been angry, he'd seen it in her eyes, in her posture, heard it in her words, and then suddenly the quiet, soft-spoken tone she'd used the evening before had been back into place as firmly as a dungeon door slamming.
We all have our sides and secrets, he told himself, impatient with the further delay. With a single, curt motion, he had her following him down the hallway.