She'd made a mistake, and not for the first time. Her life had been fraught with them, starting with her refusal to go to Hogwarts, speeding right along to the years of her life in which she'd done whatever she'd pleased, blaming her mother for her troubles. After all, Olive Benedict had been the one who'd gotten pregnant with the child of a married man.
How easy, Lilith thought, it was to place blame when you were too young to know better. When she was young, everything had been so clear cut. And lately, she'd felt the same way about her nephew—she was his blood, therefore she should take care of him.
Black and white, clear cut.
This school was shaded grey, full of complications as diverse and bizarre as the people who filled it. Elderly, idiosyncratic headmaster, boy hero as a student, Death Eater as teacher, a werewolf and an American roaming the halls as though they owned the place. With a pang of jealousy Lilith realized they all had something she didn't.
They belonged.
Blowing a breath out between her teeth, she considered packing up her meager belongings and leaving the school. But she'd never given up, not a single time, not even—especially not even—when she was wrong.
Make your bed and lie in it, her mother had often said, and though Lilith had brushed that warning off as an adage referring to a certain Balthasar Malfoy, she knew know it pertained to more than just that.
"Make your bed and lie in it," Lilith told herself, slipping between the sheets that had been righted by house elves. As she stared at the canopy above her bed, she blew out another frustrated breath. "Brew your potion and take it."
~~~
"Your demands grow more and more ridiculous and outlandish each day." Severus said, carefully masking the disbelief in his voice. "If you're not careful, I'll find myself believing I'm a Death Eater once again."
Dumbledore stared at him blankly, and for a precious moment, Severus wondered if perhaps he'd gone too far. Then the old man guffawed loudly and slapped his hand on the desk. "Good Merlin! Did I just hear what I think I heard? Did Severus Snape, scourge of Hogwarts, just make a jest? Quick, someone fetch me a Restorative Potion!"
"There's no need to be facetious," Severus said snidely, though his lips were twitching strangely. After a brief moment, the shared mirth passed and Severus sighed. "You can't actually expect me to help her, Albus." The headmaster had asked him, in a tone of voice that suggested he thought the request perfectly reasonable, to aid the bastard Malfoy in getting to know her nephew.
And Severus, in a rare display of subversion, had made his little joke. But he was serious underneath the rare show of humor—he didn't want to help her.
"I do expect you to help her, Severus," Albus said calmly.
"I can't!" The Potions Master, frustrated beyond any telling, stood up and scissored long legs, pacing back and forth across the headmaster's office. Night had passed and morning come since Lilith Benedict had rushed from his office, since Dea had left him alone again, as always. "Surely you see why I cannot help her. Look at her, Albus."
Dumbledore's face grew darker, and when he stood up, his eyes were forbidding. It was a look few ever saw, and Severus was one of those few. "You cannot fear what is already gone unless you let yourself hang onto that part of yourself." He came around the desk, forcing his employee to look at him. "You came to me on a night many years ago, showing emotion I never thought you would show, and professed your connection with the Death Eaters was done." He saw Severus's eyes flick to his arm, where there still rode the faintest scar of the Mark. "Your connection here," Albus said, jabbing a long finger at Severus's head. "And here," he jabbed at his heart. "When I see that you fear the face of your enemy long past, it makes me wonder how gone that connection can truly be."
"You fight unfairly, Albus." For the pain was there, the sting of guilt spearing none too gently through Severus.
"I fight how I must," the older man barked. "To save you from your own cowardice, and your own willful wallowing in the past."
Severus's eyes snapped to Dumbledore's faded ones, and he smiled a bit nastily. "My past, is it? May I divest you of that particular notion, then? Have you given any thought at all to the prospect that she will take him away from here?" Away from me, his brain insisted silently.
Dumbledore sat again, unwilling to show his coworker—his friend—the weakness that seemed to pervade his bones of late. "Severus, my dear friend, if you do well enough in helping her—in teaching her, as it were—she will see there is no need to take him away from here."
And to that, Severus Snape had no answer. With a terse "Very well," and a flaring of robes, he spun and exited the headmaster's office with haste.
From the corner where she had stood, Dea stepped forward, her eyes wet with tears. "When I suggested you nudge him into helping, I didn't mean it quite like that."
"Nonsense, Miss Middlemarch," Albus spoke pleasantly. "Severus is a great deal stronger than he appears to be. He's greatly underestimated." He turned then, regarding her over the tops of his glasses. "Especially by you."
~~~
She didn't know exactly what had waked her, but she knew something had. She could also tell by the angle of the light—and that puffy, unrested feeling of her eyes—that it was ungodly early in the morning. So she pried her eyes open one by one, a scream starting from her before she even realized it was making its way up through her lungs.
Lilith Benedict wasn't really faint of heart, but seeing Severus Snape standing in her bedroom at the crack of dawn was a bit unsettling.
"What in Merlin's name are you doing?" she asked, her voice shaking fiercely. Belatedly she yanked the sheets up to her chin, her fair skin coloring as she remembered the woefully thin nightgown she'd brought with her. It wasn't, she knew, exactly fitting to be wearing around anyone, much less a near-stranger of the opposite sex.
Since when did you start thinking of him as a man and not a monster? her addled brain yammered.
"Well, what are you doing?" she demanded when he didn't immediately answer.
"Would that I knew," he spoke, sounding more than a little bored. But hadn't she, just for a moment, seen his eyes follow her hands as she'd pulled the sheet up. "However, be that as it may, there's something you should see. Other, that is, than a few more hours of sleep."
The flush in her cheeks went from embarrassed to furious and she hissed out a breath, sneering in a manner, with a depth of emotion, that would have been far beyond her brother's capabilities. "Whatever it is you have to show me, Professor, I'm fairly certain it can wait a few minutes while I get decently dressed."
He raised an eyebrow, propping it to a nearly impossible height. Why was it that he didn't expect her to have any backbone? She'd broken down like a weakling… like a Hufflepuff… in his office the day before, and now she was treating him like a poorly behaved House Elf.
Women, he thought sardonically, but never in a million years would words so trite fall from his lips, if he could help it.
"Don't take your time," he said, turning on his heel and leaving her in the room.
"Make your bed and lie in it," Lilith grumbled, whipping the sheets aside and pulling her only dress from its hanger. "Apparently not for long enough to get any sleep." The few hours she'd gotten, though, had refreshed her, and getting roused in such a rude manner had done what she'd not been able to do on her own—made her angry. In anger, Lilith was righteous.
She was ready to take on the Potions Master.
~~~
She walked up, glancing over her shoulder, with a mug of ever-present coffee between her hands, rolling it back and forth, back and forth, sending the steam wafting up to his nose.
Remus hated coffee.
"Did you hear what those horrid Weasley twins said to me?" Dea asked, sounding shocked but still laughing.
His response was immediate and genuine, his thin face breaking into a sparkling grin. "No, but I'd love to know." He looked over her shoulder to see the two twins, back to watch the game, wave jauntily, identical faces displaying identically mischievous grins.
What Marauders they'd have made.
"They asked me," she said, grabbing his chin and tilting his face back to her, "If we were planning on what they insisted on calling 'puppies'. It was horrifying." His grin morphed into uproarious laughter, and Dea clenched her teeth.
Men.
"Do you think they'll actually show?" she asked, trying to sway his mind from the Weasleys' jest. She regretted, however, how it made Remus's face fall serious.
He smiled far too rarely.
"I don't know, love," he said honestly. "I know you want things to be peaceful, but you can't always have it, you know. Some people weren't meant to be peaceful, and Snape isn't one of them." He'd spent years himself trying to make the Potions Master more at ease, but to no avail. Tense obligation had held them at a civil level, and toward the end, even that had deteriorated. But for the woman in front of them, there was too little they had in common.
"I don't know where to sit," she said, rapidly changing gears. "Is it possible to sit right between the two?"
"You can sit on the Gryffindor side," Remus said stubbornly, house pride prevailing.
But of course, she sat in the middle, making him sit on the outer edge of the Gryffindor bleachers.
"Can I sit with you?" Hermione approached them hesitantly, a small smile on her face, her breath puffing out in the cool air. "It's really no fun to sit by myself, and with Ron Keeping, Ginny Chasing, and Harry Seeking—" she shrugged. "Well, it's just a bit lonely." She started to open her mouth and say more as the players came out, zooming in the air above them, swooping, diving, warming up, but her mouth sagged open. "Good heavens!" she said in a shocked little whisper, and those whispers were racing up and down the assembled crowd.
Lilith Benedict had arrived.