December 10

"Professor! Professor Snape!"

Severus stopped his determined stalk and turned around, lifting an eyebrow at the brave Ravenclaw who had stopped him. "Yes?" he asked, affixing the student with a glare worthy of a Gryffindor.

"I-" the student paused and looked momentarily doubtful of the intelligence of his actions, then barrelled ahead. "Some of the other Second Years and I were wondering if we could…" he swallowed hard, "if we could schedule a time with you for some questions and answers…" The student was trailing off, and appearing to seriously doubt the idea which had undoubtedly seemed such a good one before it actually came time to implement it.

"I see," Severus said silkily, moving slightly, just enough to set his robes aflutter. The effect was precisely as he'd anticipated; the Ravenclaw looked like he was about to wet himself from fright. "And how many of you are there who have not been paying attention in class?"

The student paled, but lifted his chin determinedly. "We were paying attention, Sir! But…"

Severus shook his head slightly. "I did not ask you whether you were paying attention, Mr. Flanagan," he whispered smoothly, "I asked how many of you there are. If you wish to bother me to repeat what I have said in class already, it is obvious that you were not paying attention."

The boy took a visibly deep breath. "Eleven, Sir."

Eleven students. Severus was actually mildly impressed that they had the foresight to organize a study group and to request some time with a teacher all together, but he had little intention of letting them know that. "And how long do you think it will take the eleven of you to learn what you did not learn in class?"

Flannagan opened his mouth, eyes flashing indignantly, and Severus' mouth curled into a sneer as he waited for the boy to protest again. Ravenclaws, however, were fast learners, and nearly as canny as Slytherins. "Three hours?" he asked, smoothing all defiance from his voice.

Severus nodded slowly. "Very well, Mr. Flannagan. Seven o'clock sharp, Tuesday evening. In the dungeons. And if you find other students who wish to attend, they may."

The boy looked immensely relieved, and grinned. "Thank you, sir!" he called, and turned, all but running back down the corridor. Severus shook his head slightly and wondered what the students wanted extra information about. It would help if he could spend a few moments referencing page numbers, as he certainly preferred to tell the students where to look and have them find information themselves rather than simly offering it to them on a platter. But then, assuming the students were Ravenclaw, it wasn't likely they would be asking questions that were so obvious. Ravenclaws were notoriously studious, and while there was the occasional student who didn't apply himself as fully as he could, they certainly knew which of their House members to ask for additional help. He doubted any of his students would come to him for additional help if there were any other feasible option. Thus, it stood to reason that there would be little by way of preparatory work that he could do to make the process easier. Oh well, he thought dismissively. Severus knew he could teach any of his classes off the cuff and teach them well. He was, after all, a Potions Master, not just some loon hired to teach it.

He continued his path to the Slytherin Tower, where he intended to look in on his charges and assure himself that they were aware that the extended curfew applied only to those who intended to use it for studying. As he stepped into the common room, though, he frowned at the scene. There was substantially less talking than he had anticipated, but also very little reading or writing or anything else of use. Everyone was, instead, staring at the entrance to the girl's dormitory, and Severus took a deep breath before turning his eyes to that portal as well. There were parts of his position as Head of Slytherin that he utterly detested, and one of those parts was keeping the girls in line. The boys were sufficiently scared of him, and fundamentally familiar at least. The girls, on the other hand, were a complete mystery, and a mystery he had always felt required more monitoring than the boys. And, once or twice, he'd had the unhappy distinction of being the adult figure to coach a crying girl through one or another important phase in her life. Severus did not feel he was precisely qualified to be instructing girls on the finer subtleties of womanhood, and, from the attention everyone was paying the girls' dormitory, he was afraid he was going to be called upon tonight to do some unpleasant task involving the girls. To waylay some crisis of vast magnitude.

His concerns were quickly aliviated, though, as the door from the girls' dormitory to the common room opened and one Miss Aislinn Ichalia stepped out. Severus' eyes narrowed suspiciously. He'd barely seen her for more than five minutes at a time since the night he'd returned from a summons by the Dark Lord. What was she doing here now? He wasted no time in asking her.

"Ah, Miss Ichalia," his voice had taken on some of the smooth disdain for which he was famous with the students, thankfully not falling into the uncertain worry that tended to plague him when he was alone with her. "An unusual place for a Gryffindor," he commented, almost mildly.

Aislinn stopped suddenly, her eyes widening a fraction, but the expression was quickly replaced by a broad smile. "Nonsense, Professor Snape," she replied, "I haven't been a Gryffindor for some years. I am merely a teacher, and as such, I do have the right to go wherever I choose in this castle."

That wasn't quite the truth of it, but it was close enough, and Severus had little intention of revealing to the students that there were places that were off-limits to the faculty. "Then what brings you here?" he asked pointedly, opting for a different tactic.

Her smile broadened across her face but seemed to leave her eyes all together. "Another privledge of being on the other side of the big desk now, isn't it, Professor? I am no longer obligated to explain myself to you."

She was stalking across the common room now, and Severus noted with vague interest that she traded her robes for a full, lightweight skirt that brushed her calves tantalizingly when she moved and emphasized the curves of her hips. Hips that swayed alarmingly as she stepped gracefully through the room. It had something to do with the height of the heels she was wearing, that much hed' worked out, but he didn't understand how it worked. The higher her heels, though, the more her hips swayed, and tonight the spikes that elevated her were four inches or better, he was sure. He pulled his eyes firmly back to her face. "And I, Miss Ichalia, have the right to know what is going on in my own House's Tower."

She opened her mouth again, as though to argue but to Severus' pleasant surprise, she closed it and lowered her head slightly, as though conceding the point. "Very well, Professor," she replied, "I was visiting with a student."

He looked at her skeptically for a moment. "Which student?" he asked, glancing towards the dormitory again, "and why?"

Any hint there had been of submission about her flitted away. "That, Professor, is not a topic suitable for discussion in a Common Room. If you wish a report, I will deliver it to your desk…"

He frowned at her. She was baiting him, and he knew it, but he couldn't tell if she was aware he knew it or not. On the one hand, if it were something for which she'd felt the need to deduct points from Slytherin, he would find out about it in due time. On the other hand, if she were simply making an informal visit to one of the Slytherin students, pressing the issue might well turn the informal visit into one with more action taken. He thought carefully for a moment, torn between curiosity (and a certain degree of indignation that she would walk into his Common Room and still maintain that she was queen of the bloody castle), and a desire to let well enough alone. He studied her carefully, but there was no glittering of her eyes, and once again he noted that her smiles were nowhere near those expressive orbs. She was not, perhaps, strictly toying with him.

"A word with you, Miss Ichalia?" he asked, and a murmur swept through the room, reminding Severus that he had a student audience. "In private?"

She looked again for a moment as though she were going to protest, but glanced at the students again. Severus looked at them too, and noted with some alarm that all eyes were on them. For the love of Merlin, he begged silently, just back down for once in your life, Aislinn. Perhaps to his surprise, she did just that. "Very well," she conceded. He gestured to the door and she didn't even glance back at the students before she slipped out of the portrait hole. Severus, however, did look back and noted the smirks on a number of students' faces. He cast them a warning look, and not a word was said, but as he followed Aislinn into the corridor, he heard someone making the comment, "She's about to find out that once a Gryffindor, always a Gryffindor, and Gryffindor is not welcome in Slytherin Common Rooms."

Severus didn't bother to correct the boy who'd said it, though he had no intention of anything of the sort. He had mostly wanted to get her out of there before she made a fool of him again, a task she seemed to delight in.

"Where did you have in mind for our 'private word'?" Her voice interrupted his thoughts, and he glanced around. His initial reaction was to suggest his office, but in all honesty, he didn't want to go back down to the dungeons for what he anticipated being a ten-minute conversation. Then again, he didn't particularly relish the idea of taking her to his personal rooms, either. There were not, however, all that many choices presenting themselves readily, and, with a slight sigh, he resigned himself to the unpleasant options he had.

"My own rooms are nearby," he suggested, "or we can go back down to the dungeons. I don't expect this discussion will take long."

Aislinn nodded and glanced down the corridor, and he wondered if she was thinking the same things he was: the dungeon was a long walk for a short conversation, but she didn't seem terribly keen on his personal rooms, either. Finally, though, she sighed softly. "I would really rather not go back to the dungeons tonight," she told him.

He nodded and gestured down a corridor. They walked in silence past a few intersecting corridors, then he touched her elbow to indicate they'd reached their destination. He spoke his password softly, though she'd suddenly found a polite interest in a tapestry across the corridor; perhaps he wouldn't have to change the password now after all. "Aislinn?"

She turned back to him and preceeded him into the room, pausing a few steps inside and to the left of the door. "Lumos," he said as he closed the door behind him, and all the candles sprang into light, casting a soft glow over the austere sitting room. He glanced towards his bedchamber and noted with relief that the door was closed, then gestured towards a chair. "Have a seat," he invited, crossing to the sideboard against the back wall. "Would you care for something to drink? Tea? Sherry?"

"No, thank you," she replied politely. The surge of disappointment he felt must have touched his face because her lips quirked into a half-smile. "You said yourself that this will be a short conversation," she pointed out reasonably.

He nodded. "Of course." He removed a glass for himself and momentarily considered vodka, but settled for sherry. "Then I will be brief. What were you doing in the Slytherin Tower?"

She smiled briefly. "I told you, Severus, I was visiting a student."

"Why?" He took a drink of his sherry as he seated himself, and she shook her head slightly, then drew her feet up to tuck them under herself, then, seeming to think better of it, put them on the floor again.

"That's really none of your concern," she told him bluntly, and his eyes narrowed.

"Was the student in question a Slytherin?" he asked pointedly, and she gave him a level look.

"I was under the impression that most of the students who live in Slytherin dormitories are Slytherin. Am I wrong in this assumption?" The look he gave her said clearly that he was not amused, and her look said clearly that she was not impressed by his scowl. "It was a visit for personal reasons, Severus. Just leave it at that."

He considered that for a moment. He knew he could pursue the issue, and if he really wanted to he could insist she tell him, but she had insinuated that perhaps it was something he didn't want to know. Personal reasons. That phrase, when coupled with his female students, brought to mind any number of things he didn't really want to know or to think about, and he doubted seriously that Aislinn was unaware of that. She was, after all, a very perceptive young woman. And yet, knowing that about her, he wondered if it was a ploy on her part; after all, that would be a simple way to deter a man from asking more questions, wouldn't it? He tried for a moment to convince himslef that she wouldn't use the possibility of feminine mysteries to deter him from asking more questions, but he couldn't really convince himself of that. A frown crossed his face. "Very well," he conceded, "but I have a question for you then."

"And what is that?" she asked.

"Why were you not Slytherin?" She looked momentarily taken aback, and stared at him thoughtfully for a moment, as though trying to decide whether or not to grace him with an answer. He took the opportunity to elaborate. "You have a drive and determination, and great skill," he said softly, sipping his sherry again, "and a shrewdness that I do not remember from your days as a student, which makes me wonder if I was blind to it or if it is a quality you have developed since you left Hogwarts. Regardless, you are in possession of all the traits that Slytherin prizes. So why is it that you were sorted into Gryffindor?"

Aislinn laughed a bit. "How should I know how the Sorting Hat decides these things?" she asked. "My mother was Slytherin. My father was Ravenclaw. His father was Gryffindor and his mother Hufflepuff. My mother's parents were Slytherin and Ravenclaw. I think perhaps I have the longest line of hodgepodge houses of any student who ever attended Hogwarts." This last was a dry comment, and Severus exhaled briefly in a soft snort of laughter. Indeed, it was a keen observation, most of the families who had long lines of students at Hogwarts were Slytherin.

"Then the Sorting Hat did not waffle over you?" he asked softly, taking another sip of his sherry.

Aislinn smiled. "No, Severus. The hat barely settled onto my head before declaring me Gryffindor. My mother was hardly thrilled when she found out, but I don't know that anyone else in the family so much as noticed."

Severus twirled his glass thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger. "It's uncommon for a Pureblood not to be sorted into Slytherin," he commented noncommittally.

She lifted an eyebrow. "Perhaps the Sorting Hat realized that I am not precisely a Pureblood, then," she suggested, and he nodded. He hadn't thought she was, by virtue of the fact that he knew next to nothing about her family, but he'd entertained the possibility that she was. After all, he wasn't so conceited as to think he knew every witch and wizard who had ever lived. "My grandparents were all witches and wizards," she said with a slight shrug, "but that's as far back as the line goes, really. Not something mother discusses very much."

Severus nodded again and took another sip of his sherry, wondering idly how long she would talk if he didn't interrupt her. She had always been prone to talking, and, it seemed that age hadn't done much to stay her tongue. She didn't disappoint him.

"Mother has it in her head that another generation or three will see our family as esteemed as the Malfoy or Goyle," she was saying, "and I've never been able to convince her that however she tries to solidify the line, our family will always have something like forty fewer generations of magical ancestors than those others. She doesn't seem to understand that concept." A note of criticism had slipped into her voice and, again, she moved as though she were going to tuck her feet under her, but stopped.

"Many families seek to solidify blood lines," Severus commented noncommittally.

"Yes," Aislinn sighed softly, "I know." She stretched her fingers, studying them carefully. "She had such great hopes that I would be the key to the establishing of our family."

"But," Severus prompted.

She smiled bitterly. "But I turned out to be somewhat less than ideal for the challenge," she replied, offering not a bit more information than he already had.

Severus sipped his sherry again, but, apparantly, she had learned a bit of restraint over the years, as she offered no more information. He was quiet for the moment, debating whether or not to pursue the question with her, his curiosity warring with his desire not to look like he cared too greatly. At length, though, curiosity won out. "May I ask why not?" he asked softly.

Aislinn snorted softly. "It's a long story," she told him.

"I have the time," he replied.

She was quiet for a moment, and he thought she was going to tell him to sod off and mind his own business (which he did not doubt he deserved.), but after a pause, she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. "Does your offer for sherry still stand?" she asked.

He raised an eyebrow and set his own glass aside, then stood and moved over to the sideboard and poured her a glass. After delivering it into her hand, he seated himself again and watched as she swirled the amber liquid absently in the glass. She held it up to the light for a moment, looking at it, and for a moment he considered telling her that he hadn't poisoned it, but she sipped it before he could open his mouth. "Thank you," she said quietly, still studying the glass.

He sipped his own sherry and waited. After a moment, she began speaking. "You might remember I told you I battled cancer when I was a child?" she asked, and he nodded, frowning slightly. "Well, the treatment for it had a rather… unpleasant side effect," she said quietly. She tipped her head back and emptied the contents of her glass down her throat. "I'm sterile," she told him. "You can't build a family from a daughter who can't have babies."

Somehow, he'd been expecting a more elaborate, less blunt explanation, but he felt his heart ache softly for her just the same. "I can imagine that your mother was not overly pleased," he speculated, rising to refill her glass.

She smiled humorlessly. "Hardly," she affirmed. "In fact, it's a bit ironic. When I first began showing signs of the disease, mother ignored the symptoms. She didn't want anyone in the wizarding community to know that her daughter had a dreadful disease, and I suppose it was easier for her to deny it if she didn't know either. It was my father's mother who finally took me to a Muggle hospital, because that would be easier to keep from my mother, and it was my father who signed the paperwork to have me admitted. Mother," she paused and emptied half her glass again, "would have likely let me die. As it happened, though, she was content enough to leave me in a Muggle hospital where no one was likely to discover my condition." She dipped a finger into her glass and ran it softly along the rim, a high-pitched ringing suddenly filling the room. "The doctors said that had they caught the disease sooner, the treatment would have been less intense, and perhaps the results not so drastic. I don't think she's said ten words to me since then."

Severus took another sip of his sherry, watching her over the rim of her glass. Go and comfort her, said a soft voice in his head, now is your chance. He didn't know what to do or say, though, so he did and said nothing. She said nothing, but finished her second glass of sherry fairly quickly. Severus rose to refill it, but she shook her head and he nodded and sank into his chair again. "It seems a bit harsh," he said finally, "treating you so for something that was not your fault."

Aislinn shrugged. "She prefers to pretend I don't exist," she said bluntly. "Particularly since she had another daughter when I was halfway through my time here."

Severus raised an eyebrow, and his mind began churning, piecing together information. The Seventh Year students remembered her from when they were First Years, which meant it had been seven years since she'd left Hogwarts, and her sister was born when she was halfway through, so around her fourth year. Which would have been eleven years ago. And that meant… "Your sister is in Slytherin," he concluded, aloud.

She stared at him for a moment, then suddenly started laughing. "You didn't know that? Honestly, Severus, I thought you were being obtuse this evening. And I thought you kept calling me 'Miss Carlisle' to tell me that you knew Amber was my sister." She shook her head slightly and raised her empty glass to her lips, then frowned at it, as though suddenly realizing it was empty. "I wonder which one of us won that one then…"

Severus, however, was too busy staring at her. Amber Carlisle, the girl he'd been watching the first day of school, the evening of the Feast, the one he'd had to chase to her dormitory so often. The one who always talked back to him in class and had such an engaging smile and a penchant for detention… That girl was Aislinn's sister? He took a deep breath and shook his head, clearing his thoughts. "I suppose I should have expected that," he conceded, "but I must admit that I had no clue."

Aislinn shrugged. "Just as well. Mother would probably prefer no one knew she and I are related."

There was something of a warning in that, and Severus nodded slowly, frowning. As his mind worked past the shock that Aislinn had a sister who was one of his own students, and a Slytherin at that, he found himself suddenly reassessing Aislinn's earlier comments to him. Trapped by her name, was she? Suddenly, he thought he could see that.

He stood and went back to the sideboard, pouring himself another glass of sherry, and bringing the bottle to refill her glass as well. "Try to make that one last more than two minutes," he chastised, then returned the bottle to its place. He moved his chair a bit closer to hers, and seated himself again. She gave him a slightly grateful smile.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and sipped.

A silence fell between them, but it was oddly comfortable. A simple matter of two people sitting in comfortable chairs with sherry and a mutual understanding. Well, Severus, at least, knew there was a mutual understanding, though he doubted Aislinn knew it.

"Slytherin," he began quietly, taking a deep interest in his glass, "has one very serious fault. Though if you repeat that, I will deny I ever said it." Aislinn's lips quirked into a smile. "There is such a great emphasis on being of the 'right' family, which is unfortunate. It's the one thing a person can't control—the situation into which he or she was born." Severus took another sip. "It took me better than fifteen years to realize that," he confided, "and I'm still not likely to say it when many can hear it. But being of the right kind of family has so little bearing on anything. Cesspools of inbreeding," he commented softly, "and a general weakening of ability overall."

Aislinn was watching him as though entranced. Perhaps she was. "I didn't have the 'right' kind of family either," he confessed quietly. "Pureblood, yes, but hardly the nobility that the Malfoys and Crabbes of the world have cultivated."

He watched her face for any sign of malice, but there was none. A bit of curiosity, perhaps, but nothing more. "I've never heard you speak of your past," she said softly, taking another sip of sherry.

He sighed. "I suppose there isn't much I wish to remember."