Amber's eyes flew open wide, and she jumped away from the chair she had been about to sit in. "I-I'm s-s-sorry," she stammered. "I c-c-couldn't sleep and…"

Severus held up a hand. "Shh," he whispered. "You'll wake the whole school. Come here," he patted the cushion beside him. She looked warily at him for a moment, and he sighed softly. "Come here," he repeated, a bit more forcefully. "I'm not going to bite you."

Finally, she edged forward and sat beside him, the sofa sinking slightly. She scooted against the arm, putting as much distance between herself and him as she could, and picked up a pillow, hugging it against her. Severus turned towards her, bending one knee and draping his arm over the back of the couch, and he studied her for a moment. "Rough night, isn't it?" he asked finally, barely a whisper.

She nodded, big-eyed and trembling slightly. "Yes," she whispered back. "I couldn't sleep."

He tried to smile, but didn't think he accomplished anything more than a lessening of his scowl. "Neither could I," he admitted. "I think perhaps we're awake for the same reason."

She was still watching him warily, as though he were a dangerous animal she was afraid would attack her, and Severus felt a momentary pang of guilt and pity for her. He was truly a dismal Head of House that his own students were terrified of him to that extent.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked her quietly, not sure if he hoped she'd say yes or no. As it happened, she said neither, but continued to watch him with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. He sighed again. "Amber," he said softly, "really, stop looking at me like I'm a wild boar. I'm not going to hurt you." In truth, it hurt him that she seemed so frightened of him. It was one thing to make his students wonder if he really could read their minds and if he really would let them die if they made their cauldrons explode… but it was something else entirely for a young Slytherin to be looking at him like he might decide to have her for breakfast.

She swallowed hard. "I miss her," she offered quietly.

Severus reached over and patted her bare foot. "I miss her, too," he replied. "Come here," he gestured for her to come closer, and she did. He settled an arm around her shoulders, and after a moment of leaning stiffly against him, she relaxed. "Were you close?" he asked softly, realizing that he didn't know anything at all about the relationship Aislinn and Amber had shared. In fact, he didn't know anything about the relationship sisters should share.

"I barely knew she existed until a couple of months ago," Amber replied.

Severus was taken aback, and he stared at the top of her head for a moment. "You mean your parents never told you that you had a sister?"

She shook her head. "I knew I had a sister, but the way they talked about her, I thought she was a squib or something. I think I remember meeting her once when I was real little, but…" she trailed away, and Severus felt a bubble of anger rising in his throat. What kind of parents were those people?

"I see," he said softly.

"I don't know that she knew who I was, either, at first. She found me…" Amber stopped abruptly, and Severus gave her shoulder a squeeze.

"Yes?"

"I was lost," Amber said, turning her head to look up at him, and for a moment he could see Aislinn. Only a moment, though, and it was Amber again. "I was already late for Charms and I didn't know where I was and I was afraid of what would happen if I walked in late… and then she turned up and showed me the way. I don't think she knew who I was until I told her my name, and I didn't know who she was until a week later."

Severus made a soft, indistinguishable noise, and patted her shoulder, hoping he was being encouraging. It was odd, but somehow the pain seemed less just now.

"I wish I'd known her longer. She was really cool."

This time he had a bit more success at a weak smile, though Amber wouldn't have been able to see it. "She was very cool," he agreed.

"How did you meet her? Was it just because you're both teachers? Were, I mean."

Once again, Severus squeezed her slightly. "No, it wasn't just because we were colleagues. She was actually my student many years ago," he said softly.

"Really?" Amber sat up for a moment and twisted to look at him. Severus let his hand fall away from her.

"Really," he affirmed. "The first year I taught her, she was one of my First Year students."

"Wow," the girl whispered, and he could almost hear the rest of that thought. You must be really old. "I bet she was really good, wasn't she?"

A slight smile touched Severus' lips at the confidence Amber seemed to have in her sister. He almost hated to burst her bubble, and he was tempted to lie, in the name of respect for the dead, but at the same time found something of a comfort in knowing that Aislinn had been human, with human faults. And perhaps Amber would find comfort in the same. In knowing that the sister she'd known for such a short time was not a goddess, unreachable except by prayer, but a woman with the same sorts of insecurities and inabilities as any other. "Terrible," he replied after a moment. There was a brief hesitation, and then a giggle from under his arm, and that giggle encouraged him. "She was simply abysmal in potions. Her hair was always falling into her cauldron, or worse yet into the fire, and despite repeated detentions, she could never seem to remember to tie it back. In fact, my rule about tying back long hair was a direct result of your sister." He absently stroked Amber's shoulder, his eyes on the flames leaping in the fireplace, his mind drifting somewhere a decade since dead. "And she never had the patience for trifles like measuring," he said softly. "And that used to infuriate me-- that she would just dump asphodel into the cauldron, and I'd go storming over to her... and she'd measure it out in her palm and tell me 'That's a teaspoon!' And then she'd dump it into the spoon and it always was, and she and I went round and round about that. She called it skill, I said it was luck and that she shouldn't rely on luck when a dash extra could turn a sleeping potion into a powerful poison."

"Was it luck or skill?" Amber asked him, and he looked at her for a moment, then snorted softly.

"Six months ago, I would have still insisted it was luck. Some degree of skill, of course, because you can't say that it's entirely luck-- she obviously knew about how much was in a teaspoon. But the precision I would have called luck." He frowned a bit. "Now I'm not so sure. Perhaps she did have a skill with it that I couldn't see." He shook his head, as though clearing a mist from it, and looked sternly down at Amber. "But luck or skill or psychic connection to the cauldron, it isn't a valid method for potion-making," he said dryly. "And she never seemed to understand that she needed to measure, if for no other reason than because I told her to."

Amber giggled again, though it wasn't as heartfelt this time, it seemed. "I don't think she liked to spend an hour on anything if she could do it some other way in five minutes."

Severus nodded against her head. "I think you're right about that," he said softly. "I don't think she liked to spend two minutes on anything if she could do it in one." The girl grew quiet again for a moment, and Severus thought for a bit. "You know," he mused, "I'm actually not sure that it's fair to her to say she was terrible in my class. She really wasn't. She was horrible at mixing the potions, and a royal klutz, but the theory came to her very quickly. When she was a Third Year, she was doing work I would have been pleased to see a Sixth Year doing."

"What's the theory?" Amber asked softly, and Severus grimaced. As a First Year, she was still learning technique and vocabulary; he provided the ingredients for their potions for them at that stage, and guided them, step by step, through the processes.

"Sparing you a great deal of detail that you'll get into next year," he said after a moment, "each ingredient has a purpose and a set of characteristics. Aislinn could look at the instructions for a potion, and she knew what it would do because she knew what aconite did and what shrivelfig did... and she could predict what would happen if you added lacewing. Of course, she wasn't always right," he smiled a bit, "but her logic was sound. If she would have measured the ingredients and tied back her hair, she might have been one of the more brilliant potions students I've ever taught. And if she had been a little more serious. But I don't think she cared for the process."

Amber nodded slightly. "I don't think I blame her," she murmured, and then gasped, and Severus chuckled.

"I know you don't like Potions, Miss Carlisle. Believe me, after sixteen years practice, I can tell who does and does not enjoy the class. It hardly matters, though. You have to take it, and you have it for another four years at least, so you might as well make peace with it, if nothing else." He found a smile on his face as she turned her head into his shoulder, and he stroked her hair softly.

"Professor McGonagall said she was really good at Transfiguration," Amber said, picking up the cushion again and hugging it.

"It wouldn't surprise me," Severus replied. "Transfiguration is one of the more amusing branches of magic, along with Charms, and your sister did like to be amused. She was always laughing and smiling."

"Was she in trouble a lot?" Amber asked, and again, Severus chuckled.

"Constantly," he replied dryly. "She was hardly a model student."

"What did she do that was so bad?" Amber had turned her eyes up to him again, and he couldn't help but smile.

"Oh, I don't know that it was so bad," he said softly. "Not in retrospect at least. But at the time I certainly thought she was one of the worst-behaved students I'd ever seen. She talked constantly. She even chattered when she was in detention, which was at least once a week, and it was the most inane babble..." He gathered Amber closer and leaned his cheek against her hair. "Odd, that the things that I found so infuriating when she was my student are the things I found endearing when she was a colleague."

"You were in love with her, weren't you?" Amber asked in a whisper, and for a moment, Severus was silent.

"Yes," he replied after a pause. "Very much so."

"Why?"

The corner of his mouth twitched into a sad smile. "I think because she was so full of life and... positively drunk on living. She made silly little things seem monumental, found pleasure in the autumn leaves and frost-covered grass and the patterns steam made when it rose from her teacup... And she never seemed concerned about anything."

Amber nodded again, but said nothing. This time it was her silence that encouraged him.

"She believed the most ridiculous rot I've ever heard," he said softly, his voice not carrying the derision which should have laced it at such a statement. "All those fairy tales that Muggles have invented over the years... I think she believed every one of them."

"That's why mum disowned her," Amber said matter-of-factly. "She went to live with the Muggles."

Severus raised an eyebrow. That was not what Aislinn had told him. He wondered if he would ever know the truth. "Well," he said quietly, "that's your mum's loss, then."

"I wish she were still here," Amber whispered softly, and turned to lean into Severus' arm again. He cradled her against him, shifting so she was leaning against his chest.

"I wish so too," he said softly. For a long moment, there was nothing but the crackling of the fireplace to dispel the quiet, and in the silence, Severus had the opportunity to reflect that if anyone walked in at that moment, he'd have a hard time explaining why he had a student curled up against him. For a moment, he considered separating himself from her, for the sake of propriety, but he could bring himself to move. Besides, he didn't think of her as anything other than a student and a child, and intent had to count for something.

"Can I ask you a question, Professor?" she asked suddenly, and he glanced down at her.

"Certainly," he replied, hoping it wasn't going to be anything too taxing to answer.

"Does the Sorting Hat ever put anyone in the wrong House?"

That took him by surprise, but he recovered quickly enough that he hoped he sounded convincing. "If it ever has, I didn't know about it."

"Oh."

"Why?" he asked softly, and she turned to look up at him again, her hair falling into her face. Instinctively, he moved the strand behind her ear. "Do you think you don't belong in Slytherin?"

Even in the faint firelight, he thought he could see her blushing, and she turned away again, picking up the cushion once more. "Sometimes," she admitted.

"Can I ask why not?" he asked quietly.

"It just seems like everyone else is so pushy and mean," she said softly. "I don't really have any friends here."

Severus shifted slightly. "We're not all so bad," he told her gently. "Ambitious, yes, and determined. And maybe even ruthless at times," most of the time, "but there are a lot of good people who are ambitious and determined. They aren't bad qualities, you know."

"But why does everyone have to be so…" she trailed off.

"Mean?" he offered, using her own word from a minute ago. She nodded.

"Yeah. I mean, can't you be ambitious and still be nice?"

He smiled slightly and hugged her close again. "Of course," he replied. "You just have to remember to be nice. I'm afraid that for most of us Slytherins, that's something we have to remind ourselves. It's easy to forget to be nice when you're focused so intently on achieving a goal." She seemed to accept that answer, and didn't say anything else for a moment. "I thought you were happy to be sorted into Slytherin," he commented softly.

"I was at first," she replied, just as softly.

"What changed your mind?"

She was quiet for a minute, then frowned. "Draco was teasing one of the Hufflepuff girls about her glasses. I don't know… it just seemed so pointless. But then everyone started ganging up on her, and she wasn't doing anything to any of us…"

Severus sighed softly. "Draco tries very hard to please his father, to be like his father. I don't think he realizes that his father is seldom arbitrarily cruel." That was a diplomatic way of saying that Lucius Malfoy always had a reason for tormenting people, and that reason was usually their parents.

"I want to make my parents proud of me," Amber replied. "But I don't think I have to be mean to do it."

Severus nodded. "Remember that, then. You don't have to be cruel to get what you want. Spend more time working on your goals and don't try to sabotage others and you'll go farther." You're the kind of person this House needs, he thought distantly. Someone who can remind the world that Slytherins are not all cruel and evil. He found himself hoping desperately that Amber didn't succumb to the pressure to be heartless and ruthless that so many of the Slytherins did.

She yawned suddenly, and Severus shifted himself again. "Why don't you go try to get some sleep?" he asked softly, but she shook her head.

"I don't really want to be alone," she whispered.

He nodded. Neither do I, he thought. That, however, was one sentiment he didn't voice. "All right," he replied. "You can stay here." He started to move, intending the chair for himself, but she stopped him with another whisper.

"Please," she begged softly, "just hold me for a little longer."

Once again, his mind protested that this was so far from proper that it wasn't even amusing. But, once more, he replied to himself that his intentions were pure and that had to count for something. Though, if anyone happened upon the male Potions teacher whom everyone knew to be a sad and lonely man holding one of his female students… he doubted that anyone would even ask what his intentions were. The damage to his reputation would be irreparable, and he would be lucky if he had a job afterwards.

But, somehow, that didn't seem so important right now. "All right," he replied again. "Just go to sleep." He had every intention of slipping out as soon as she did, but, as his own eyes drifted shut, he reflected that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

A/N: Again, thank you all for your reviews and comments! And Jenilyn, I'm so sorry, but Aislinn just had to die. She was created to die. These things happen.