Adrienne let herself into Catherine's house and set her suitcase down inside the door. Even though Catherine no longer really lived here – and now rarely even visited – it was as neat and tidy as if she had just had it cleaned. Blessings on the house-elves, Adrienne mused. They were somewhat rarer in America than they had been in Europe – Adrienne still remembered the look on Bobby's face when she'd suggested that they could use one – and she wondered if their attendance on this house was due to her visit, or if they kept it this way all the time.

Adrienne prowled around a bit on the ground floor – plenty of food in the pantry and a thoughtful supply of her favorite coffee – before catching sight of the pool and deciding to go for a swim. Unpacking efficiently in the guest room before slipping into her suit and heading downstairs made her feel that she had accomplished something, and was now entitled to enjoy herself.

She swam lazy laps for a long time, letting her mind wander. No kids to worry about – well, as a parent, you never really stopped worrying, but there was nothing to do about it at the moment – so she could allow herself to drift and just enjoy the sensation of the cool water moving across her skin. After a time, she began to get hungry and padded into the kitchen for a bite to eat. She was just debating whether or not it was worth making a proper meal just for herself when the doorbell rang.

She opened the door and found Severus Snape on the other side.

Even in the heat of the southwest, he was dressed in full black robes, gripping the handle of a silver-trimmed black trunk with a white-knuckled hand. Startled, she raised her eyes to his, and barely held back a gasp.

What happened to him?

"Good evening, Mrs. Kearney," he said with mechanical formality. His eyes were agonized in his stiffly set face. "I will be attending the Quadrennial Conference as well, and Catherine suggested that I might be able to stay here." He couldn't possibly realize what his appearance betrayed or he would never have managed to speak so coolly. "If it would not inconvenience you, of course," he added politely, with a brief bow in her direction.

Adrienne's mind raced. Whatever had happened to him must have been bad. Catherine wouldn't have suggested he stay here otherwise, not because of any concern about the house, but because she would not have imposed the company of a relative stranger on Adrienne unnecessarily. Catherine also expected Adrienne to realize that.

"Not at all," Adrienne answered calmly, hoping she was doing a better job of managing her expression than he was. "It will be nice to have the company." She held the door open and waited for him to step inside. "I was just about to make dinner, if you'd care to join me. You have time to get settled in while I get started on the food," she suggested.

"Thank you," he said blankly after a betraying interval during which he appeared to realize that she was waiting for a response.

"You can go upstairs to the bedroom on the left and unpack," Adrienne said carefully, wondering again what could possibly have reduced the capable and intelligent man she had met at Catherine's wedding to this. "I'll call you when supper is ready." She watched him nod automatically and start up the stairs.

Adrienne's first instinct was to Floo Catherine, but she had a feeling that if he came back downstairs and found her talking about him, he would be further upset. Resolving to find a safer way to contact Catherine as soon as possible, she went back to the kitchen to decide what to feed him.

He came downstairs when she called him for the simple meal she had prepared – steak, rolls, and a vegetable accompanied by a nice Bordeaux. His conversation was still coming with an effort, so Adrienne supplied a steady flow of nearly meaningless chatter to fill the void. As the meal progressed, she thought he began to relax just a little – when he had first arrived, he looked as though he might shatter under the pressure of his own tension – but that slight relaxation might be solely the product of the nice Bordeaux.

As a Frenchwoman, Adrienne was quite accustomed to wine, but the rate Severus Snape was downing it was still impressive. Fortunately, it – or the time difference – also made him sleepy, and he excused himself immediately after the meal and retired to his room.

----------

Severus appeared at breakfast the following morning looking slightly more composed, although still rather ghastly. He accepted a cup of coffee, refused everything else, murmured something about needing to get to the conference early to attend to something related to his registration and disappeared.

Adrienne was unspeakably relieved to see him go.

Almost before the front door closed behind him she was out of her chair and striding over to the fireplace. She tossed some Floo powder into the fireplace and knelt to stick her head into the flames and said "Stone House" very clearly.

What happened next was not what she expected. It felt like a huge hand shoved her violently out of the fireplace. She landed on her butt several feet away, still facing it, and saw the flames from the Floo powder extinguish themselves behind her.

She stayed put for a moment while she worked her way through a string of mental obscenities she could never utter aloud until the kids were fully grown. Catherine and her security! She should never have assumed Catherine would leave the Floo open even from one of her homes to another. Adrienne winced as she struggled to her feet. If Bobby were alive, he'd never let her hear the end of it.

She was straightening her robes when the fireplace flared again and Catherine's husband stepped out of the flames.

"Hello, Adrienne," he greeted her mildly, despite the wand he was holding at the ready. "Is everything all right?"

"Fine," she admitted guiltily. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Remus. I was hoping for a word with Catherine and rather stupidly assumed I'd be able to Floo her from here."

"It's no trouble," he assured her kindly, slipping his wand up his sleeve. "I'm afraid Kate isn't due back for a while, but I'd be happy to let her know you'd like to speak with her."

"No, that's all right," Adrienne said quickly. "I really don't want her to Floo here." As Remus' brows lifted slightly she added hastily, "I'm not sure when I'll be in, and it really wasn't that important."

"Well, if everything is well with you, I'll excuse myself and head back," Remus said kindly, his polite acceptance making Adrienne feel even worse.

"Won't you at least have a cup of coffee before you go?" she suggested. "Although I suppose it's a bit presumptuous of me to be offering you coffee in your own house."

Remus chuckled slightly, his amber eyes lighting with humor in a way that reminded Adrienne oddly of Catherine, despite the different colors of their eyes.

"I'd love a cup, thank you, and it didn't seem at all presumptuous. I've only spent a week here myself, so you're probably much more familiar with it than I am."

Adrienne deftly retrieved another mug and served Remus his coffee before seating herself across from him at the small kitchen table. "Actually, I helped a little when she was decorating it," she told him. "It has a few touches of my fantasy home in it. Catherine, being single at the time, could do things with her house that just weren't practical for us with a pair of little wizards running around."

Remus looked around thoughtfully, the open floor plan allowing him to see into the main rooms on the ground floor from his seat in the kitchen. "You did the guest room upstairs," he mused aloud, "and the downstairs bath, maybe parts of the dining room, and the artwork flanking the windows over there." He met her eyes again and smiled. "The guest room is very nice. It really suits the house, and the design takes advantage of the little balcony."

"How did you know that? Did Catherine tell you?"

"No, but I know Kate fairly well," he said casually. "All I had to do was eliminate the things that she chose herself."

Adrienne considered and decided she was not placing enough weight on the fact that the man before her was the one that Catherine had chosen for her husband. She took a deep breath and asked, "Can you tell me why Severus Snape showed up last night looking like he'd been through hell? Because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing in this situation. He looks like he needs something other than the chance to sit through three days of speeches on potion-making, but I don't know what it is." Remus listened intently to this recitation without any evidence of surprise.

"Kate was very sorry to spring this on you without warning," Remus told her calmly. "She did try to Floo you at home earlier to let you know before he came, but unfortunately she wasn't able to reach you before she had to leave again. Severus needed to be somewhere else for a time, and the conference was the best option under the circumstances. I'm afraid I can't tell you much more than that, but I don't believe Kate expected you to do anything in particular beyond allowing him to stay here."

"Can't tell me or won't?" Adrienne asked shrewdly.

"Can't in this case, although you're quite right that I wouldn't if I could," he replied equitably. Adrienne arched a brow in inquiry and he added with a small sigh, "I'm afraid Severus is not very fond of me. He never would have chosen to confide in me, and I won't use the fact that he has taken my wife into his confidence to intrude on his privacy. If he wants me to know what happened, he'll tell me himself."

"That doesn't bother you?" she asked curiously. "Catherine not telling you, I mean."

"No, that doesn't bother me." Was there a slight betraying emphasis as he spoke? "She would tell me if I asked, I'm just choosing not to ask."

"I guess that makes sense." Adrienne took a sip of her coffee. "Bobby never wanted to talk about his work with me, so I'm probably projecting a little."

Remus shot her a quickly assessing look before shifting his glance away.

"You were married to an Auror for quite some time," he said at last.

"Eight years."

"Would you mind if I asked you –" he hesitated.

"Go on," Adrienne prompted.

"There are times when I worry about something happening to her, but I don't want that to affect her work. I hate to think of Kate limiting herself in any way because of me. I wondered if you had any advice you could share with me."

Adrienne sat back in her chair. "The 'married to an Auror' discussion."

"Sorry?"

"I think I'm the one who should be sorry," Adrienne told Catherine's husband wryly. "Spouses of Aurors usually form an informal support network. Traditionally, the partner's spouse organizes the first get-together to introduce everyone. Being married to an Auror does present some special challenges, and it helps to have other people who've had similar experiences to talk to."

"Technically, I'm not sure I qualify, but I do still worry about her being in danger."

"I don't know how much I can help on that front," she admitted ruefully. "When you care about someone, you're going to worry, and none of us have ever figured out how to avoid it. You learn to live with it, or decide you can't, but there don't seem to be many other options." Remus nodded slightly as though this was not unexpected, and Adrienne continued.

"I think the impact of Bobby's work on our marriage was more significant in other areas. We really appreciated the time we spent together, but there was a lot of stuff we didn't talk about because we didn't want to ruin that time arguing about things that weren't really that important." A wistful look came into her eyes then. "But normal couples do argue over stupid things – the Floo bill, or who left the lab door unlocked, or whose turn it is to get rid of the garden gnomes – and the process of working through those is part of what builds your marriage. I don't want you to misunderstand me – Bobby and I loved each other, and I think we had a good marriage – but we didn't share as much as we could have, which is something I'm just as responsible for as he was. I protected him from a lot of the day-to-day irritations of running a household with two small kids, and he protected me from having to deal too much with his work."

"But you felt excluded," Remus said gently, his eyes warm with understanding and sympathy.

"Exactly," Adrienne agreed. "It was as if the Aurors all belonged to a private club, and didn't discuss anything that went on with someone who wasn't a member." She cocked her head to the side in thought. "Catherine was better than most of them that way. Bobby's first partner, when we were still dating, acted like I was a half-wit, incapable of understanding anything about their jobs. The one before Catherine – he was Bobby's partner when we got married – pretty much ignored me, but at least he was fairly polite about it. Catherine's really the first one who ever talked to me." Adrienne took another swallow of coffee. She was talking a lot, but Remus was a good listener and the spouses had often been unusually candid with each other. Unless Catherine returned to active duty, Adrienne might be the only one her husband knew who had been in the something like his position.

"When Bobby got home from a shift, I would ask how his day at work was, and he would smile and give me a kiss and tell me everything was 'fine' or that it had been 'just the usual' or something like that. The first time he did that in front of Catherine, she gave him this look and said something about not thinking it was all that ordinary to have an underground potions lab explode under an elementary school! They talked about it a little, and Bobby saw that I was interested – and not hysterical – and I think it helped. It was also one of the reasons Catherine and I became friends." Adrienne grinned. "I started suggesting we invite her over for supper a lot more often, which I hadn't with the others." Catherine's husband was looking rather thoughtful. "Sorry, I guess I've been rambling quite a bit. I'm not sure how much help I've been."

"Quite a lot, actually, and I really appreciate it," Remus said, glancing at the clock and rising to take his leave. "Thank you for taking the time, especially when you've other plans for the day."

"It was a pleasure," Adrienne said truthfully. "I didn't want Catherine to Floo me when it might upset Severus," she confessed, switching back to their earlier topic of discussion, "but maybe you could ask her to get in touch with me after the conference instead?"

"Of course," Remus agreed immediately, smiling and thanking her one last time before he stepped into the flames, said 'Stone House' and disappeared.

------------

A/N – A special thank you to those of you who have taken the time to comment on my work – I really appreciate it, and thank you also for your patience in waiting for updates as I juggle this story and Fallible. I was beginning to feel guilty about leaving Severus as miserable as he was at the end of the seventh chapter, so I thought I had better at least get him out of there without much more delay – but things will get better for him, I promise! ;-)