AUTHOR'S NOTE: Yes, my friends it is Super Bowl Sunday, and guess who's not watching either the big game or the commercials! Call me narrow-minded if you must, but I'm one of those oddities in America who actually believes there are better things to do with my time. But before we get to the feature presentation, here's a couple of messages for my reviewers:

Krew- Yes, I love Dickens. In fact, my beta-reader had to sit me down and have a talk with me about being a little too Dickensian in my writing style (don't worry, the worst offenders are not in this story, and as John Cleese would say, "Well, I got better!"—not that Dickens turned me into a newt). And have no fear, the set-up is almost done. In fact, this is the chapter in which Meli leaves the hospital wing! She's free, free as a bird—minus the feathers…and stuff.

Cinammon- All I can say is WOW. I am truly humbled by your review. Sorry for keeping you up 'til all hours, but I'm glad you liked it. A couple of things: First, how do we know Dumbledore's not a little bit daft in his off-hours? It's a rough job being headmaster of a school like Hogwarts, and there are times when I think he's a little nutters in JKR (in a good way, of course). I will admit, though, that that particular scene is one that Snarky and I came up with in the wee hours of the morning, which might account for it. Secondly, I used to be a full-out Gryffindor, but the influences of my grandmother and the very Slytherin Snarky have delightfully corrupted me, so I don't know anymore where I'd be Sorted; I think Slytherin would be kinda fun, though. Thirdly, I do apologize for devastating you over Meli's death; originally, the first chapter of "Dream" was the last chapter of "Selkirk", but I moved it when I actually posted "Dream" because it worked better in the sequel. I'm glad you kept reading, though, and found out the happy facts of it. Fourthly, stay tuned for the rest of Sharpie's story; I thought it was finished myself, and then I had a rather inconvenient epiphany, right in the middle of serving on a jury—I do not recommend having epiphanies during jury duty. The judge gets a little annoyed when a juror's eyes suddenly glaze over. And lastly, in the matter of Rasa's full-time assistant…Sorry, had to wait out a bout of maniacal laughter…Ahem. You'll get to meet him in Chapter 5, and I don't think he'll disappoint…snicker.

Thanks for the reviews, and now without further ado, here's Chapter 4.

AE

Chapter 4: Laid to Rest

Zarekael and Snape did, indeed, return within the hour, and while neither looked particularly thrilled with his lot in life, they didn't seem too much worse for the trip, all things considered. Zarekael, not surprisingly, fell immediately on his bed and sank into an exhausted sleep not long afterward, leaving Snape and Dumbledore to remove his robes. The Potions master, also not surprisingly, preferred not to stay and socialize, so, after replacing all evidence of his and Zarekael's recent activities in the satchel, he departed in silence.

-

Meli's funeral was scheduled for a week and a half after her death, which gave her time to finish her recovery and actually be at liberty for a few days beforehand. She was still a little twitchy, but Poppy's constitution wouldn't stand for her and Zarekael's joint presence in the hospital wing for an hour longer.

Zarekael left first, and Meli had no doubt that his departure made a serious impression on a number of people. It was widely known that her body was being kept in that room until it could be cremated, and her erstwhile roommate left quite calmly, apparently not at all bothered by the presence of a supposed corpse the next bed over.

Meli herself left a day later, smuggled out under an invisibility cloak she suspected of being "borrowed" from Harry Potter without his knowledge, and took up residence in a remote section of the dungeons. Dumbledore had promised to get back to her as soon as there was work for her, but, understandably, there wasn't exactly a caseload ready and waiting to be picked up. That meant that, when she didn't have visitors, she had a great deal of spare time, which meant that her choices were still reading or sleeping. The only time it was safe for her to leave her rooms was at night, which she did at every opportunity, and it was in that way that she inadvertently stumbled over the Weasleys' graduation prank in progress.

She enjoyed the show very much, but it threw her into a despondent mood. The Weasley twins meant well, of course, and they certainly couldn't have known that one of the Skulkers was watching their every move…but it recalled to her the old days, when life had been simple, all four of them had been alive, and friends truly were friends.

Dumbledore, perhaps hoping to pull her out of her apparent depression, assigned her to a pre-doomed mission with Snape, on the grounds that she might be able to help the Potions master remain calm. The one disadvantage was that she no longer had a wand, for, not having expected to survive her own death, she had willed hers away to Andrea.

She managed to turn this to her advantage, however, and used it as an excuse to get outside the castle. Snape lent her his wand to create her very first Rasa glamourie, and with that identity in place, she apparated to Diagon Alley to buy herself a new one.

-

Meli stepped into Ollivander's with the same quiet reverence she had exhibited seventeen years before, but her soft step served no practical purpose; Ollivander heard her just as clearly now as he had then. He smiled at her from behind the counter.

"Good morning," he said politely. He did not use her name; he did not know her name.

"Good morning," she replied, a note of uncertainty to her voice. "Mr. Ollivander?" She tipped her head inquisitively to one side, dislodging a pile of red-gold curls from her shoulder and gazing at him with bright green eyes.

He nodded. "I am, indeed." An odd gleam of interest touched his silver eyes. "I judge by your accent that you are not a local?"

Meli smiled slightly. "Guilty as charged," she lied, sharply cornering the r in the last word. "I just moved here to take care of my cousin, but her house is a virtual death trap. I tripped and fell yesterday and broke my wand in three places."

"Ah." Ollivander took a long, measuring look at the short redhead he saw before him. "Yes, my American counterpart is still learning some of the more subtle secrets of making durable wands."

Meli shrugged. "I don't think anything short of an Impervius charm could have saved even a durable wand," she said ruefully. "It was a pretty nasty fall."

Ollivander nodded again, but she had no frame of reference for knowing what he might be nodding at. There was no tracking the thoughts and ideas that passed through the mind behind those eyes.

"Well," he said at last, "it must, of course, be replaced. Let us see what we shall find."

And now came the hardest part. It had taken two hours to find her first wand, and it was generally accepted that replacement wands were always harder to find. Her use of an appearance charm, while necessary, would probably make the process even more difficult.

Ollivander handed her at least a dozen wands, none of which were right, and then suddenly he paused, his eerie eyes peering at Meli and perhaps even peering through her.

"I don't think I caught your name," he said slowly.

Meli ducked her head sheepishly, a mannerism entirely foreign to her—and, in fact, to the person on whom she had based her current identity. "Sorry. I'm Mara Jade." She extended a hand, which Ollivander shook.

"Mara Jade." He smiled. "A pleasure to meet you." He stared at her a moment longer, nodded at whatever it was that he thought, and disappeared again among the boxes of wands. He was gone quite awhile, returning at last with a very old-looking box that had been recently dusted off. This he opened and set before her. "Try this one."

Meli smiled uncertainly. "You're not going to tell me what wood it's made of, how long it is, or what's at the core?" she asked, only half-joking. He hadn't given her the run-down on her last wand, either—not until it had chosen her.

"It is…an unusual wand," Ollivander replied, and her heart sank. "If it proves to be yours, I'll tell you, of course, but there's no need to explain beforehand."

Almost the exact speech, down to the inflection. At least this wand was of a different wood. Her previous wand had been reddish; this was a polished black. She resisted the urge to take a deep breath as she took up the wand.

A dark purple mist surrounded her and then, to her horror, a green light shaped like a cobra leapt forth from the wand's tip. As he had done seventeen years before, Ollivander remained perfectly calm, but he wore a strange little smile that gave Meli reason to believe she was found out.

"Ebony wood," he told her as the mist cleared. "Eleven inches. Werewolf fur at the core."

"W-werewolf?" Meli repeated.

He nodded once. "You have a great task before you, Mara Jade," he said. "The witch who carried the brother to that wand left a great deal undone at her untimely death." His smile turned sly. "I shall not, of course, say a word."

Meli permitted herself a reptilian smile. "Understood," she replied, still with her borrowed accent.

-

NOVEMBER 1981, THIRD YEAR AT HOGWARTS

All of the Camerons and Snape accompanied her to her parents' funeral. Meli did not recognize many people there; she had lived with her adoptive parents only two summers and two Christmases. Four figures were easily recognized, however: her grandparents Stafford and her grandparents Ebony. She had hoped that the former would ignore her, but to her unsurprised dismay, they naturally did not.

Mr. Stafford was a stiff, thin, disdainful man who considered himself well-bred on account of his expensive suits and his ill-mannered bearing, which was considered fashionable in certain elitist, though by no means elite, circles. His wife was a sharp whip of a woman, both in appearance and in words, who looked with suspicion on anyone who did not fit exactly her concept of all that was right and proper. As Meli had discovered through frustrating experience, the percentage of the population who fit into that concept mold was even smaller than the percentage who could match up to Madison Avenue's idea of physical perfection.

This gruesome twosome should by all rights have existed only in the pages of a Jane Austen novel, but even caricatures could come to life occasionally, and these two had done. They were convinced that their son had married beneath himself, they disapproved of mingling in lower circles, and they had suddenly discovered a pining for the old system of parish workhouses when Meli had appeared in their son's life. Mrs. Stafford had made it known at one point that she thought of Ebenezer Scrooge's philosophy of reducing the surplus population as highly enlightened—and then she had explained it in cruel detail to Meli, who was just eleven at the time. Meli herself was not much bothered by it, and in fact developed instantly a very low opinion of both her paternal grandparents' intelligence on the basis of that conversation, but she was also aware that she was not a typical eleven year-old and that the woman's intention had been to degrade and hurt her. That understanding did nothing more than lower her opinion even further.

At the approach of this congenial couple, a subtle change came over everyone in Meli's party. Snape, who stood beside her, adopted a disdainful countenance of his own, and the Camerons drew themselves up as a company of avenging angels prepared to strike if so much as a snide syllable emerged from the Staffords. Meli herself closed her expression as she had previously done only for her natural grandfather when weathering his punishments.

"And what do you think you're doing here?" Mrs. Stafford sniffed. "It's bad enough that you got him killed; now you have to desecrate his funeral, too!"

"Of all the insults!" Mr. Stafford added. "Coming where you're not wanted—"

"You seem to have a mistaken impression of who and what is unwanted," Snape interjected smoothly, his tone both silky and deadly. "This is a place of mourning, not of petty foolishness, and what is not wanted is rabble styling itself as nobility, as if it had a right. Now that I've properly informed you, I suggest that you make honorable use of the information and leave immediately."

The Staffords, stunned though they might be at such a reproof, were not so easily uprooted. "And who in God's name are you?" Mr. Stafford demanded.

"There's no need to invoke the name of a deity above yourself, and consequently one in whom you obviously don't believe," Snape returned coldly. "And all you need know is that I'm the one who will remove you if you don't remove yourselves." So saying, he drew himself up to his full height and glared at the Staffords from a vantage point of at least six inches until at last they relented and slinked away, making failed efforts at holding onto some shred of manufactured dignity.

It was Scott Cameron who spoke next. "Woah," he said crossing his arms and grinning. "That was cool."

Meli caught Snape's eye and offered a tiny smile. "Thanks."

Before anything further could be said, Meli's other grandparents joined them. The difference between the Staffords and the Ebonys could not be more marked, and that observation alone was a source of great comfort to Meli. Grandfather Ebony was also tall and thin, but his long face retained a boyish playfulness that even deep wrinkles could not obscure. Grandmother Ebony was a stereotypical grandmotherly woman, down to the deep dimples in her fleshy cheeks and the half-moon spectacles perched on the end of her nose. These two beamed brightly at the Camerons, at Snape, and especially at Meli, spreading rays of sunshine everywhere they looked. Through these smiles, though, Meli was oddly comforted to see what she had not perceived in the Staffords' haughty countenances: evidence of tragic tears held at bay. It was not pride that kept the tears from flowing but rather the temporary victory of joy at seeing…her.

"Oh, dear, I'm so glad you made it," Grandmother said, catching Meli in a strong hug. "Everything happened so quickly, I wasn't sure the headmaster got my letter in time."

Meli smiled solemnly as her grandmother released her and stepped back. "I'm glad I made it, too," she replied. She politely indicated Snape. "This is my chemistry teacher, Mr. Snape. Sir, these are my grandparents, Henry and Rose Ebony."

Snape offered a half-bow and shook Grandfather's hand. There was no need to introduce the Camerons; the Ebonys had met them several times while visiting Meli's family.

"Thank you for bringing her, Mr. Snape," Grandfather said. "I only wish we could have met under better circumstances."

Snape nodded politely.

Grandmother smiled and leaned over to whisper in Meli's ear. "I like him better than Professor Brewer," she confided. "His eyes aren't glazed over with idiocy."

Meli smiled back but couldn't trust herself to formulate a suitable verbal reply.

-

PRESENT: MID-JUNE

Meli arrived early to her own funeral, which, though she was unaware of it, was what a number of her acquaintances had always predicted she would do. Her time of arrival was largely owing to the role she had adopted, but Dumbledore had also asked her to come a bit ahead of time, as there was someone he wanted her to meet.

"Ah, Rasa," the headmaster said, smiling as he strode over to her, accompanied by a shabby-looking man. "Permit me to introduce you to our newest teacher. This is Remus Lupin, our former and current Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Remus, this is Rasa."

Meli looked on her replacement with new interest. "Professor Lupin," she said cordially. "It's a pleasure—indeed, I should say an honor, to meet one of the legendary Marauders."

Lupin smiled faintly. "The honor is mine," he replied mildly. "I understand you'll be making others as nonexistent as you yourself are?"

"Who better to set the example than someone who's successfully done it?" she countered, offering her hand.

"Well said." He, too, extended his hand to shake hers, but then a very odd thing happened.

The left side of Meli's robe, into which she'd sewn a sheath for her wand, pulled back as Lupin's hand came forward. The wand sheath jerked behind her back with such force that it nearly turned her around.

Meli felt her smile freeze into place, saw Lupin's do the same as each realized what had happened. Dumbledore's eyebrows raised less than a millimeter in reaction…then the moment passed. Lupin caught and shook Meli's hand, then withdrew it and stepped back. Her wand slowly crept out from behind her back, bringing the corner of her robe with it.

"I always knew I preferred human company to that of…certain solitary magical creatures," Lupin commented. "But I had no idea that the feeling was mutual."

"It is a wasted day in which someone does not learn something new," Meli replied. Such as the fact that there's truth to the rumors that you're a werewolf, Professor Lupin. A pity my wand had to betray itself in proving that, but on the bright side, you had no way of knowing what was at the core of Meli Ebony's wand and therefore no way of associating her with me. "However, I have found in my short, eventful life that some things are accidentally learned, and that not all lessons are meant to be passed on."

Again, he smiled, and she caught a subtle trace of understanding in it. "Once more, well said."

-

Rose and Henry Ebony had not been to Hogwarts since their granddaughter had graduated ten years before, but to Rose the old castle looked much the same, at least on its surface. Some of the stonework was damaged in places, and the corridors still smelled faintly of smoke, but the school itself had lost none of its majesty.

In place of school and House banners in the Great Hall, there were black hangings and drapes. The dining tables had been removed and replaced with padded benches akin to church pews, and the faculty table was likewise gone, making way for a closed black casket.

The casket, Rose knew, was entirely symbolic. Meli had been the last blood descendent of Voldemort, and Dark Lords liked to use remains of blood relatives for Dark spells or nasty experiments. Dumbledore himself had notified her adoptive family that Meli had requested immediate cremation and dispersal, and that her wishes had been carried out with all possible care and speed.

"Hello, Mum and Dad."

Rose turned to see her only living child standing beside her. "Amber, you came!"

Amber, a tallish woman who looked as if she could have taught Audrey Hepburn a thing or two about style and poise, smiled somberly. "It's the least I could do," she replied. "Meli brought pride to the family by dying a hero. How could I not come?"

Henry nodded. "It's good to see you, even under the circumstances," he said.

Amber was an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries, and Rose had discovered that even wizards generally didn't know what that meant. Based upon Amber's personality and abilities, her parents assumed that it was a sort of magical spook agency, but Amber hadn't told, and they wouldn't ask. All that anyone knew for certain was that her job required odd hours and kept her from seeing her family much, even over holidays. She hadn't been to Christmas dinner in six years.

"You are the Ebonys, I presume?" a gentle voice inquired.

They looked to the side and found there a young woman with thick, black hair pulled into a single plait down her back. She might have been eighteen or twenty, but the dignity with which she carried herself belonged to a much older time.

"We are," Amber answered, regarding this stranger with undisguised interest.

"My name is Lizzie," the young woman replied. "I volunteered to help—" She broke off, then spoke again, more slowly and with apparent difficulty. "It's good to see you here; Professor Dumbledore was hoping you could come. Please, follow me."

Lizzie led them to the front of the hall, then stood aside and motioned for them to enter a particular row.

"Isn't this the family section?" Amber asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise. They had hardly known Meli, after all, and while she had written regularly, they hadn't seen her since her fiancé's death ten years ago.

Lizzie, too, raised her eyebrows. "You are her family," she replied. "She always thought of you so. Meli knew that…that she could die at any time, and she left specific instructions that you be seated here at her funeral."

The Ebonys all exchanged uncertain glances, but they silently filed into the row Lizzie had indicated. They were alone there, Rose noticed; if the family of Meli's fiancé had come, or the wizarding family who had taken her in after her parents' deaths, they were sitting elsewhere. She meant to ask Lizzie about it, but when she turned to do so, the black-haired girl had gone.

-

"Lizzie" slipped out of the Great Hall and ducked into an alcove, then buried her sleeves in her eyes. If she couldn't make it through this without crying, she didn't see how she was going to survive the rest of the funeral at all.

It had been a decade since she'd seen her grandparents and even longer since she'd seen her aunt. To see them now, to hear their voices, to talk with them, yet not to touch them or really converse with them, broke her heart more than anything else having to do with this charade. She could hold out on the Camerons, the Fells, even Andrea, simply because she must, but to interact with the Ebonys, who had barely known her and loved her anyway, and not to give the whole thing away—it was impossible. And yet it was crucial.

Amber would forgive her; she was an Unspeakable and understood such things. Her grandparents, however…

"Stop," she whispered viciously. "It's just a speck in your eye. Rub it out and go on."

She at last succeeded in chasing the water from her eyes and returned to the Great Hall. Attending her own funeral had seemed like a fun thing at first, but now her only thought was to ride it out without crying more than her own family did.

-

Several rows back from the Ebonys sat a nondescript family that no one recognized but whom no one really noticed, either. It appeared to be two sets of grandparents, a married couple, and their two sons, and the observer who concluded such would have been largely correct. One set of grandparents, outside of this charade, however, was in no way related to the rest of the family.

The elder of the two boys surveyed the other mourners through eyes reddened with tears, while his brother, though alert, seemed to have tearlessly withdrawn himself. The rest of the family were silent and pale, with no apparent contact with the world around them as they waited for the funeral to begin.

This silent bubble was breached only once, and that briefly, by the arrival of a young woman none of them knew. She bumped the arm of the faux grandfather, who sat next to the center aisle, and earnestly begged his pardon.

"Not at all, not at all," he replied, his Oxford accent just barely tainted by a trace of Welsh. "It's rather crowded; people are bound to bump into one another here."

The girl smiled gratefully and caught a lock of black hair that had strayed from her thick braid, tucking the escapee behind her ear. "Thank you," she said, then looked at the other seven family members. "Thank you all," she added inexplicably, then faded away into the crowd.

The faux grandfather turned to his wife. "Have you ever felt that someone you couldn't see through was looking through you?" he asked in an undertone.

She smiled sadly. "Only with Crimson," she answered.

-

Meli had not expected a huge turnout; she was hardly a social butterfly, and she knew that few, if any, of her students, Muggle or wizard, would ever consider her a great mentor or role model. She hadn't exactly gone out of her way to be liked, and she had specifically gone out of her way not to make friends.

It was a surprise, therefore, to see the Great Hall nearly full. The entire Order of the Phoenix had turned out, along with a number of Order supporters and several Hogwarts students and their families.

How ironic, Meli reflected, catching sight of the Abelmore brood. Six of the twelve children were current Hufflepuffs who had cowered under her glare for a year. All I had to do to become popular and beloved was to die.

She resisted the urge to shake her head; such a motion was out of character for Lizzie Hexam in this time and place.

At Dumbledore's half-joking suggestion, she was attending her own funeral; at her own request, she would be participating. After her brief encounter with the people she believed to be the Camerons and the Fells (it was hard to be certain; Andrea had done a splendid job with their appearance charms), she had proceeded to the front of the Hall, where the other participants were seated. Snape and Andrea nodded politely to her, while Dumbledore consulted his watch, then stood to take his place behind a podium positioned in front of the casket.

The low murmuring of those gathered bled away into silence, and all eyes turned to focus on the headmaster.

"Friends and family," he began in a clear, resonant voice, "we come together today to celebrate the life of Meli Ailsa Ebony. Though she has fallen in battle, her spirit lives on among us, and I believe that she would wish us to remember the good rather than to dwell on her loss."

Actually, I'd prefer you all to forget about me, Meli thought peevishly. This is all rather embarrassing and silly—all the more so because most of you hated me. And Albus, you can stop with the tongue-in-cheek eulogy any time.

"Professor Snape now has a few words to say."

Snape replaced Dumbledore at the podium and read, with minimal inflection, an obituary that he and the headmaster had carefully prepared. He had to walk the unenviable tightrope of appearing to the Order to have been Meli's friend while simultaneously appearing to Voldemort to have been her covert enemy. It had required hours of trimming and tweaking the facts and connotative language to create a suitably universal obituary, but they had managed it at last.

It did cover all of the bases, though, Meli thought. He talked about her time as a student and prankster, her teaching in Little Whinging, and her year teaching at Hogwarts, and he did so matter-of-factly. It probably helped his delivery that he knew Meli to be alive, well, and sitting not two meters away, but she thought he'd have pulled it off admirably in any case.

Next came Andrea, who did not know that Meli was alive, did not have the need to be dispassionate, and did not want to stick to the cut-and-dried facts. It was from her that the mourners heard tales of Meli's hell-raising escapades, her determined loyalty as a friend, and her tenacious dedication to ridding the world of Voldemort and his ilk. Where Snape had called Meli "memorable" (no one, least of all the Dark Lord himself, could argue that point), Andrea named her a hero and a martyr and went so far as to call upon all present to look on her sacrifice and devotion to the cause as an example to be lived up to.

By the end of that spirited tirade, Meli would gladly have dug a hole and buried herself in it had the option been viable. She had now dancing in her head the mortifying picture of herself dressed in red-and-white striped trousers, a blue waistcoat, a star-spangled top hat, and a white goatee, jabbing her finger out of a poster that screamed, "I WANT YOU TO JOIN THE ORDER AND BRING DOWN VOLDEMORT!"

I doubt she meant to make me a rallying point for propaganda, Meli reflected darkly, but all the same, I'd prefer to be as unobtrusive in death as I was in life.

Unfortunately, the only way to have accomplished that would be to have died in her sleep, which hadn't been an available choice at the time.

Dumbledore returned to the podium in Andrea's wake and offered what he had dubbed a "comforting word". Except for the fact that there were no readings attached, Meli considered it a misnamed homily. He never outright quoted the Twenty-Third Psalm, for instance, but he certainly alluded to it indirectly some half-dozen times, and he spoke of expecting to see Meli again someday (though she suspected that statement of being sardonic rather than theological).

He finished his brief address by informing those present that Meli's favorite poet had been Robert Burns, and then he called forward "a longtime acquaintance of Meli's" to sing her a proper send-off.

Proper send-off, indeed, Meli thought, amused. More of a double-message, if you ask me. If they knew who was singing this…

She barely restrained a smirk, then, in a trained voice very different from the high, impish croon they had all come to know and fear, she sang her own ironical epitaph:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear.
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidled i' the burn,
From morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine;
And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mine;
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my dear.
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

At the completion of the song, Meli silently resumed her seat, carefully not looking at anyone who knew her to be still among the living and even more carefully avoiding Andrea, who was actually crying. Dumbledore stood and dismissed the mourners, inviting them to stay for a luncheon, which was to be served out by the lake.

As people slowly filed past the Ebonys, Meli at last felt fully the unreality of what had just happened. She was now dead—finally and officially dead. It did not require a Dickensian soliloquy to explain the facts; it had only required time for those facts to sink in. After the fashion of John Harmon, she belonged neither to this world nor to the next, and the birth of Rasa was slim comfort when viewed in that context.

Andrea thanked her for her singing, then slipped off to talk with the Ebonys; Meli was too frozen in her reflections to respond. Snape apparently picked up on her mood, for he cleared his throat and caught her eye.

"Will you be going to the luncheon, Miss Hexam?" he asked. "Or had you rather go home?"

Meli stirred and managed a wan smile. "Home sounds best," she replied. "I think it would be best if I didn't eat just now."

"Do you require any assistance?" he persisted.

Translation, Meli thought sardonically, you want an excuse to escape. Well, be it overzealous mediwitches or funeral luncheons, I am happy to assist.

"If I could avail myself of your arm, sir," she said quietly, "I would be much obliged to you."

Snape narrowed his eyes in something like a slight smile. "Then consider yourself obliged, Miss Hexam," he returned, then offered her his arm. "Although in truth, the pleasure is mine."

FURTHER AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just in case anyone reading this happens to have read my reviews from earlier today, let me set any potential fears to rest. I will be giving up reading fanfic for Lent (my sweet tooth is comparable to Meli's, so giving up snacks wasn't a real option; this year I figured we'd make a real sacrifice), but please rest assured that this does not include proofing my own work or posting it. I hope to update as regularly as possible, no matter where we are in relation to Ash Wednesday.
AE