Title: Warmth
Author: Sonya
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I don't own. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all associated characters, settings, etc., belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN, etc. Harry Potter and all associated characters, setting, props, etc., belong to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Inc., etc. No copyright infringement is intended, so please don't sue - all you'll get is a really bratty bird and some really spoiled rats.
Spoilers: Up to 'Wrecked' in the Buffyverse, up to "Goblet of Fire" in the Potterverse.
Pairings: Willow/Snape, Hermione/Viktor Krum, Draco/Ginny, Fred/Angelina. Other 'ships to be revealed later. ;)
Summary: "The place where you hold me is dark in a pocket of truth" - Indigo Girls, 'Virginia Woolf'
Author's Note: Just a reminder that this story takes place following "Goblet of Fire" - as in, "Order of the Phoenix" never happened. There will be overlaps, but there will also be differences, and there are no intentional spoilers. So, if you've read the book, you'll see some things familiar and some things not. If you haven't read the book and don't want to be spoiled - use your own judgement. If I don't tell you what's my idea and what's from the book, then you're not really being spoiled, right?
And if anyone cares, I have a Livejournal - username cissasghost - it occasionally contains fic-related ramblings.
"What the devil are you doing?"
Willow jumped, startled; Severus was standing just inside the doorway to Hogwarts' kitchens, puzzled and scowling.
"Baking cookies," she answered simply, and then looked away and back to her task.
Don't think, don't think about it, eggs go in next - where'd I put the eggs -
"Baking cookies," he parroted incredulously. "At three in the morning, in the main kitchens. I realize this is perhaps not the most significant issue raised by the situation, but what was wrong with your own kitchenette?"
"It was too small," she explained, cracking an egg on the side of her mixing bowl; a tiny fragment of shell slid into the dough, and she muttered and swore under her breath. "I wanted to make a few different kinds - I'm starting with chocolate chip 'cause everybody likes those, but I think I remember him really liking the peanut butter, but I'm not positive on that, that might have been Xander, so -" She fished the bit of eggshell out with one finger, balanced it on her fingertip long enough to flick it into a nearby sink. "- better safe than sorry, right?"
"And by "him", you mean Mr. Giles?" Severus guessed, as Willow added flour, baking soda and salt to the mixture and stirred. The spoon stuck, and the bowl nearly scooted off the counter.
"I need chocolate chips," she answered after several moments of frustrated struggle with her ingredients, wiping her hands on her robes and eyeing the dough critically. "Or - no, not yet. More flour, I think. Do you bake? I mean, you're a Potions Master, you should technically be really good at baking, I'd think -"
"And why, exactly, are you baking cookies for the man you slapped not an hour ago?" Severus pressed.
"Because he's Giles," Willow managed in a tiny voice. "I slapped Giles. I - chocolate chips. No, flour. You're distracting me!" She frowned and jabbed a finger in his general direction, before grabbing the bag of flour and, finding it light and nearly empty, up-ended it over the mixing bowl. The result was a powdery white mushroom cloud that had her backing away in a fit of coughing and sneezes.
"I always do that!" she exclaimed, waving a hand before her and advancing determinedly on the bowl, sniffling as she plowed her hands into the mixture and began working the flour in. She glanced sideways at Severus, who was watching her with a very confused, disbelieving expression on his face.
"I know, hands," she grimaced. "But it gets too thick for spoons; if you mess up the flour and you have to add more later it's just much easier to just dive right in and get your hands dirty - I mean, my hands aren't dirty or anything, they're just doughy, I washed them before I started. So, not as gross as it looks, really."
"Amazingly enough, I was not contemplating cookie dough," Severus drawled.
"Oh," Willow said, and nothing else; she stared assessingly down at the dough for a long moment, before beginning to scrape it from her fingers.
"Mr. Giles has left," Severus told her.
"He did?" Willow spun, distraught. "But - cookies - I wasn't done with the cookies -"
"I suppose you'll have to mail them," Severus suggested dryly.
"It's not the same," Willow protested. I think that was sarcasm, but I'm gonna just ignore that now. "But, better than nothing, I guess. I think it's chocolate-chip time now - I couldn't find those before."
"Dare I ask the purpose behind this?" Severus asked.
"I told you," Willow muttered distracted, stalking over to the pantry and pushing the door open with an elbow, her hands still irredeemably dough-covered. "Giles -"
" - would benefit greatly from the opportunity to scrub the third floor corridor after one of that infernal ghost's tantrums, under the supervision of Mr. Filch. Unfortunately, Dumbledore concurred with Mr. Giles that I lacked the authority to assign him detention."
"You tried to give Giles a detention?" Willow squeaked, unsure whether to be horrified or to burst into hysterical laughter at the mental image Severus' words produced. She frowned and opted for neither, instead diving back into her task, trying awkwardly to shift around the contents of the pantry with the still-clean backs of her hands. "You didn't need to do that - I mean, it's nice you were all irritated on my behalf and all, but there's some stuff that . . well, some of what he said was sort of . . right." She scrunched her eyes shut a moment, sucked in a breath through her nose and forced the tremor in her voice back down. "The pantry is the logical place to keep chocolate chips, isn't it? And I know they have them somewhere here 'cause we had chocolate chip muffins last week, and we've had them before too, they're sorta a rotating staple, alternating with the blueberry, which makes it sorta interesting 'cause they look similar at a glance and I don't like blueberries, so it's risky business at breakfast sometimes, you know, but what I'm getting at is that they must keep -"
"I'm gathering, from this little effort, that you wish a reconciliation," Severus cut her off. "If you are thinking of leaving -"
"I'm not," Willow hastily assured him.
"Good," Severus answered shortly, and then paused, seeming to consider his next words. "Do not expect me to ever forgive that man for the way he spoke to you. A slap was the least of what he deserved, but -"
"Sev-" Willow tried to interrupt.
" - but if, for some reason utterly incomprehensible to me, you actually wish to see him again in the future, I would strongly suggest you meet elsewhere. And do not tell me about it in advance, as I have no intention of leaving you alone in his company."
"Don't," Willow snapped.
"Don't what?" he retorted.
"Don't - be like that," she muttered. "All like I'm poor little victim-girl or something -"
"I was not implying any fault on -"
"Well, you should have been," Willow shot back. "It's just - there's stuff, okay? Stuff I didn't tell you about, though I was going to, it just - well it doesn't exactly come up in conversation, but it'd make tonight make a little more sense, and I shouldn't have slapped him and he's Giles and if you can't understand that -" She paused, took in his implacable expression, and sighed. "Then just don't, I guess, you don't have to, but don't be like that."
Severus said nothing; Willow gave up on the pantry and moved on to the nearest cabinet.
"You know there is a small army of wailing house elves just beyond those doors?" Severus commented after a long and awkward pause, folding his arms across his chest and nodding to some vague point behind him. Willow banged the cabinet door shut, realized she'd left a wide smear of flour across the wood, and grabbed frantically for a rag to wipe it away. There was none, so she used her sleeve, before moving on to the next cabinet. She was careful to wrap her now flour-coated sleeve around her hand when she opened this one.
"I told them they could take the night off," she murmured back distractedly; the cabinet contained extracts and liquors of every flavor imaginable, and a few she really didn't want to imagine, but no chocolate chips. She slammed it shut. "Don't they need to sleep sometime anyway?"
"One would think," Severus allowed. "I've never considered it."
"Well, you should," Willow snapped; the next cabinet was full of spices, what looked like hundreds of little jars full of greens and browns and yellows, odd shapes and sizes without labels. I guess they just know what's what. "They're making your breakfast and cleaning your socks and making your life all easy, aren't they? Shouldn't you know if they need to sleep? Maybe they're all sleep-deprived and -" she cut off at a hand on her arm.
"I can't find the chocolate chips," she explained, blinking up at Severus; something was making her eyes sting. Must have gotten flour in them.
"And that is obviously worthy of tears," he drawled.
"I'm not crying!" she insisted, pulling irritably away from him and shoving past him to get at the next cabinet; it was stocked with rice, in every shape and description. She slammed the door so hard it bounced open again; her nose was running, and she scrubbed impatiently at her face with her sleeve. The flour went up her nose and she sneezed and blinked and inhaled more flour. Hands settled on her shoulders and she jerked away, spinning on him as best as she could.
"I'm not -" she sneezed again, felt snot running down her upper lip and scrubbed it away with the back her hand, feeling miserably disgusting. "It's the flour, my eyes are running, I'm not crying!" she protested, though she had to gulp for air between words and couldn't seem to stem the flow of hot tears down her cheeks. "It's just the flour -"
"Willow," Severus said quietly, voice low and wavering and awkward.
"Stop it, leave me alone," she snapped out feebly; her nose wouldn't stop running. "Are there tissues around here?"
"Tissues?" Severus asked in a doubtful voice. "What - sort of tissues? I would expect the meats are in the larder."
"Not - don't you have tissues?" Willow exclaimed in exasperation, glaring up at him and sniffling, giving up on her face. "Little white pieces of soft paper-kinda stuff that you blow your nose on! How the hell do you survive without tissues?"
He produced a handkerchief silently and moved to wipe her face; she snatched it away from him, wiping at her nose and eyes with frantic movements, hard enough that she thought her face would likely be red and abraded in the morning. The cloth was soft and flimsy and she could feel wetness soaking through to her fingers.
"What have you done in the place of these 'tissues' all these months?" Severus asked carefully. "Your nose must have run before."
"I conjured some," Willow answered, sniffing and blinking furiously and pressing the cloth to her eyes.
"Then why not conjure some now, if you would find them comforting?" he suggested.
"Because I'm an idiot," Willow confessed, letting her hands fall away from her face, with the sodden handkerchief. So I'm crying, I guess. "Because I'm a rank, arrogant amateur." She slid down the wall of cabinets until she was crouching, and wrapped her arms around bent legs. Her forehead fell forward to rest on her knees. "I ruined my friends' lives and I think I can fix it with cookies, except I can't even do that 'cause I can't find the stupid chocolate chips, and you really don't get much more pathetic than that, do you?"
Severus had crouched down beside her, and when she glanced up she found herself looking directly into his impassive face. She looked away again quickly, scrubbing her nose on her skirts and wishing the floor would open up and swallow her. For a long moment there was no sound in the room but her sniffling.
I'm so sorry, Tara baby, I'm so sorry. Dawnie. Buffy. Ms. Calendar. Jesse. Oh god Jesse - it wasn't supposed to end up like this, you were supposed to be here, you and me and Xander and we were supposed to stick together and it was supposed to be okay - it was supposed to be okay if we stuck together and I didn't - I didn't Jesse, I left them, I messed everything up and I ran away and I left them and it's not okay and I'm not okay and -
"I had a sister," Severus suddenly announced. Willow blinked up at him.
"I didn't know that," she responded, not knowing what else to say.
"Of course not, considering I didn't tell you," he retorted derisively, and she shrank back, tucking herself in against the cabinet.
"Oh," she sniffled. "Well, I'm sorry. How did she die?"
"I don't know," he snapped. Willow blinked.
"Uh- okay," she stammered. "I'm sorry, it's just you said 'had', so, I thought -"
"She may have died," he went on flatly, right over top of her rambling apologies. "It's likely, in fact. But I don't know how. I didn't find her."
"She got lost?" Willow ventured hesitantly, feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole. It wasn't supposed to be this way. And, why are we talking about his sister?
Because of course we ought to be focused on you, because you're the one having the crisis and everyone ought to stop having lives and traumas of their own and they ought to just focus on feeling really, really sorry for you, right?
You rank, arrogant amateur -
"She ran away," Severus answered, and moved stiffly to sit beside her on the floor, just far enough away not to be touching, his long legs in their black trousers splayed out before him, his hands settling limp in his lap. "I traced her as far as Muggle London, but -" He stopped, staring into nothing.
"But?" Willow prompted carefully.
"But the Muggle police had never seen a Wizarding photo before and thought I was playing a prank, and when I tried to search myself I was robbed, beaten and left in an alley," he continued, voice level, emotionless, as if everything he might have felt about the experience had long since drained away. "I spent a memorably evening in the company of an elderly woman named Martha who apparently lived in said alley and thought I was Jesus. Then the Aurors came and retrieved me and threw me into a holding cell somewhere beneath the Ministry, told me I was expelled from Hogwarts, and that I would have a hearing before the Wizengamot the next day to determine whether I would go to Azkaban or be released into my father's custody."
"A hearing for what?" Willow demanded, pulling a little ways out of her huddle and inching towards him. He was still staring straight ahead, focused intently on a butter churn. "You didn't do anything!"
"Oh, but I did," he said, and there was the faintest trace of bitterness. "I showed a Wizarding photo to Muggle police."
"But your sister was missing!" Willow protested. "If it was the only kind of picture you had -"
"I did attempt to explain that," he said mildly. "They were far more interested in that line of thinking once my father and his checkbook arrived."
"He bribed them?" Willow guessed, feeling increasingly horrified.
"Of course not," Severus scoffed, though his tone dripped sarcasm. "A Snape, the noble old house of Snape, resort to such low means? Never! No, he made a very generous contribution to old Barty Crouch's election campaign. Promised to speak for him, too, and hold a fund-raising dinner at the Manor, I believe."
"That's -" Willow found herself at a loss for words.
"The way of the world," he finished flatly. "Though I was less inclined to see things that way at the age of seventeen. So when I was approached by certain people back at Hogwarts, with the suggestion that they could help me both find my sister and change the way of the world . . " He trailed off again.
"You asked where you could sign up," Willow finished for him, feeling nauseous. I would have. I would have too.
Didn't I, too?
No, I didn't. I was never that honest with myself. Other people paid for my conscience.
Is that worse?
Does it matter which is worse? None of it's good.
"It wasn't much of a stretch, you must understand, to believe Muggles to be dangerous and sub-human," he went on, "given my recent experience of them."
"Guess not," Willow answered quietly, and then another thought occurred to her. "If your father was such a big important person -"
"Why didn't he make some effort to find Valentina himself?" Severus interrupted.
"That was - that's her name?" Willow stumbled over past and present tense.
"Valentina Ignatia Snape," he said. "She was fourteen, and she left a note."
Willow waited, thinking there must be more to the answer than that.
"That's it?" she finally exclaimed, incredulous. "Your father didn't look for her because - what, she asked him not to?"
"More or less," Severus said levelly, though his voice seemed to vibrate with something dark and carefully checked. "Also it might have caused a scandal. There was a rumor going through the school, within a few weeks, that my mother's family had intervened when they heard her grades were slipping at Hogwarts, and insisted she be sent off to Durmstrang. It was vaguely unsavory, but not as sordid as it could have been. I think after a while my father almost believed it himself."
"I think I would have gone insane," Willow offered.
"You would not," he said with flat finality, and turned to her; she wanted to look away, but found she couldn't quite make herself do it. "I cannot imagine what would break you. I do not understand how you survived."
"Me either," Willow said with a shrug, trying to make light of it. It didn't quite work, and her lopsided grin wavered and finally crumpled. "Because I'm a terrible person," she blurted out, voice catching and tears hovering. I can't start crying again. I feel like something inside me would break and I'd just start screaming and never stop, if I thought about it, if I let it. "Because other people died instead of me and to save me and I did terrible things and I wouldn't even admit they were terrible and I was all proud of myself and - and I don't even know how I got here or why I did anything and thinking about it is just like trying to remember a movie you saw when you were really tired and half asleep and it's all out of order in your head and it doesn't make any sense -"
This time when he reached for her she let him pull her forward, so that she half fell into him.
"I did the best I could," she confessed into his shoulder; his arm pulled her closer, tugging her so tightly against him that the sharp bone of his hip was digging into her side, but she didn't want to move. "I did the best I could and it wasn't good enough and people died."
He didn't say anything.
"Maybe if I'd come here - or, that place in Roswell that Dumbledore mentioned? Maybe if I'd actually known what I was doing and I hadn't been trying to figure stuff out from books in languages I didn't even read then -"
"- then you would have been in Roswell," Severus interrupted.
"I could have come back when they needed me," Willow insisted. "And I would have known stuff - and we could have asked for help. There was a whole world out there that we could have asked for help."
"You wouldn't have gotten it," Severus snorted. "We were far too busy with our own problems, and Slayers are generally . . not held in particular esteem, by Wizards. We take a different view of the vampire problem."
"Yeah, I got that from Reed," Willow sighed. "Though, you know, that's Reed, so I thought maybe -"
"For once, he was accurate," Severus responded; his hand had moved up to stroke her hair. Willow sniffled, her nose running again.
"I'm gonna get snot all over your robes." She tried to push away; his arm tightened around her, his hand moving to cradle the back of her skull.
"I really do not give a damn," he responded, sounding just slightly irate. "In fact, I cannot fathom what could possibly be of less significance at this moment."
"Chocolate chips?" Willow suggested.
"I stand corrected," Severus drawled, tone painfully dry. Willow found herself giving a hiccoughing little giggle in spite of herself.
"It still wasn't his choice," she said, after a long and silent moment. "Giles. He still had no right, not to tell me."
"Of course not," Severus agreed, snorting dismissively. "As, I believe, I maintained from the beginning. Are you quite finished with your fit of sulks over slapping the man, in that case?"
"No," Willow answered honestly. "He's still Giles."
"I see," Severus answered, in a tone that suggested he didn't see at all.
"I'm giving up on the chocolate chips, though," Willow offered.
"What do I do now?" Ginny asked, sitting curled into a ball and shivering on the cold tile of the Slytherin boys' showers.
"Whatever you want," Draco answered, stalking past her and jerking open all the taps, so that hot steam billowed around her. It made her skin tingle; a trickle of hot water snaked its way across the tile to be sopped up by the edge of her nightgown.
"I don't want anything," she answered flatly. The moisture crept up the fabric; it burned when it reached her skin. She didn't move. Draco's footsteps moved behind her, and she heard the showerhead sputtering. A moment later water slapped against her back, and she flinched; it was cold at first, but the temperature rose quickly towards scalding. "It's too hot," she protested, trying to shift out of the way, tears springing into her eyes. "It's too hot, stop it -"
"It's barely lukewarm," Draco argued, crouching down in front of her and grasping her shoulders, stilling her.
"It hurts," she whimpered, making a listless effort to pull away. He held on, fingers digging into her shoulders. "Make it colder."
"No," he snapped. "The water's cold, Weasel. It's just warmer than you are, but then, most things are right now." His own hair was soaked, hanging in his face and dripping, his clothes saturated and clinging to the muted angles of his body. She didn't answer, just clutched her knees tighter to her chest and tried to ignore the stinging pins-and-needles sensation of feeling working its way back into her limbs.
"How's it feel now?" he asked after a few moments.
Almost cold again.
"Better," she allowed, wanting to be angry at him for inflicting this pain on her but finding the emotion out of reach. There's nothing inside me. There's just this great big empty nothing, like if I open my mouth I might accidentally swallow the world, there's just so much . . so much nothing, it's all hollow -
"I'm going to make it warmer, then," Draco warned her, at the same moment she blurted out, "I feel sick." He paused.
"Like you're going to retch, sick?" he asked.
"I don't know." She shook her head, felt the wet ends of her hair sliding over her shoulders. Movement was painful, aching as if every cell in her body were bruised."I just feel like - I don't know, I can't - nothing's making sense, my brain feels slow," she frowned, struggling for the words. "That's stupid, that's not what I meant, I just - I can't talk -"
"I'm going leave the water colder for a bit," Draco said nervously, reaching out to push a tendril of sodden hair out of her face. She flinched; his fingers were cold. "I think you're in shock or something."
"I just feel sick," Ginny insisted.
"You could go to the hospital wing," Draco offered hesitantly, and she glared up at him. "Right, stupid thought," he sighed. "Just - you know I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing, right? If there's anything really wrong - I mean, if you froze something or there's damage inside you because you got so cold or - fuck it, I don't even know if that can happen, because I'm not a fucking mediwizard and you know that, right? You're not gonna get saner later and want to know why the hell I let you sit here and be all bloody frozen and maybe fuck up your bloody liver or something?"
"My liver?" she asked, and felt a trickle of something bright that tightened her chest and made her lips twitch; it took her a moment to recognize it as humor. That's funny. I think that's . . funny.
"Well how the fuck should I - are you laughing at me?" he demanded, incredulous and indignant.
"I don't know," she answered, and giggled. Is that funny? I'm laughing. Laughing means something's funny . . I don't know what's funny.
"You are!" he snapped, scowling.
"It's f-funny!" she stammered by way of apology, and tried to reach out, wanting to touch his scowling face - touch something solid make sure I'm here because it feels like falling - falling end over end over end and I'm breaking - I'm just bright sharp little pieces and I can't stop laughing - she fell over sideways and her elbow landed hard on the tiles, shooting sharp pain up her arm. It brought tears back to her eyes, made her gasp for air and start coughing, laughing so hard she shook. Little bitty pieces, something's just shattering into little bits and it's just - I can't stop laughing -
"Weasel?" Draco asked, sounding scared.
"I'm f-fine," she managed to gasp out, glancing up at his face and then bursting into further giggles. It's not that funny, I don't know why I'm laughing so hard - so hard my stomach aches and I feel sick and I can't - I can't stop - "I'm c-cold and in a n-nightgown in the S-slytherin b-b-BOYS room -" she had to pause to gasp for air "- and I'm L-lord V-voldemort and you w-want - you w-want to kn-know if I froze my - my liver!"
"You're being just a little fucking scary right now, Weasel," Draco pointed out. "Or - or whomever -"
"Weasel's fine," she said, pushing herself back up to sitting and suddenly feeling all the laughter run away like water down the drain. He was watching her warily, poised on the balls of his feet as if he wanted to flee, his narrow jaw set, lips pressed together until they were nearly blue in his pale face. A thick lock of hair was plastered to the center of his forehead, and water ran down and dripped off the tip of his nose. Drip, drip, drip, drip . .
Falling. Falling into -
something. Must be falling into something or it wouldn't make a sound.
So quiet inside my head. Everything already hit the bottom.
He wants to run. He's scared, scared of me, and he wants to run and he doesn't.
She lurched awkwardly forward and kissed him, just a brushing of cold, wet lips together. Then she lost her balance and would have fallen again, if he hadn't reached out and caught her.
"What the fuck was that?" Draco demanded, sounding dazed. Ginny found the last remnant of a giggle waiting somewhere down in her chest, at his bewildered expression.
"I wanted to," she said, managing to get her legs in order under her so that she could sit, watching the movement of his throat as he swallowed. "There's water dripping off your nose," she pointed out. And there's nothing, nothing, nothing inside me . . so much nothing I could just float right away . .
"I - um -" he stammered, eyes darting everywhere, to her face and away and then down her body and away again. My nightgown's all wet.
Should I feel something about that?
My tits are showing. He's looking at my tits and he's swallowing again and I think I should feel something about that.
I don't care, don't care, don't care, don't care . . there's water dripping off his nose and I'm just going to float away . . now I kissed him, he kissed me, kissed me twice and it wasn't fair and now it's almost fair . . one more to be even . . one more that I want, that's my choice, what I want, I could want anything . . I could want anything and nothing and I could just -
"I should go get towels," Draco pronounced, getting awkwardly to his feet. "Towels, and clothes and shit, and - I'll be right back. Don't - don't fucking go anywhere," he finished, before stomping out of the shower in squelching slippers and robes that clung to the lean lines of his back. She watched him go.
I'm cold.
Feeling weak and dizzy and newborn, she managed to pull herself to her feet. One foot in front of the other . . dizzy, dizzy, dizzy nothing . . it all started in a shower with being cold and I'm here again, here I am again and I kissed him . . I kissed a boy, all myself, and he laughed . . way back in the beginning that was really the middle I kicked him and he laughed and I told him not to go home and I wonder . . I wonder if he remembers, that he laughed, that he laughed and I thought he was crazy . . other foot, one foot in front of the other . . she wobbled, threw her arms out to steady herself. Can't fall now, nobody here to catch me . . because he had to go get towels so he could stop looking at my tits and I think that's funny . . I think that's funny, don't fall . . other foot . .
She reached the wall, half falling into it, both hands slapping against the tile with a wet, echoing splat. Her legs shook, wanting to fold out from under her, but she locked her knees and bit her lip determined, one hand crawling down over the wall until it reached the tap. She jerked it to the left, and the showerhead sputtered and hissed; the spray at her back grew warmer.
Ginny closed her eyes and stepped backward, hands sliding away from the wall, arms raising to her sides as if she were walking a tightrope, until she was standing directly under the water and letting it run down her face.
Do you have any comprehension of what you've put us all through? Tara attempted a locator spell to find you, Tara who you all but raped-
From his vantage point beside and slightly behind her, Severus had not seen the full impact of those words on their target, but in the dim quiet of the enormous empty kitchen, they seemed to echo back to him. Willow's face had flushed as if scalded; she had flinched as if struck.
It had been at that point in the conversation that he had seen the complex machinery of her intellect click sharply back into gear, as well, as if that had been the jolt she needed to recover from the initial impact of Mr. Giles' unexpected appearance. It was telling, though he felt vaguely disgusted with himself for the insight - unable to cope with that accusation, her mind had cast frantically about for some other focus, and found the discordant fact that Mr. Giles should not have been there in the first place.
Generally sane people do not make such enormous cognitive leaps away from things that are not - at least in some manner or form significant within the framework of their own self-image - true.
A part of her believes that - that what she did to this Tara, whom she loved, was equivalent to rape. If not worse.
And what do you know of what happened between them, really? Of who she was before.
She was a child, a child raised on a Hellmouth -
and when did such mewling excuses begin to sway you?
When she did not make them. When she looked twice at a wretched old bastard who'd failed at everything he'd ever touched -
when it began to serve your purposes, then.
More than anything, the thought of her having done something so genuinely, disturbing wrong only brought back the half-morbid, half-hopeful curiosity he'd felt upon first meeting her. The ease with which he could accept it made him nauseous, but in the same instant that he felt vague revulsion clawing at the back of his throat, his arm was also tightening around her. Whatever she has done - it cannot be worse than the things you've done, the things you've witnessed and condoned and said nothing, done nothing, paid your penance in screams and gurgles and pleading eyes and stepped back, pulled your robes aside, sneered down and let them die for your cause - for your cause that you failed -
for nothing. In the end, for less than nothing.
For a pitiful farce of a trial before a puppet court, in which your testimony was not even needed. Cissa died for that, for that pathetic joke currently before the Wizengamot, a handful of worthless sycophants paying their due to a society that would rather go on about its business.
And the pureblood families, the old, noble families, they screech and groan about even that - they've formed a bloody coalition, in the open, in the light of day, to challenge the right of the Ministry -
and I thought the world could change. I thought we were better. I believed it enough to torture and maim and kill for it.
And then I believed enough to torture and maim and kill to oppose it.
Whatever she's done - it cannot matter. Whatever she's done can go to hell and rot there.
Willow was curled into his side now, collapsed in exhaustion, and dreaming. Her lips moved now and then, her brow creased and furrowed; every so often he felt a subtle shift of her entire tiny frame. Those movements made him think of things submerged in deep water, of violent battles fought in murky depths, reduced to the barest of ripples at the surface.
Sentimental drivel.
She was very warm, curled there into the hollow of his shoulder, her elbow digging into his ribs.
As she had feared, she had indeed left a smudge of tears and flour and things less pleasant to contemplate across the sleeve of his robe and a portion of his vest. Severus grimaced down at this intrusion; years of potions work had taught him to be fastidious about his actual cleanliness, if not his appearance. Many an apparently harmless little blot or speck of dirt could result in more than a stained wardrobe if ignored, and perhaps combined later with some other haphazardly splashed concoction.
He had told her he didn't care, though, and while that was not honest in the strictest sense, it was not too large a lie. In the smallest of increments, he had ceased to be cautious with her.
It was suddenly disquieting, the realization that she'd bled like spilt ink on wet parchment, across the fibers of his existence.
He had not thought of Valentina in a very, very long time.
The darkened kitchen seemed full of things that time ought to have buried, and it grated on his nerves; he did not want to move for fear of waking Willow, and losing the small solace of her warmth nestled against him. Somewhere in the back of his brain Severus thought he could hear Cissa laughing at him for that.
Except that she's not, because she's dead.
An image coalesced in his mind, unbidden - Cissa, young, very young - through the firewhisky haze that had enveloped his brain he thought he knew her, or at least had seen her before, in classes - he tried to say something, anything, but his tongue was tripping over itself and he couldn't tell if he'd been even mildly coherent. The smell of charred flesh was thick and insidious in the air, and somewhere in the distance, he heard Muggle sirens going off.
He hadn't wanted to be there anymore, hadn't wanted to stay for this, though he'd understood - with no small degree of scorn - that the revels were the only reason half of them were there at all. He'd done his part earlier in the evening, provided detailed and carefully researched notes on improvements to a new and theoretical hex - flame that sought out living flesh, but left the inanimate untouched. It could have many useful military applications, which he had outlined in painstaking detail, and the giddy rush of pride he'd felt when the Dark Lord had pronounced it worthy of experimentation was still burning somewhere down in his gut.
He had never seen someone die before - dead bodies he had seen, but not death itself, dressed in the gaudy pageantry of slick green flame. He hadn't expected the smell; he hadn't expected it to be a carnival, someone pressing a bottle of whisky into his slack hand and clapping him on the back, congratulating him in an already-drunken slur as a blackened thing that had once been human twitched into stillness in the middle of a suburban Muggle lawn.
There had been no making sense of it, no separating the wonderfully malicious vindication, the greedy clutching for someone to acknowledge all that he could do, all that he could be, from the sick disorientation and the wrongness of it all. He had wanted to vomit until his insides turned out and the world collapsed in on itself; instead he'd poured alcohol down his throat. The Dark Lord was watching, a distant shadow like some dark god, apart from the chaos he engendered.
And then she was there, her hands slipping nimble and warm and impossibly soft, inside his robes. It was overwhelming and surreal; someone had shoved her at him like a begrudging gift, and she'd bit her lip and grinned at the same time, nervous and yet knowing. Then there was nothing but sensation, stumbling to the unforgiving ground, twigs and dead grass digging into his knees, the sharp slap of cold air against suddenly bared flesh.
Nearly twenty years later he couldn't quite remember how he'd ended up inside her, only that it had been shattering; the sensation enough to obliterate everything else, all thought, all memory - and somewhere in that miasma of heat and pleasure and forgetting was the sound of her giddy laughter, sharp and cold and broken -
Willow twitched against him, muttered something incomprehensible in her sleep.
Ripples on the surface.
Severus closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the cabinet none too gently. He was aroused now, and irritated with himself for it.
"Uh?" Willow inquired, at the sharp rap of his skull against the wood.
"Hush," Severus ordered imperiously, and she must have remained more unconscious than not, because she did. He felt like a bastard for it, and then like an idiot for that.
I've said worse to her when she was quite wide awake.
Of course, wide awake, she can say something back - even if it is usually some infantile excuse for an insult.
He was very conscious of her hand, dropped limp and thoughtless on his thigh; he could feel the thudding of her heartbeat against his own ribs. Other, less pleasant physical sensations were brought into focus as well; the unforgiving stone floor, the crease in his trousers that was digging into the back of his knee, the ache that was forming in his lower back. He tried to shift just slightly, and she made some small protesting sound again; he scowled down, very tempted to blame his physical discomfiture on her.
But you choose to be here - you choose to remain -
The thought of her not being there any longer was simply unacceptable. Unfathomable, you mean.
Can you even remember how you got through the day, before? What kept you from just laying yourself down at the end of the day, and Avada'ing yourself to sleep?
He'd never been truly suicidal, but he remembered imagining it in a degree of detail that likely would have had Dumbledore ready to ship him off to St. Mungo's, if he'd ever known. The word despair was not one he would have used to describe his existence; it had seemed comfortable, at the time. He'd had purpose, a bitter driving purpose, however hollow it had been in the end.
The thought of returning to it filled him with a degree of sheer terror that seemed entirely too large to be contained within his physical frame; there was the urge to scream and flail. When she'd declared so unequivocally that she was going nowhere, the relief he felt had actually made him momentarily weak in the knees - which had made him furious, of course. It was pathetic, ridiculous, insupportable that he'd come to need her so much in so little time, with so little intimacy.
She's not Cissa.
Following from that thought, with a guilty tug down in his gut, Thank Merlin.
Cissy's laugh still seemed to echo there in the silent kitchen, as some internal mechanism made him aware of the hastening approach of dawn. The light, or rather its lack, remained unchanged, but something in the air was different - on the verge, and hushed.
Severus pulled himself carefully to his feet, shifting Willow's slumbering form so that the cabinet would support her slight weight. He felt his joints creaking, muscles full of a tremulous weakness that told him he'd pushed it too far - that he needed food or sleep or both, in the immediate future, unless he wished to embarrass himself by collapsing. The counter was still an explosion of flour and eggshells and disorganized bottles and tins. Leaving ingredients - ingredients for cookies, you pitiful sod - out like that made him grimace, but the house elves would take care of it, and likely not thank him for keeping them outside that much longer to clean it himself.
"Wha?" Willow questioned blearily, blinking and squinting as he crouched beside her.
"It's morning," he informed her in a hushed voice, though he wasn't sure for who's benefit he was whispering. "If we want breakfast, we'd best let the house elves back in."
"Oh," she answered, leaning into the arm he'd slipped between her shoulders and the cabinets. "But the Council said not to. " She frowned.
She talks in her sleep.
He slid his other arm under her bent knees, grimacing faintly as his own knees protested her weight lifted into his arms.
"You can't eat that," she announced with great authority, eyes still closed, and then let her head fall back against his chest.
"I will remember that," he assured her, amused. She snorted, and then was quiet. The heat of her soft breath reached him through layers of robe and vest and shirt. The kitchen seemed to wait around them, deep in the bowls of the castle where sunlight would never reach, full of the imminence of dawn.
No one is listening. No one will hear.
"Goodnight, Cissa," Severus whispered to the empty room.Ginny was sitting perched on the edge of a sink when Draco got back, arms laden with oversized towels and heavy sweaters and woolen socks, all stolen from his dorm mates. Everything I own is crap, wouldn't be warm enough, have to get her warm - there was a puddle under her, and she was swinging her feet, watching the water drip from her toes.
Little pale toes with freckles - freckles everywhere - fuck it, stop looking at her like that, stop thinking with your fucking cock - I'd burn down the world for her, burn down everything, everything is just fucking shit except her and she has to be okay - she has to be okay, so I can fix it all for her freckled toes and tomato soup hair and -
and I can't stop looking at the way her nightgown's all wet and bunched up between her thighs and fuck she's tiny and she's got these tiny little tits and this flat little stomach and I can see her belly button and -
and she just tried to kill herself, you miserable little shit, stop looking at her like that.
"What are you doing?" he demanded furiously, tossing everything he carried into the dry sink next to her.
"Dripping," she answered, looking up at him and smiling faintly.
"You're supposed to be getting warm, you're supposed to stay under the fucking hot water -" He snatched up a towel and threw it over her shoulders; his hands contacted flesh for a moment, and he pulled back, scowling.
"I'm warm enough," she said, though she pulled the towel around herself. I know.
Warm and soft and wet -
shut the fuck up, just stop thinking.
She was watching him, considering.
"Right." He swallowed hard. "You should get dressed then, before you get cold again - I brought clothes and shit - socks -" He made a vague motion towards the pile of cloth in the sink.
"I want to show you something," she answered.
Someone was tugging on the laces of her shoe and muttering.
Willow blinked, disoriented, and realized there was something soft under her head - something that felt very little like a cabinet, or Severus' shoulder. Also she seemed to be lying down.
"I fell asleep on you again, didn't I?" she asked, grimacing. The fumblings at her feet paused a moment.
"You did indeed," Severus responded, apparently managed to untangle the shoelace she remembered triple-knotting that morning - years and years and years ago - and pulled the shoe off of her foot. She felt cold air against sweaty sock for moment before the sock was gone too. I think I ought to be embarrassed or something now. My feet are all day-old and stinky.
Her foot was shifted slightly, placed on something that felt rather like a mattress; a blanket was pulled across her legs, up to her waist, where he paused and her eyes found his face.
"Sorry," she mumbled sleepily. "Who's room are we in?"
"Yours," he supplied, sounding faintly amused. "The house elves wanted their kitchen back."
"Oh." Her outer robes were slung across her the desk behind him, atop the books she'd been reading the night before. She shivered as she became aware of the cold air seeping through the thin material of the shift-like dress she'd been wearing underneath, and tugged the blankets up higher. Huh. Guess I was really out. Usually I notice being undressed and put to bed.
That's sorta . . I don't know . . I'm feeling something about that, and I think it's good, sorta warm and tingly and God I'm tired.
"You took my shoes off," she pronounced sleepily.
"Did you want them on?" he asked doubtfully.
"No," she scoffed, then, "It's cold in here. It's always so cold here."
"It's Scotland," Severus pointed out dryly.
"Stupid Scotland," Willow grumbled, reaching up to catch the piece of hair that had fallen across his face. His eyes followed her fingers. Her own vision was a little unfocused; hazy, hazy and warm.
"Go to sleep," he answered, catching her hand and kissing the palm. He tried to lay her hand down on the bed, but she grasped his fingers and held on.
"Stay," she asked. He didn't move, didn't respond; he watched her face as if waiting for some other sign.
I think I need to wake up a bit more . . I think it's possible I'm doing something that's gonna be embarrassing in the morning . . come on, brain, let's function now . .
"Just - just for staying," she amended.
"Of course," he answered, awkwardly, suddenly looking everywhere but at her, and his fingers in hers were tense. "I would not have presumed -"
"No, you should," she cut him off, shaking her head and propping herself up on one elbow. "I mean, just not - not now? Not when it's - I'm not saying this very well," she scowled, scrunching her nose and squeezing her eyes shut repeatedly, trying to get the world to focus. "I'm not awake enough to be having this conversation, and I just had a sorta bad day -"
"Sort of?" Severus snorted.
"Yeah, sort of," Willow said. "Nobody died."
It was silent for a moment.
"I hate that," she pronounced. "I hate that I say things like that and I hate that I think like that and I hate that my life is like that. I don't mean to, I really don't, I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for me."
"I know that," he answered, almost offended; nothing that could be mistaken for pity.
"Have I mentioned I might want to keep you?" she blurted out.
He raised an eyebrow, shifted his knees on the floor. She bit her lip, wakefulness creeping up on her.
"I probably ought to take that back or phrase it better or something, but I think I meant it," Willow said finally, with a shrug. I wouldn't be saying this if I weren't so tired .. so tired, so tired from everything, I'm done, empty, I can't feel anything anymore except I'm cold and I want him to stay - I want him to stay always -
"Good," he said finally.
"Good?" she asked, and tried not to sound as small and needy as she felt. Please stay.
"Go to sleep," he said again, and pulled his hand out of hers, pushing himself to his feet.
"What-" she started, feeling her stomach drop, but then he sat on the edge of the bed. "What're you -"
"I am taking my shoes off," he answered in an exasperated sort of voice; it was just this side of rude, and she felt an enormous stupid grin tugging at her lips. He glanced back at her, snorted and rolled his eyes. "And you are entirely too exhausted to be speaking. Do be quiet, before you say something that will have you babbling explanations and apologies in the morning."
"You're staying?" she pressed.
"No," he sneered. "I'm walking back to my rooms in my bare feet."
"Ass," Willow muttered, letting her head fall back to the pillow, closing her eyes and just absorbing the sounds of him moving about the room, the shift of the bed under his weight as he slid in behind her. "You like that I babble. Jerk-person," she added for good measure.
"Babbling twit," Severus returned, pulling the covers up over them both. His arm curled around her waist, and she wriggled back against his chest. He went still, awkward and uncertain for a moment before relaxing.
"You're warm," Willow observed approvingly, consciousness already swimming away as he murmured, "Nox," and the bedside lamp went out.