Severus noticed that the clanking of the exercise machine had stopped. A minute later, Konstantine came downstairs, looked to Cheiron as if suppressing the instinct to salute – even after several years on the Rock, he seemed still unsure of the social conventions of a place which had neither feudal nor military hierarchy – and rather unenthusiastically started making a sandwich. Like Severus, he tended to lose his appetite when stressed, but he knew that low blood sugar always made his temper worse, and in a typical workout, he usually burned off at least 600 calories. 'Do you want anything?' he asked the other two.

'I've had lunch, thanks,' said Cheiron. 'What about you, Severus?'

'I'm not hungry.' At least, Severus had to admit to himself, what he mainly felt was sick with anxiety – but possibly also sick with hunger. The cup of tea swirled around his stomach as if it was disappointed at not finding at least a biscuit or two to soak into.

'You need to take care of yourselves, both of you,' said Cheiron warningly. 'Firstly for your own sakes; secondly because, if you both still want to go on looking after Anakin here, you need to be healthy enough to deal with him; thirdly, because you need to set him a good example. After all, if he's supposed to get used to living an almost normal life after being a cyborg for most of his adult life, you two need to demonstrate a healthy lifestyle, especially where hygiene, eating enough, and sleeping enough are concerned. But I need to know whether you do still want to look after him. Konstantine?'

'Yes. Please.' Konstantine sat at the end of the table and stoically worked his way through his sandwich, not looking at either of them.

Cheiron continued, 'I expect Rowan has left you a care plan – how long she wants Anakin to stay resting in bed most of the time, whether he's continuing with bacta immersion on a part-time basis, and so on – but when he's healed enough to sit up in a float-chair, it'll help if you can bring him down here and eat meals together. He might appreciate going outside, too, but obviously, he'll need plenty of sunscreen.'

'Of course,' said Severus. He wasn't entirely comfortable outdoors himself, though that had less to do with his pale skin being unaccustomed to daylight than with feeling uneasy anywhere that he couldn't think of as 'home'.

'Have you made any plans about sleep patterns?' Cheiron asked. 'At the moment, there ought to be someone awake at all times to keep an eye on Anakin and see if he needs anything but you each ought to try to get at least eight hours' sleep. So if you could stagger it so that you've got eight hours when Konstantine is sleeping, and eight hours when Severus is, you can arrange eight hours when both of you are available, preferably when Anakin is most likely to be awake and the three of you can spend time together. It might take a few days' trial and error to find out what his patterns of sleeping and waking will be, of course.'

'I suggest I take midnight to 4pm,' offered Severus. 'I imagine you will still need my services as a potion-maker, which I can easily work on at night, and provide any personal care that requires the use of a wand in the daytime. Konstantine, are you satisfied with 8am to midnight?'

'Yes, Professor,' muttered Konstantine, sounding both subdued and preoccupied. He had finished his snack and was fidgeting, twisting his hands back and forth as if to check that his wrists still worked.

'If you're going to fidget, at least make yourself useful,' said Severus. 'I need to make a start on the second stage of the calming potion. While I stir it, can you chop up the murtlap tentacles?'

'Yes, Professor.' Konstantine sounded more at ease now that he had something tangible to work on – and the reminder that Severus trusted him enough to turn his back on him while Konstantine had a knife in his hand. Cheiron, too, began grinding some spices to powder, and for a few minutes the three of them worked in silence, until Konstantine was relaxed enough to manage to get the question out: 'Professor – when I came here – did you want to take me in? Or did Cheiron make you take me?'

'He told me you were coming, because there were healing potions he needed me to brew for you,' Severus replied. 'He asked me whether I would mind keeping you company until you had settled in here. He thought we would be good for each other if we could be friends, but it wouldn't work if I hated or feared you.'

'How – did he tell you much – about me? About what I'd done?'

'A little. Not much about your early life, because that was for you to decide whether you wanted to tell me. He said that you used to come to him for short visits when you were a child, and again for a while in your thirties, when life was hard for you, but that I didn't need to know the details. But to give me an idea of what sort of man you are now – he showed me Miles Vorkosigan's memories of you.'

'Lord Miles came here? When? Is he…?'

'He didn't die as soon as you weren't there to protect him,' said Cheiron. 'The last set of memories I have that involve him are when he was in his forties. You know that the way time runs here doesn't bear much relation to time in any of the worlds people come from, or Anakin, who comes from "a long time ago, in a galaxy far away" wouldn't have just appeared here now. But the set of memories that Severus saw were ones that Miles showed me when he was eighteen, soon after he returned to Barrayar.'

Cheiron had explained at the time that this didn't mean that Vorkosigan was missing the original memories. The Rock had an upgrade to Pensieve technology here that copied memories, so that their owners could keep the originals. Severus had never bothered replacing the assortment of memories that he, as he died, had given to Harry Potter. After all, they weren't exactly blanks in his mind – he knew what they were, because he had the memory of reviewing and selecting them – and they were just a collection of short scenes, rather than a gap of several months' worth of mystery. Besides, they had mostly been unhappy memories, of times when he and Lily had quarrelled. It wasn't as if he didn't have a store of memories of good times together, brewing potions, or sneaking into Lily's sister's bedroom to giggle over her secret diary.

'Once I'd see you through the eyes of someone who loved you, I couldn't…' Severus tried to choose his words carefully. It wouldn't be true to say, 'I couldn't hate you,' because from what he had seen, he could have done. Vorkosigan had evidently put together this set of memories to work through his feelings about his dead bodyguard, and while they had mostly been about Konstantine's loyalty and protectiveness of him, he had been honest enough to include ones which showed that this was not just someone who had made a few bad decisions decades ago when he was young and naïve, but a dangerously unhinged man who actively enjoyed torturing and killing. Konstantine wasn't an outright psychopath like Voldemort, but he seemed to be at least as far along the sociopath spectrum as Sirius Black: someone who was utterly devoted to those he loved, but ruthless to anyone else. Admittedly, he wasn't as conscienceless as Black, but a reluctant monster like Remus Lupin, more or less in control of his condition as long as he took his medication regularly – which was even more of a reason to fear him. It was just that – he wasn't Sirius Black or Remus Lupin. He was himself, and he was someone Severus had felt he wanted to get to know better.

'I couldn't not give you a chance,' Severus concluded. 'Apart from anything else, I admired you.' Konstantine didn't say anything, but Severus could sense his disbelief. 'Anyone who could cope with Miles Vorkosigan without…' (again, he wasn't sure how to put this. 'Without going crazy' wasn't really applicable to someone who was already insane, and 'without wanting to throttle him' wasn't exactly a joke) 'without giving up, is someone doing more than I ever could.'

He wondered whether he had gone too far, and glanced round. Konstantine tensed as if wondering whether to take offence at the slur on his liege-lord, but then seemed to concede that it was a fair point.

'You're used to teaching classes of forty students at a time,' Cheiron pointed out. 'I like Miles, and I'd have enjoyed being his tutor. In many ways, he reminds me of Achilles. But that doesn't mean I'd want a class of thirty Miles Vorkosigans at once. Certainly not one class after another after another, all day.'

'Did Cheiron tell you anything about me?' Severus asked Konstantine.

'Not much. Just that you were from Earth, that you were a wizard, and a teacher at a boarding-school. But – Cheiron trusted you, and I knew I could trust him, so that was enough. We know who Skywalker is, because we've watched the vids. But he doesn't know anything about us. So why should he trust us?'

There was a faint cry of 'No-o-o-o!' from upstairs.

Konstantine stood up. 'I'll go.'

Cheiron nodded encouragingly. Severus felt like screaming, 'No-o-o-o!' himself. Instead, he tried to think of something appropriate to say. Konstantine, in addition to his similarities with Black and Lupin, had some traits in common with Black's old house-elf Kreacher, not least of which was the ability to interpret instructions to mean whatever he wanted them to mean, or, if necessary, elicit instructions that he could interpret in this way. Asking him to 'take care of' their guest or 'sort him out', for example, would be perilously easy to misinterpret. 'Be kind to him,' he managed at last.

'I will.'