A/N: New Chapter.

Well I have to say I'm a little saddened at the lack of reviews again... But oh well. I could stop writing this, but it's my obsession so that's unlikely to happen. :)

Thank you to everyone who's been reading this!

Chapter 40

"Professor?"

Chauncey caught me coming out of Sirius's rooms, not that it worried me, I was cool and composed. A ready lie on my lips.

"I did not just come out of Sirius's rooms!"

Well there was a ready lie, it just wasn't a good lie.

The look she gave me was rather surprised. A quick glance at the door made me groan softly. Before I had said anything the girl had been completely in the dark as to where I was.

"Anyway... What can I do for you?" I coughed softly, distracting here from my stupid mistake.

"Well I saw you and I was wondering..." She tugged a lock of her red hair, whatever she was thinking made her at least a bit nervous.

Self consciously, I tugged on the sleeves of my blouse. It was a little uncomfortable since it was the same shirt I had worn the night before, and generally I wasn't overly thrilled wearing a piece of clothing two days in a row. I started to head down to my room, positive that Chauncey was going to follow me.

"Are you still reading those muggle papers? Is there something odd again?"

Before I had basically told her off for reading muggle papers and connecting the dots, even though I had been well aware that she was right.

"Well..." She was nervous about it again, fidgeting as she walked next to me.

"Look I'm sorry about basically telling you off about reading the papers. It's fine. I just didn't want you to get too... involved with anything. I hadn't realized you were staying here for Christmas either..."

"That's fine." She laughed softly. "I'm not staying here because I don't have a family or anything like that. I'm staying because I had wanted to look into this stuff with the muggles..." Her voice dropped slightly. "My parents aren't overly enthused with things muggle related." A shrug was all I got after that comment.

Truly lovely... It would likely be hard for a die hard muggle supporter like Chauncey to have parents who seemed to think of us as sub species.

"So did you want to talk to me?"

"About what happened, between Kerstan and Cain."

"Yes did you see something?" I stopped immediately, looking at the girl expectant.

"No... Sorry."

I sighed, and continued to walk again.

"We're all a bit worried about it though. You all don't seem to be doing anything about it..."

Stopping again, I looked at her hard.

"We are doing something about it. As much as we can. Kerstan denies anything happened. The rest of you seem to think Cain did it. Personally I don't believe that. There is no indication that anyone broke into the castle. So what are we supposed to do?"

Next to me the red headed Gryffindor was pouting, tugging again on her hair, probably thinking about what I had said.

"Well, thank you for telling me that much. Professor Sinistra basically told us to shut up when we asked. As if it wasn't our business." She huffed next to me. Couldn't say I blamed her, after all Sinistra was hard to deal with. And certainly not forthcoming about really anything.

"So there's nothing else that's wrong? No strange burglaries or anything?" Really I hoped that there wasn't, I don't think I could deal with anything else at the moment.

"No... Still looking into the other ones though. The newspaper occasionally updates on the search for the missing items. But it looks like nothing really important was stolen, which is why it was really weird."

Well nothing important unless you knew what a plain wooden object was for...

"That's good then."

The red haired girl nodded, still following beside me.

"Miss Cooper?"

"Yes?"

When I stopped she looked at me expectantly.

"If possible, could you try and get the other students to lay off Cain? I know it's likely they'll all still believe he did it, but he didn't. Okay?"

She looked a little uncomfortable with my request, probably because she was one of the people to believe that he had committed the crime. After a long pause though she agreed to try.

"Ah hello Professor!"

We had made it to the dungeons, stopping as Severus appeared in front of us. Chauncey had tried to be nice, polite to the Potions master but it wasn't surprising that the man barely even grunted a greeting in response.

I was still remembering his giddy joy about getting a present from Sinistra, and it appeared that he wasn't too thrilled with me either. Sensing a particularly unhappy vibe, Chauncey made her exit.

"So did you have fun with Black last night?"

There was no masking the sarcasm in his voice...

"Did you have fun with Sinistra?"

Of course there was no masking the sarcasm in mine either.

The two of us had walked down to Severus's office, our problems aside we had a lot of memories to go through. It was a task important enough to put aside out differences and work together toward a positive finish. But that didn't mean we couldn't harass the other and generally make their lives a living hell.

"You should probably see Poppy."

"Being in your company isn't going to kill me Severus."

"I was referring to the likely need of rabies shots."

He bristled, I bristled back. In general there was rather a lot of bristling.

"I didn't spend any more time then was necessary with Sinistra." Severus muttered.

"Certainly liked her present. Right after telling me that you didn't like presents."

"It was potion supplies. I'm the Potions master." He huffed like that explained everything. While he was talking he was setting up two small pensieves for us both to go through the memories. "You're sounding jealous. What? Did you have a present to give me?" He laughed at this, apparently making a joke.

My stony silence though stopped the laughter.

"You did?" He asked, a bit incredulous.

"Well you made it rather clear you didn't want one, so never mind." I was busying myself by splitting up the vials of memories into two piles for each of us. "If you apologize maybe I'll give it to you."

Severus is not one for apologies.

"I apologize."

Now that was a surprise.

"Though I didn't do something wrong."

Now that was a bit more like the man. But it had been an apology, as insincere as it was, and that was making quite a bit of headway on it's own. And after all I hadn't really specified what kind of apology I wanted.

"I'll give it to you later. We really need to make some headway on these memories. It would be best to finish before the students return, so we have about a week. And this is a lot of memories..." I gestured to the table which was practically overflowing with the damned things. And all I wanted was one silly boy's memory...

"Right." For whatever reason he didn't look as glum as when the day had started. The idea of looking through Slytherin memories likely appealed to him. "Just pick a vial, empty it into the pensieve. You can watch the memory play out from above."

"Wait, can't you jump into the memory as well?" My knowledge was all from the books which certainly showed Harry getting into people's memories and watching it from the inside.

"Yes, but that's too involved for what we're doing. We want to do this as fast as possible, so preferably when you see that it's not Cain, stop the memory. Just put the vial in and the memory will go back in."

I huffed softly, disappointed that the man was killing all my fun with this. My only comfort was that somewhere in those piles there were the memories of Draco and Severus... I really hoped I would find theirs. It would definitely give insight into their character. Not to mention wonderful blackmail opportunities.

With no more delay we both picked up a vial and started in on our day of memory viewing.

My very first choice was not Cain. Not that I had expected it to be him, that would have been far too easy. No my first choice was a dark haired boy, a few freckles doting his face, likely in his fourth or fifth year. I should have stopped the memory at that point, knowing that it wasn't Cain but I couldn't really help myself. After all this was the first time I had watched someone else's memory, and I was a little curious what a young Slytherin boy would choose as his most important memory.

This young boy led me around the school as a viewer. The halls looked the same as they did now. I wasn't sure if that meant it was a recent memory, or if the school just hadn't changed much over the years. I didn't doubt that it likely looked the same fifty years ago, probably the same 100 years ago...

The memory ended sitting with one of his teachers, being told that he had been chosen for the Quidditch team. The professor was no one that I recognized, showing that the time period was nowhere near recent.

"Well that was... boring." I sighed, bottling the memory again and placing it in a box on the ground for the already viewed.

"Hmm?" Severus glanced up from his pensieve. By his side there were already five vials in his box versus my one. He was following his own rules, not Cain don't watch.

"Nothing." I kicked the box closer to my side so he couldn't see what was in it. I didn't need him getting on my case

"Try and at least listen to me once." Severus's attention was back on his own pensieve, but I didn't doubt that he was fully aware that I had only looked at one memory

To avoid him getting too miffed, I only basically browsed through the next memories. The second I saw that the person wasn't Cain, I stopped and moved onto the next one.

But I can't exactly say I did what he said perfectly... Every so often I had to watch a couple that seemed like they would be interesting. My excuse was that it was purely educational, for research if you would. It was interesting to see what Slytherins chose. After all the general consensus on this house is that it's filled with backstabbers who take pleasure in other's pain, and that they're all evil. Personally I just couldn't believe that.

After watching rather a lot of the memories, my general belief seemed to be proven correct. Most of the memories were the normal things a student would remember fondly. The first time meeting their best friend, their first kiss, being chosen as prefect or Head Boy, or getting all O's on your OWLs.

But every school has it's darker parts...

This particular memory seemed to be that of a boy, brunette, and older looking so he was likely in his last year of school. His favourite memory was the rape of a fellow female student...

People like to slow down on roads to see accidents. It's a morbid fascination in our characters. We don't want to see dead people, but if there's a chance there is one we have to look. It's rather sick, and in my life I have to say I never did it. But in this case I couldn't stop watching. Not for the morbid reasons, but to make sure that these weren't students that were currently in the school.

At the finish I pulled back with a jerk from the pensieve, taking deep breaths, and looking sick.

"What's the matter?" Severus looked a bit concerned. When I didn't answer him, instead trying to calm my erratic breathing down, he looked into my pensieve and watched the memory replay itself.

His reaction wasn't as bad as mine, but when he pulled away there was a sneer on his face, disgusted with what he had just seen.

"That's not a student I ever had. It must have been before I even went to school here." He sighed before turning to me, placing a hand on my shoulder. "Every school has the things no one wants to see."

"But..." I took a deep breath, my breathing finally falling back to it's usual rhythm. "Isn't there a way to track him? Make him pay for what he did?"

Severus's eyebrow rose at the question.

"We don't know when this happened. Likely the man's dead. I'm sorry but there's nothing we can do. We don't have the time to worry about this problem as well. It's likely going to happen again. Not all these memories can be happy and fluffy. People aren't all made that way." He gave my shoulder a comforting squeeze. "We should take a break now anyway. Time for lunch."

"Any luck with your memories?" I thought a change of subject would help me forget about what I had seen. The response to my question was a shake of his head as he covered the pensieves with a cloth.

"Nothing as bad as yours.. A lot of sappy moments." He sighed, rolling his eyes. "I didn't realize my house had such romantics in it. Rather disturbing."

"Almost as bad as the Gryffindors.." I gasped, giving an expression of mock shock. The Potions master gave me a cold glare before making his way to the door. I had to double step to keep up with his long strides. "I can't wait to see your memory Sevvie. I wonder if it will be as nice and fluffy as some of those others."

"You see mine, you had better not watch it." He growled this warning out, but I took no heed of it, just laughing.

It was rather surprising that I was almost positive that Severus's memory was going to be something good, and likely surprisingly sappy. There was no worry in my head that his was going to be bad at all, like beating anyone up, or watching anyone suffer. It was surprising since I knew well enough how much he disliked Sirius and the rest of the Marauders. It was entirely plausible that his memory could deal with something bad happening to one or all of them. But not possible in my mind. It was a feeling, woman's intuition if you will. And once I saw that nice fluffy memory I was going to make his life hell for it...

"What are you smirking about?"

Next to me Severus was looking a little worried as we made our way to the Great Hall for lunch. Not surprising really, he must have realized that if I saw his memory that I was going to take the mickey out of him.

"Absolutely nothing Sevvie dear." I reached up and patted his cheek rather condescendingly before hurry out of his reach, through the doors and bounding over to the table to sit next to a miffed Sirius.

"Where have you been?"

"I've been working on some things with Severus. You know to do with our connection, the boys..." My voice dropped automatically, even though there was no one else sitting next to me since Severus had taken his usual place as far from Sirius as possible. "That horcrux we're looking for..."

My explanation for my disappearance for the morning didn't really seem to improve Sirius's mood. Not really that surprising that he wasn't too happy. After all with the majority of the student's gone, no classes to teach, and only Sinistra and McGonagall here, he would have had nothing really to do.

"I had to read a book."

My hand covered my heart, and I gasped in horror.

"Do your eyes hurt?" I grinned at him.

"You're being cheeky. Really what else was I supposed to do?"

"You could have kept the students company." I shrugged. "Searched the castle some more for you know what, been in the library looking for a solution to our problem, been working on lesson plans for your class, taking up a new hobby, been planning a practical joke to play on Severus." I ticked off all the ideas on my fingers, showing the man that there were plenty of things that didn't involve me that he could have been utilizing his time for. "You could have been writing a letter to Harry or Hermione, looking into the robberies at the museum, finding out more about Bellatrix, making a fort in the snow..."

"All right, All right. I get it. There are plenty of things for me to do." He rolled his eyes. "But none are nearly as much fun as you."

I patted his cheek, pinching it gently.

"You are just so adorable sometimes. How sweet."

During lunch I made sure to keep Sirius as amused at possible. After all I wasn't going to be spending too much time with him, not if I had all those memories to look through. It was really too bad since time with Sirius was actually a lot of fun. He might be obnoxious at times, a child most of the time, and a flirt all of the time, but that didn't mean he didn't know how to make the most of the time. Whether that had been part of his personality before his death or not, I didn't know.

"When do I get my present?"

Severus caught up to me after lunch on my way to his office. Well catching up might not have been right since after all we were both going to the same place after leaving the same place.

"Before you didn't seem to care about presents, and now you seem eager enough for mine." My eyes rolled automatically. "But fine. It's in my room."

We diverted our course from his office to my rooms instead. It was something Sirius wasn't going to like too much since I didn't even really like him being in my rooms.

I handed Severus the package and immediately started to ramble an explanation as he started to open it.

"I didn't want to get you something useful really as a present. That doesn't seem too much fun. So this isn't going to be as good as Sinistra's, nothing like potion ingredients. That didn't seem to imaginative or caring at all. I could have done that easily enough... then I know you would have liked it. But I saw this and thought... well..."

I stopped my rambling when Severus had finished unwrapping, and was now holding a stuffed snake. He experimentally squeezed it, causing it to hiss and a rather lifelike tongue to come out of it's mouth. I sighed at the less then enthusiastic look he gave me.

"I thought it was cute. Okay? I could have gotten you useful stuff, but that's not fun at all." He still hadn't said anything and was still looking at the snake with a blank expression. "Okay. You don't like it. That's fine. You don't have to keep it, I'll take it back."

When I made to reach out and grab it back, Severus's pulled it out of my reach.

"I'm keeping it."

I blinked at him, not really understanding why he would want to keep something that he didn't seem to even like.

As I was blinking in confusion, I missed the closing of space between us as Severus moved in closer. I only came out of the state I was in when I felt his cold hand on my cheek, bringing my head up to look up at him. I stared into his black eyes, before closing my own when his smooth lips covered mine.

The kiss was deep, long and above everything else, it was passionate. Up until now Severus's kisses had been rather... well rather held in check. This one though, by the time he pulled away, my hands were clutching his robes since my legs were not doing the job that they should have.

"What... What was that for?" I licked my lips, my forehead resting against his chest, trying to once again do something about my breathing.

"I didn't get you anything."

It took a few moments, but I soon started to laugh. Not knowing why I was laughing, Severus pulled away from me, holding his snake and looking more then a little put out.

"Sorry. But it is rather amusing that you think a kiss from you makes a good Christmas present."

"Doesn't it?" He huffed, sounding a little injured.

This time I closed the gap between us. To give Severus some credit, he didn't take any steps away, even though he looked more then usually worried at my expression. I didn't doubt that I must have looked a bit like a predator stalking her prey.

"Well I think after giving you something as adorable as that snake... I think I need something a bit more then just a kiss."

He seemed to have regained his usual expression a bit, an eyebrow lifting at my suggestion. Though the snake seemed to be held in a death grip.

"What are you suggesting...?" His voice held rather well, but his eyes kept flickering down to my lips. A good enough sign that I pushed on.

"Sevvie... My bedroom is right there." With a hand on his chest, I pushed him in the direction of my bedroom door.

"Aine... I..." Severus was still putting up a token resistance. "I don't want Black's seconds. I already said that."

"You're not playing anyone's seconds." I waved this argument off.

Briefly I wondered when I became as brazen as I was being, and for want of a better word, when I had become rather a slut... After all I was sleeping with one guy, and now trying my hardest to get another one in the sack. But that part of my brain was forcefully shut off by the part that really wanted this.

"Sevvie."

"Severus." The typical argument came up without pause, on reflex.

I grinned at him, once again closing the gap. "Fine, Severus."

"You're going to regret this."

"Yes, but only if you keep talking."

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"It's time for dinner."

I buried my head into Severus's chest, moaning about not wanting to get out of bed.

"Too ashamed to go down to the Hall after this? Worried the canine is going to smell us?" Severus sneered out, pushing me off him, sitting up.

"Actually..." I grabbed his arm, pulling him back down on the bed, a rather bright grin on my face. "I was rather hoping to just stay in bed with you."

That eyebrow was in it's usual place, arched in question, though his tongue was licking his lips.

"If we both miss dinner you know that will start rumours." Apparently Severus's logical side was too strong to kill.

I groaned and rolled away from the man, an arm slung over my eyes.

"Sevvie, you need to worry less about what others think."

"And you need to worry more. There are already rumours about you and Sirius, do you want more?"

"Well they are true after all." I muttered. "You just don't want to spend anymore time in bed with me. Already regretting this aren't you?"

I found myself pinned under a rather displeased looking Potions master.

"Are you going to continue sleeping with Black?"

"I don't know..." I frowned, it was a thought that honestly I hadn't given much thought. It was wrong to sleep with two men at the same time, even if I didn't have any commitments to either. It wasn't like either of them liked the situation, they hated each other. Even the thought of Sirius finding out about this was a bit frightening. He would likely blame Severus and try and cut off his head...

"This is not going to happen again." Severus pushed away from me, getting off the bed and angrily putting his clothes back on.

"I am not in a relationship with you or Sirius." I sat up, for modesty's sake holding the covers over me. "I don't have to explain myself to either of you. I like you both." My guilt was driving me to explain myself, but my stubbornness was making me avoid actually apologizing, not accepting that this was anything wrong.

"Fine. It's still not happening again." He paused by the door. "It's time for dinner."

I snorted as he walked out the door, a little too late to throw a pillow at the man.

With the man now gone it was time to honestly think about what had happened. And more importantly what I was going to do about it.

I had slept with Sirius, and now I had slept with Severus. One knew about it all, the other was in the dark. It was preferably to keep Sirius in the dark. After all the two of them hated each other, and out of the two of them, the Gryffindor was the more volatile. But that wasn't the problem. The real issue was that I still liked both men, rather equally as it was. And it wasn't fair to either.

Severus was right to say that it shouldn't happen again.

Not just with Severus either, I was going to have to stop with Sirius as well. Granted the man wasn't going too pleased about being cut off, but he would survive.

No more sex for anyone until this got solved. As it was I was going to have to deal with Severus's being cold to me because of what happened, and Sirius whigning because of what wasn't going to happen.

After having a shower, I made my entrance for dinner taking my normal seat next to Sirius and avoiding the death glare Severus was giving me. Despite my disagreeing earlier about Sirius smelling me, the shower had been mainly to make sure that didn't happen. I wasn't sure exactly how good his sense of smell was, or if it was only when he was in his dog shape.

"Are you going to spend time with me tonight?" Sirius practically pouted as he asked the question.

"Sorry Sirius. I've decided that I need to focus on the problems at hand. Mainly our connection, the problem with Cain and Kerstan and the horcrux." I patted his hand. "So no more spending the night."

Sirius opened his mouth to complain when he was interrupted.

"Professor, can you pass the potatoes?" Chauncey asked from a few seats down. I smiled at the girl and complied, happy for the interruption.

"As long as the reason is just that you want to concentrate..." Sirius's eyes flicked down the table to the more then usually grumpy Potions master.

"Of course."

The week before the students came back was abnormally busy for me, even if it was the sort of busy that was brain numbingly boring. After all browsing the memories of generations of Slytherins wasn't exactly compelling. Granted it could have been more fun if grumpy Sevvie hadn't been watching to make sure I wasn't actually watching any.

Ever since the... incident... he had been unhappier, colder, and just generally far more untalkative. Since he wasn't exactly effervescent before, now it was like standing next to a glacier. Chills and all.

Even my sparkling personality wasn't fixing this. I wasn't regretting what had happened, but he was certainly making me regret it if this was going to be normal. To make this even better all I needed to have happen was for Sirius to find out that I had slept with his arch nemesis even as Voldemort burst through the doors and cooked us all alive. That would make my day.

The piles were whittling down and still there was no sign of Cain's memory. It was as usual, the thing you look for is always the last place you look. The way we were going the very last vial was going to be the boy's. And even more annoyingly I hadn't seen Draco's or Severus's. My luck stood with those two having been in his pile.

I made a lucky glance next to me to see that at that moment Severus's face was a bright red. I couldn't control the smirk that appeared on my face, apparently Sevvie had just gotten hold of rather an embarrassing memory. Trying to catch a glimpse, all I saw was a familiar blonde head, before he stopped the memory.

"That was Draco!" My chance at blackmail was at hand. Well not blackmail so much as a chance to make the usually cool Slytherin tremble. "Let me see it!"

"No." Severus's face still hadn't lost the blush, only making me even more curious to see what kind of memory had been in that glass.

"But..."

"No."

I pouted, basically giving up on any chance of seeing that one. Especially not with the vial having been tucked safely into his robes. The only chance to get that was to get into the robes, and he had made it absolutely clear that wasn't going to happen again.

"Is the reason you don't want me to see a purely philosophical reason, or did dear Draco do something bad?"

"Nothing... illegal no." Severus ground out, apparently not too comfortable with this topic. But at least he was speaking to me.

"But you didn't say no to it being bad. So that means you thinks it's bad, but not illegal." I grinned wickedly, coming to a natural conclusion. "Does this include the Gryffindor golden boy whom Draco happens to be living with right now?"

A cold glare told me that was all I was going to get on the subject. I was curious yes, but I knew when a mission was hopeless. And with Sevvie already annoyed with me, I wasn't going to get details.

The viewing of memories continued until I, to coin a phrase, hit the mother load.

Swirling in front of me was the treasured memory of Severus Snape.