A/N

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A yawn wrenched Alice's jaws apart as the potent calming draught washed over her. She closed her eyes and flexed her back and arms, spreading her fingers like a cat stretching its claws.

"Bruising salve. Use the mirror in the bathroom to apply it."

Alice jerked, having forgotten about the dark wizard across from her. He was handing her a jar of green paste, which she took a long moment to focus on and take from him.

Snape didn't let her out of his sight, standing in the doorway to the bathroom as she spread the salve over the bruise on the base of her neck where Dolohov had grabbed her. Her upper thigh ached from where she'd fallen on a sharp rock while grappling with the snatchers, but she wasn't going to undress in front of a Death Eater in order to tend to it.

She went to rub the paste on her face and faltered.

She looked haunted. Her normally straight dark hair was tousled and framed her head like a fraying halo, beneath her eyes there were deep purple marks, stark against her pale skin, and her eyes were so wide her blue irises screamed at her from her eye whites.

His words echoed in her head, I plan on leaving her with the ability to speak.

Her hands shook as she applied the paste to her cheek. She was a fully grown woman, twenty six years old and had signed up to be an auror. She'd known the risks. Now she needed to be strong.

"Come here."

She flinched.

Snape indicated for her to sit on the bed and pulled up a chair to sit in front of her. He sat so close that his knees almost touched the outside of hers, caging her in. Her heart beat fiercely as he leaned towards her.

"I am not going to physically hurt you, Miss Duclos, unless you give me no choice, and I have no interest in… violating you in any way. I'm also not going to waste veritaserum on you. I'm simply going to ask you some questions. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

The "sir" slipped out naturally, even though he hadn't taught her in eight years.

His dark eyes flicked between hers.

"Good."

He held her chin so that she couldn't turn her face away and she felt a shiver of anticipation at the idea that he might kiss her.

"Why were you outside Malfoy Manor?"

"I was collecting dirt to make the manor plottable," Alice answered truthfully, since she'd already admitted as much to Dolohov. Snape removed his hand from her.

"How does a soil sample aid in ridding the estate of the unplottability charm?"

"I don't know, I was just following orders," she lied.

"There's no point lying, Miss Duclos." His deep voice was smooth and not angry, but Alice remembered the feeling of his large hand wrapped around her throat and her chest tensed. "The Aurory doesn't recruit qualified arithmancers with no combat training for them to run simple errands on enemy territory in the middle of a war."

It was off putting that he knew her qualifications.

"Er… I don't know, I thought it might help, I wasn't sure though. I hadn't done the calculations," she mostly lied again.

Snape raised an eyebrow.

"Do you expect me to believe you would take such a risk for an uncertain outcome?"

"I don't know," Alice replied, stalling, "But I didn't realise I was so near and in such danger, the estate was still unplottable to my eyes." That wasn't entirely a lie. Her voice sounded strange, like it didn't belong to her.

"Will they come looking for you?"

"I don't know," she answered truthfully, her voice threatening to break.

"Will the aurors be capable of making the manor discoverable without your help?"

She hesitated. She had been working on this project mostly on her own, with mainly disapproval from her superiors, so no, it was unlikely they would continue it now that she had disappeared, but that was different than the concept of their possible potential to-

"Miss Duclos, do you believe the manor will soon be plottable?" Snape clarified.

No, Alice thought. But maybe she should lie. Would it waste the Death Eaters' time and resources if they thought they had to relocate their headquarters or at least fortify it?

Snape's eyes continued to bore into hers. Then, for some troubling reason, the corner of his lip twitched.

He looked exactly the same as he did when he taught her potions eight years ago. Alice knew he'd spent the last year at Hogwarts teaching Defence, and a part of her was envious of the students who got to learn about the Dark Arts from him. She'd heard he'd been an excellent Defence teacher. She wondered if she looked the same to him too, the same as her eighteen year old self, the only Hufflepuff in his seventh year potions class of 1988.

For a split second Alice thought she saw him wince. Then he asked,

"Do you have any information on the whereabouts of Harry Potter?"

"No."

Her boss, Williamson, was part of a team of aurors who had been trying to find the Boy Who Lived and had fortified a safe house in central Europe to shelter him, but so far the teenager had eluded them. There were rumours that he had attended a Weasley wedding under a disguise months ago, but that was the extent of Alice's knowledge.

Snape looked unsurprised by her answer. He pushed his chair back and got up, gesturing for Alice to do the same. She winced as she put her weight on her bruised leg.

"Do you have other injuries?" he asked sharply. She hesitated and Snape twirled his wand at her. Alice deduced from the two clockwise semicircles and downwards jab that it was some kind of revealing spell. She stepped away, stumbling as the back of her legs hit the mattress as he muttered,

"Ostendo trauma"

Her bruised thigh turned red through her jeans and between her legs glowed pale orange.

"The snatchers?" Snape asked through gritted teeth. Actually, the snatchers hadn't touched Alice any more than had been necessary for her capture. They'd made a few lewd insinuations, but otherwise they'd been relatively gentle. Snape's incensed black eyes were looking her up and down and she wondered if he had ordered the snatchers not to touch the captives. She indicated her thigh and said,

"I fell trying to escape the snatchers, they didn't touch me." She placed her hand low on her hip beside the orange glow between her legs, which had started to fade, "This is from you," she said quietly.

He looked momentarily bemused, but then a muscle in his jaw twitched as he must have remembered shoving his knee against her. At the time, there'd been so much adrenaline running through her that she hadn't realised he'd bruised her, but now it felt a little tender.

For a second she thought he might apologise, but he just summoned the jar of bruise paste.

"Go shower and use this afterwards. You are to leave the door unlocked. If I hear anything suspicious I will check on you. The potions cabinet cannot be opened by anyone but myself and my rooms are impermeable to magic or any kind of signalling. If you try to hurt yourself I will enter and stop you. Is that clear?"

Alice gave a slight nod. Snape arched his brow.

"Yes, sir."

He handed her the jar.

She went into the bathroom and for two mins allowed herself to lean against the door and just breathe.

Snape had healed her. That was a good thing, she told herself. And he was allowing her to shower, that was also good and not in any way concerning. He said he had no interest in touching her. So no, it was not concerning, it was even almost considerate, or well -Alice sniffed herself- maybe it was for his sake just as much as hers.

Still, she found it hard to scrape together any hope. It was unrealistic to expect Snape to free her. He hadn't even interrogated her yet about the current operations at the Aurory, or as the New Ministry would call it, the "Hostile Rebel-lead Insurgency Faction".

When the Death Eater regime took over the Ministry the majority of aurors broke away from ministry control and established a new headquarters on a remote island off the Scottish coast. Thankfully it was unplottable, so Alice couldn't give up its whereabouts even if she wanted to.

Alice had joined a few months ago, after the schism, slipping away from her job as a ministry arithmancer and fleeing to rebel headquarters. Technically, Snape and Dolohov could be prosecuted for even calling her an "auror", but obviously, given their positions, they had nothing to fear from the new laws on "dangerous speech".

Eventually, she pushed away from the bathroom door and undressed, placing her dirty clothes in an empty basket in the corner.

The shower was like stepping under a steamy waterfall. Alice's muscles were all taut and she scrubbed at her body roughly. Afterwards she dried herself with a towel she found on a shelf and began to rub the bruise paste into her thigh. Glancing at the basket where she had left her clothes, she realised with a start that they were gone. The jar slipped from her fingers onto the tiled floor and she yelped as the glass smashed, sending shards skidding.

Snape swept into the room and Alice let out another startled cry as she turned away and rearranged her towel.

"It slipped," she said and turned back to face him. He didn't look annoyed, but his appraising eyes looked her up and down, finally landing on her face. He waved his wand and with a muttered spell the glass shards turned into sand which he evanesco'ed along with the spilled paste.

"Did you need more?" he asked.

"Of the paste? No, I was finished, thank you." Did she just thank a Death Eater? "Erm, my clothes disappeared."

Snape indicated the basket, "Did you put them in there?"

She nodded.

"That automatically transfers its contents to the laundry."

He left the bathroom, opened the door onto the hall and called, "Trixie."

A house-elf popped into view.

"Yes, Master Snape?"

"Bring me casual clothes suitable for a small, adult witch."

The house-elf nodded, her large ears flopping, before disappearing again. Snape closed the door and glanced back at Alice with his hands on his hips, looking like he didn't know what to do with her.

She shivered as water dripped from her hair and ran down her back.

He held out his hand and a dressing gown flew from the other room into his grip.

"Wear this," he ordered as he went to hand it to her. He stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door over, and Alice quickly dropped the towel and shrugged on the robe.

He instructed her to sit on the bed again and sat across from her. Then he began to fire questions at her, the majority of which Alice was relieved not to know the answer to.

"Does Williamson know where Potter is?"

"No, er, I don't know."

"Is Henry Wilson spying for the rebel aurors?"

"I don't know."

"Did the rebel aurors capture Garrick Sewlyn?"

"I dunno."

"Did they capture Osmont Mulciber?"

"No- I don't know." Her eyes slipped away from his.

"Look at me," he ordered. "Did they capture Osmont Mulciber?"

"I don't know," Alice said more forcefully. Too forcefully.

"Is he alive?"

"I- I don't know."

"What information did he give up?"

Alice panicked; he knew she was lying.

"I don't know."

"Has the Dublin Central Auror Office facilitated the move of the rebel headquarters to the republic of Ireland?"

"No," Headquarters didn't move to the republic of Ireland, Alice thought.

Snape paused for a moment and she thought he was going to ask a follow up but instead he asked,

"Have the rebels recently augmented Hogwarts' principle bulwarks?"

"I don't know," she lied, thinking about the hours of calculations she carried out at Rebel Headquarters with Mateo Craftsman towards that aim.

Snape leaned back into his chair.

"How many arithmancers currently work at rebel headquarters?"

Three, Alice thought reflexively, and, after deciding this was information Snape would definitely expect her to know, answered,

"Eight."

"Other than yourself, who are the other two?"

Alice hesitated. Had Snape known there were three arithmancers and was testing whether she would lie to him? He had already known that she'd left the ministry to work with the rebels.

She rubbed at her eyes. At five o'clock that morning her alarm had gone off and she'd jumped off her top bunk at Headquarters and checked the bottom for Maria, hoping she'd be back from her expedition to Mongolia but knowing she wouldn't be. That felt like years ago. Would Maria return tonight and look for Alice in her empty bunk tomorrow morning?

"Is Elijah Martell working with the rebel aurors?" Snape asked.

Why is he asking me questions he clearly knows the answer to?

Elijah Martell was a renowned arithmancer who'd retired from the Ministry decades ago and had joined the rebel cause after the death of Dumbledore. He frequently looked over Alice's workings for her, and he was the one who'd suggested she needed a dirt sample from the wider area of the manor for her re-plottability enchantment calculations, although he'd explicitly stated she should request a field agent retrieve it for her.

After a long pause Alice answered,

"I don't know."

Snape's dark eyes searched hers. Then he abruptly looked over his shoulder and swept to his feet. A moment later Alice heard a knock.

"Narcissa, surely you realise there was no need for you to deliver these in person," he drawled as he opened the door.

Alice peeked past him. Narcissa Malfoy was almost as tall as Snape in her elegant black high heels and as slim and beautiful as Alice remembered from photographs she'd seen of her. Her long blond hair was as luscious as her sisters, and she had the same intense eyes, although hers were an icy blue instead of black. Like most members of the sacred twenty-eight pureblood families, Madam Malfoy's posture was drawn up with arrogance, however Alice saw uncertainty in her eyes when she addressed Snape.

"Well, Severus, you've blocked my house elf from accessing your suite, which, incidentally, it's very distraught by," she said as she handed him a folded pile of clothes.

"As usual, Trixie may knock if she needs to make a delivery to my rooms."

Madam Malfoy ignored his reply and asked coldly,

"May I engage your guest for a moment?"

"Certainly." Snape stepped away from the door and gestured for Alice to approach.

"Miss Duclos, I am happy to see you in one piece," Madam Malfoy stated, although her eyes scanned her up and down as if she weren't convinced that was the case. "I knew your father briefly when he was a seventh year prefect in Slytherin and I was in my first year at Hogwarts. Shame what happened."

Alice didn't know if she were referring to the fact that her father had been killed by the Death Eaters during the first wizarding war, or the fact that he had married her muggle mother before that. Either way, it was such a bizarre thing for her to have said that Alice was at a loss for how to reply.

"I hope your former professor is being gentle with you," Madam Malfoy commented waspishly, pinning her with an appraising look before sliding her cold eyes behind her to Snape.

"Narcissa, you wound me," he said. "Would you rather I handed her back to Dolohov?"

Madam Malfoy's perfectly sculpted lips tightened.

"Miss Duclos, put these on in the bathroom," Snape instructed abruptly, handing Alice some clothes before banishing the rest to the other room.

Once inside, Alice pressed her ear against the bathroom door.

"-your concern is touching, but hardly appropriate. You know I have no taste for brutalising women," Snape was saying. He scoffed. "I have to admit I find it incredible that I am at the receiving end of your lecture and not Dolohov or Greyback. Or better yet, your sister."

"Sewlyn said she looked quite distraught-"

"-I didn't realise you were sending spies with your notes."

"Severus."

There was a pause before Snape stated,

"Dolohov only understands strength, now that I've taken her, he will back off."

"I don't want such behaviour carried out in my home."

"Maybe you should've thought of that before becoming one of the highest ranking families on one side of a civil war, Narcissa."

"Severus, this isn't a muggle-born we're talking about-"

"-If you wish to return her to Dolohov, go ahead, Merlin, give her to Greyback for all I care." Alice's heart beat faster in her chest. "But otherwise you don't have to worry about such behaviour occurring under your roof until another enemy witch is caught and ends up in another wizard's hands, and then you can just pray she's a muggle-born, because in that case you couldn't care less, correct?"

Narcissa gave a muffled reply and Alice heard the door close. Then there were footsteps and she hurriedly stepped backwards. Snape came in and continued towards her. She backed up further, but he simply opened the potions cabinet and took out a green vial.

"I will be gone for several hours. No one other than myself can enter these rooms so you will be safe." He unstoppered the vial, "Drink this, it'll help you sleep."

She took it from him and asked tentatively,

"Is this dreamless sleep?"

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Who did you bribe for that Exceeds Potions N.E.W.T? Dreamless sleep is blue. This is a light sleeping potion. Drink it."

Alice was surprised he'd remembered her N.E.W.T result. She sniffed the potion and smelt juniper berries which she knew were common in sleeping potions.

"Don't make me force you, Miss Duclos."

He was so much taller than her and standing so close that Alice had to stretch her neck to look up at him. He raised an eyebrow, as though daring her to disobey him.

She relented and swallowed the earthy, milky liquid with a grimace. She felt instantly drowsy, and almost stumbled on her feet.

So "light" sleeping potion was a bloody lie.

Snape left the bathroom and she put on the pair of pale blue bottoms and long-sleeved top, both of which were made of the softest cotton Alice had ever felt. Although she felt exposed wearing only the thin material with no underwear she couldn't resist yawning and stretching as the potion flowed soothingly to the tips of her fingers and toes. Snape re-entered the bathroom at the end of her stretch as her legs wobbled. He sighed just before her knees buckled and put a hand around her waist and legs, lifting her into his arms as though she weighed nothing. The potion was making her feel cosy and safe and an excited heat leapt from her centre towards her face at the feeling of his hands on her.

What's wrong with me? she thought sluggishly before falling deeply asleep.