AN: Just a quick note that I made some changes to chapters 1-7 of RPM Part 1: Chocolate and Cigarettes if anyone is interested in rereading them. I was never really happy with how they read and really like the new version. They are still fairly similar with some additions and tweaks.

And, for a while, I thought I was the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I'm out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
and getting stabbed to death.
Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal."

– Richard Siken [Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out]

Rose walked quickly across the grounds, hurrying to beat the crowd back to the castle. The second task had been a harrowing experience to watch. From the moment that Harry had almost missed the arrival deadline to his late return, she'd felt like she might be sick. As soon as she'd seen that Harry had returned safely from the second task, Rose had left. She'd intentionally held herself back from seeking him out before the task, remembering Snape's rebuke about not getting closer to the boy. She was still trying to reassure herself that it was the right thing to do as she made her way down the stairs and towards the dungeons for her occlumency lesson.

"Enter," his voice commanded in response to her knock, and Rose pushed open the door to Severus' office. Stepping inside, her eyes fell on the pale man sitting behind his desk, organizing vials of potions in a wooden rack at his desk. Lifting one particularly congealed looking potion up to the light, he gave it a look of disgust before jotting down notes on a paper. Rose was certain she saw him scrawl the letter "D" there.

"Enjoying yourself," she asked with a smirk, settling into the chair across from his desk.

"Failing first year students for their abysmal concoctions isn't exactly what I'd describe as enjoyable," he replied irritably.

Though she smiled at his response, Rose could feel her heart hammering in her chest. Today was the day. She'd been working up her courage all week for this lesson and still felt completely unprepared for whatever was going to happen. Standing from his desk, Severus set his quill down and began walking around to her side of the desk.

Rose had always known that honesty was a terrifying thing. She'd been sick with worry over confessing her feelings for Remus—terrified of the rejection that had ultimately happened. But the fear she was currently experiencing was altogether different. The kind of courage it was taking to sit in front of Severus Snape and willingly allow him to discover her relationship with one of the people he most despised was pushing her to her breaking point.

As he settled into his normal seat across from her for her weekly occlumency lesson, a mere foot of distance between them, Rose could only think one thing 'I'm not ready for this.' He must have sensed her anxiety because a frown quickly crossed his face when they made eye contact.

"Calm your mind, Roselin," he instructed in annoyance, clearly sick of having to tell her this every week. Nodding quickly, Rose took a deep breath, and unclenched her hands. Her palms were slick with sweat, and she surreptitiously wiped them on the sleeve of her robe.

"Sorry, sir," she said demurely, falling back into the habit of addressing him as she would a Professor.

"If you aren't going to come to these lessons prepared, you are just wasting our time," he criticized. Rose gave him an irritated look, the annoyance helping to steel her nerves. Taking another breath, her heartbeat slowed.

"I'm ready," she told him. He gave her a skeptical look, before his face became serious, and he stared intently into her eyes.

It's hard to explain exactly what it feels like to have someone use legilimens. The exact sensation can vary widely from person to person. To Rose, it always began much in the way a half-forgotten thought would nag at the back of her mind. Almost like there was a part of that felt hazy like she couldn't quite grasp it. The haziness grew and pressed up against her mental defenses, not in the way of a battering ram, but like an elusive fog that just needed a small crack to slip inside.

Today, Rose had intentionally provided that crack, leaving a small thread that made its way back into her memories and through the trap door she'd been working so hard to protect. The memory she'd chosen was innocuous enough but would certainly get the point across. As Snape began to tug at the string of her memory, she began to relive it as well:

Rose could feel the rising and falling of his chest beneath her cheek as she laid, sprawling against him. The couch really wasn't big enough to fit the two of them lying down, especially given the heights of both involved, but Rose hardly minded the tight squeeze. The warmth radiating from his body was seeping into her own, leaving her feeling safe and whole on the cold February night. Stifling a yawn, she nuzzled deeper into his embrace.

"Tired?" he asked, his voice low and half-whispered. She glanced up at him, where his head was propped against the armrest. He looked so peaceful tonight. The grays in his hair glistened silvery-gold in the firelight, and the scars on his face were muted by the warmth cast upon his skin. Rose stretched, enjoying the feeling of pressing her body into his and the way his hand felt against the small of her back.

"Maybe a little," she admitted, smiling when he lifted his free hand to brush her hair away from her face. Leaning down, he captured her lips with his own in a long, sweet kiss.

"Would you like me to take you to bed," he asked, a mischievous grin playing across his face. All the answer Rose gave him was to grab the front of his shirt and tug his lips back down to her own.

CRACK!

The shattering of several of the glass vials on Severus' desk was enough to snap the pair of them out of the memory. In the time it took Rose to blink, he had already torn his eyes away from hers and stood up, the chair toppling to the floor behind him. Turning away from her, he walked to his desk and flicked his wand at the spilled potion, vanishing the mess.

When his desk was clean, he still didn't turn back around.

An aura of deadly calm hung about him. This impression was belied only by the whiteness of his knuckles as he leaned against the desk, his hands clenched into trembling fists. Rose sat frozen, as if to move would be to gain the attention of a dangerous animal. Instead, she stared at his hunched figure, obscured by his dark cloak.

"Severus…?" Her voice came out as barely more than a whisper.

"Silence." He cut her off immediately, and the two lapsed back into silence.

Rose felt inexplicably calm as if this encounter was happening to another person.

"How long," he asked, after nearly another minute's silence had elapsed.

"Since mid-December," she answered immediately.

"Liar," he hissed, tilting his head towards her, but still not fully turning his face. "How long?"

"Last March," she admitted, dating their relationship back to the first kiss they'd shared. His body became, if possible, even tenser.

"Last March," he repeated slowly, as if needing time to digest the words. She watched him take a long breath before the tension gradually drained from his body and his fingers unclenched. Turning towards her, a derisive sneer covering his face, and he leaned back casually against his desk.

"And what exactly motivated you to so brazenly flaunt this information in front of me," he drawled.

Rose's face must have shown her surprise at this question because his sneer deepened.

"Oh yes, did you think I wouldn't notice the trail you laid for me?" He continued. "How easily you allowed me to slip inside of your defenses?"

Rose's lips pressed together tightly. She glared at him but refused to speak. Her eyes instead followed a trickle of blood that seeped out between Severus' fingers where they were settled against the desk.

"What were you hoping to accomplish? What did you think? That I would care what you do with a half-breed lowlife like him," he asked mockingly. "Have you continued to labor under the illusion that I care for you? For you?"

He let out a derisive snort at his last words as if they were utterly unthinkable. Rose felt almost like she was experiencing this moment through the eyes of someone else. Severus felt so distant and his words, which would normally have torn her up inside, fell flat as she continued to stare at his bleeding hand rather than his face. In the darkest of ways, it was almost funny how hard he was trying to deflect the pain she'd just caused him by pushing it back onto her.

"I have never, and could never, love someone like you," he sneered.

Rose finally met his gaze, and she could tell he was surprised not to see anger in her eyes but merely exhaustion. He flinched away when she grabbed his left hand but was not fast enough to keep his blood from smearing across her fingers. Lifting her fingers up, she showed the blood to him, and saw his mocking expression twist into one of confusion and pain. Clearly, he hadn't even realized he'd clenched his fists hard enough to draw his own blood.

In the back of her mind, Rose realized that some part of her had longed for this moment—to hurt him as much as he'd hurt her. She'd never imagined being able to plunge the knife this deep into his heart. But now that it had happened, she didn't think she wanted it anymore. Just when things had begun to heal between them. Just when they'd almost settled back into their familiar repartee, the truth had shown just how dangerous a weapon it was. But right now it was a weapon she needed. At least everything was clear between them.

"You can believe whatever you need to, Severus," she said simply, finally standing from her chair. "…I assume we're done for this week."

Turning her back on the brooding man, she walked out the door, his blood slowly drying on her fingertips.

As soon as the door closed, Severus grabbed another of the vials off his desk and threw it with all his might across the room where it shattered against the wall. Vial after vial followed until all the first year's potions lay broken on the floor, and Severus was left standing before his desk, panting heavily, his temper unabated. His fingers curled into fists, and he hissed in pain, forced to look down at his bleeding palms. Stalking to his cabinet, he rifled through its contents to find a rag which he clutched in his bleeding hands—he didn't trust himself to perform healing magic at the moment.

Leaning against the wall, he let his head fall back against the cold stone wall of his dungeon office, staring unseeingly across the room at the closed door.

'Control your emotions,' he thought hollowly. 'Discipline your mind.'

With Lord Voldemort becoming more and more active he could not afford to lose his temper like this. It infuriated him that that girl could elicit such strong reactions from him; that she could so easily see through any mask he tried to put up. How dare she keep walking into his life and prying him out of the dark shell he'd locked himself up in for years? And how dare she keep abandoning him just as he began to think that life in the light might be something worthwhile?

Severus shook his head at that thought. He didn't deserve to stand here wallowing in self-pity. He'd had all the power in their relationship. He should never have allowed it to begin in the first place. He deserved to feel exactly this miserable for what he had done to her. The way he had used her—even if he'd been unwilling to recognize it at the time.

And he was especially angry because it shouldn't have come as a surprise to begin with. He'd known about her feelings for Lupin. And if his own experience had taught him anything, it was that Rose Malfoy was relentless in attaining what she wanted.

In the darkest part of his mind, after their relationship had come to an end and he'd been trying to understand why he'd allowed himself to get involved with a student, Severus had wondered if his relationship with Rose had been—in some twisted way—a means for him to try to get back at James Potter. But now it seemed more likely that Rose was instead a way for his old nemesis to continue to torture him from beyond the grave.

Hell, he had sat through her entire goddamned wedding, and it still hadn't hurt him even a fraction as much as the idea of her finding love and happiness with Remus fucking Lupin—the man who had been a part of almost killing him—the one who had looked the other way for years while Sirius and James bullied and abused him despite having the power to stop it.

And he couldn't even hate Lupin properly for sleeping with Rose—couldn't rage about how he'd taken advantage of a student because hadn't he, himself, done far worse? For some reason he'd just assumed that Lupin would stay strong where he hadn't, that the man wouldn't give into temptation. And what did that say about him? Did it mean that Severus really did think of himself as less disciplined, less competent than a werewolf? Surely not. But maybe… maybe where a certain redhead was concerned. The state of his office and his hands were clear indicators of just how well Rose could unhinge him.

Squeezing his fists so tight around the rag that he had to clench his jaw to keep from gasping in pain, Severus tried to drive all thoughts of Lupin and Rose from his mind.