Graihagh had fallen back into a routine but she lost track of day and night again. She'd wake up whenever, have a quick wash and some food, work until she couldn't see straight, then crawl into bed and skim through her books, the vampire erotica mostly, because there were only so many three-syllable words she could read at the end of a long day.
Sometimes she'd take time off to sleep or write in her journal the way her Healer had told her do once, to process her thoughts. Aberforth came up a few times to play cribbage and she tidied up her room and rearranged the boxes and barrels to give herself more space. She had a lot more energy now that she was making potions again.
She was washing some clothes in her tin bath when the bollan cross lit up. She wrung out her wet robes and rushed down the staircase in her t-shirt and jeans, wand at the ready. Something was obviously wrong, Snape wasn't the type to just pop in and say hello.
She opened the door to find him standing in the alley looking utterly wretched, with his puffy eyes and tangled hair and skin red-raw with scratch marks.
She said the first thing that popped into her head, even though it was stupid. "Are you alright, Professor?"
"I'm fine," he snapped.
Graihagh opened her mouth to insist he tell her, and closed it again when she saw the way his lips moved, his sharp retort already half-formed. He didn't have any serious injuries as far as she could tell. He was looking for a friendly face, that was all. And in that moment he wasn't a Death Eater, or the headmaster of Hogwarts. He was her old friend.
"Why don't you come upstairs for a bit? I could make us some tea."
Snape's face was impassive. "I suppose."
She led him up the stairs and into her room, pushing the pile of dirty clothes out of the way. "Sorry for the mess, I was just doing the wash," she said, hoping against hope that he wouldn't see the cotton knickers hanging from the line she'd strung across the ceiling.
Snape stood beside the wooden chair, one hand on its back. He seemed unsure of himself.
"Go ahead and sit down, if you like," said Graihagh, but the moment she'd said it she realised that her black wireless bra was lying right on the seat. No wonder he hadn't wanted to sit down. She fumbled for her wand and banished it to the laundry pile.
Snape sat down and she was glad of the excuse not to look at him as she got the water boiling and poured them each a cup, the way she'd done with Remus. He was so different from Snape, on the surface, yet she sensed that underneath they were very much alike, the way they kept themselves hidden.
She sat down on the upturned crate next to her work table and draped a cloak over her shoulders. Now that she was sitting down the room was rather cold, even with the tea.
"You wouldn't happen to have any sugar, would you?" said Snape in a too-loud voice that told her he was trying to pretend the chair incident had never happened and couldn't quite do it.
Graihagh pulled out her wand.
"Accio sugar."
There was a hole in the wall not unlike a Muggle laundry chute that lead to the kitchen, and within seconds a bowl of sugar appeared there. Snape took it and poured three heaping tablespoons into his tea.
Graihagh stared at him over her cup. "Have a little tea with your sugar."
Snape ignored her with a dignified silence and took a loud sip.
"Seriously, how can you drink that?"
"It goes better with this," said Snape, setting his cup down and and pulling a small package out the pocket of his robes.
"Oh my God, are those Cadbury Buttons? Can I have some?"
Snape sent some chocolates flying towards her with a flick of his wand and Graihagh caught them and popped two into her mouth.
"Ugh, these are so fucking good." She shot him an apologetic look. She'd only ever heard him curse once, and he'd been in a white-hot fury at the time. "Sorry. I haven't had chocolate in ages."
"I've spent enough time with you to know you were raised by sailors, Miss Corlett."
Graihagh made a face at him over her tea. "Very funny. Although come to think of it, I did learn to curse from my grandmother."
"She sounds delightful."
"She was! I mean, she was tough, but she had to be, she raised four kids on her own."
"What happened to your grandfather?"
"He died when my dad was little." She popped another chocolate into her mouth. "She helped raise me, you know. My grandmother. She gave me the idea for that potion. She used to make me a tea out of meadowsweet."
"I used the potion today."
"Did you? How'd it go?"
"It seemed to work."
Graihagh wondered who'd needed it and why, but she thought it best not to ask. "That's great."
They were quiet awhile, drinking tea and eating chocolate, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. A spider scuttled across the floor, running for the corner. Graihagh pulled out her wand and immobilized it just before it crawled behind a box.
"Is this a false widow spider?" she said, scooping it up and holding it out to Snape.
"I believe so. That's a decent specimen."
"Isn't it though? I've never seen one this big. I think I'll hang on to it." She dropped it into a jar and sat back down.
"So," she said, reaching for her cup, "Did you grow up in the wizarding world?"
"No."
Graihagh swallowed her tea so fast she burned her tongue. So that explained how he knew about Monty Python. "Are you Muggle-born then?"
"Half-blood."
"But you were raised as a Muggle?"
"Yes."
Graihagh sensed it was something he didn't like to talk about. She steered the conversation in a different direction.
"D'you still watch television?"
"No."
"Do you go to the cinema?"
"Occasionally."
"What kind of films do you like?"
Snape sipped his tea and shrugged "I have no particular preference."
"Have you ever seen Dazed and Confused?"
"No."
"What about Clerks?"
"Are we playing twenty questions, Miss Corlett?"
Only Snape could come up for tea and get annoyed when conversation ensued. "I was just curious. There's no need to get short with me."
She took a long sip of her orange pekoe. He didn't seem to like comedies much, which didn't surprise her. More likely he was into horror films. She thought vampires were sexy but other than that she wasn't a big fan of the genre, her nerves were frayed as it was.
"What about Apollo 13?"
"I did see that one."
"I saw it with my friends," said Graihagh, allowing herself only a glimpse of the memory because she hadn't heard from Cate or Milo in weeks, and didn't want to think of them just then.
"I seem to remember it was rather good," said Snape.
"Wasn't it though? That scene when they lifted off gave me chills. I felt like I was in that spacecraft."
Graihagh chewed thoughtfully on a chocolate. "Do you ever think about it? How Muggles have been to the moon and sent probes to the farthest reaches of the solar system? I mean, I know they're always going to be limited in some ways, but you have to admit, they've got some amazing technology."
"I suppose there's some truth in that," said Snape. He was quiet a moment. "I sometimes thought about being an astronaut."
Graihagh smiled. She never would have expected it, and yet it was easy for her to imagine him sitting in front of a control panel in a space shuttle, fiddling with all the knobs and buttons.
"Did you really? You would've made a good one." She licked a bit of chocolate off her fingers. "I wanted to create pyrotechnic chemicals. Fireworks and that sort of thing."
"You do have a knack for blowing up cauldrons."
"I only did that once."
"Twice."
"Alright, fine. Twice."
Snape took a long sip of tea. "You do realise that Muggle technology has a dark side."
"What, you mean like nuclear weapons and that sort of thing?"
"Precisely. Have you ever heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis?"
"I think so." She didn't have a clue.
"The Soviet Union sent submarines to Cuba armed with nuclear warheads. The Soviets thought war had broken out and decided to launch a nuclear torpedo."
"So what happened?"
"I thought you said you'd heard about it."
"Okay, I lied. So what happened?
"One of the officers refused, I forget his name-Vasily Arkhipov, I think it was. But can you imagine what would've happened if he hadn't? We were a breath away from thermonuclear war."
"Well, shit," muttered Graihagh. She sat and mulled this over awhile. "But what about the things that-you know-they're doing?"
"What do you mean?"
Graihagh let out a derisive snort. "Oh you know what I mean. They're rounding up Muggle-borns right now and doing who knows what with them, they're destroying bridges, attacking villages, I mean is that any better?"
Snape traced the rim of his cup with a long finger and didn't look at her. "Some would consider it a small price to pay, to prevent the deaths of millions through nuclear destruction."
"Well, maybe so, but I don't care about a million hypothetical people, I care about my family and my friends, and they could be in danger right now for all I know."
Snape inclined his head to her. "Spoken like a true Slytherin."
"So you agree with me then?"
"I'm more concerned with individuals than ideology, if that's what you're asking."
"Is that why you keep saving my life? Because you care about me?"
Snape swirled his tea around the cup, probably to loosen the sugar that had settled at the bottom. "No, I'm just a masochist."
Graihagh smiled at him over her cup. "Oh, so you like it when I annoy you?"
Snape tensed and Graihagh cringed. She hadn't meant for it to come out the way it had, it wasn't what he thought it was. She took a long drink of tea and brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. She was going to have to cut it again soon.
"So do I," she said, setting her cup down. "I mean, I care more about individuals too."
His eyes were such a deep brown they were almost black, and they seemed to see inside her. She looked away and there was a crinkle of plastic that she thought was Snape crumpling up the sweet wrapper and stuffing it into his pocket.
She stood up to pour herself another cup of tea and they were quiet again. The silence was tense, heavy with something-maybe it was Graihagh's teasing, or the strangeness of being alone in this room where they'd seen parts of each other they'd never intended to show. Or maybe it was that Snape finally appeared to have noticed the knickers hanging from the ceiling.
Graihagh searched around for something to say, and settled on the thing that had been troubling her for months.
"Does Rowle ever mention me?"
Severus didn't seem surprised that she'd asked. "Occasionally. He was furious that you'd escaped. But he's been given another mission that is taking up much of his time."
"So he hasn't mentioned going back to Mann to find me? Or my family?"
"Not that I'm aware."
Graihagh clutched her cup with both hands. "He found us, you know. Milo and me. He went all the way to Douglas. He took us to Malfoy manor and"-her voice became strained, and she steadied herself-"I thought that was it." She took a long sip of her tea.
"Someone Imperiused him and made him lead us to safety," she went on. "They told me to come here."
"Really?" said Severus, and Graihagh searched his voice for any sign that it had been him. He sounded confused, astonished even, but whether it was sincere or put on, she couldn't tell.
"I know, I don't understand it either," she said. "But I think about that all the time. I can't tell you how much it meant to me, knowing someone was looking out for me like that."
She studied his face for any sign of emotion, of recognition, but his expression was as impassive as ever. She didn't know why she wanted so much for it to be him.
"Listen," she said, "you don't have to keep calling me Miss Corlett. You can use my name if you want."
Snape didn't say anything to this, and she had a sneaking suspicion he'd forgotten what it was.
"You don't remember my name, do you?"
Snape looked indignant. "Of course I remember your name. It's Graihagh, isn't it?"
Graihagh smiled, remembering that first day of Potions class when he'd mangled it. "That's it. Nice of you not to call me Gray-Hag this time."
Snape smirked at her over his tea. "It's not my fault that langauge of yours makes no bloody sense."
"It's called Manx."
"Do you speak it?"
"Er-not really, no."
"I rest my case."
Graihagh set down her cup and shot him an indignant look. "A lot of people do speak it, and it's beautiful."
"I'll take your word for it," said Snape, with a wry sip of tea. Graihagh met his eyes and she could've sworn they were-not smiling exactly, but not cold either.
"Can I ask you what your name is?" she said.
"You may not."
"Oh come on, I won't laugh, even if it's Philbert or something."
"If my name really were Philbert I'd have been highly offended by that."
"Seriously, you can tell-"
Snape clutched his cup in both hands and didn't look at her. "I don't-it's not-as headmaster of Hogwarts and your former teacher I don't think it appropriate..."
Graihagh glanced down at her cup. She wasn't surprised, really. He'd only come so far before retreating again. "Yeah. Maybe not."
They slipped into a heavy silence. Snape finished his tea and set his cup down. "I should get back to the school."
"Of course."
He stood up and nodded towards her work table. "Have you made progress on the antidote?"
"I have some solutions prepared. But I really need to be able to test them."
Severus seemed annoyed by this, or frustrated maybe. He stuck his hands in his pockets and glanced up at the ceiing. "Have them ready. We can test them tomorrow evening."
"Sounds good."
He stepped towards the door and she opened it for him. "Goodnight," he said.
"Goodnight. I'm glad you came by. We should do this again."
His expression was hard to read. "Perhaps," he said. "But next time do me a favour and don't invite me in on your laundry day."
Graihagh smiled a little. Now that he'd said it out loud the whole thing was sort of funny. "I promise next time you won't be subjected to the sight of my undergarments."
Severus looked as though he wasn't sure whether to be amused or not and kept his face neutral. She could've sworn his cheeks flushed.
She closed the door behind him and when she'd cleaned the teacups she picked up some clothes and tossed them into the washtub. She hummed an old Charlatans song as she swished her robes in the water, smiling a bit.
Graihagh was ready when Snape came for her the next evening, three vials of potential antidotes lined up on her work table. She opened the back door for him and beckoned him inside.
"We won't be working here," he said.
"What?"
"It's too dangerous. We'll go somewhere else."
Graihagh was rather touched that he didn't want them testing poison antidotes in her living space.
"Hold on. I just need to get the solutions I've prepared."
She ran upstairs for the jars and when she got back down to the alley Snape told her to Disillusion herself.
They passed a few villagers on their way to the Three Broomsticks, and a black-robed figure with a long pointed hood walked by, nodding to Snape. Graihagh gasped and the figure paused and turned round before moving on.
"Shh!" hissed Snape.
"Sorry," muttered Graihagh, though she really didn't appreciate being told to keep quiet when there were Death Eaters everywhere. Easy enough for him to do, he was one of them, they weren't hunting him down.
They turned down a side street and followed it to a path that forked off in the direction of the Shrieking Shack. Graihagh stared at steeply sloped roof and the boarded-up windows, bits of deepest black showing through the cracks. "Wait, we're going here?"
"Muffliato. Repello Inimucum. Yes."
She followed him into the falling-apart house, the door creaking shut behind them. The place was pitch-black and smelt of old wood and musty fabric and a musky, ammonia-like smell that was probably mice.
"Lumos."
Blue-white light filled the foyer, exaggerating their shadows on the peeling wallpaper. A chair with one leg missing leaned feebly against the wall and a mouse scurried for cover.
The stairway and the rooms beyond were pitch black, untouched by any light. Graihagh shivered. "Isn't this place haunted?"
Snape made a dismissive noise. "That so-called ghost was nothing more than a werewolf."
Graihagh followed him into a large room on the ground floor. "A werewolf?"
Snape lit a few lamps. "One Remus Lupin. This was built for him as a place to transform so he wouldn't be a danger to the other students. Not that it kept him from roaming the grounds with his friends."
Graihagh looked around at the broken furniture and torn wallpaper and scratched paintings. He'd wrecked the place, but far worse was knowing he'd let himself run free. Somebody could have been killed.
Snape glanced at her with a hint of a smirk on his face, as though he knew what she was thinking. Graihagh said nothing. She knew then that Snape didn't like him, whether because he was a werewolf or some other reason she didn't know.
She didn't have time to think on it just then. Severus had pulled two pieces of fabric out of his robes and draped them over a chair. They looked like Muggle hazmat suits, with face shields and hoods.
"You'll need to put this on," he said.
Graihagh's stomach tightened. She and Owain used full-face respirators once in awhile, when working with particularly noxious potions, but she'd never had to wear anything like this. "Just how dangerous is this poison?"
Snape slipped on a pair of gloves and held up a large vial of pale yellow liquid. "So dangerous that even the smallest amount will kill you within minutes."
Graihagh couldn't get a deep breath and the room faded as her mind swirled with images of people coughing and choking and dying, and she knew, she knew they had this poison and she wasn't doing a damn thing about it, just like she hadn't done anything about Rowle's dagger, and maybe this antidote would help them, just like her Felix Felicis helped Rowle...
"What the fuck is going on here?" she hissed. "What is this being used for?"
"I can't tell you."
Graihagh fought to keep her voice from rising. "How do I know you people aren't going to kill everyone and save yourselves?"
Snape raised an eyebrow. "I thought you trusted me, Miss Corlett."
She wanted to say yes. And it was true in a way, she did trust him, or she thought she did, but this was too much. "I-yeah, but..."
"It won't only be Death Eaters you save."
"So you're saying it'll save innocent people?"
"That conclusion follows logically from the premise, I should think."
Graihagh turned and paced the room, arms crossed over her chest. Maybe the poison was one step too far for him, and the Death Eaters didn't know about this. If worst came to worst, she could always steal it, or find out their plans and tell the Order.
"Fine. I'll do it. But I want you to promise me one thing."
"What's that?"
"Promise me you'll try to stop them using it."
Snape's face was impassive. "You know of whom you're speaking, don't you?"
"Yeah," she said, her rising inflection asking why it mattered.
"Then you'll know why I can't promise such a thing."
"Then I'm not making this." And she meant it. She turned and walked towards the door.
"Miss Corlett!"
Graihagh whipped around. "What?"
"You agreed to this."
She had agreed, that much was true, but she hadn't promised anything.
She sighed and rubbed her face. "Look, I don't want this to be another Felix Felicis. And I'm not going to-I won't let you-"
Snape slammed his fist down on the table, making her jump. "I am not using you!"
There was nothing forced or put on about his frustration, she knew him well enough to know that. And she wanted so much to believe him.
She let out a long breath. "Alright." She walked the room a few more times, to clear her head, and set her vials down on a table at the far end of the room.
"I thought we'd try using a caustic reagent first," she said, opening the first vial. "That sometimes works on Muggle poisons."
Snape nodded. "It's worth a try, I suppose."
Graihagh set her solutions down on the table and she and Snape put on their hazmat suits and stood over them, getting everything ready. Graihagh's chest tightened as Snape twisted the cap on the vial of poison. She reached up to check her hood, make sure it was on properly.
Snape piped a small amount into a beaker, and Graihagh added an equal amount of her solution. The mixture frothed and sizzled but the colour and texture of the poison stayed the same.
Graihagh tapped her wand to the beaker. "Revelare contenta."
The toxin had remained intact. They couldn't talk under their face shields, so Graihagh shook her head and Snape conjured another beaker and added a few more drops of poison. They tried all three of her solutions, but none of them took.
"I'll keep working on it," said Graihagh, when Snape had performed a charm on the room and she'd removed her hazmat suit. She could tell he was worried, and now that she knew the danger they were in she wanted the antidote quite as much as he did.
Snape nodded. "As quickly as you can."
He Vanished the beakers did some sort of charm on the suits, to remove any traces of the poison, probably. When he'd folded up the suits he capped the vial of poison and tucked it into his robes and even though Graihagh knew he'd put a charm on it to stop it breaking she made a mental note not to go anywhere near him until he'd put it away.
"Does anyone else have access to this poison?" she asked.
"Not that I'm aware of. From what I gather it's extremely difficult to produce, prohibitively expensive and extremely illegal. You can't just walk into a shop and buy some, any more than you could buy enriched uranium."
Well. She'd sleep a bit better then, but still.
Snape draped his traveling cloak over his shoulders. Graihagh supposed he'd head back to the castle, but she wasn't in a hurry to go back to her room, gloomy as the shack was. She wanted to stay with him, get her mind off things.
"I've been meaning to ask, who took over as Potions Master?" she said as she tucked her vials back into her robes.
"Horace Slughorn."
"Oh, I know him. We were in the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers together. He threw a big party at his house every year, it was good craic."
Snape made an indistinct murmur, and she wondered if he'd been invited and hadn't gone.
"He used to rave about you," she went on. "Said you were one of the best he'd ever taught. You and your friend-Lily, was that her name?"
Snape twitched as though something had bit him and Graihagh wondered if he'd stepped on something or gotten a sudden stomach pain. "Yes," he said. He didn't seem to want to talk about her.
He adjusted his traveling cloak, clearly in a hurry to get going, but Graihagh leaned against an old sofa and pretended she hadn't noticed.
"What made you decide to become a teacher?"
Snape paused with his hand on his cloak as though she'd jumped out behind something and surprised him.
"I enjoy watching eager young minds get crushed by reality," he said.
Graihagh gave him a wry smile, remembering the way he swept around the classroom tearing everyone to pieces. "Seriously, though."
Snape played his cloak between his fingers, his face impassive as ever. She supposed she'd have to add teaching to her ever-growing list of Things Professor Snape Refused to Talk About.
"Because I was young and didn't know what else to do. Now if you're finished asking questions, I need to get back to the castle."
Graihagh didn't want to, but she supposed they'd better. She stood up and followed him to the door. Snape paused with his hand on the doorknob.
"Miss Corlett."
"Yeah?"
"You are not to tell anyone what we're doing. Do you understand?"
His usual sarcasm-tinged indifference was gone, and his face was serious, earnest even.
"I won't."
She wasn't sure she meant it, and Snape must've known it. He stepped out in front of her, his face close to hers. They were the same height.
"I am serious, Miss Corlett. Tell no one, or the consequences will be more severe than you can even imagine."
Graihagh's chest tightened and she was dizzy, too many thoughts going through her to sort them all out. She understood why they couldn't tell anyone, but what if she'd been tricked? What if she was just their tool, the way she'd been with Rowle? And what exactly was he threatening her with?
And yet. His face was so serious, so tired, the way he'd looked when he showed up at her door and when he'd been lying half-dead at the gates. He didn't like some of the things they were doing, she was sure of it. Maybe he was even going behind their backs. She had the strangest urge to reach up and stroke his face.
"I won't. I promise."
The action was impulsive, instinctual. She raised a hand towards his face, and only at the last minute, when Snape's eyes widened just slightly, did she realise what she was doing. She brushed back a loose strand of her hair as though she'd meant to do it all along, and Snape opened the door.
She Dillusioned herself and they walked in silence until they reached the road, Graihagh's mind full of the poison, and Snape's mind on what she didn't know, but he was every bit as preoccupied as she was.
"Stop," said Snape.
"What is it?" But Grahaigh saw what it was before she'd even finished the sentence. Three skeletally thin figures in ragged black robes were drifting over the high street of Hogsmeade, close enough that Graihagh's breath floated in front of her and the stars went black.
"Can you make a Patronus?" she whispered. Cate and Milo had shown her how to make a Patronus years ago, but she'd never gotten the hang of it.
"Death Eaters can't make Patronuses."
"So what do we do?"
"Wait until they pass."
Graihagh had never been so close to a Dementor before. She set her eyes on the moonlit mountains above the village, imagined they were just out for a walk, but she couldn't stop the voices in her head, Rowle and Milo's urgent whispers as they made their plans, her own voice, agreeing to help them. And other more distant voices, Rowle's shouts and Milo's screams, her dad telling her that her mum wasn't coming back, Cate asking why she hadn't stood up for her.
Another voice spoke in her ear, this one curt and annoyed. "Get up,"
Snape's boots were in front of her face and there were stones under her fingertips. She must've fallen.
"You're letting your emotions get control of you," said Snape, as though she'd just done something stupid. "Master yourself. The Dementors are going to be here awhile."
"Great, I was just thinking I could use a bit more anxiety right now," said Graihagh as she stood up.
Snape scanned the high street. "I think they've gone. Go, quickly."
"Right. I'll see you later, Professor."
She took the high street at a run, not worrying about her loud footfalls, and didn't stop until she was in her room.
Graihagh spent days wracking her brain for an antidote that might actually work. She rummaged through her ingredients as though the right one might suddenly jump out at her, paced the room, flipped through her books. In the end it was Aberforth who gave her the idea, when he came up to her room to play a game of cribbage and told her about his friendship with Hagrid, and how he'd helped him train the Thestrals.
She lost the game on purpose so he'd leave, and checked her watch. Seven o' clock at night, Snape probably wouldn't be busy. She pulled out the coin he'd given her.
"Meet me in the alley."
Snape showed up fifteen minutes later, alert and expectant.
"I need some Thestral hair," said Graihagh.
"An interesting choice for an antidote," said Snape. "But you'll need to go into the Forbidden Forest. Those are the only Thestrals in Britain."
"Want to come with me?"
"I suppose."
They Disillusioned themselves and walked in silence. The night air was cold, nearly freezing, but Graihagh was so relieved to be out of the stuffy room she wouldn't have cared if it were minus fifty. A light rain was falling and the grounds were so dark she could barely see the outline of the trees against the sky. There was something reassuring about the distant lights of the castle, but she couldn't help wondering what things were like there. Did the man beside her sweep through corridors like a nightmare, terrorising his students and bullying the staff? She didn't think so, somehow, so why had they made him headmaster? None of it made sense. She kept her eyes on the path ahead of her and tried not to think about it.
They walked into the forest, which was so still she could hear the distant footfalls of the forest creatures. Snape pulled out a pocketknife and cut the side of his palm.
"You didn't have to do that," said Graihagh, with a stab of guilt. "I would've waited for them."
"It doesn't matter," said Snape, as though he were indifferent to his own flesh. They stood and waited. The silence was broken by a faint rustling as a skeletal black horse crept out of the trees.
Graihagh reached out to stroke its face. She didn't like them much, but they were gentle.
Snape was watching her. He knew how close she'd come to seeing them when she was sixteen.
"My granny passed away about nine years ago," she explained, so he wouldn't assume the worst. "I was there with her."
Snape ran his hand along the side of the Thestral's face. "You were close, I take it?"
"Yeah."
They stood side by side, stroking the Thestral's neck, their hands brushing against each other. The Thestral nickered and nudged Snape's face.
"It likes you," said Graihagh.
Snape made a dismissive noise, but she suspected he was rather chuffed. "I think it's more interested in my red blood cells."
"I think you secretly like them. In fact I think you secretly like all animals."
"Only when they're dead and preserved in a jar."
"You feed stray cats, don't you."
"No," said Snape, so quickly it was as good as a yes. Graihagh smirked and stroked the Thestral, her hand close to his. His palm was still bleeding.
"Let me put some dittany on that," she said. She took off her gloves and pulled the bottle out of her robes before he could say no.
"Hold out your hand."
Snape held out his hand to her, and she gripped his palm between her thumb and forefinger to keep it steady while she applied the dittany. His cut healed in a puff of smoke, leaving his palm dry, pale, callused, but intact. She squeezed his hand and stroked his skin with her thumb.
Snape snatched his hand away as though she'd burned him. He stuck it in his pocket, and Graihagh tucked the dittany in her robes as though nothing had happened. She didn't know why she'd done it, it wasn't what he thought it was. She'd only wanted to comfort him a little.
"We're going to have to do immoblise it, if you want its hair," said Snape, his voice curt, formal, this-is-strictly-business-don't-get-any-ideas. Graihagh was a bit stung by this, and she didn't know why.
She fumbled for her wand and tapped it to the Thestral. "Petrificus Totalus."
The Thestral froze in place. "Sorry, you," she whispered. "It's just for a moment." She walked behind the Thestral and pulled a few hairs out its tail. "I've got them," she said, tucking them into her pocket.
"Finite," muttered Snape.
The Thestral bucked and whinnied in delayed protest, but consented to let Graihagh stroke its nose, soft as velvet under her fingertips.
Snape checked his watch. "We need to get going. The Dementors will start their patrol soon."
"Right," said Graihagh. She was freezing her arse off anyway.
They walked in silence back to Hogsmeade, through a fine mist of cold rain. Graihagh was wearing her cloak and gloves but even still she crossed her arms over her chest and stuck her hands in her armpits to warm them.
"Cold?" said Snape.
"Bit."
"We're almost at the gates."
Graihagh stopped when they'd reached them. "Thanks for coming with me."
Snape nodded very slightly, keeping his distance.
"Goodnight," said Graihagh.
"Goodnight."
She took the path to Hogsmeade at a run, to warm up her legs a bit. She'd nearly reached the village when the sky turned black, so dark she couldn't see her hand in front of her face. She knew what it was.
She stopped and hugged her arms to her chest, waiting for them to pass, the voices in her head growing louder. She hated the fucking things, why did they have to show up now, just when she was starting to get a handle on her anxiety?
She thought the flash out the side of her eyes was lightening at first, until the doe leapt in front of her, silver-white and weightless. She was one of the most beautiful things Graihagh had ever seen.
The doe stopped and watched, and Graihagh knew she was waiting for her. She followed her through the streets of Hogsmeade, and she was a talisman against her own fear.
They reached the back entrance of the Hog's Head and and the doe stopped and stood beside her. "Thanks," said Graihagh. She reached out to stroke its head, but her hand went right through her. She was pure light, a bit warm to the touch.
The doe streaked off through the alley and vanished. Graihagh held on to the banister as she made her way up the stars, shaky and spent and immensely grateful to whichever villager had conjured her.
When she got to her room she took off her cloak and gloves and poured herself a capful of calming draught. She sat in bed a long time, wondering what Snape was doing at the school, and how he could've joined the Death Eaters, and just what it was they were doing. She wished he weren't with them.
Thanks so much for reading! And thank you PearlM21 for the review! It really is so heartbreaking to see him sacrifice so much and be so misunderstood-but he will get some comfort!
