Author's Notes: This has been a long time coming. Bartleby - alternately titled "My Last Ghost" - was supposed to be a sordid little story intended to address a tired and ugly topic: rape. Specifically, let's invent an OFC, abuse her a little, throw her in with a young Severus Snape, and see what happens.

A lot ended up happening in the several years since I began writing this. My sordid little story grew a life of its own. In many ways it's an ugly tale, but in other ways it's a surprising one - to me, anyway. Maybe it will surprise you, too.

I will be updating regularly. Please feel free to review.

This is a fanfic, obviously, and was written only to quiet my internal thoughts and questions. I claim no ownership or rights. Much is borrowed from other sources.

A Baptism by Fire

Myron Wagtail was an eccentric but good-looking 7th year who skyrocketed from relative obscurity to instant fame during his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Myron had been something of a curiosity in those early days. There was absolutely no doubt that the boy had talent, but the trouble was, he also had a cello.

Myron's cello was a perpetual third wheel; a weird adornment that followed him everywhere he went. He took it to class. He polished it. He tuned it. If certain rumors were to be believed, he even slept with it. But Myron did not, to anyone's knowledge, ever actually play that cello.

Not until Professor Slughorn invited—or rather, dared—him to four years ago.

It took a solid hour of harassment, but Myron did, eventually, take the center stage at one of Slughorn's Club dinners. Clearly agitated, the attractive third-year sat stiffly in a chair, rosined his bow, and proceeded not to play his cello, but to attack it.

Myron Wagtail attacked that instrument with such discordant, string-breaking intensity that, when he was finished, every single person in the room sat in utterly stunned silence. They'd never heard anything like it before. It was shocking. It was bold. It was original. It was really, really good.

"My dear boy!" a breathless Horace Slughorn finally exclaimed. "Such talent! Such innovation! What do you call it?"

The thirteen-year old savant flipped his hair out of his face.

"Rock and roll, Professor. I call it rock and roll."

And, just like that, Myron shed the awkward mantle of his early adolescence. He left the cello in the practice room and carried in its place confidence, charm, and all the seductive appeal of a rebel. Now a prefect at the top of his class, captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, and proud owner of the longest eyelashes you've ever seen on a boy, Myron was simply born to succeed.

How disappointing for him to be paired with Amy.

Amy watched as Myron, for the umpteenth time that hour, raised his wand, shouted "Expecto Patronum!" failed to produce a corporeal Patronus, and swore colorfully. He was not so accustomed to failure as Amy was, and didn't take it very well.

"Stupid—Bloody—what sort of idiot invents a spell that you have to be happy to perform? In the middle of a fight with a Dementor?" he asked, and, really, he had a point about that. Myron continued his tirade with facetious gravity: "Oh, excuse me, evil soul-sucking fiend, while I reminisce about the Christmas of '77, when I got that wank magazine I've always wanted."

"Uh-huh," said Amy.

Way back in fifth year, when he was in his Philosophical Stage and talked about Authenticity a lot, he told Amy about this mad Kraut who ran around screaming that God was dead. She still didn't have any idea what that was supposed to mean.

"Expecto Patronum!" cried Myron again, but nothing happened.

"Think positive, boys and girls!" somebody called from the top of the classroom. "Let your spirit animal reveal itself!"

The speaker was the D.A.D.A. Professor of the year, a dumpy, eternally positive housewitch-turned-educator with a passion for guiding young people and a baffling interest in what she called "Muggle Metaphysics." Her last name was "Burbage" and her first name not terribly memorable - some abstract noun like "Charity," or "Chastity," or some other quality Amy lacked.

"It'll take some time," said Professor Noun, "but just keep trying!"

Myron, unmoved by the encouragement, gave up trying to conjure his Patronus—or "spirit animal"—and fell into the seat next to Amy. He stretched a lean, well-muscled torso, frowned at the ceiling, and continued complaining:

"Perfect ending to the first month back. First, I'm up all night on that Transfiguration essay, and of course they serve bloody kippers for breakfast. And then I learn that Hufflepuff's very own Gwenog Jones has the Quidditch pitch booked through the first game." He nodded toward the top of the classroom, where the aforementioned Gwenog Jones, Myron's chief rival for the Most Popular Person At Hogwarts Award, looked like she was having the time of her life.

Myron scoffed. "I tried talking to Professor Snape about it. I mean, you'd reckon he'd want to see the Quidditch Cup in his office, for once, but he was just—" Myron then drew himself up to his full height and put on a mask of ill-humored indifference that, presumably, was supposed to be an impression of Professor Snape. He dropped his voice about an octave and made a sweeping gesture around the room "'—Look at them, Mr. Wagtail. Look at all the fucks I don't give.' "

"Myron, dear, did you need something? I saw you waving your arms?" Professor Noun called, because she was the sort of person who believed that the current state of education could be revolutionized if only teachers were friendlier and called students by their first names now and again.

"No, Professor," said Myron, dropping the impersonation. "I was just telling Amy that I reckon my spirit animal will be this big," he said, and raised his arms again as if measuring the five-foot fish that had gotten away.

"It's not the size of the Patronus, dear, it's how you—oh, very funny," the Professor chastised, as several people had begun to snigger.

"He didn't actually say that, of course," Myron conceded more quietly, turning back to Amy. "It was something about Hogwarts bylaws and his hands being tied until they elect a new school Governor and 'don't bother me with this drivel, Mr. Wagtail.' You did hear that the Malfoy fellow resigned over the summer? He'd been on the governing board for ages, too."

"Uh-huh," said Amy.

"Are you even listening?" he asked.

"Yes. It's fascinating, Myron."

Myron tsked her. "You know what your problem is, Amy? You think everything is boring. You're such a drag lately." He snatched his copy of Getting Familiar with Familiars from the table, looking sour, and began flipping through it aggressively. "And you've really got to start going to Potions," he told her. "I'm tired of covering for you."

Amy's been working on this theory. It was an indisputable fact that one simply did not skip Professor Snape's class. It just wasn't done. Ergo, she was, in some mystical way, still attending, right?

Right?

"All you have to do is show up," Myron chided.

Yeah, show up and watch as Snape's jaw did this thing where it clenched as soon as she walked through the door. He seemed to get livid as hell any time their eyes accidentally met over a potion, across the Great Hall, or anywhere else for that matter. And their eyes did meet. They met often. It may have been simple paranoia, but she could have sworn Snape had taken to staring at her.

Of course, maybe she only noticed because she'd taken to staring at him with neurotic frequency, as though one of these days he wouldn't be looking at her with such anger.

She didn't think it had anything to do with her personally, the anger. It might have been that she represented something for him, something that involved words like 'political' and 'bias.' Maybe he felt guilty for not being in his office at the time of the...incident. Still, it made her uncomfortable and she'd been avoiding him all semester.

"…Not like Slughorn's class," Myron was saying. "No lesson plan, no help, just 'turn to page 394 and figure out how to make this ridiculously complicated potion so I can give you a 'T' when you fail.'"

As if Myron had ever received a 'T' on anything in his life. Amy used her quill to scrape some dirt from under her fingernails. You'd think there'd be a spell for that.

"You know he's yet to give back a single essay? Bastard can't even be bothered to grade. Snape's Patronus is probably a bloody cockroach—look, there's one in here—I mean, what sort of person would conjure a cockroach?" Myron asked.

"Gregor," said Amy, who now had ink under her nails in addition to the dirt.

Myron looked at her. "Who?"

"Whom."

He made a face. "Huh?"

"What? Nothing. Nobody. Never mind."

"Right…" He looked at her sideways—wondering if she were somehow responsible for his bad month, perhaps—and then flipped an errant bit of hair from his face. He did this often.

"Well, anyway…This on top of Alex resigning. I know she's taken that whole thing with her uncle Augustus pretty hard, but what are we supposed to do with one Beater? I mean, I could always pull Tremlett from the Chasers, but then—"

"Look, everyone! Gwen's nearly got it!" Professor Noun interrupted from the top of the class. And, indeed, Gwenog Jones had managed to conjure a bright, if formless, ball of light. Several in the immediate vicinity clapped.

"Tosser," Myron huffed.

Amy scraped at her nails some more and watched the cockroach-patronus skit nervously across its page. It was a funny way to profess your atheism, screaming that God was dead. He'd have to have been alive in the first place, wouldn't He? She felt hopelessly stupid when she tried to think about it, just like she did when she'd read that Bartleby book Slughorn had given her. She wondered, idly, what Snape would think about the matter.

"…So have you turned in a proposal for your senior project, yet?" Myron was asking. "It's due this week."

"I'm working on it," Amy lied. The Aurors had made her go back for her 7th year, but they'd never said anything about a senior project. They'd never mentioned anything about going to class or passing, either.

"I've got permission to leave campus once a week for my project, starting next semester," Myron said, sounding rather smug. "Field research. Got it approved last year."

Amy looked over at him in disbelief. "Snape approved that?"

"What? God, no. Dumbledore did. Snape couldn't be bothered to approve anybody's project last year. I keep forgetting you missed those last few weeks on account of your mum."

On account of her Mum. Right.

"How is she, by the way?"

"Fine," Amy said. "It was just dragonpox."

"I thought it was splattergroit?" Myron said.

"Right. Splatterpox. Dragongroit. Nasty mix."

"Oh! That reminds me - there was post for you this morning. I left the package in the Common Room, but I have the note in here, somewhere," Myron said, picking up his bag. He began rifling through it for the lost note.

Her heart leapt. Had Slughorn finally written her back?

"Found it. Here you go, Amy." He held the note out to her.

She snatched it up and began to read.

"Jeez, Amy, you look as though someone's just told you there's a Muggle in the family—God, your mum didn't die, did she?"

She was saved answering by the bell.

"Don't forget!" cried the professor over the din, "I want fifteen inches on your spirit animal by Monday!"

Amy's parents still love to tell the story of her first solo Floo trip. It's something of a rite of passage in the wizarding world that usually happens somewhere between potty training and Hogwarts. Some parents, the good ones, introduce their children gently and gradually. Others, like Amy's, push their offspring into the flames with little preparation and no warning.

A baptism by fire.

Her parents' friends all think the story is hilarious, but Amy only remembers the trepidation of staring at the hearth, larger than life to a child, and the later, lingering paranoia that anyone, at any time, might decide to shove you into the blaze and send you spinning out of control.

That's what Professor Snape's door reminded her of. She was nine years old in her stupid, ugly whore skirt, tiny and overwhelmed by the scale of the Castle's woodwork. Her parents were there in spirit, forcing her across the threshold with a gift. For Snape. Her parents' polite thanks for his defense in the form of a brand-new cloak.

Or else their insulting suggestion that he couldn't be trusted to dress himself. She wasn't sure.

Either way, it was soft, black, and clearly very expensive. She probably should have wrapped it or something.

Amy must have stood outside that door for a good five minutes, working up the courage to knock, when it opened slowly, its rusted hinges creaking. Spooked, she jumped back.

Professor Snape, dark and imposing as ever, gave a kind of miniature sigh and scowled down his great ugly nose at her. The cords in his neck tightened. "Well?" he said, as if prompting an especially stupid first-year.

"I—sir?"

"Well, do you plan to stand there for another five minutes like a feckless idiot, or would you like to come in?" he snapped.

It was strange that she didn't remember him being this acerbic when he was a god to her.

She looked away from his probing gaze, quailing, and nodded. "Sure."

The young professor turned and stalked out of the doorway, gesturing her to follow with a curt little move of the hand. She took one shuffling step inside before realizing that he'd left her with the impossible conundrum of the door. Her fingers hesitated on the knob.

"Leave it," he said over his shoulder, either because he could read minds and knew she didn't really want to be trapped alone with him, or because he didn't want to be alone with her, either. She left it open and looked around at the office, so changed from Slughorn's time. There was no comfort, anymore. No warmth. No candied pineapple. All was hard planes and angles and dead things mortified in Preserving Solution.

Snape settled himself in an austere chair behind the desk. "You may sit," he offered neutrally.

She sat and stared at a particularly disgusting pickled specimen on his desk. It looked something like a flayed toad, and she had this strange thought that she sympathized with it. She wanted to bury it so that nobody would look at it, naked and dehumanized, ever again.

"Tea?" Snape asked, brusque and bored.

"Er, sure. Thanks," she told the specimen.

With a flick of his wand a tea tray appeared between them. They poured their own cups.

An extremely uncomfortable few seconds passed by while they waited for their drinks to cool.

Then, abruptly, "How are the dittany treatments progressing?"

She hazarded a glance at him, mortified, before looking steadfastly away. He didn't look particularly interested in the answer, merely sour and perfunctory, like he thought he might as well just make some awkward, half-assed effort to…care. By asking about her curse scar. On her thigh. The one her attacker had given her. Of course he knew about the treatments; he probably made the potions.

She shoved her hands into her pockets. "Er. Okay. I guess."

They were both blessedly saved from having to continue on that topic by a knock on the door. Amy and Professor Snape looked sideways at the noise in tandem.

It was Filch of all people who poked his head into the room, and he looked as though Christmas had just come early.

"Professor—a quick word if you—" Filch began in those oily tones of his, giving a sycophant little bow.

But the young professor had already risen and was gesturing Filch out. "In the hall," he said curtly.

Amy half-hoped he'd dismiss her, but he merely swept out into the corridor without another word.

The door clicked shut behind him.

"Found one when I was sweepin' in the corridor—came right to you with it," Filch was saying in low, excited tones. She could just barely make out their conversation through the door.

There was an unnatural silence for at least a minute. And then—

"As you saw, Professor, nasty business," Filch was saying. He couldn't have sounded happier about it. "If I could only get the approval forms for flogging—"

"I'll look into it, Filch," Snape said.

"Professor, it would be a simple matter—"

"I said I'll look into it," he snapped.

Filch's shuffling steps retreated back to whatever rock he'd crawled out from under, and Snape returned to his office, looking immensely irritated. His eyes flicked toward her as he sat down again, but she only seemed to make him angrier. He looked away once more and busied himself by opening up a desk drawer. Amy drank her tea, anxious to leave.

"You're failing Potions," he told her without preamble.

"I know," she replied apologetically.

Snape gave a disapproving tut and reached into the pocket of his robes. She thought, for one insane moment, that he was going to pull out his wand and hex her for being such a piss-poor student, but all he did was retrieve what looked strangely like a Christmas bauble and dump it unceremoniously into his desk.

He then withdrew a small, battered flask from the same drawer and poured a measure of clear liquid into his tea. Amy caught a faint whiff of something juniper-y and antiseptic, like an evergreen forest meets a hospital, but it wasn't any potion she recognized. He didn't offer any explanation for this bizarre exchange, either, but merely gave her a nasty look when he caught her staring, as if daring her to say something about the whole thing.

She didn't.

"Are you planning on submitting your senior exit strategy for review anytime soon?" he asked.

"I'm working on it," she lied for the second time that day.

"Then I assume you had some other reason for coming here? Or have we covered it?"

Right. She'd almost forgotten.

"No. I, ah…My parents wanted me to give you this," she forced out, retrieving the package from her bag and shoving it across his desk. "It's to replace the one that you gave—the one that I—the one that got lost."

Snape looked at the cloak but elected not to comment.

"I don't know what happened to it. I don't remember how I even ended up with it," she continued. It seemed important to clarify that.

His fathomless eyes flicked toward her. "No, I don't suppose you would."

"I don't remember much," her mouth insisted without bothering to first consult her brain.

Stupid. Stupid-Stupid-Stupid.

"Shame, really. I understand there's a flourishing black market in illicit memories. You might have made a fortune for your trouble," he said, impassive and dead-pan.

That made her gape unattractively at him because it was the most ridiculously inappropriate thing anybody had ever said to her. The few people who knew looked at her like she was either a ruined, pitiable thing, or else a potential murderess. Never had anybody made light of her situation, and she was certain that Severus Snape had just made a joke. A dry, extremely macabre, not-very-funny joke, but a joke nevertheless. She hadn't thought he possessed any humor whatsoever.

"Close your mouth, Miss Scrivener, you'll let the pixies in."

So she closed her mouth, finished her tea, and decided that maybe Snape was okay, after all. This was the first time since he'd been installed as Head of House that he'd remembered her name correctly, anyway.

Then he gave her a month's detention for failing so many classes and generally sucking at life.

Amy's hair is limp and lifeless. The color of dishwater. Of a decade's soap scum caked onto a porcelain sink.

She has these two roommates that, over the last seven years, she's gotten to know fairly well. Fiona was an exceptionally pretty idiot with the loveliest honey-blonde hair Amy has ever seen. Every night before bed, she'd brush it into a great, frizzy mess, and then spend the next several hours twist-twist-twisting golden locks around her index finger. She'd coil them up into these tight springs, release them, and by lights-out her head would be covered in these perfect Victorian ringlets. It was strongly reminiscent of a powdered wig.

Alex, a foul-mouthed beater with an endless supply off-color jokes—the one Myron said was apparently taking something about her Uncle Augie pretty hard—also had good hair. This was probably because Alex knew every Hair Charm in the world. Braids were her specialty—Big braids, little braids; long braids, short braids. Sometimes she chose to tease her hair out into a big curly mass; other times, she'd ply it with relaxing potions. Alex was forever harassing her hair and frequently got into fights with the mirror over it ('the mirror,' she liked to claim, 'is a fucking racist'). Amy had always liked Alex's hair. It was dynamic, exciting, and vivacious. It was also the loveliest blue-black.

But Amy's hair is limp and lifeless. Not unlike Snape's, actually, just a lot less greasy.

Wand pointed to her own head, she tried yet again to do something about this. She gave her wand a hopeful sort of flourish, and her hair gave a pathetic little quiver before lying dead again.

"Amy. Amy, Amy, Amy," said Alex, shaking her head from the spot by the grate. They were Seventh-Years, now, and had claimed the best spot in the common room.

Amy lowered her hand-mirror. "Alex. Alex, Alex, Alex," she mocked.

Alex gave a dramatic, put-upon sigh, pointed her wand straight at Amy's head, and made an aggressive motion. Unfamiliar magic scuttled over Amy's scalp as her hair arranged itself into something that, hopefully, would improve it.

She raised the hand mirror again and was immediately surprised. She looked...pretty. Yes, Reflection-Amy looked pretty. Alex's charm had styled her hair into some kind of complicated up-do. Or something. She's never been great with fashion.

"Thank you," she said, looking back up.

Alex waved her hand vaguely, as though it were the easiest thing in the world to make yourself appear agreeable to other people, and began copying Fiona's Charms homework.

Behind her, several fourth-year boys were roughhousing and laughing while they teased a fourth-year girl. The girl seemed to be enjoying the attention.

"Lucky," Fiona pouted to Amy. She was sprawled across one of the Common Room couches with a copy of Witch Weekly, and had a finger poised some five inches from her temple with a lock of hair half-curled around it. "If I did that, it would look like somebody'd Spelled a hippogriff tail to my head." Whatever that meant.

Alex laughed somewhat maliciously at that, but Fiona ignored her.

"So, you got a date, Amy?" Fiona asked with an air of girlish gossip that made Amy want to give her a bloody nose. "I hear Myro—"

"Detention," Amy interrupted. 'Date' and 'Snape' were not words that belonged in the same library, let alone in the same sentence.

Alex leaned in Amy's direction. "Is that why you're getting all tarted up? Hoping he'll raise your grade?"

"No, no. I—"

"You're wasting your time," Alex insisted over Fiona's giggles. "Fiona already tried—"

"Oh my God, gross, Alex," Fiona interrupted. "I'd never!"

"Oh, don't get all high and mighty on me, Fiona. Everybody knows how you got that Prophet internship last summer," Alex said.

"Not by coming on to a greasy, hook-nosed—"

Amy put her mirror away and stared at the fourth-years. The boys seemed to be trying to convince the girl to do…something. She sat up for a better look.

"—You're always going on about rugged men, Fiona. Don't you think he's rugged?"

Behind Alex, the fourth-year girl was making a show of refusing to touch whatever one of the boys was trying to hand her— something?—Amy couldn't see it clearly.

"—Like he could just grab you and-"

"—Eww!"

The 4th-year girl, giggling madly, finally reached out for the—Christmas bauble? It looked exactly like the thing she'd seen in Snape's office, the one he'd put in his desk before pulling out that ill-smelling tonic.

"—Rugged like he could just ravish you and—"

"What are they doing?" Amy interrupted, loudly enough to be heard over the bickering.

Her roommates turned to look at the scene. The 4th-year girl had the bauble-thing in her hand and was standing, stock-still, with her eyes closed. The boys watched her eagerly for a reaction. And then, quite suddenly, the girl dropped the bauble with a half-delighted, half-horrified little squeal.

"Just stupid fourth-year stuff. Looking at…well, porn, most like," said Fiona in a whisper.

Amy frowned. "Porn? How—"

"Hey!" Alex interrupted, yelling at the group. "Pipe the fuck down! And give that here—Memoriballs are banned."

One of the boys started to protest, but Alex flicked her wand in a silent Summoning Spell and the object zoomed into her waiting hand.

"Hey, you're not a prefect!" he whined.

"And you're a shite Chaser, but we go to war with the army we have, don't we? Now piss off," Alex yelled back.

The fourth-years shuffled off.

"Are you going to turn that in?" Fiona asked Alex. "Snape's been really strict about those this year."

"What? God, no. I'm going to watch it," said Alex happily. "Want to join me?"

"Gross. I'm not—" Fiona began.

"But what is it?" Amy interrupted.

"A Memoriball," said Alex, as though that clarified everything. "You know, like a 'memorial,' only it's a ball, so—"

"Yeah, I got it. But what's it made of? Is there, like, a memory in there?" Amy asked.

"Could be, I guess." Alex shrugged.

"I thought you needed a Pensieve to do that," said Amy.

"Well, sure, if you've about a million galleons and want to do the thing properly," Alex said.

"What, so people go do something they think other people would want to see and then sell their memory of it?" Amy asked, thinking about Snape's off-color joke. She might have made a fortune for her trouble.

"That's the idea," said Alex. "Fantasies, you know—something to watch when you're bored. Only, not too long. Your brain will turn to mush."

"Mush?" Amy repeated, hoping Alex would elaborate.

Alex tapped her head. "Yup, mush. 'It doesn't do to dwell in memories' and all that. Stay too long, watch too many times in a row, your brain will liquefy. So, they're banned."

"I think they're sick," Fiona interjected decisively. "I hear there's one where the Minister eats a live octopus!"

"That isn't the Minister, you idiot. That's just some bloke Polyjuiced into him. Everyone knows that," said Alex.

"I heard people Polyjuice into kids in those!" Fiona insisted.

Alex rolled her eyes. "Even if that were true, and it's not, it's still just a fantasy. They don't hurt anybody—hell, if they keep the whack-jobs from bothering real people, the inventor should get a bloody Order of Merlin. Sure you don't want to watch? No? How about you, Amy?"

Amy shook her head.

"Wimps," Alex said and, with that, closed her eyes and held the Memoriball tightly in her fist. She froze for all of ten seconds before dropping the thing with a laugh. "Oh. My. God!" she exclaimed. "Where's Myron? Is he here?—Myron!—MYRON! You've got to see this! It's DISGUSTING!"

And she was off, running in the direction of the boys' dorms. Amy stared.

"Hey, Amy?" Fiona said after a bit.

"What?"

"Weren't you supposed to be in detention, like, twenty minutes ago?"

Amy checked her watch.

Fuck.

Amy lied before, when she said she didn't know how she came to have her professor's cloak. She does.

It wasn't one of those things she legitimately doesn't remember, like how she managed to get from that empty classroom to the Hospital Wing in the first place. Neither is it one of those things she refuses to remember, like what happened before that. She simply lied about it.

She is a Slytherin, after all, and she believes that the truth is open to interpretation.

Even still, she'll admit that reality must have at least a skeleton of immutability; there must exist a set of barest facts, and those facts are these: She ended up, somehow, at the Hospital Wing. She submitted, barely, to a humiliating and ultimately pointless exam. At some point after that, Snape showed up.

He'd appeared for some reason and started to say something, but it died on his lips when he saw what was Marked on her thigh, visible where her hospital gown had ridden up. For about three whole seconds, every bone in his body seemed to become fused to its neighbor, he was so still. He took in a sharp breath, and she was riveted to the flare of his nostrils; the sudden feral tilt to his lips; the brief vision of crooked teeth barred. It was only then that she truly began to panic, because she had never seen anything so like hatred in her life.

What he had done? That was child's play, compared to what the look on Snape's face promised.

She has no idea, in retrospect, if Snape actually dragged her out of bed as violently as she thinks he did, but he certainly wasn't gentle. This wasn't like in a trashy romance novel, when the knight in shining armor came to carry his poor, abused witch to a land of eternal sunshine and spotless minds. Snape had no kind words, and she wouldn't have wanted any reassuring touches even if he had any to give her. He did not even let her put her shoes on.

How she ended up with the cloak was this: Afterthought.

After the staccato of Snape's boots against the stone and Madam Pomfrey's shrill, shrieking protests; after the exquisite cruelty of the pain of the journey to the Headmaster's office; after being dumped unceremoniously on the floor outside it; after all of that, the thought.

What was it, Snape?

What was it that made you pause?

Was it in some small fit of propriety remembered that you unfastened your cloak?

Was it in regret that you let it fall over my body?

There is probably some profound extended metaphor here about the truth being a skeleton, and our interpretations being the muscles that make it move. Maybe there is something about the shitty things we do to ourselves being the fat that weighs it down, and the shitty things life does to us being the scars that give it character. But Amy isn't really a writer, and she definitely isn't a poet.

She is only a liar.

Amy the Liar stood at the door outside Snape's classroom, took a shaky breath, and raised her fist to knock. Snape's face swam in her mind's eye, scowling and outraged. She could feel the ghost of his hand, suddenly, where it had curled around her arm those few months ago. His words echoed in her mind: "Call her the Death Eater Whore you believe her to be!"

Her fist lowered to her side. She turned around and started walking back to the dorms.

It was an indisputable fact that one did not skip detention with Professor Snape. It simply wasn't done. Ergo, in some mystical way, she'd actually attended, right?

Right?