"Hyacinthoides non-scripta."

"What now?"

"Bluebells," Hermoine said simply, pushing a hot cup of tea towards Harry across the coffee table. "Also sometimes known as fairy flowers."

"Fairy flowers?" Ron sniggered from the floor in front of the fireplace, sputtering some of his own tea onto the rug.

"Doesn't exactly fit his image, does it?" Harry glanced up from his reclined position on the ancient sofa and nodded gratefully at Hermione as he picked up the cup and took a sip. He ran his fingers over the faded purplish floral embroidery once again, as though it would finally deign to reveal its secrets if he kept messing with it, like the runes had.

"I'm completely over weird, enchanted books. Best just leave it alone, mate." Ron relinquished a portion of the cushion he was sitting on to make room for Hermione as she sat down next to him and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. "Or stick another basilisk fang in it," he added under his breath.

The sitting room of Number 12 Grimmauld Place was briefly illuminated in bright white light. After a few moments, thunder rolled in the distance and rain continued to pound against the windows. Truth be told, Harry was inclined to agree with Ron at this point, keenly recalling his mixed fortunes with certain diaries and potions books. Friendly, helpful, dangerous, treacherous, destroyed…gone. He tossed the journal into the fire.

"Harry!" Hermione admonished him, fishing it out of the heatless enchanted flames and dusting soot off of the cover. "Let's decide on it later, when you're not so—"

"Mental?" Ron interjected.

"I was going to say emotional," she countered. Harry glared at both of them. It was pointless trying to deny it though, as his eyes were still all red and puffy from this morning.

They'd ended up having to abandon their efforts early as someone had called the local police to investigate the house, probably having spotted one of them in the windows. Luckily, their escape plan had been seamless and all that had to be abandoned was furniture, which wasn't worth the risk of returning for. Everything potentially damaging or dangerous was in the stacks of boxes that contained a disproportionate amount of books, currently heaped in a corner of the room and temporarily forgotten. Harry didn't have the energy to go through them today.

They sat in subdued conversation for a while, with Harry mostly silent. The storm blew itself out until it was little more than background noise by the time it had grown late, and soon the interior was bathed in a turquoise light as the sun began to set.

"How are your parents doing, anyway?" Something forcefully insistent in Ron's tone of voice snapped Harry out of his daze.

"Oh, you know…" Hermione nervously tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, glancing sideways at Harry, as though unsure of how he'd react. "They're doing better. A bit at a time."

"…Your parents?" He sat up from the couch, feeling a fresh wave of guilt begin pooling up from within. "I thought you said getting their memory charms reversed was successful?"

"It was successful…mostly. It's nothing to worry about," she fidgeted and glanced around, looking for an exit to this line of conversation.

"The healers at St. Mungo's said it's going to take a while to fix the damage," Ron urged on without remorse.

"Damage?" Harry's teacup hit the saucer with a loud noise as he stood up, looking at Hermione with a horrified expression.

"Harry. I promise, it's not as bad as it sounds," she sighed, giving Ron a quick glare, "It's just…reversing a memory charm, one that takes a lot away, especially, isn't just as simple as waving a wand and undoing it. I wiped their entire memory of me. It's slow-going and they're not very quick to trust me right now. I've been assured that, with time, they'll come around in the end… It's not as bad as what happened to Lockhart."

"…Hermione, I'm so sorry…" he started. She put up a hand to silence him.

"It was my choice, wasn't it? You've got enough on your plate at the moment, I didn't want to worry you any further."

Harry crossed the rug and reached out to grasp her hand and help her off the floor, pulling her into a familial hug. "I know I'm useless, but if there's anything I can do, please ask." He spotted the stack of boxes over her shoulder. "I'll keep an eye out for anything that might be of help." She squeezed him gently and nodded.

"We'd best get back to the Burrow; it's past supper," she said quietly. "You coming tonight?"

"Ginny's been asking after you," Ron added. "She's been a bit lonely."

"Next time," Harry withered a bit under the sharp look Ron gave him. "Tomorrow, even. I promise," he shrugged and smiled weakly, "I'm exhausted, anyway. Wouldn't be great company."

After goodbyes were said, and Hermione had gone ahead through the Floo, Ron paused before entering the fireplace and then suddenly rounded on him with an uncharacteristically inscrutable expression in his eyes.

"Harry…I don't presume to understand exactly what you're going through… This last month has been very hard for everybody and I'm worried about you…But I'm worried about Hermione, and Ginny, and Mum, and everyone else too."

"I'm fine, Ron—"

"No, you're not…None of us are. No one in their right mind would be. You need to remember that you're not the only one who has suffered and lost—"

"I know that!" Harry bristled indignantly.

"—and that's why we need to stick together on this," Ron talked over him without missing a beat, "You can't keep it all in all the time by yourself and ignore everyone around you. You need us as much as we need you…or something like that…" he trailed off noncommittally.

"…Tomorrow. I promise."

Ron nodded, and then pulled Harry into an awkward attempt at a brotherly embrace which lasted just a moment too long for both their tastes, before patting him on the back with a chuckle and breaking apart.

"I'm holding you to that, or I'm coming back with Mum and her corned beef sandwiches."

"I'm not sure if you meant that as encouragement or a threat."

"Both."

—

From the Great Hall way back in the distance drifted the faint, beautiful melody of a choir and indistinct hubbub that might have been laughter. There were more people than anyone in recent memory could recall staying here for the holidays, owing to the great cause for celebration still at the forefront of the collective wizarding consciousness. The decorations were extra lavish as well, as the headmaster was putting on an impressive show of festive colour and light even after making the rare move of allowing family visitors. The whole thing ended up something like a massive party that lasted long into the evening.

Severus detested parties, though, and he had no family left. Severus had nothing except a vow.

It was bitterly cold out here by the lake, and despite his heavy woolen cloak and scarf, he had been shivering uncontrollably for a while. He'd never carried an acceptable amount of body fat even at the best of times, which these were decidedly not. It might have helped if he'd at least had something warm to drink, but just looking at the feast back inside the castle had made him feel ill. Thus, he'd found himself absconding entirely and had instead trudged a path through the pristine, untouched snow out to his old hideaway by the lake. His tracks were slowly disappearing under the heavy fall of new snow, he noted blankly.

All of them erased…gone…lost…

Another great shudder sent snowflakes cascading from the top of his inky head, their crystalline structure faintly catching the distant colour of fairy lights on the way down like some kind of absurd tinsel. Happy Christmas to me, he thought rancorously.

Severus had actually had a number of Happy Christmases in the past, though not many. He'd passed the indeterminate hours reminiscing on them. There had been the warm smile his Mum had given him one particular year when he was very little that they'd had a bit more money and she'd actually presented a wrapped gift to him. New shoes, he remembered, trying to curl his numb toes in his thoroughly worn boots. A practical gift, but a novel rarity for him at the time. Even greater a novelty had been that genuine smile.

I wonder if she's able to smile more now that she's free of me and Toby?

Where is your mum now? A troublesome voice nagged at him unexpectedly. I've no idea, he realized. He was drawing a vast and unnatural void when he tried to remember why she wasn't coming back. Another thought floated to the surface in its place. Reggie's never coming back either… though he found a similar hole in his memory as to the reason.

…You knew Regulus?

Of course he knew Regulus, he'd been a loyal companion and, dare he say it, good friend during those bleak times when he'd realized he was rather in over his head with the whole movement. Reggie used to get him the occasional gift too, actually. Rather funny when you think about it: Death Eater gift exchanges. The voice snorted in stifled laughter.

The laughter reminded him of Lily, which curdled the momentary respite he'd found out here in the cold. There was the anguish once more, as fresh as the new snow. He might have started crying again, but he had nothing left to give, it seemed. Just the emptiness within him, slowly freezing every place in his heart that it touched. Lily's smile, Lily's silly little gifts, Lily's eyelashes twitching as he'd nearly worked up the nerve to kiss her under the mistletoe a few years back, before he destroyed everything.

Severus felt tiny icicles being driven through his hands, his overly large nose, and the rest of his extremities before suddenly going blissfully, comfortably numb all over his body. He was vaguely aware that he'd stopped shivering a while ago, to which some clinically detached part of him reprimanded him that he ought to have cast a warming charm on himself. But the snow was so, so soft and he hardly felt the impact when his body toppled over into it. Lying here forever wouldn't be so bad, after all, if he didn't have to feel anything.

Wait, you can't do this! Get up! The irritating voice broke through the haze of his catatonia. Severus twitched, but his body would no longer obey him. The lights in the castle had gone out some time ago, too, given the absence of their colourful glow as his black eyes dilated and remained fixed towards that direction. It had gone very quiet.

Too late, sorry. He didn't really feel all that sorry, however. He told the voice spitefully, Add it to the list of my failures.

You promised…someone, though, didn't you? Swore to protect them?

What of it? It doesn't matter anymore.

You matter, dammit! Get the hell up and keep your promise!

If only to get the voice to shut up, Severus tried again, but his legs were useless and all he managed to do was roll over face first into the snow. It felt enchantingly like that kiss he'd almost stolen against his thin and frozen lips. His resolve dissolved again with the comfort that brought.

GET UP, you miserable git!

Oh, Severus was angry now. How dare this unwelcome, disembodied voice command him not to die? That anger funneled into his stiffened limbs, and he managed to finger his wand loosely in its wrist holster. Attempting to lash out at the voice, albeit pitifully, he managed to conjure a weak shower of red sparks that sputtered briefly in the air around him.

Showed you, then. He snorted a muffled laugh into the snow, kicking up a few flakes with his breath.

Somewhere nearby, a dog was barking, though it sounded strangely distorted, as though it was coming from underwater. He heard more voices, male, then a feminine shout, footfalls crunching in the snow. Blackness overtook him as they approached, and soon he was aware no more.

—

Severus awoke in considerable pain, uncomfortably warm and bare from the waist up, and feeling strangely weighed down on his arms and legs. He tested his fingers and found them constrained loosely by a wrapping of some sort. As his senses came back to him, his nostrils filled with the nostalgic scent of clean linen and something pungent and herbal. Matronly hands pressed something wet to his face that made the herbal scent overpowering and stung his skin a bit. He squinted through bleary, half-open eyes.

"Mum?" he croaked.

"Och, that'll be the day," came a familiar snappy lilt.

The rush of hot blood all the way up to his temples brought with it extraordinary clarity of mind. He flailed frantically, attempting to flee, but found himself unrepentantly knocked back into the pillow with magic and let out an unseemly oof.

"Oh no y'don't. Poppy will have my head in the Boxing Day pudding…Once she sleeps off all the pastis, that is."

Severus gathered up a cocoon of sheets over his naked torso with heavily poulticed fingers, glaring resolutely at the ceiling that was slowly illuminated by the morning sunlight and refusing to make eye contact with his makeshift caregiver. He felt humiliatingly like a student again under her stare. "My apologies, Professor."

"You gave us quite a fright, young man. What on earth were you thinking? And don't y'dare say you were just out on a wee stroll, with the sorry state we found you in."

His mouth snapped shut. Well, there goes that excuse. McGonagall's pointed gaze bore more deeply into the side of his head the longer he took to come up with a story, but that was no shock. Despite Dumbledore's word after his trial, she scarcely trusted Severus farther than she could throw him, and who could blame her, really? Nothing good would ever come of faith in someone like him.

"Don't want to talk about it? Guilt on your conscience?"

Always, he thought. "I made an error in judgement. I'm perfectly fine."

It must have been the wrong response, for she stood up very briskly and snatched a potion vial off the tray next to his bed with a clatter, uncorking it and thrusting it under his nose. "Very well. You'll have no sympathy from me, Professor Snape."

"I appreciate that," he quipped.

Careful not to abandon his cocoon, he awkwardly arranged himself into a partially upright position, thankfully without interference this time. He took the potion and tilted it back, immediately making a sour face. One of Slughorn's inferior brews of Pepperup from just before he'd up and quit rather unexpectedly two months ago. He'd evidently used immature mandrake root in his haste; Severus was reluctant to consume it.

He finally met McGonagall's eyes as he handed the empty vial back, mouth still full of Pepperup. He truly must have looked terrible or ridiculous, or perhaps both, for something in her expression had become facetious when she took it from him.

"Five galleons," the crinkles around her bespectacled eyes deepend as she gave him a mischievous little smile, "on the outcome of the next Quidditch match, which so happens to be between our houses, as I'm sure y'know."

He lifted an eyebrow at her, and she continued, "If y'win, I'll let you in on the other errors in judgement that were made around the staff table last night."

Severus lost a few dribbles out of the corner of his mouth in an attempt to not spit it out entirely, doubling over and eventually swallowing with an enormous amount of effort. He was sure he'd turned another unnatural shade of red.

"And if I lose?" he asked cooly, steam beginning to issue out of his ears.

When she did not reply after a moment, he glanced up. McGonagall was not there, nor was the hospital wing. The shift had been so immediate that he could only stare blankly in surprise. He found himself propped up instead against the sofa on the floor of Grimmauld Place, with the boy shifting in his sleep behind him, snoring softly. Catching the light of the fire as it rolled to a stop on the rug next to him, a little crystal bottle with some substance in it obscured by the glare had tumbled out of the coat Potter was using as a blanket.

And clutched loosely between Severus' blistered fingers, a glowing sprig of violet flowers he knew instantly to be bluebells, slowly dissolving into light as they disappeared from his grasp.